American Independence and it’s link to the automobile

The single greatest element of freedom to Americans is our ability to own and drive a vehicle.  Hands down, its tentacles reach into nearly 40% of our economy.  It’s the fuel industry, the new and used car markets, highway construction, the insurance companies and so much more.  In fact, over 90% of U.S. Households own or have access to a car (Source: Quora.com).

What’s more, it can be argued, that nowhere in the world is the cost of ownership and operation of a motor vehicle less as a percentage of individual income.  Did you know that in Norway Cars are so expensive that they offer 10 year financing?  Perhaps you’d heard that gasoline in Austria is over $5 U.S. per gallon?  Sure a Toyota Corolla costs about the same in Cairo, Egypt (approx. $19,000) but the average monthly net salary there is $165 after taxes. 

Cars are clearly an instrument of independence to Americans.  We use them to drive to our jobs.  If we need more income, they facilitate our travel from Job A to Job B.  They afford us the opportunity to go anywhere at any time, simply by hopping in and putting our foot on the accelerator pedal.  In addition to the Eerie Canal and the proliferation of Railroads, no single mode of transportation has done more to advance the freedom of Americans.   They permit us to work at whatever we choose, live wherever we choose and eliminate the extraordinary amounts of hours needlessly spent getting to, and waiting for, buses and trains.  Cars make us masters of our domains.

So why the push to take away the ability to drive and replace it with one’s accessibility to be driven?  Why is it that there is a general push to eliminating skills, rather than increasing the number of them a human can execute? 

The independence associated with driving is directly related to the ability of the driver to operate and navigate the vehicle at their own pace and choosing.  We can stop anywhere we want to view a sunset or wildlife, we can turn around, we can hit the roadside ice cream stand…the choice is ours.  While we currently have devices in our vehicles that track our movements, we’d now be connected to some mother board computer running endless algorithms looking for nefarious rationales surrounding our movements.  That’s not independence. 

On skills being lost…. Have you ever paid for something at the register which required change, and opted to pay with a round dollar amount?  Or perhaps you discovered the change seconds after the transaction has been executed in the register, handed the change to the young person and they looked at you like you had six heads?  Have you noticed that young people in general, not all mind you but in general, cannot perform rudimentary calculations at a cash register?  These are skills that have vanished, into the cosmos of social media navigation and being liked.

Now the social engineers and corporations think it a good idea to take away the skill of driving too?  We should be learning how to drive more vehicles not letting them drive us.  We should be teaching our young people to fly and to boat, in addition to driving.

Each of us has a cell phone, a desktop or laptop, maybe even a tablet.  Think of how many times your device locks up during use in a given week; the freezes, the reboots…right in the middle of something important.  Now imagine you’re travelling at 80 miles per hour and your cars computer freezes.  Sounds like fun right?

Enter 5G technology, which is the manner in which your vehicle will receive directions from the mother ship, the central transportation computer.  What will happen, when during a storm, the power to the 5G is interrupted, either by lightning strike or felled tree?  Will you be stranded in the vehicle until the repairs are made?  Will the vehicle have emergency astronaut rations for you to consume?  Sure its funny, if not horrifying to consider. 

Were you aware that in China, some citizens wear 5G tracking bracelets so that the central government can monitor them, wherever they are, at all times?  They are literally lo-jacked by the government.  Your self-driving car will be too.  Algorithms computing why you’ve punched a certain destination, how long you were there and so on.  Dystopian doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. 

We should all be concerned that some all-seeing eye is mapping our movements, learning everything about us, when and where we go…soon to be asking “why” we go there. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely.  Keep YOUR power.  Keep YOUR independence.  Drive your own car.  Don’t submit to the will of the Extranet and the pressures of corporations and the governments that support this type of control and power.  Say no to self-driving cars.