In the world of business, no firm, even the giants, can standstill for long. In trouble, Xerox fought back with its new andimproved 10 Series of “Marathon” copiers, and in 1983 thecompany increased its share of the photocopy market for thefirst time since 1970; and its record considerably improved in1984.

So, Happy Birthday Xerox! The Xerox success story is amonument to what a brilliant and determined lone inventor canaccomplish. It is a living testimony of how a small firm caninnovate and outcompete giant firms, and of how a small firm,become a giant, can rethink and retool in order to keep up witha host of new competitors. But above all, the Xerox story is atribute to what free competition and free enterprise can accom-plish, in short, what people can do if they are allowed to thinkand work and invest and employ their energies in freedom.Human progress and human freedom go hand in hand. Z

55 THE WAR ON THE CAR

One of the fascinating features of the current political sceneis its bitter, and nearly unprecedented, polarization. On

the one hand, there has been welling up in recent months a pal-pable, intense, and very extensive popular grass-roots movementof deep-seated loathing for President Clinton the man, for hisideology and for his politics, for all those associated with Clin-ton, and for the Leviathan government in Washington.

This movement is remarkably broad-based, stretching fromrural citizens to customarily moderate intellectuals and profes-sors. The movement is reflected in all indicators, from personalconversations to grass-roots activity, to public opinion polls.

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First published in December 1994.

The bizarre new element is that usually, in response to suchan intense popular movement, the other side, in this case, theClinton administration, would pull in its horns and tack to thewind. Instead, they are barreling ahead, heedlessly, and therebyhelping to create, more and more, a virtual social crisis and whatthe Marxists would call a “revolutionary situation.”

Response of the Clinton administration has been to try tosuppress, literally, the freedom of speech of its opponents. Twoprominent recent examples: the Clinton bill to expand the def-inition of lobbying (which would mean coerced registration andother onerous regulations) to include virtually all grass-rootspolitical activity. Fortunately, this “lobbying reform” bill waskilled by “obstructionists” in the Senate after passing theHouse.

Second, was the federal Housing and Urban Development’ssystematic legal action to crack down on the freedom of politi-cal speech and assembly of those opposing public housingdevelopments for the “homeless” in their neighborhoods. Itturns out that this elemental political activity of free men andwomen was “discriminatory,” and therefore “illegal,” and HUDlegal harassment of these citizens was only pulled back underthe glare of severe public criticism. And even then, HUD neveradmitted that it was wrong.

The latest Clintonian march toward totalitarianism has notyet been unleashed. It seems that the White House has estab-lished an advisory panel known as the “White House Car Talks”committee, slated to submit its recommendations for action inSeptember. The need for “car talks” is supposed to be the men-ace of the automobile as polluter.

The fact that the demonized chemical element, lead, hasalready been eliminated from gasoline, or that federal mandateshave repeatedly made auto engines more “fuel efficient” at theexpense of car safety, cuts no ice with these people. It is impos-sible to appease an aggressive movement bent on full-scale col-lectivism: gains or concessions simply encourage them and whettheir appetite for escalating their demands. And so to the car

202 Making Economic Sense

talkers, automobile pollution remains as severe a menace asever.

The Car Talks panel consists of the usual suspects: Clinton-ian officials, environmentalists, sympathetic economists, and afew stooges from the automobile industry. Some of the innova-tive ideas under discussion, in addition to higher taxes on “gas-guzzling” cars and trucks (query: does any car ever sip daintilyinstead of “guzzle?”):

• establishing a higher minimum age for drivers’licenses;

• forcing drivers over a maximum age to give up theirlicenses;

• placing maximum limits on how many cars any fam-ily will be allowed to own;

• enforcing alternative driving days for car com-muters.

In short, the coercive rationing of automobiles, by forcingsome groups to stop driving altogether, and by forcing others tostop using the cars they are still graciously allowed to possess.

If that isn’t totalitarianism, what exactly would qualify? If theAmerican public is enraged about “gun-grabbers,” and theyindeed are, wait until they realize that Leviathan is coming tograb their cars!

Now, of course, the White House aide who discussed theseideas with the press admitted that some of the “wilder ideas”will get killed in committee. Is that all we can rely on to pre-serve our liberty?

Meanwhile, as usual, the only public criticism of these rumi-nations has come from the Left, griping that the Car Talkers arenot acting fast enough. Dan Becker, of the Sierra Club, com-plains that “each second this yammering goes on in the Whitehouse,” hundreds of gallons of pollution are being sent intothe air. Who knows? Maybe Dr. David Kessler, apparently the

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permanent head of the Food and Drug Administration, canissue a finding that the fuel emissions are “toxic,” and theadministration can then ban all cars overnight.

We should realize that the war against the car did not beginwith the discovery of pollution. Hatred of the private automo-bile has been endemic among left-liberals for decades. It firstsurfaced in the disproportionate hysteria over what seemed tobe a minor esthetic complaint: tailfins on Cadillacs in the 1950s.The amount of ink and energy expended on attacking the hor-rors of tailfins was prodigious.

But it soon emerged that the left-liberal complaint againstautomobiles had little to do either with tailfins or pollution.What they hate, with a purple passion, is the private car as adeeply individualistic, comfortable, and even luxurious mode oftransportation.

In contrast to the railroad, the automobile liberated Ameri-cans from the collectivist tyranny of mass transit: of beingforced to rub elbows with a “cross-section of democracy” on busor train, of being dominated by fixed timetables and fixed ter-minals. Instead, the private automobile made each individual“King of the Road”; he could ride wherever and whenever hewanted, with no compulsion to clear it with his neighbors or his“community.”

And furthermore, the driver and car-owner could perform allthese miracles in comfort and luxury, in an ambiance far morepleasurable than in jostling his fellow “democrats” for hours ata time.

And so the systemic war on private automobiles began andmoved into high gear. If they couldn’t get our cars straight away,they could, in the name of “fuel efficiency . . . pollution,” thejoys of physical exercise, or even esthetics, persuade and coerceus into using cars that were costlier, smaller, lighter, and there-fore less safe, and less luxurious and even less comfortable.

If they grudgingly and temporarily allowed us to keep ourcars, they could punish us by making the ride more difficult. But

204 Making Economic Sense

now, the Clintonians, in a multi-faceted drive toward collectivismfrom health to gun-grabbing to assaults on free speech, and onthe rights of smokers have demonstrated that they never giveup.

Unlike previous administrations, they are tireless, implaca-ble, and overlook nothing. Yesterday, the slogan: “If you letthem come for our cigarettes or for our guns, next they willcome for our cars,” would have seemed like absurd hyperbole.Now, that prospect is becoming all too much a sober portrayalof political reality. Z

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