Why are we not “free” to own cars?
Cars are terrible for so many reasons, but I’m tired of writing.
I’m not a bike guy. I don’t know what brand my seat is. I think my gears are Shamano. (That’s a brand, right?) I think that’s how it’s spelled. I’m not going to look it up. I saw it on the window of a bike shop once. I think that’s what I have. I just use my bike to get around and to get my kids around. It’s just a tool for me. That’s pretty normal here in the Netherlands.
I’ve done some hacky repairs on bikes, not because I especially care about bikes but because I especially care about autonomy. I don’t like being controlled. If someone can lock me in, control my ability to fix my main mode of transportation, they can control me. I use open source software for the same reason. My instinctive hatred of cops comes from a pretty similar place.
I’m not a bike guy. I’m an anarchist. That’s where I’m coming from in this text. I’m not here for the bikes. I’m here for the liberation. And it is specifically to anarchists that I am speaking. If you happen to be a bike person and also an anarchist, great. You’re not alone. I hope this lines up with your existing critique, or helps you fill out your critique, of car culture. If you happen to be a bike person and not an anarchist, well… I’m working from a set of assumptions you may not agree with but enjoy the ride. If you are an anarchist who does not already identify motosupremacy, the enforcement of the motorcar as a form of transit at the exclusion of all others, as an oppressive system and a structural component of the interlocking systems of oppression that we oppose, well, I have some words for you to read.
I’m inclined to just point at The Social Ideology of the Motorcar and walk away, but I won’t. I will dump the first few sentences here before moving on though:
The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratized. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it.
Last time I started digitally yelling FUCK CARS into the void, in repose to some nonsense or other, someone called me a fascist for “imposing my beliefs on them.” I think that’s worth talking about, because bullshit arguments like that carry way too much weight around here.
So let’s change the frame for a bit.
Why not slaves? I mean, why don’t I have the freedom to own other people? You fucking know why. If you don’t, I do not understand why you’re reading this. Anarchists oppose hierarchy. We oppose systems of oppression. We oppose coercive authority. You can’t own a person without using coercion. So that’s pretty much off the table. The same is true for the wage system, since it’s also a system that relies on coercion. (Sorry, not sorry, capital “L” “Libertarians.”)
But that’s easy. We all agree on that. (We fucking better all agree on that shit.) Of course, you can’t own people. That’s obviously fucked up. Let’s move on to objects.
What about the means of production? Yeah, just kidding. (Anyone coming from the bikes, not the anarchy, is gonna be really confused right about now.) Let’s try something else.
Why not private jets? Fuck no, because of climate change, right? Of course. But let’s pretend it’s possible to have non-polluting jets. There’s still a geometry problem. Jets are big. Everyone having one takes up a lot of space. Even if we skip the whole “someone has to pilot it” and assume that everyone has a pilots license, even small jets are very large. OK, so not everyone is going to want to fly their own jet, but even if a significant portion of the population wanted one that’s just a lot of physical space for jets. They also take a huge amount of maintenance. Small planes crash all the time. What about cleaning those crashes up? What about flying near cities? There are a lot of people who aren’t near an airport. Do they get their own runway? How do all those people land? We would have to build a lot more airports, and have a whole lot more flight controllers. How do …