Ride the Wave
I came into an easy $80 a few weeks ago, so I splurged on something that has long intrigued me: a shortwave radio. I bought a Grundig G4000A. The model was recommended by a “survivalist” blogger as a solid less-expensive radio, and the Amazon reviews were good. Shortwave radios are a rage with the Armageddon types, and that appealed to me, and Peter Schiff got his start on shortwave. I’m also intrigued by the possibility of enhanced AM reception and listening to off-beat radio broadcasts from around the world. There’s something about tuning in broadcasts from one’s backyard instead of listening through your computer speakers. It’s a tactile experience, as Polanyi or McLuhan might express it, or as Taleb captures it in this aphorism: “They read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall on an eReader but refuse to drink Chateau Lynch-Bages in a Styrofoam cup.” But the real reason I bought the radio: I’ve wanted one since I was a kid. A year ago, I mentioned that I really enjoyed late night radio as a kid. The lure of such radio broadcasts has lessened now that my available time has evaporated, but the enjoyment is still there. I’m hoping this shortwave radio will introduce me to a new entertainment world of off-beat stuff that would otherwise escape my notice. If you have any shortwave recommendations, please pass them along. I know virtually nothing about the medium. * * * * * * * Podcasts Still Going Strong. I’m not sure when I’ll have time to listen to shortwave broadcasts. My podcast universe is filling up with more and more quality shows, and my customary shows continue to plug along. This week, Econtalk is running a delightful interview with George Will. I’m only about 25 minutes into it, but so far it’s great. I’m looking forward to listening to the rest on my walk to work this morning. * * * * * * * Will, Obama, and Railing. Will, I learned on the podcast, is the most-voluminous writer in the history of Newsweek (78 years). This week’s column is worth checking out: High Speed to Insolvency: Why liberals love trains. Will asks why Obama and other liberals are pushing for a high-speed rail system at a cost of billions, when the deficit obviously can’t tolerate it. He offers the following theory: “The real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism. To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates.” It’s not a bad theory, but I suspect there’s more to it. I can think of three other explanations off the top of my blogging head: high-speed rail would help reconnect and revitalize the inner-cities, where progressives’ constituents dwell; environmentalism; and the simple lust for progress, whatever the stripe. But Will couldn’t address all those reasons in an op-ed piece, and he’s hardly trained to do so anymore. During the podcast, he half-jokingly said that his decades of opinion writing causes him to “think in 750-word chunks.”
“I can think of three other explanations off the top of my blogging head: high-speed rail would help reconnect and revitalize the inner-cities, where progressives’ constituents dwell; environmentalism; and the simple lust for progress, whatever the stripe.”
Yeah, but George Will would rather take cheap shots than refute arguments. “Thinking in 750-word chunks”? His columns are only charitably called “thinking”.
As Russell Kirk pointed out when he called the automobile a “mechanical Jacobin”, the car culture doesn’t “conserve” anything at all, and allows everyone to drive roughshod over place, culture, custom, etc. The train is no better (I’m not a “progressive” by any means), but if George Will’s conservatism is merely making sure the previous generations’ mistakes aren’t addressed, then all it is is sentimental twaddle.
Sure, the car is romantic, but so is a trip on the Orient Express. The real reason most people, most of the time use a car is because it is the only, or by far the cheapest, solution for them.
Why?
Americans are, by historic and world standards, pretty rich. Even lower class people can afford cars, gas, and repairs. Most can even afford insurance;
fuel has been cheap, perhaps artificially cheap, in America for several generations;
the Fed gov’t has spent about a $trillion (not sure what it would be 2011 dollars) building and maintaining a free highway system that is far overdesigned in most places, which makes it artifically cheap to travel (and worse: transport goods) long distances;
forced desegregation of public transit, forces people to vote with their feet, thus re-segregating it.
There is nothing inherently collectivist about public transportation, any more than there is something particularly individualist about owning a car. For most people, most of the time, decisions about whether to go and how to get there come down to basic economics, i.e., financial self-interest. For most of American history, the government has held its hand with varying force on different parts of the transportation scale. So we have arrived at today, and that which we consider normal is really just an amalgam of natural economic forces, human invention, and consequences of government manipulations in the market, intended or otherwise.
One could argue either way whether any or all of such government interventions were prudent, whether they achieved intended effects, whether they had a net benefit, or even whether or to what extent transportation infrastructure ought to be seen as common property. Political dispositions might well influence where one comes down on any of these or other issues, but I don’t think there is much good, from a conservative or anti-statist perspective, to be said for our current state of affairs, for our current state of affairs has been driven largely by large-scale government interventions already. What if that $trillion or so had been spent since the 1950s on train systems and buses (both of which are way more energy efficient)? Would a conservative now argue against a gov’t plan to build a free highway system because it’s socialist? Probably not.
I’ve slowly come to the position that every long-term distortion is the result of government.