American Fascism - Cars
You might think of owning a car as the American Dream. Often times America is portrayed in the media (both domestically and internationally) as the country where everyone who is anyone has a car and experiences the freedom of driving around wherever they may please.
There is some truth to this. Because of the geographic layout of the country, most Americans do own cars and use them as their main form of transportation. However, this experience is far from "freedom."
Let's start at the beginning, when a car is manufactured. Each American car company is under the rules and regulations of countless government bureaucracies, from OSHA to the EPA, regulating everything about the way they do business. The most ominous of these regulations has to be the "CAFE standards" which dictate the fuel economy that cars must meet. Nevermind what the customers actually want, you have to make cars this way because the government says so... does that sound like freedom?
Additionally, the United Auto Workers have an unholy alliance with the government and they hold an absolute monopoly on the workforce for the big three auto makers. These union members get paid ridiculously high wages and receive benefits that are totally unrealistic. In fact, their pension plans and healthcare plans are so expensive for the companies that $5000 out of the price of every car you buy goes to paying for the benefits of current and past employees of the company, not including their wages. You would think the car companies could just fire these people and hire new auto workers that aren't so expensive, but they are under tremendous political pressure to not do so, an there is even a handful of labor laws that prevent such action. Sound like freedom? Not so much.
So, whenever you go and buy a car in our supposedly capitalist economy, keep in mind the fact that you're paying for exorbitant costs of labor (which the companies are forced to hire) and for whimsical government regulation.
Now lets talk about your own experience of buying a car and driving it home. When you go to the dealer to purchase a car, keep in mind that you could just buy a car over the internet like anything else... if the government would allow it! Think about how much you could save by buying directly from the manufacturer. Think about all the games you have to play with the dealers to get a reasonable price and what a lovely waste of time that is. You hardly can find the car that's got exactly the features you want, and if you let on that you've found just that, you're never getting the price down. Thanks again to Uncle Sam.
Once you've gotten your new car and you drive it off the lot, you are now participating in yet another government monopoly: the highway system. Most people might think that roads are a proper role of government but are they really? If you live in a city of more than 100,000 people, when is the last time you looked around and said "boy rush hour traffic sure is a breeze!" How about never? Ever wonder why mass transit in most places is generally horrible and doesn't go anywhere you need to go? Well the government is "competing" with transportation alternatives by taking tax money and building roads everywhere. How then could a mass transit company come in and attract enough of a market base to warrant the investment? They can't.
OK so you have your car and you're driving on the government roads, you're scott free, right? Wrong. You'd better make sure you pay your "property tax" on that new car for as long as you have it. If you fail to make that payment, the government will come to your house and steal your car. Let's say your property tax bill is $300. Your car might have cost $30,000. You fail to pay that $300 bill and the government physically takes your $30,000 property from you. Is that freedom? I think not.
While you're driving, you'd better not take any cough syrup, or drive faster than the arbitrarily set speed limit, or forget to wear your seat belt, or roll through a stop sign where nobody else is around, or turn left when there's a red left turn arrow, or have any firearms in the car, or... you get the point. Granted, some traffic safety rules are necessary, but as I've already contended the roads should be controlled by private companies and not by the government. In that case the rules would probably be a lot less arbitrary. If they weren't, people would just use different roads, or a different method of transportation.
I have just lightly touched on this subject and illustrated many ways in which the government controls your personal activity of car ownership. I'm sure there's much more out there that I haven't included. The point of this exercise is not to give you a list of statistics or a ton of legal documents to read, it's just to explore individual pieces of our every day lives and think of how many ways the government controls them. When you live in a system of government control, you live in a fascist system. A quick look at the Auto Industry has illustrated this clearly.
There is some truth to this. Because of the geographic layout of the country, most Americans do own cars and use them as their main form of transportation. However, this experience is far from "freedom."
Let's start at the beginning, when a car is manufactured. Each American car company is under the rules and regulations of countless government bureaucracies, from OSHA to the EPA, regulating everything about the way they do business. The most ominous of these regulations has to be the "CAFE standards" which dictate the fuel economy that cars must meet. Nevermind what the customers actually want, you have to make cars this way because the government says so... does that sound like freedom?
Additionally, the United Auto Workers have an unholy alliance with the government and they hold an absolute monopoly on the workforce for the big three auto makers. These union members get paid ridiculously high wages and receive benefits that are totally unrealistic. In fact, their pension plans and healthcare plans are so expensive for the companies that $5000 out of the price of every car you buy goes to paying for the benefits of current and past employees of the company, not including their wages. You would think the car companies could just fire these people and hire new auto workers that aren't so expensive, but they are under tremendous political pressure to not do so, an there is even a handful of labor laws that prevent such action. Sound like freedom? Not so much.
So, whenever you go and buy a car in our supposedly capitalist economy, keep in mind the fact that you're paying for exorbitant costs of labor (which the companies are forced to hire) and for whimsical government regulation.
Now lets talk about your own experience of buying a car and driving it home. When you go to the dealer to purchase a car, keep in mind that you could just buy a car over the internet like anything else... if the government would allow it! Think about how much you could save by buying directly from the manufacturer. Think about all the games you have to play with the dealers to get a reasonable price and what a lovely waste of time that is. You hardly can find the car that's got exactly the features you want, and if you let on that you've found just that, you're never getting the price down. Thanks again to Uncle Sam.
Once you've gotten your new car and you drive it off the lot, you are now participating in yet another government monopoly: the highway system. Most people might think that roads are a proper role of government but are they really? If you live in a city of more than 100,000 people, when is the last time you looked around and said "boy rush hour traffic sure is a breeze!" How about never? Ever wonder why mass transit in most places is generally horrible and doesn't go anywhere you need to go? Well the government is "competing" with transportation alternatives by taking tax money and building roads everywhere. How then could a mass transit company come in and attract enough of a market base to warrant the investment? They can't.
OK so you have your car and you're driving on the government roads, you're scott free, right? Wrong. You'd better make sure you pay your "property tax" on that new car for as long as you have it. If you fail to make that payment, the government will come to your house and steal your car. Let's say your property tax bill is $300. Your car might have cost $30,000. You fail to pay that $300 bill and the government physically takes your $30,000 property from you. Is that freedom? I think not.
While you're driving, you'd better not take any cough syrup, or drive faster than the arbitrarily set speed limit, or forget to wear your seat belt, or roll through a stop sign where nobody else is around, or turn left when there's a red left turn arrow, or have any firearms in the car, or... you get the point. Granted, some traffic safety rules are necessary, but as I've already contended the roads should be controlled by private companies and not by the government. In that case the rules would probably be a lot less arbitrary. If they weren't, people would just use different roads, or a different method of transportation.
I have just lightly touched on this subject and illustrated many ways in which the government controls your personal activity of car ownership. I'm sure there's much more out there that I haven't included. The point of this exercise is not to give you a list of statistics or a ton of legal documents to read, it's just to explore individual pieces of our every day lives and think of how many ways the government controls them. When you live in a system of government control, you live in a fascist system. A quick look at the Auto Industry has illustrated this clearly.
Labels: American Fascism
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