Safer Still?
The Secretary of Transportation believes, apparently, that a significant proportion of highway accidents are attributable to drivers being distracted by telephone calls or even broadcast entertainment. This seems, shall we say, counter-intuitive: you would imagine that conversing would be more liable to precipitate errors when one is driving fast, but collisions are concentrated in slow-moving vehicles – say, 25 m.p.h. or less.
My observation is, that the overwhelming majority of vehicles are driven by human beings, not by robots. And the nature of a human being is that se learns from experience – particularly, the experience of finding hirself wrong. This why experts – persons with experience – are prized. The more, and the more widely differing, experiences the driver has amassed, the better. One can, we might suppose, learn to ignore ones companions, ones conversations, even ones discomfort if the moment actually calls for attention.
If the Secretary actually aspired to improve highway safety, he could attend to what is properly his responsibility, the public highways. The most glaringly obvious characteristic of the highways is, that they regularly, predictably become overloaded and slow down. The reason why is also obvious; they are not managed to make profits. Taxes on fuel (or, perhaps, electricity) do nothing to match supply to demand, to keep the highways running fast: where there are tolls, it seems to be an invariable rule that the toll is the same when traffic is light as when it is heavy (except that, in the vicinity of New York City, vehicles without an EZ-Pass cannot travel at night, when the highways are least congested!)
It is obvious that an enormous investment was incurred in running the Interstate Highway System through the city centers, rather than through the suburbs. But this expense was largely wasted because, in the cities, the Interstates so often, so regularly, run slowly. Again obviously, this happens because intra-city traffic also uses the Interstates. Also obviously, this could be prevented by intelligent management – either by charging tolls at off- and on-ramps, or by requiring an interstate license plate in addition to the state plate. (In some cities, such as New York and San Francisco, city, state, U. S. and Interstate highways all use the same bridges or tunnels, so that local and long-haul traffics are inseparable: but adjusting the tolls according to the traffic offering would tend to shift the local traffic away from the busiest times.)
If the wasteful, irresponsible self-styled “engineers” who run the highways could be subjugated, we would no longer see highways where the most precious real estate is rendered useless by destructive barriers. The right-hand lanes could be marked with green reflectors, the center lanes with yellow, and the left lanes with red: the center lanes would run inward from midnight to noon, and from midday to midnight, outward. Anyone driving in the yellow lanes after 11:55 would doubtless hear loud hooting from drivers anxious to claim those lanes themselves!

Once upon a time – I remember it well – there was a prominent psychologist named Eysenck who believed that intelligence was randomly distributed among human beings. Later, he conceded that experiment had falsified this simple theory: nowadays, even in a society where all the races and religions mingle together, it is accepted that the truth is otherwise. For a millennium or two, Jewish fathers have been eager to marry their daughters to a rabbi; for centuries, Christian families have sent scholarly sons into celibacy – generation by generation, the inherited differences have been accentuated.

So “No child left behind” has been a perverse “policy,” directing precious resources to less rewarding uses. Parents who were ambitious for their children have had to pay for church schools or private schools, as well as paying taxes to support badly-managed schools.

Possibly, conceivably, tax-payers will weary of supporting wasteful schools. If so, one can see how the transition away from indiscriminate education could be made. Suppose that children were still compelled to enroll in first grade – but, after the first year, only 90% were admitted to second grade, and so on . . . . Obviously, there would be keen competition to avoid being decimated; the 32% who graduated would have studied diligently and mastered the syllabus. And complained loudly against lazy or stupid teachers!

