Ferrrari, Slowest Car On The Road

"No... No, Jack, it's a beautiful car. It just seems like ya got a lotta capital tied up in it."

Ivan Illich is supposed to have figured out how fast a car will go, if you account for all the time you spend earning the money you need to operate it. Something like six miles per. I wonder how fast this thing goes. (Yeah, yeah, I know, but I said "earning.")

Scan from the September 24 issue of The Week, which can be a fun read over your cornflakes.

Michael Phillips Redux

I've swiped this one before. It's by Michael Phillips, and from the Summer, '77, CoEvolution Quarterly -- the Voluntary Simplicity issue. I'm pretty much in agreement with the character who's speaking, although I'm not sure that Phillips was/is.

Ya gotta understand that oil is capital, and we turn it into food, transportation, building materials, etc. In other words, we live on capital. If we're really running out of the stuff, we ought to use what we still can to mobilize its replacement(s).

My ecological footprint is roughly the size of what I own and earn, whether I'm an entrepreneur, wage slave, beggar, thief, trust-fund baby -- you get the idea -- except to the extent that I build a sustainable future. So I can make a zillion dollars a year, and that's okay, if I use it to build a society that runs on sun, gravity, and photosynthesis, and live on...very, very little.