Red Tory v.2.0
It's funny how well-known, well-documented stories such as this fail to penetrate and weaken the familiar narratives trotted out by free market ideologues and corporate propagandists and don't shake some sense into people who continue to assert that changes in consumer behaviour are always the result of people choosing rationally something they prefer over something else.
I'm sure, at some critical point, the private car was preferred over mass transit simply out the need for people to engage in competitive consumption that is a very real consequence of people perceiving they are better off when others are worse off. It's a psychology we all fall prey to, and one I identified in myself when I lived in the 3rd World (where I was compelled to buy a car...in fact ordered to...and lavished with all kinds of incentives to do so) and couldn't escape feeling sometimes guilty, sometimes relieved that I was spared the inconveniences average people endured as part of normal life, like walking.
In terms of responding to a very real need to accomodate a wide variety of transportation requirements, the private car is superior to mass transit. The unintended consequences of that have become farcical, however; the time lost in the bureaucracy of car ownership, in traffic and in searching for parking, the horror of urban planning that is a result of being constrained to design human habitation to accomodate this intrusive technology, the imperative to develop additional technology to counter its drawbacks, and the sheer expense of the whole experience of car ownership should finally be included relentlessly in the cost/benefit analysis to determine not only how exactly this technology improves our lives, but how it relates to economic efficiency and productivity.
So-called “free markets” are often more of an illusion than anything else with big business just paying lip service to true capitalism.
Capitalism tends towards monopoly - unless it is unchecked and regulated for the benefit of the common good.
I have worked for two very large corporations, and believe me, they would be all too happy to be in a monopolistic or at least, oligopolisitc position if they could achieve it ....
Commenting by HaloScan
