Don’t Blame Detroit – Again
In these United States, one expects to find a reason for any phenomenon (with exceptions, such as the earthquakes in San Francisco and the San Fernando Valley ¬– the latter of which I experienced.) It is conspicuous that cities are usually laid out with streets running East/West or North/South, and the highways between them are usually straight. In the days of the horse and buggy, all the traffic moved at the same speed, so one lane in each direction was enough. When motor vehicles blossomed, the highways were not widened to three or four lanes, so that faster vehicles could overtake slower ones; instead, maximum speed limits were imposed. As a result, comfort and spaciousness and luxury were the qualities on which the manufacturers competed, on which the cars excelled.

Consequently, Americans were inclined to complain, “At 40 you steer it, at 80 you aim it,” and it is true that the ordinary cars (but not, conspicuously, the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair) were cursed with “understeer,” you needed heavier and heavier control forces as you went faster. But the lack of maneuverability hardly mattered. The fatality rate on U. S. highways was less than three-quarters those of the United Kingdom and Canadian highways, and incomparably better than those of nations without a common-law tradition. If the users had wanted greater safety, they could have achieved it without spending money; they could have demanded an end to STOP signs that conceal who has the right of way, and to stop-on-red signals, and to dividers between inward and outward traffic lanes, and to tolls that do not penalize peak-hour traffic, and to pavements that are cambered instead of banked at the corners, and to “white” instead of “yellow” maximum speed limits, and to registration plates that allow access indifferently to county or State or U.S. or Interstate highways. And faster highways would quickly have brought faster, more responsive automobiles into service.

However, in Washington, D.C., the highway system is important only so far as it can be milked for money to spend on buying votes. And the sufficient qualification to be Secretary of Transportation is to be married to a senator. Thus Washington devised what it calls “standards,” which in fact were requirements, demanding that every vehicle be designed and equipped for extreme climates and densely packed cities.

When the short-wheelbase Ford Falcon with Fairlane engine options (the Mustang) appeared, in 1965, it was priced at $2500; the 2008 Mustang looks very similar but costs $20,500. Today, the popular cars are either imports or designed for foreign markets, such as the Ford Focus: and the prestige cars are foreign-built or -designed, as is the Cadillac CTS. (Yes, you are right; today’s cars are eight times better than ’65s – if you intend to drive head-on into an immovable object, and if you don’t mind having a blind spot where the vehicle overtaking you is hidden, and if you are neither smaller than the 5th percentile woman nor larger than the 95th. percentile man.)

And we have witnessed the caprices of the Environmental Protection Agency. How strange it is that the Department of Justice – and justice, one would suppose, really is the same everywhere – has divided the United States into nine Circuits, but the E.P.A. is convinced that there are no differences between the environments in the several States, whether contiguous or otherwise. The E.P.A. expects the tax-payers to believe that every vehicle in the fifty States, from a two-seat car to a forty-ton tractor-trailer, burns the same quantity of fuel every year. Its pogrom against leaded gasoline devastated efficient, high-compression engines in every State: its witch-hunt against “particulates” has driven – or will drive – off every highway the tough, efficient diesel engines that regularly achieved two million miles between overhauls.

All this devastation was utterly unnecessary. If there had actually been pollution in some State, the U.S. could have announced standards – actual standards of comparison, perhaps red, white, and blue levels of emissions – and left it to every State to find which level was best suited to it.

If today’s regulated automobile industry is unprofitable, the remedy is not to subsidize it, but to stop suppressing it. If the highways were being managed to make money, they would be striving to handle more traffic, more quickly. We should see minimum speed limits, which are actually justifiable; any vehicle moving slower than the minimum stalls all the traffic behind it. We should see special plates for admission to Interstate Highways, so that the Interstates do not get jammed with intra-city traffic but run fast everywhere. We should see tolls varying with demand, so that peaks would be spread out more evenly (in San Francisco, the cheaper buy-a-whole-book tickets for the bridges are still accepted at peak hours!) We should see low-priced plates that allow vehicles to use only local or county highways, as distinct from State or U.S. highways. We should see double yellow lines painted properly, so that the traffic can spread itself equally heavily over the lanes. We should no longer suffer fees to support Highway Patrols, now that every other vehicle has a cell phone on board. We should no longer waste hours and days getting and renewing driving licences; drivers are not divided into classes, the least experienced are getting better every day and the most experienced are getting worse. (Hertz and Avis and National Car Rental can issue licences, if they find there is any demand for them.)

