Labels

Saturday, August 4, 2018

The Controllers . . . If We Let Them - EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk

Why did people fall in love with cars?

I mean, why did they used to fall in love with cars?

It wasn’t because of speed or sex appeal – though those things certainly helped. It was because cars were freedom incarnate. As a teenager, you counted the days to your sixteenth birthday because on that day, you were let out. Free to drive anywhere your wheels could take you. No longer controlled or supervised or monitored. On your own and as you please.

This freedom is under attack  – has been for a long time, including via skirmishes that have made the process of acquiring a driver’s license torturous and  endless, insofar as teens are concerned. They are effectively debarred from driving in any meaningful sense until they are practically no longer teens, via prohibitions levied against their driving with friends who are also teens or at night, without the supervision of an adult and via brutal “zero tolerance” polices, which criminalize the tracest amounts of alcohol or “drugs” (the arbitrarily illegal ones) in their systems.

Which delays their becoming adults and also stifles their desire to become adults. Which is probably why the current generation of teens shows the least interest in cars and driving of any generation since the dawn of the automobile age more than 100 years ago.

But now the real battle is about to commence.

The one that will determine whether adults are to be debarred from driving in any meaningful sense – via the force-feeding of automated (as distinct from “autonomous”) cars.

Which will be controlled – just not by you. Hence the farthest thing conceivable from “autonomous.” Black is white. Freedom is slavery. You are a customer of the IRS.

But who will control these automated cars?

Well, for openers, the cops – i.e., armed government workers. Which is to say, the government. And the bureaucrats, who will use the cops to enforce their every edict. No more “getting away with”  . . . anything. Everything will become a closely-monitored, tightly regulated, by-your-leave privilege, revocable at their whim.

A Reuters news story details a recent meeting of “stakeholders” – which includes everyone except, of course us – hashing out our automated car future. Apparently, we have no stake in the automated car future. As always, we are not even consulted; the decisions are made on our behalf, in secret conclave. Not unlike (exactly like) the conspiracy which led to the force-feeding of the federal Constitution – which empowered a small elite to control everyone else, without their consent.

Well, here we go again.

A 39-page summary issued from this closed-door meeting, which was held back in March – couched in the now-usual boilerplate of “safety” and “security” – included “concerns” expressed by “public safety officials” (i.e., armed government workers and government workers generally) about the necessity (as they regard it) to “… interact with or even control” automated vehicles “in the event of an emergency.”

Italics added.

You can perhaps visualize such “emergencies.”

If not, visualize the odious “lock downs” (a very deliberate – and accurate – choice of words; words formerly applied to prisons but now that the country is itself a prison . . .) which have become common whenever the government decides there is an . . . “emergency.”

Well, what exactly constitutes an “emergency”?

Whatever the government says it is. Anything the government says it is. There is no law defining “emergency,” which means the government can simply declare one, whenever it likes. Hut! Hut! Hut! Shelter in place!

And let’s be precise about another meaning.

There is no such thing in real life as “the government.” It is a rhetorical device at its most benign; a sleight-of-hand at its worst – used to obscure the fact that it’s not some all-wise/all-knowing entity but just other people, the sole difference between them and us being they have arrogated to themselves power over us.

How they got this power – and what gives them the moral right to possess it and exercise it against us – are two questions that ought to be asked (and answered) more often.

Anyhow, the government declares an “emergency” – and then a “lock down.”

Technically, these “lock downs” aren’t The Law . . .  yet.

You could get in your car – your not-automated car – and leave the area.

But if your car is automated  . . .and if the government controls it . . . then you are locked down. And not just overt lock downs. There are also the subtler ones – where you go and when and how.

No longer under your control.

Which is key to understanding the nudging behind this loathsome automated car rigmarole. The pretense is that it’s all about saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety – but this as fatuous as Obamacare being about “affordable” medical care.

Fatuous because the assertion rests upon the imbecility of technological infallibility. Computerized, electronic infallibility. Imagine a cell phone big enough to throw a saddle over and let it take you for a ride at 70 MPH – hoping the OS doesn’t lock up in the middle of a curve.

Or the sensors don’t see the curve because it suddenly got foggy.

It might work at first – and maybe even for awhile. But unless these devices are very regularly thrown away and replaced with new ones, they will degrade and develop hiccups –  because everything does. Hiccups can be trouble at 70 MPH when there’s no steering wheel or brake pedal and you have become just a meatsack sitting behind where the wheel used to be.

And hiccups side, the automated future means that instead of being able to just jump in your car and go where you please, when you please and how you please – you’ll be carted around as they please, when they please and how they please.

If they please.

If we let them.


Got a question about cars – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!

If you like what you’ve found here, please consider supporting EPautos.

We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!

Our donate button is here.

If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:

EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079

https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2018/07/31/the-controllers-if-we-let-them/