Improving Transport, Part II

"Goodbye GM" Counter-suggestions


By John Taylor; 2009 June 07, Nur 02, 166 BE


We continue going through the suggestions Michael Moore made for improving the transport system in his recent essay, "Goodbye GM." Moore's fifth suggestion is:


Moore: "5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses."


JET: Until we moved into the country in the late 1990's I refused to own a car and for at least twenty years used mostly buses to get around Hamilton. I spent a large proportion of my time waiting around for the next bus. So I can tell you from first hand experience that this system needs a great deal more fixing than just manufacturing more buses, however clean and energy efficient they may be.

What killed the bus was not so much a plot by big brother as it was little brother, the unions. If we really wanted people to use buses again, you would have to break the leech-like hold of the teamster's union. That would mean cutting through a mountain of red tape and introducing free enterprise into the equation.

The cheroots of Israel and share taxis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi) used throughout the developing world could be adapted to follow flexible routes and pick up passengers until they are full, with costs shared by them all. Combined with better regulation, on demand methods and connected devices, this would would fill the gaps between various modes of transport.

I still resent being forced to own a car, which is against all my principles. So, why not let amateurs compete head on with professional drivers by allowing any motorist to pick up riders along the way, with times, routes and fees already negotiated by GPS and Internet connected computers? Any reliable motorist could offset expenses by picking up passengers, while at the same time decreasing the wasted resource of one-occupant vehicles.

The kids and I have as our daily reading lately, "One People, One Planet; The Adventures of a World Citizen," by Andre Brugiroux, the story of a Frenchman who traveled around the world (and when he hit Alaska, heard about and became a Baha'i) on a dollar a day, exclusively by hitchhiking. This book reminds me of what a great experience it is to travel by thumb. When I was in school and my mother had a mortal illness, I commuted from Hamilton to Guelph University almost every day for a while. I remember learning far more from the stories and comments of the kind souls who picked me up than the rigid, overly stiff lectures I attended. A few years later it became impossible to get a ride, thanks no doubt to a terror campaign against hitchhiking by the mass media. Rich, centralized money machines have no interest in competing with rides for charity.

But, now that I think of it, if journalistic terrorists were removed from the picture, present cell phone technology would make hitching far more pleasant and convenient than before. You would just punch a virtual thumb into your Blackberry and any driver in the area who feels like gabbing in exchange for a ride would pick you up. In case a crime were committed, there would be a record of who both both are indelibly inscribed on the Net. Hitchhiking would be safe and relaxed for all concerned.


Moore: "6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true)."


JET: Moore is stuck in the past, a time when huge factories and unions ran the roost. We do not need ruthless predators to dominate, centralize and subvert the economy again. In early days, local machine shops designed cars. Gradually, big assembly lines exterminated them. Now technological efficiency has shifted back to the local level. Let the workshop come back. Using three dimensional printers any part can now be fabricated on-site at the punch of a button. All the retooling of electrification can go on at your local garage. Larger but still local workshops could, with existing technology, quickly convert every existing car to electric, and then go on to greater things.

There is no doubt that a shift to local manufacture would create far more and better quality, more creative jobs than factories ever did. Once every present car is electric, local shops and garages could start designing and manufacturing new cars based on local demand. There is no real need for big factories any more, except sometimes to make standardized, specialized parts. Local enterprises can assemble mass produced parts into vehicles, and, whenever necessary, make their own parts. All we need to do this would be agreed upon standards. Standard parts for an open-system designed series of cars and trucks could be designed, tested and negotiated in the same way that the Linux operating system was worked out, by a combination of paid and volunteer workers whose output is mediated by Internet-connected software.

Clearly, local workshops too could be taken over by larger interests and made into franchises as centralized, undemocratic and narrow sighted as GM ever was. However, well designed profit sharing schemes and open accounting can be designed to counteract that tendency. With good laws and accounting methods, a local shop can be a worker's cooperative using the same combination of competing amateurs, professionals and expert consultants that would reform the other, consumer end of the industry where buses, cheroots, taxis and hitchhiking compete with one another for the common good.


Moore: "7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them."


JET: Absolutely! I can only add that we need to set up a very elaborate set of goals and deadlines to accomplish this complex task. It is as much a legislative and intellectual challenge as an industrial one, because solar energy is local by definition. Sunlight falls on every point on earth equally, not only on Washington, London or Beijing. If our political reflexes responded to needs of the locality, we would have converted to solar power long ago. The great challenge posed by total solarization of energy is to decentralize democracy, and that can only be done once a world confederation is formed. Otherwise the continual threat of war will swing the balance to the center and the local will continue to be starved out.


Moore: "8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy."


JET: Not nearly enough. We need to give neighborhoods real decision making power. We need to discourage freehold dwellings, and encourage higher density, modular housing. This will only happen once we have come up with legal mechanisms to see that everything in a neighborhood is both democratic and up to world class standards.


Moore: "9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them."


JET: This is a great idea but no politician who dared advocated it would survive the next election. The electorate is a spoiled child who wants his cake and demands to eat it too. Surely another example of the tyranny of "Little Brother." This is why the Baha'i administrative order permanently eschews the approval of voters for policy while upholding their right to choose the individuals who, in a group, arrive at and carry out policy. Some political thinkers put it this way: a politician is either a leader or a representative of the will of the people, but cannot be both. If she is a representative there would be no need for a human being to be there in the first place, public opinion polls or referenda would determine every decision. In this time of crisis, we clearly need leaders. And mostly, we need local leaders.


John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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