From Greg de Paco, New Westminster, British Columbia

“George Monbiot is correct that if a transportation system were designed today with the objective of moving people around efficiently it would not focus on the private automobile. In North America our transportation systems were not designed for efficient movement but for auto industry profit.

“The car companies bought up the street car systems of almost every North American city – Toronto and San Francisco alone successfully resisted – in order to tear up the rails and create a market for their product. This eventually resulted in an anti- trust conviction – and a fine of a single dollar.”

The Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy- focused think tank, says, in effect, that we are  on the verge of an energy and technology transformation to rival the sudden decline of the coal industry.  They point to the real technological transformation that could arrive from the merger of two vehicle trends — automation and electrification — and the idea that it could happen quite fast, with major consequences for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Autonomous cars won’t just be safer and more energy efficient, the Institute argues.  Hiring one to taxi you around will also become very cheap, they argue, once these vehicles can be electrified, rather than running on gas. The upshot is that, perhaps quite soon, it will make more economic sense to have a robotaxi ferry you around on all your trips than to personally own a car. At the same time, as the trend becomes widespread — with fleets of autonomous vehicles, owned by companies or cities, on the road and not running on gas — our greenhouse gas emissions could plunge.

By the year 2018, the study argues, “solely using autonomous taxis for transportation could cost the same as owning and operating a car.” More specifically, the researchers think that electric robotaxis might quickly rival the per-mile cost of personal car use, which they say is 85 cents per mile.  Peak  car ownership in the United States will occur around 2020 and will drop quickly after that as a result and almost end in the big cities

And of course these vehicles will be electric because that, too, will save money — in this case, for the companies that own and operate them. The huge distances that autonomous vehicles might drive in their lifetimes will mean that even if an electric vehicle costs more than a gas vehicle to purchase, it will make up the difference over the course of its use.

Most striking is what this would do to greenhouse gas emissions. There would be  a major decrease in gasoline demand and, as a result, a major increase in electricity demand, and a plummeting of transportation-sector greenhouse-gas emissions. Walker said the reduction could be as large as 800 million tons per year in the U.S. by 2035, a huge contribution to fighting climate change.  (based on an article by Chris Mooney, September 22 , 2016)

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My feeling is that the issue is trust.  I wouldn’t trust an autonomous car under any circumstances at the moment.  Geeks are noticeably nonchalant and in denial about the reliability of hi- tech things already on the market. My own computer constantly plays up, and Microsoft and the computer manufacturers have  had 30 years at least to make them reliable.  Automated cars are altogether more potentially scary.  There are regulatory, legal and even ethical ssues to be addressed that will take ages sort out. It is possible to iron these challenges out, but you still have the problem that people are attached to the convenience of their cars and won’t want to give them up, especially if they drive long distances out of cities and into the countryside.

Issue one coarse crude or vulgar word while I was growing up and I was sent to my room without the next meal.

Among a host of other concerns raised by the election campaign, the coarseness of the language, the vulgarity, rudeness and lack of respect for others – these stand out as truly troubling.  We now have in the West a record number of people with further education, and an historically large number of young people in college.  And yet you have the impression that bad language is shrugged off and that anonymity on social media allows the most horrible ad hominem attacks and foul language, without any danger of paying for it.

As a follower of Epicurus I never thought I would say or think this, but “free speech” has gone too far and those who abuse it should be disciplined (clearly,  their incompetent parents were not inclined to do it; maybe they were preoccupied with shopping).  It is troubling that the “F” word, the “B” word  and the “C” word are  bandied about, and people don’t care.

I hope I am being proudly old-fashioned when I say that mutual toleration and respect are the cornerstones of civilisation (certainly of Epicureanism); that uttering foul language at the expense of the powerless isn’t funny, or clever, or meaningful – just beneath contempt.  Moderation allows us to live together and to differ in our views without screaming and shouting.

