Liberating oneself from false belief may be one of the most powerful freedoms. It is also something which carfree cities advocates should be used to doing: escaping from the myth that cars are necessary for movement opens a whole new world of possibilities and makes many otherwise obscured truths evident.

Likewise with economics: when we move beyond the “truths” that are so self-evident as to require no explanation (meaning that many of them will fail to stand up to examination), we can discover breathtaking possibilities. Of course it involves making a little effort to learn some terms and see through the common arguments that are used to keep us in the dark, but if we ever want to achieve our carfree cities, there may be no other choice than to expand our knowledge and discard what “common sense” tells us.

“Today it is almost universally accepted that we must make cars to keep jobs, not to move people about,” wrote philosopher Hannah Arendt back in 1975 (Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, Schocken Books), writing about the change from “an early producer society into a consumer society that could keep going only by changing into a huge economy of waste…” and where progress means that “to stop going, to stop wasting, to stop consuming more and more, quicker and quicker, to say at any given moment enough is enough would spell immediate doom.” (Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, p. 262)

This is the world that economist John Kenneth Galbraith refers to as a squirrel wheel: we must work hard to produce a vast quantity of goods. We then need advertising to convince us to buy them because otherwise the demand would not be enough to match the supply. Then we have to work equally hard to afford the goods that we didn’t want in the first place. (JK Galbraith, 1958, The Affluent Society, Penguin Book) Meanwhile, since many people still cannot afford them, but the goods must be purchased as well as produced to keep the economy moving, banks provide loans even to the credit unworthy…and if the system collapses, the government (meaning the people) step in to bail it out. A great system for those at the top of the major corporations and the banks, but it is less clear how it benefits the vast majority of the population.

Jobs

No question about it, building cars creates jobs. But as Hannah Arendt suggests, is there not something odd about building cars not for transport but for job creation?

The question, thus, is not how many jobs building, selling, and servicing cars creates, but whether less costly means (in terms of money, pollution, environmental destruction, and cost to human life) are available to increase employment. It is also interesting to note that the same people who urge the need to continue the manufacture of cars, to bail out the big auto manufacturers, are happy to see jobs eliminated from the workforce through increased mechanisation and automation.

Rather than look at how many people’s livelihoods are dependent on the auto industry, as a stand-alone fact that means that we must continue producing cars at whatever cost, why not look at the cost of that production, given that the production occurs in large part not to provide transport, but rather jobs? How much in raw materials, water, and energy goes into car production; how much fuel will those cars likely consume when used; how many people will die or be injured in car crashes? Perhaps it is not such a fruitful bargain after all.

What are the alternatives? Other than weapons, tobacco, fast food and soft drinks, most of the economy is far less destructive than cars in terms of impact on environment, health and wellbeing. If people stopped buying cars, there would be an awful lot of money to invest in various other activities that could create jobs – and as a side benefit, create wealth rather than destruction and poverty. The idea of retooling car factories to produce bicycles and mass transit, for which the need would dramatically increase if we stopped driving so much, is only one simple solution to the problem. Fortunately economies tend to be dynamic and to adjust to new circumstances with little or no help: where was the outcry, for instance, when typewriters became virtually obsolete?

Private Wealth, Public Poverty

A not so lovely phenomenon of “modern” times is the incredible disparity between the wealth of some individuals and the poverty of public services. People keep their houses clean and regularly dispose of their trash; streets are filthy and trash collection services often inadequate. People have expensive entertainment systems in their homes; children attend ill-equipped schools. People drive cars often worth tens of thousands of dollars or more; others pay to travel in shabby buses that fail to maintain a regular schedule

Endless creativity goes into defining various details and “refinements” of cars to increase their sales and to convince those driving older vehicles that they must regularly upgrade; little or no such thought seems to go into maintaining and upgrading public transit services, not to mention the condition (and often absence) of sidewalks and bicycle lanes or paths or trails.

