It is, I shit you not, a cold war tariff on fucking chickens. There’s some other shit that’s glommed on over the centuries, but the mad-science breeding program to create a pickup truck big enough to swallow the sun started with a stupid trade dispute over chickens between the krauts, the frogs, and the yanks.
The notion is echoed by a lot of thinkers, including that of Karl Marx in his deconstruction of capitalism. We need to make a society aware of this tendency much the way we have to be mindful, as a society, of prejudice divisionism.
Otherwise, overexploitation of common resources is going to kill us if we can’t find a way to circumvent the problem, such as by reaching out into space as local resources become dire.
It’s also politically wanted. American car companies can’t compete with overseas manufacturers in the small car market so regulations were written to subsidize SUVs and trucks.
It’s funny too that SUVs and trucks also have themselves gotten bigger. I own an 11 year old SUV and I feel dwarfed on the road by every other new SUV I see. Trucks are insane too, some are so big they don’t fit in regular parking spots. Compare that to older pickups with the same bed space that are smaller than some sedans.
True too. There’s one guy at my apartment complex who drives a Ford F350 Super Duty. The monstrosity juts out like 1/4 of an entire parking space into the already tight road we have. Makes navigating into nearby spots a nightmare.
SUV, Truck, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, sedan, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV.
The culture problem around big vehicles we’ve created with bad regulation and aggressive marketing is depressing.
It isn’t just a culture problem, it’s a tragedy of the commons.
When you’re surrounded by giant vehicles, the only way to
befeel safe and see the road is to have a giant vehicle.That’s not the tragedy of the commons, and that’s not why everyone drives turboencabulators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
It is, I shit you not, a cold war tariff on fucking chickens. There’s some other shit that’s glommed on over the centuries, but the mad-science breeding program to create a pickup truck big enough to swallow the sun started with a stupid trade dispute over chickens between the krauts, the frogs, and the yanks.
A gentle heads up that the guy who coined that term was a huge piece of shit, and was almost certainly wrong.
The basic notion regarding the exploitation of limited, unregulated public resources leading to depletion is significantly older than that term or the essay with that title..
The notion is echoed by a lot of thinkers, including that of Karl Marx in his deconstruction of capitalism. We need to make a society aware of this tendency much the way we have to be mindful, as a society, of prejudice divisionism.
Otherwise, overexploitation of common resources is going to kill us if we can’t find a way to circumvent the problem, such as by reaching out into space as local resources become dire.
It’s also politically wanted. American car companies can’t compete with overseas manufacturers in the small car market so regulations were written to subsidize SUVs and trucks.
It’s funny too that SUVs and trucks also have themselves gotten bigger. I own an 11 year old SUV and I feel dwarfed on the road by every other new SUV I see. Trucks are insane too, some are so big they don’t fit in regular parking spots. Compare that to older pickups with the same bed space that are smaller than some sedans.
And American “regular parking spots” are already much bigger than those in the rest of the world.
True too. There’s one guy at my apartment complex who drives a Ford F350 Super Duty. The monstrosity juts out like 1/4 of an entire parking space into the already tight road we have. Makes navigating into nearby spots a nightmare.
https://xkcd.com/562/, but with the back!
OVER FUCKING CHICKENS!
I HATE IT HERE!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
Failed state which retains cold war revenge tax.