Like being able to drive? Daniel Gelernter says, “Watch out!” He offers details at National Review Online.
The cover story of Time’s March 7 issue makes “the increasingly compelling case for why you shouldn’t be allowed to drive,” claiming that computerized cars are (or, it is hoped, will be) safer drivers than humans, and so the logical thing is to ban humans from driving altogether. The plan is simple and familiar: First you use behavioral economics (higher taxes) to discourage a certain behavior — think of smoking — and once it’s gotten really unpopular, you ban it. Before you know it, you can’t smoke in Central Park.
In one of the sillier arguments I’ve encountered in print this decade, Time author Matt Vella notes that “there is no ‘right to drive’ enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.” Last time I checked, it was enshrined right next to the right to breathe and the right to wear socks.
Vella admits that weaning America off its “long-standing romance with its cars” will be a tough chore. But it is apparently a worthy task because Vella, like millions of other Americans, has been a victim of a human-driven-car accident. So he knows firsthand just how dangerous letting humans drive can be. His whining rhetoric is reminiscent of that of the anti-gun lobby, who similarly maintain that the only thing preventing us from saving lives is an irrational and outdated emotional attachment.
This is pat leftist thinking: “Individuals want X. Individuals are incapable of doing X efficiently by themselves. Therefore X should be provided for them by experts.” The experts are generally the government, often the academics, but never the individual. They know which doctor you should see, which operations your insurance should cover, which schools your kids should attend, and what the curricula should be. Think of then-candidate Obama’s infamous “Life of Julia”: Everything is taken care of for Julia, the perpetual child of leftist America, so that she isn’t bothered with the tedious business of making her own decisions, which would be inefficient and probably wrong.
Those who believe in turning major aspects of our lives over to “experts” ought to consider F.A. Hayek’s concept of the fatal conceit.