Want to know what else provoked my tirade? A made-for-TV series called “Mozart in the Jungle”, ostensibly featuring female players in a symphony orchestra (cue for beautiful, civilized music) preoccupied with crude sex and barrack-room language.  We  turned the thing off after 15 minutes. The crudity and vulgarity of the internet has invaded everything.

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act.

An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.

Competitive tax rates? Other countries can take part in a race to the bottom as well.  This subject needs a long essay.  Suffice to say, the deficit would sky-rocket.  The only sensible bit is the tax simplification, but every person’s tax complication is another’s handout or boondoggle.

End The Offshoring Act.

Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

Probably too late, but in any case this threatens old- fashioned tarriff wars, something we tried to get away from for decades.

American Energy & Infrastructure Act.

Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

About time.  But the Congressional Republicans don’t think this is a priority. Why, when bridges are collapsing and the infrastructure generally is obviously ageing, is a mystery.

School Choice And Education Opportunity Act.

Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.

Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

Potential disaster.  How can you “save”  on minimum wages?  What is needed is a single payer system that cares for everyone but that means higher taxes.  As for the “red tape” at the FDA this is what protects us from dud drugs that are either dangerous or have horrible side effects.  Who thought that up? (why, the pharmaceutical companies, of course, and their lobbyists)

Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act.

Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

Yes, o.k

End Illegal Immigration Act

Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

America is a country of immigrants.  We need  them because the population is ageing, and in some cases we simply don’t have the skills. (poor education, as witnessed by the election!).  But I guess this is the main driver of the Trump success; fail in this and he’s out.

Restoring Community Safety Act.

Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.

Crime isn’t “surging”!  Is this an excuse for putting more blacks in jail and supporting the private jail industry?

The US is now fighting in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia. Yet “no vital American interest is at stake” in any of these places. In 1980, president Jimmy Carter declared that any challenge to American positions in the Persian Gulf would be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the US, but back then we were engaged in a standoff with the Soviet Union and depended on oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. That’s no longer the case. Today, the US’s naval presence in the Gulf “serves mainly to increase tensions” and “escalate conflicts”. And the only beneficiary of that is the US arms industry.

Regarding Hillary  Clinton, one of the  things I felt uncomfortable about was her readiness to use military force and her support of the various wars in the Middle East.  It would be one thing if the wars were brutal, short and successful, but they never seem to be. Trump appears to be much less militaristic, and this is promising, if true,  and if he is not captured by the miltary-industrial complex.

Tomorrow, I would like to discuss some of the things Trump says he wants to do early on in his Presidency. Some are predictably damaging, but others look promising, if hard to deliver. Epicureans try to keep an open mind.

A “quiet catastrophe” has befallen America, says George F. Will.   Almost unnoticed, millions of American men have left the job market. A study has revealed the percentage of males of prime working age (25 to 54) in jobs today (84.4%) is smaller than it was as the Great Depression neared its end in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14%. Rather than being a product of recession, today’s retreat from the workplace appears to be “largely voluntary”: of the men in this age group who didn’t do any paid work in 2014, only about 15% say they were unemployed because they couldn’t find a job; the rest just didn’t want to find a job, preferring to live on benefits. “In 1965, even high school dropouts were more likely to be in the workforce than are the 25-to-54 males today.” A lot of men, it seems, have given up on the traditional rites of adult life – working for a living, getting married, raising a family. Whether welfare reforms or other policies can reverse this process remains to be seen. Still, one manifestation of this social regression, the rise of Donald Trump, “is perhaps perverse evidence that some of his army of angry young men are at least healthily unhappy about the loss of meaning, self-esteem and masculinity that is a consequence of chosen and protracted idleness”. (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 15 October 2016)

George Will, a crusading conservative, cannot connect the dots. He supports the Republicans (to his credit, not Trump), but cannot see that the Republican strategy of concentrating on lowering taxes for the rich and pandering to the same, and then totally ignoring the interests of the ordinary Republican voter has produced the revolts led by Trump (and Bernie). It’s the policies, stupid!