The reasons for the disparity are rather obvious, and well-described in Galbraith’s masterpiece, Economics and the Public Purpose (JK Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, Houghton Mifflin Company Boston), in which he thoroughly debunks the myth that people communicate their needs and desires to companies through the marketplace, and that the business of companies is to satisfy those desires; that is, that the consumer is at the heart of the system. Only small companies face pressures under the marketplace; large corporations control their costs, prices, consumers, and even to a large degree the government. The corporation, not the individual consumer, is at the centre of the economic universe. What benefits General Motors benefits General Motors, not the nation.

As a result, there is an absurd over-abundance of unnecessary products that happen to be lucrative to large corporations, and Madison Avenue is kept busy finding creative ways to convince people to consume the unnecessary. Meanwhile, the goods and services that people desperately need and crave – things like quality affordable health care, good schools, breathable air, walkable streets, and good public transit – are the source of political battles that usually lead to failure for the general public.

Learning to say “No”

Galbraith, while not a self-declared (at least to my knowledge) carfree cities advocate, posits an interesting question: what if, as in the case of building a new school, those wishing to buy a car had to demonstrate their need? What if the assumption was that the car purchase is unnecessary, and the burden of proof were on the consumer to prove otherwise? And what if the situation worked in the reverse for schools and for public transit: that is, it would be assumed that more and better is better unless proved otherwise.

It is a bit disingenuous to ask from whence the money would come for such expenses when tax systems currently contribute to ever-increasing inequality in incomes. When we remember that everyone suffers from public poverty – that the rich themselves must spend enormous sums to provide themselves with transport, security, better schools, good health care and so on – it seems even more absurd that the tax system not be amended and priorities rearranged so that basic and public needs would take precedence over private expenditures.

One needn’t be a socialist, or even believe in the need for greater equality of incomes, to see that there is something wrong when individuals are expected to make enormous outlays for private vehicles because the government is not able to provide a decent transport system. The situation becomes even more absurd when we remember that we produce cars not for transport but for jobs.

What if, rather than bailing out the auto industry, the government were to create employment through expanding public services: better public transit, sidewalks, and bicycle routes; more and better parks and playgrounds and other public spaces; better schools and health care, and so on? Rather than simply working to earn a wage to buy all that is needed to survive, while the job itself destroys the future base of the economy by eating up natural resources and destroying the environment, one could work at a job that increases overall wealth.

What about those who still wish to drive? As Galbraith argues, “Automobile use in the central city…[and] random residential use of land are … cases where the advantage to the particular consumer is outweighed by the adverse effect on the community as a whole. In the past the presumption has favoured individual convenience even in face of larger social cost… The rational legislative decision requires the exclusion from consumption of products, services and technology where the social cost and discomfort are deemed to outweigh the individual advantages.” (JK Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, p. 290-291) In other words, where the desires of major corporations interfere with the public good, it is the responsibility of government to act in the public interest: in this case, to ban the use of cars in the central city.

Could you use more Vacation?

As Galbraith (and Ivan Illich and the other authors) suggest and the European experience indicates, one could work a lot fewer hours, as well. (Ever wonder how the Europeans can afford their 36-hour work weeks and 6 weeks of annual vacation, not to mention generous maternal and paternal leave policies and an enviable range of social benefits? Sure, they own a lot of cars, but they drive an awful lot less than Americans and have infinitely better systems of public transport as well as conditions for walking and cycling. Hmm…almost enough to give one pause.) Rather than work hard to create products that nobody wants and that people must work hard to afford to buy, we could work a lot less to create a lot more useful wealth that we could share a lot more equally.

Given the evidence, it would seem likely that the only hope for future prosperity is in going carfree. The problem lies in learning how to talk back to the corporations and economists who would like to keep us in the dark about a few basic facts of economics, and in learning to see beyond our immediate crises. Overcoming our fear of economics and learning to talk back to those who would keep us down could prove liberating in the most intoxicating sense of all, by giving us the power to fulfil our dream of carfree cities.

Article and photo: Debra Efroymson, Regional Director, HealthBridge in Bangladesh

This article has also been translated into Japanese by our friends over at Realiser.org, check it out!