“Don’t aggress against other people or their property.”
This phrase is perfectly familiar; people suppose that this is what “liberty” means, that no one will aggress against them.
Unfortunately, however, it is necessary, but not sufficient, for liberty and justice. A few years after 1776, the French committed themselves to liberté, égalité, fraternité – three principles. What did they add? They undertook to join in the defense of any one, or many, whose liberty or equality was violated.
Academic quibble? Think back 90 years. President Wilson came back from Paris urging the United States to join the new League of Nations, committed to “collective security” – an attack on one is an attack on all (just the principle of our own “firm league of friendship” in the Articles of Confederation.) The Senate refused consent: the consequences are well known (particularly in Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Greece, and European Russia.)
Possibly, men of affairs have no energy to spare for history – “History is bunk!” However, they have energy to spare for the question of what succeeds and what fails. There are two conspicuous practitioners of fraternité for all to witness – they are the police forces and the labor unions. Both of them enjoy liberty in the proper sense; they act first and leave it to others to raise objections afterwards. The newspapers tell us that there was recently a “battle” in New York City, in which 50 shots were fired: 46 were fired by the police.
In contrast, the ordinary citizens must pay for permits and licences to build on their own ground, to drive on the “public” highway, to open a business to please customers . . . It seems to have been forgotten that “liberty” means no prior restraint: that is, you do what you wish with your own (as in the parable of the landowner who paid all the laborers the same denarius) and let whomsoever has an objection go to court – “Sue me!” Liberty has been abandoned to such an extent that a candidate for Congress can admit to a “pro-life” stance – meaning that he denies that an infant belongs to its mother, rather than to the state.
Decades ago, John Lukacs, in The Hitler of History, remarked that Hitler’s system of Fascism – private ownership and public management – had been adopted by the very nations that fought against Hitler. Obviously, what we need, and want, is the polar opposite: private management of the vast resources that are today publicly owned (observe how the publicly-managed Interstate highways slow down severely in urban areas.)

Ethics
The renowned and respected investor, or speculator, Doug Casey has proclaimed his ethical principles, as follows:
1: Do all that you say you're going to do.

2: Don't aggress against other people or their property.
The first is hardly “ethical” at all, unless you have promised some persons to do something; in many circumstances, the proper thing to do is to keep private your intentions.
The second is perfectly familiar; people suppose that this is what “liberty” means, that no one will aggress against them.
Unfortunately for Casey and our society, it is not what “liberty” requires. A few years after 1776, the French committed themselves to liberté, égalité, fraternité – three principles. What did they add? They committed themselves to act in defense of anyone whose liberty or equality was violated.
Academic quibble? Think back 90 years. President Wilson came back from Paris urging the United States to join the new League of Nations, committed to “collective security” – an attack on one is an attack on all (just the principle of our own “firm league of friendship” in the Articles of Confederation.) The Senate refused.
Possibly, investors and speculators have no energy to spare for history – “History is bunk!” However, they have energy to spare for the question of what succeeds and what fails, today and tomorrow. There are two conspicuous examples of fraternité for all to witness – they are the police and the labor unions. Both of them enjoy liberty in the proper sense; they act first and leave it to others to raise objections afterwards.

Object Lessons
According to reports, prominent among the “citizens” rioting in the streets of Greece were the public servants. This seems, to me, anomalous. It is, it has long been, the case that public service, compared to for-profit employment, pays better at the bottom and worse at the top. Businesses in the market know the imperative that costs must be contained; they remember what happened to the Pony Express riders when telegraph wires were strung across the continent, what happened to buggy-whip makers when Henry Ford decided to make cars rather than watches, what happened to punched-card calculators when Atanasoff developed electronic circuits that could calculate with ones and zeroes; what happened to scores of companies that strove to compete against Bill Gates; they know the threat of creative destruction. Public servants may have heard about creative destruction, but they suppose that “it can’t happen here.” And those among them who achieve prominence are content to take their rewards in public admiration and deference; they are above gold and silver.
How, then, to explain the Greek anomaly? It is because public servants are, by nature, unethical. Their working hours – earning hours, rather – are dedicated to extortion, to demanding money that the owner may not wish to give. They may, very often, be in a position to refuse service, with no fear of condemning themselves to hunger and thirst and exposure. They may, very well, make it a practice to act without all parties being agreed, to presume upon their fearfulness and act as a judge or a divider.
Is there any escape from the dominion of public, or “civil,” servants? Of course there is: every State is guaranteed a republican form of government. This means that no office-holder can hold office beyond the next election unless the citizens approve of hir – or, at least, a majority of them approve. At present, Washington is sending officers into one or another State with “senatorial courtesy,” i.e. the approval of the senior U. S. senator. But this, obviously, is the opposite of democracy: the many know better than the few, not vice versa.