If moving people was what we cared about, mass transit would be the biggest game in town. It speaks more to the ideas of industrialization and mass production: efficiency, uniformity, large quantities.

Cars, however, are all about profligate waste and excess. The sad fact is, without that waste and excess, most of modern American life wouldn't be what it is. If we made bread at home instead of buying it at the store, or took the train instead of drive, or generally carried on as most people around the world carry on - there would be a hell of a lot less capital sloshing around this country.

I think the idea of Americans be de-incentivized to drive scares the crap out of people making lots of money off of us driving.

It's funny how the industrial revolution created the concept of mass production, which allowed the personal private automobile to be produced, which killed off mass transport, which is based on many of the same theories as mass production. Advocating the personal private automobile as an efficient mode of transportation for millions of people is the same as claiming that millions of products are best manufactured by a single craftsman.

It's a really strange offshoot of capitalism that doesn't make much sense, and I think it's all based on the fallacy that private cars offer "freedom" and "privacy". Whether you're crowded on a train with other people or crowded on a highway with other people, you're still just part of a long line of sheep going from their homes to work and back again. And privacy? Please, you don't think we can see you picking your nose and eating your boogers in your car? Those windows are made of transparent glass. It's a false sense of privacy my friends!

In unrelated news, I'm going on a diet. You see, none of my clothes fit anymore because I eat too much. What I'm going to do is buy bigger clothes. That way I'll fit into my clothes again. What a diet!

My least favorite appeal is "more roads."

I've talked to people around LA and when they say that, I ask, okay, where? And then they're stumped because they haven't thought it through. We can't even widen a freeway without ten years of lawsuits and demolishing fifty homes. Are we suddenly gonna be able to build new roads everywhere?

How would these new roads deal with the fact that a lot of people commute down the current roads because, oh, I dunno, that's the road that's going where they all need to go?

The other insane thought is double-decking the freeway, which I'm sure after we spend fifty billion on that and all our cars die going in circles up a giant ramp two-hundred feet in the air, we'll quickly find that the roads are still completely clogged. Just amazing.