The horror.Remember, it's not just your car, it's your freedom.
"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."
-Jonas Salk
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
me, Michael Tobis Ph.D., a.k.a. "mt"
The Best of "In It"
- Getting Things Backwards
- Childhood's End
- Nature Doesn't Need a Seat at the Table
- Quote Gallery
- My Point of View in a Nutshell
- Tobis's Tautology
- The Cruel Hoax
- The Lawnmower Problem
- Sunspots vs Global Temperature
- Climate Models- Is There a Better Way?
- Can Computation Solve Economics?
- The Opposite of Denialism
- Consequences for Getting It Wrong
- On Falsifying AGW
- How Loud to Squawk
- Getting Things Backwards
- Energy is Unbelievably Cheap
- Reply to Revkin
- Selling the Incomprehensible
- Nature is not a Budget Item
- Perpetuity Smaller in Texas
- Taking Lomborg Seriously
- The Missing Feedback
- Science Budget Talking Point
- Does My Prius Help?
- The First Meter
- B-Schools vs Scientists
- Climatological Culture
- The Mayor Feels My Pain
- Economists Overflow Bathtubs
- The Great Society
- Economists vs Engineers
- The Market for Lemons
- Is Climatology A Science?
- The Climate Science Budget
- Bambi vs Godzilla
- Why Truth is Losing Ground
Where the 4 Winds Dwell
- AGW Observer
- And Then There's Physics
- Brave New Climate
- Climate Abyss (Nielsen-Gammon)
- Climate SIght (Kate X)
- Covered in Bees
- Daily Climate
- Daily Dish
- Deltoid
- Empty
- Energy Collective, The
- Fleck
- Greenman (AKA CLimate Crock)
- Grist
- Grumbine
- Hale
- Hot Topic
- Ill Considered
- Krugman
- Long Now
- Maribo
- Planet 3.0
- Quark Soup
- Rabett Run
- RealClimate
- Resilience
- Samadhisoft
- Science of Doom
- Serendipity
- Stoat
- Tamino/Open Mind
- Texas Climate News
- Texas Observer
- The Other Onion
- Things Break
- Variable Variability
- Various Consequences
- Yale Forum
No Cattle and No Hat Either
me, Michael Tobis Ph.D., a.k.a. "mt"
Some biographical info is on
my home page
Blog Archive
-
▼
2007
(289)
-
▼
September
(34)
- Help from the Tundra
- WIRED Correlations
- Good News Bad News
- Bicycling in America
- Generalized Climate Change
- The Long Now
- Knowing Whom to Trust
- Certified Alarmism Free!
- Ocean to Violate 1976 EPA pH Standards
- CO2 -> plants -> hydrology
- From Sweden to South Africa by Bicycle
- America "Soviet Style"
- "Can Anyone Stop It?"
- Anthropocene Geography
- Should We Stop Modeling?
- Absolution
- Pseudoscience Symptoms
- US Science panel complains re policy connection
- The Evil That is Socialism
- Uncertainty about Uncertainty
- Postmodern Geophysics
- Taking Lomborg Seriously
- Policy as a Problem in Engineering
- Agreeing to work to agree to work to...
- Whom Should We Trust - The Flip Side
- Quote of the Day
- Encounter with a Texan
- What Corporate Executives Believe
- Terraform Earth First
- How Propaganda Works and How It Fails
- Carbon Sequestration
- Chemical Alley
- Pedal to the Metal
- Earth Observation COVR-up
-
▼
September
(34)
6 comments:
It's a cute socialist idea for seniors that could actually become a cute business project not only for seniors but I am afraid it can't replace cars unless you combine your socialism with a national socialism that whose brownshirts will make it mandatory.
For what it's worth, I don't suggest enforced replacement of cars. I suggest that alternatives be subsidized in the same way cars are subsidized, as they are in Europe.
I would love to see bicyle infrastructure in America supported to the extent of a penny compared to every dollar of public funds spent on cars.
We already have socialism for cars here; this doesn't seem to bother anybody.
Freedom to choose between transportation modes A, B, C, D is freedom.
Freedom to choose between transportation modes A, A, A and A is not freedom.
Nor are soccer moms free to choose to tell Trevor and Brittanie to ride their bikes 14 miles to soccer practice along arterials with no bike lanes.
Thus, in our country, the brownshirts forcing us to be chained to mode A hide their brownshirts under their white dress shirt and power tie (exaggerated to make a point).
Best,
D
Helsinki has had free bikes from 2000 but they are always almost all taken, and there is a lot of vandalism to them. They are also crappy to drive because of vandalism proofing. (Ie solid rubber tires.)
But driving my own bike is mostly fantastic. When the cars don't throw tiny rocks in my eyes. Have to use goggles because of that. At some places there aren't bike roads which is annoying.
I think the biggest enemies of biking are distance, weather and laziness. :)
I don't know if it's really the case that we have "socialism for cars" -- although I think I would agree with some of the prescriptions which would follow from such a complaint.
We have, I will concede, net subsidization for automobiles. It seems probable to me, at any rate, that gasoline taxes, registration fees, auto sales taxes, and auto excise taxes, probably do not cover all auto-related expenses, at least if you include most of the military cost of protecting Saudi Arabia (i.e., oil) as an expense of automobiles.
I would not oppose increased gasoline (or better, carbon) taxes, provided they were offset by the elimination or reduction of other taxes, for no net increase on the whole. (But of course, this would mean tax increases for heavier-than-average users of energy, and tax decreases for lighter-than-average users.) This would be good for the environment, and probably more economically efficient, albeit likely with major changeover costs, especially to auto workers.
But socialism, or ownership (or control) of the means of production, would seem to be quite limited today, to:
1) Construction and maintenance of roads and bridges and such. But these are used by buses and bicycles as well as cars -- mostly the latter, of course, although that reflects consumer choices.
2) Maintenance, by force of law, of municipal monopolies and oligarchies on intra-city transportation (i.e., bus monopolies and taxi medallions). Allowing jitney buses and taxis, subject to safety inspections and licensing, but not to government control of numbers, routes and pricing, would be a desocialization which would help the environment, the poor, and the economy.
The public owns the means of production and maintenance of the roads, without which the vehicles would be useless.
Therefore, yes, socialism.
It's also easy to argue that this approach is inefficient and corrupt.
I suggest that the solution to incompetent government is competence, not anarchy. Either way, though, the roads are strictly speaking a socialist institution.
Post a Comment