Proletariat Blog

Il Duce would be proud. The government, that is, Our Great Leader, has decreed that the car market will change and it shall be so.

Obama’s new rules will transform US auto fleet
DETROIT (AP) – Some soccer moms will have to give up hulking SUVs. Carpenters will still haul materials around in pickup trucks, but they will cost more. Nearly everybody else will drive smaller cars, and more of them will run on electricity.  ~news.moneycentral.msn.com

Every vehicle will cost more, go slower, not go as far, and will likely not be as safe to drive, but it’s all for our own good: the government says so. Trucks and SUV’s will be all but outlawed it seems.

Yes, this does look like the “Transformation of America” that I expected. An America where decisions are made from the top and handed down across the land. It will no doubt take time for our rulers to get around to tackling Urban Blight and Sprawl by making decrees as well, but socialist centrally-planned utopias aren’t built overnight.

The higher mileage and emissions standards set by the Obama administration on Tuesday, which begin to take effect in 2012 and are to be achieved by 2016, will transform the American car and truck fleet.

…the changes will make pickup trucks so much more expensive that they will be used almost exclusively for work.

And instead of a minivan or SUV, more parents will haul their families in much smaller vehicles with three rows of seats — something more like the Mazda 5 small van, he said. The Mazda 5 gets about 28 mpg on the highway. ~news.moneycentral.msn.com

Only government can do this job of regulating and transforming our society, one aspect, one industry at a time. Free Markets would never get around to making the hard political choices of banning products and services people want and are willing to pay for. Especially when a free market is not intelligent the way a single dictator is. No one person makes any decisions in a free market. It’s just the choices of individuals who aren’t smart enough to know what’s good for them.