Cars -- the nazi's best friend

[Dak]

inspired by this thread:

 

thinking about it, does anyone think that the gov's attitude towards cars is overly authoritarian?

 

I mean, we have to register our cars (and ourselves) in a national database, drive around with a serial number on our car, and (in the US) we have to carry ID (drivers licence) and produce it on demand to the authroities!

 

Try taking this attitude towards anything else and you'll get called overly-authoritarian and invasive, and people will start making references to 1984 and the nazi party and talking about how the gov' could abuse the databases, and the need to strike a balance between our government protecting us from ourselves and us being able to resist the gov' should it turn bad.

 

However, even quite ardent anarchists happily accept compulsary-carry photo-ID, serial numbers and national databases when it comes to cars.

 

why?

Edited May 14, 2010 by Dak
fixed url

[swansont]

You have to do none of that if driving solely on your own property. It's only when you want to drive on the socialist government-owned property that you need to do that. (Somehow, however, this will be Obama's fault.)

[bascule]

I mean, we have to register our cars (and ourselves) in a national database, drive around with a serial number on our car, and (in the US) we have to carry ID (drivers licence) and produce it on demand to the authroities!

 

Clearly we need free market alternatives to our national SOCIALIST roads. We should let several companies build roads side-by-side. Then the free market will decide which road is the best.

[Pangloss]

How much energy is contained in a 4,000-pound object moving at 80 mph?

 

Swansont, I'm not sure that's accurate, btw.

[Dak]

Clearly we need free market alternatives to our national SOCIALIST roads. We should let several companies build roads side-by-side. Then the free market will decide which road is the best.

 

umm... this has nothing to do with economics, this has to do with government invasion into our lives.

 

e.g., they could always tax us, build our roads (socialist-style), and even regulate our driving and require us to get licences all without that level of invasiveness. e.g., in the UK, you are required to have a licence, but not to carry it whilst driving. I'm sure there's any number of ways you could have a verifiable license without it requiring storage on a national database, and you could probably get away without license plates too (or, at least, you should be able to get away without registered license plates).

 

It just strikes me that if cars had only just been invented and we were told of the whole licence, photo-ID, high-visibility serial-numbers registered to a national database, etc, we'd not accept it as easily as we accept it now.

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You have to do none of that if driving solely on your own property. It's only when you want to drive on the socialist government-owned property that you need to do that. (Somehow, however, this will be Obama's fault.)

 

Yet, if you required photo-ID and a big licence number on your shirt to walk on the socialistic government-owned sidewalk, you'd get complaints (see for reference: face-reccy-tech and CCTV in the UK, which amounts to something similar, and the idea that even some residents of Arizona will be required to carry photo-ID).

 

I mean, they could always stay at home, right?

[jryan]