Monopoly Archives - Green Mass Group

Energy and Equity: The elusive threshold

eli_beckerman February 17, 2011 0

{ Installment 7 of Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity series }

The elusive threshold

Paradoxically, the concept of a traffic-optimal top speed for transport seems capricious or fanatical to the confirmed passenger, whereas it looks like the flight of the bird to the donkey driver. Four or six times the speed of a man on foot constitutes a threshold too low to be deemed worthy of consideration by the habitual passenger and too high to convey the sense of a limit to the three-quarters of humanity who still get around on their own power.

Tags energy, Equity, Industry, Ivan Illich, Monopoly, transportation

Energy and Equity: The radical monopoly of industry

eli_beckerman February 15, 2011 0

{ Installment 6 of Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity series }

The radical monopoly of industry

A desirable ceiling on the velocity of movement cannot be usefully discussed without returning to the distinction between self-powered transit and motorized transport, and comparing the contribution each component makes relative to the total locomotion of people, which I have called traffic.

Transport stands for the capital-intensive mode of traffic, and transit indicates the labor-intensive mode. Transport is the product of an industry whose clients are passengers. It is an industrial commodity and therefore scarce by definition. Improvement of transport always takes place under conditions of scarcity that become more severe as the speed-and with it the cost-of the service increases. Conflict about insufficient transport tends to take the form of a zero-sum game where one wins only if another loses. At best, such a conflict allows for the optimum in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: by cooperating with their jailer, both prisoners get off with less time in the cell.

Categories Environment Tags energy, Equity, Industry, Ivan Illich, Monopoly, transportation