capitalism's drive to carmageddon || news & comments
Libertarian car buff — only in America, folks! — Eric Peters has a very useful commentary today. The car corporations’ efforts to boost MPG results is producing a major increase in the already mind-boggling complexity of their products. Peters: For example, turbochargers – sometimes not just one but two of them, staged in sequence (as … Read more
At the upcoming Washington Auto Show, Automotive News will be presenting its Lifetime Achievement Award to none other than Edsel B. Ford II, great-grandson of the spectacularly over-estimated Henry Ford, who, contrary to ruling mythology, invented neither the automobile nor the assembly line and who did not want to make sure workers’ incomes kept up … Read more
Mainstream dogma paints cars-first transportation in the United States as a product of pristine popular democracy. It is a huge lie, an attempt to divert attention from actual history. One very interesting aspect of the actual history is the connection between sponsored right-wing labor unions and the imposition of cars-first infrastructure. Take the case of … Read more
[Click image for larger view in pdf format.] This is one of my early favorites from my dig into the history of capitalist dictation of transportation policy in the United States. As we at DbC know, the general public has never been seriously included in the making of said policy, except on the margins and … Read more
Tell me, who wouldn’t want to pay triple the price of a Nissan Versa for this driving experience?: Door to door, my drive to The Globe and Mail’s head office in downtown Toronto is about 35 kilometres each way, which should be fine for the Leaf. Still, I charged it from 7 p.m. to 7 … Read more
Tom Murphy of Do the Math walks us through a topic that’s as crucial to the future of progressive, science-and-communications aided, modern society as anything could be: the comparative energy efficiency of human muscled-powered locomotion. Corporate capitalism presumes the continuation — and, hence, the sustainability — of present mobility arrangements in at least its core areas. Under that … Read more
Remember how, massively contrary to mainstream claims, automobile ownership is actually one of the most unequally distributed of all so-called “consumer” product categories? While their apologists manufacture dogmas about how cars unite the whole society across class lines, the reality is that, for the rich, cars are luxurious toys paid for out of petty cash. This fact … Read more
In his latest Do the Math post, physicist Tom Murphy estimates that total human energy use, in all forms across the whole globe and its 7 billion inhabitants, is something like 13 TW (TW = terawatts, or trillion watts). Murphy also calculates that the United States’ annual use of 7 billion (yes, it’s the same … Read more
Like the rest of their class, the automobile manufacturers are hoarding cash. Automotive News for October 10 cites a new study by IHS Automotive: Car companies are holding a quarter-trillion dollars in cash and equivalents, says Charles Chesbrough, senior principal economist at the industry consultancy. And the overall cash-to-revenue ratio is a healthy 19.3 percent, … Read more
The arrival of greenwashing as a top priority in corporate capitalism’s core industrial complex is expanding and refining the art and science of halo-ware as a 21st-century marketing strategy. “Halo products” are newfangled loss-leaders designed to provide cover for business-as-usual. Two times in just the past week, Automotive News, an insider gossip and news publication, … Read more