Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

I think it's safe to say that, like any good liberal, I think that the American military and the automobile have been two forces with decidedly mixed records in the last 50 years.

On the one hand, they have been responsible for much good. 50 years of relative peace and prosperity for America, western Europe, and much of the developing world. Lots of cool gadgets like the GPS system, night-vision camcorders that let you see through women's clothing, and astronaut ice cream. The American dream of living in the suburbs, the rise of the middle class, and NASCAR.

On the other hand, there have been some decided drawbacks, as well.

In the case of the military, American force supremacy has been primarily good for America. And, I would argue, primarily good for the rest of the world, as well. However, as Robert Wright is quick to point out, we are entering an era where being the biggest kid on the block might just mean that you have the biggest target on your chest. As technologies continue to improve, it is almost inevitable that smaller and smaller groups will have the capacity to do larger and larger amounts of harm and damage. To that end, the current era of American military supremacy is making us more likely to be on the receiving end of terrorist plots. In particular, the use of air power, and its often-indiscriminate effects on civlians, is proving to be a big fat negative, I would argue.

And so, I would recommend that you read Robert Farley's argument for disbanding the US Air Force. Not the concept of air supremacy, but specifically, the idea of an independent branch of the military, whose existence continues to rely on strong arguments in favor of deploying air power in as many situations as possible. Particularly in a future of small force counterinsurgency campaigns, exclusive reliance on air power is not only unhelpful, it is actually counterproductive to drop bombs on major cities where we are trying to win the 'hearts and minds' of the locals.

Likewise, the car, while it has led to some pretty remarkable economic developments (and I, as a city-lover who lives not particularly near any real city, sincerely appreciate the freedom to get up and go to Denver anytime I damn well please), has also had associated downsides. There are the obvious ones, like smog and global warming. There are also less obvious, but I would argue even more pernicious ones, like the serious lowering of life quality for people who spend 2 hours a day commuting back-and-forth to work, the social isolation foisted on us by the exurban lifestyle, and the general amount of common human decency lost when the people around you stop being human beings you are sharing a life with, and instead become obstacles preventing you from getting home in time to catch America's Next Top Model.

And while not all of these downsides can be given an economic value, I think it's important that we internalize some of the costs of our car-dependent lifestyle, and the easiest way to do that is a straight-up carbon tax, such as the one proposed today by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. It's going to be painful for a while, and hopefully it can be phased in to allow people the opportunity to change their lifestyles in adaptive ways. And I'd be all for either making it revenue-neutral by dropping payroll or income taxes to match, or giving out rebates to make it more progressive. But it's the simplest and most straightforward way to reward people for learning to live energy-efficient lifestyles.