{"id":65431,"date":"2017-12-18T11:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65431"},"modified":"2018-03-19T09:52:35","modified_gmt":"2018-03-19T14:52:35","slug":"car-neutrality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65431","title":{"rendered":"Car Neutrality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>SCENE:\u00a0 Dayton, Ohio &#8211; 1904.\u00a0 A group of protesters &#8211; young activists from Snofe Lakes, California &#8211; chant slogans in front of the Leach and Bitwell Auto Company; &#8220;Keep The Roads Democratic!&#8221;, &#8220;What do we want?\u00a0 Road Neutrality.\u00a0 When do we want it?\u00a0 Now!&#8221; and &#8220;Cars are a Public Utility&#8221;.\u00a0 \u00a0After a few moments, Arthur LIBRELLE climbs up on the soapbox.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>LIBRELLE:\u00a0 What we seek is\u00a0<em>highway neutrality<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0We demand that the government treat cars and roads as the public utility they truly are.\u00a0 \u00a0That way, in thirty years, your children will be able to buy a car like this (<em>LIBRELLE\u00a0points to a 1904\u00a0 Leach and Bitwell roadster &#8211; a two seater with a hand-crank starter that is basically a glorified go-kart with a two cylinder engine and a couple of chairs which lists at $5,000 &#8211; which is about $200,000 2017 dollars<\/em>) &#8211; and their children, and their children&#8217;s children, as long as California is the capitol fo the horseless carriage industry.\u00a0 Nobody will be able, using just more money, to buy a better car!<\/p>\n<p>(<em>Hezekiah MERG chimes in<\/em>):\u00a0 But if you treat the budding auto industry like a utility, there&#8217;ll be no impetus for someone like, say, Henry Ford or Louis Chevrolet, to respond to the market demand and build a cars that, before long, will be every big as good as the specimen you see here, for\u00a0 a fraction of the price.<\/p>\n<p>LIBRELLE:\u00a0 (<em>Scoffing as the young people from Snofe Lakes laugh uproariously<\/em>)\u00a0 Oh, it is to laugh!\u00a0 The idea that people from\u00a0<em>Detroit\u00a0<\/em>will ever build cars, or that technology will\u00a0<em>ever\u00a0<\/em>surpass what we see in front of us!\u00a0 \u00a0No, indeed; let us regulate cars and roads like utilities, that they may ever be as successful as the crown jewel of Los Angeles&#8217;s transportation system, our streetcars!<\/p>\n<p>(<em>The crowd erupts)<\/em>_.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SCENE:\u00a0 Dayton, Ohio &#8211; 1904.\u00a0 A group of protesters &#8211; young activists from Snofe Lakes, California &#8211; chant slogans in front of the Leach and Bitwell Auto Company; &#8220;Keep The Roads Democratic!&#8221;, &#8220;What do we want?\u00a0 Road Neutrality.\u00a0 When do we want it?\u00a0 Now!&#8221; and &#8220;Cars are a Public Utility&#8221;.\u00a0 \u00a0After a few moments, Arthur [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,51,374],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-65431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-liberal-tyranny","category-social-justice","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65473,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65431\/revisions\/65473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}