You object, these reforms wouldn’t strengthen the vehicle manufacturers? No, what they need to do is reform their internal relationships. They already buy large fractions of the vehicles from other firms, such as Delphi, so as to pay only for results, for components that actually work. They need to pay only for results internally, too: there should be not only collective bargaining but also collective remuneration – pay the labor unions so much for each vehicle completed (less the cost of any necessary rectifications.) The unions could share the money out among their members; they actually do know which workers are skillful and dedicated, and which are only a pair of hands (and a mouth.)

I have heard it suggested that, if the Detroit manufacturers did go bankrupt, their biggest creditor would be the United Auto Workers! The Workers should know more about the assets – the buildings and machinery and tooling – than anyone else. And the thousands of dealers all over the States know what they can and what they can’t sell. Democracy – decision-making by the many – might yet be adopted . . . as a last resort.

But there indeed are acts of Congress that are, if not necessary, highly desirable. An obvious one is to abolish the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency metric: it is plain falsehood to lump together a two-seat sports, or city, car and an eight- or ten-passenger van. Another is to abandon the tax on motor vehicle fuel, which renders labor (except that of computer geeks working from home) and everything else more expensive, and substitute tolls that vary with the clock and the calendar, to keep the traffic running fast. A far-sighted one would be to make the Interstate Highway System exempt from all maximum speed limits; when the operators noticed the improvements in cost and safety, they might well demand that the States repeal their own capricious (“white”) maximum speeds.

Memo to the President-Elect
IT WOULD BE NICE to think that a man who is quite new to Washington, D.C., would appreciate some advice from someone who has no personal ambitions at all . . . .

First, that promised tax cut; only the fraction of the people who pay taxes to the U. S. now would benefit. Much better, “no taxation without representation” – put an end to taxes on fictitious persons, i.e. corporations. Then all of us would find that the things we buy are cheaper: but the U.S. would not lose much in revenue, because the corporations would distribute their increased profits in dividends, which are taxable. This would make the corporations more efficient, too, because they would no longer have to lavish skilled labor on preparing tax returns.

How can you raise revenues? One way that would do something to bring supply and demand into balance would be to deny the Interstate Highways to vehicles that do not have a U. S. plate, in addition to a State plate. This would do much to overcome the failing of the Interstates today, that in or near the cities they regularly become overloaded and slow down to a crawl. Drivers who have paid for U. S. plates would, we could expect, hoot disapprovingly at anyone on an Interstate who did not display them.

Save money! One really easy way would be to stop subsidizing schools and universities with U. S. funds. If you have money to throw around, give it as prizes to anyone who demonstrates the ability to drive a tractor-trailer, read an X-ray, sell real estate, remove an appendix, file a brief, follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or soothe the fevered brow. (Perhaps the prize should become smaller and smaller as the earner becomes older and older....)

You call yourself a Democrat, so presumably you understand that the States know more, and better, than the Union: stop spending the taxpayers’ money on things that do not benefit all of the States equally – meaning, everything except the COMMON defense and the GENERAL welfare. If any of the States want to subsidize art or literature or cinema or sculpture or music or ballet, they can do so; and people who appreciate those studies can go and live in the States that indulge them.

You call yourself a Democrat, so presumably you understand that the way to get it right is for the decision to go from the many to the few: “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate” can only mean that the Senate has the first as well as the last words – what recent presidents politely call “fast track” (it was an avowed aristocrat, Alexander Hamilton, who proposed that the president have the initiative, “subject to the approbation or rejection of the Senate.”)

You call yourself a Democrat, so presumably you understand that treason, and counterfeiting the CURRENT coin, and piracy, are crimes against the citizens of every State; if the U. S. can prosecute any other crimes, they can only be ones of the same character. Therefore, let us see you make an emphatic end to the U. S. sending attorneys and “special agents” into States to behave as a Gestapo (“general state police,” as you will, no doubt, recall.)

You call yourself a Democrat, so presumably you understand that the power to admit immigrants is retained by the States (even although they allowed the Congress to prohibit immigration, at least after 1808.) Let us see the Border Patrol disappear, and its erstwhile members selling apples on street corners.

You were editor of your Law Review, so you must be an exacting critic of English; how do you distinguish between “regulation” – an authorized function of the Congress – and “dictation?” If you need an example to make yourself plain, I suggest the (unratified) Child Labor Amendment: “The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate and prohibit the labor of persons under 18 years of age.” (Plainly, “regulate” cannot mean either “limit” or “prohibit.”)