Past the second watershed. Of the six balances: 4 lost, 1 tipping, 1 not assessed. Position at least 93 of 100. The balances not assessed can only move it further.
- Biological degradation Lost Does this tool damage the living world, or the body, faster than either can recover? Lost: the tool is clearly past the limit.
- Radical monopoly Lost Can people still meet the need another way, without this tool? Lost: the tool is clearly past the limit.
- Overprogramming Not assessed Does using this tool require training or certification that people cannot give each other? Not assessed: nobody has looked at this yet, so it is not counted as holding.
- Polarization Lost Does this tool move power or advantage to a few, at others’ cost? Lost: the tool is clearly past the limit.
- Obsolescence Tipping Does this tool force people to replace what still works? Tipping: the tool has begun to cause this problem, without going past the limit.
- Frustration Lost Does this tool give back less than it takes, counting everything it takes? Lost: the tool is clearly past the limit.
What it does
Carries a few people and their things from door to door, quickly, over a road network built for it.
Before
In 1910 Canada had 9,158 registered motor vehicles for an estimated 6,988,000 people, about one for every 760; by 1975 it had about one for every two.1 In 1969, 48 per cent of American children from kindergarten to grade 8 usually walked or cycled to school and 12 per cent were driven; by 2009 the figures were 13 and 45 per cent.2
Where it stops
It doesn’t. Illich argued that past a certain speed a transport system stops saving time and starts creating distance and dependence, so that people must travel more, spend more, and give up more space just to do what they used to do on foot.
How easily you can stop using it
Hard, where towns and jobs are built for cars. Repair needs specialist knowledge and equipment, and living without one can mean moving or doing without.
What is scored
- The unit: The privately owned gasoline car, together with the roads, parking, and settlement pattern built for it. Unlike the bicycle, the car cannot be used without these, so they are scored with it. Left out: electric cars (see The electric car), buses, and goods vehicles.
- The job it is tested against: Carrying a few people from door to door, quickly. It does this reliably.
- Where and when: Rich countries, on Illich’s argument of 1974. None of the scores has been checked against current evidence. Five of the six balances are assessed.
The contrast with the bicycle record is deliberate. Same job (moving a person from here to there), opposite verdict.
What Illich saw
In Energy and Equity (1974) he argued that motorized transport past a threshold of speed and power produces a new scarcity of time and space and a “radical monopoly,” the condition in which a single way of meeting a need crowds out the others until there is no real choice. In Tools for Conviviality he used the same idea of radical monopoly to say what goes wrong when a tool is no longer one option among many.3
The six balances
Scored as set out in How to evaluate tools. The car reliably does its job, so the scoring starts from the six balances. These scores follow Illich’s argument. They are not yet checked against current evidence.
- Biological degradation: 2. Exhaust, greenhouse gases, and land given over to roads and parking. The electric car asks how much of this a change of fuel removes.
- Radical monopoly: 2. Illich’s defining case: where towns and jobs are built for cars, getting around without one becomes hard or impossible.
- Overprogramming: Not assessed.
- Polarization: 2. The argument of Energy and Equity: past a critical speed, the time one person saves is taken from others, and people who cannot drive are stranded.
- Obsolescence: 1. New models every year, and parts and software that tie repair to the maker.
- Frustration: 2. Illich’s effective-speed sum: counting the hours spent earning its cost, the car moved his model American at under five miles an hour. See The bicycle.
Where the threshold falls
Past the second watershed, at 93. Four balances score 2, and any balance at 2 puts a tool past the limit: 70, plus 2.5 for each of the nine points in its total.
This record puts the private car well past the second watershed, where Illich’s argument puts it. It is not a general verdict on all motor vehicles. Buses, trains, and a shared van are different tools.
Open questions
- Which of Illich’s figures in Energy and Equity hold up against current data? None is quoted here; the text is free online (see Reading), so each can be checked and pinned to a section.
- Illich puts the critical speed at 15 mph4 and gives little evidence for the number. How well does it hold for modern transport?
- Should electric and shared vehicles be catalogued as separate tools?
- Statistics Canada, “Series T147–194: Motor Vehicle Registrations, by Province, 1903 to 1975,” table T147–194a, and “Series A1: Estimated Population of Canada, 1867 to 1977,” in Historical Statistics of Canada, 2nd ed. (Statistics Canada, 1983), https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-516-x/sectiont/4147444-eng.htm. The vehicles per person are our arithmetic from the two tables. ↩︎
- National Center for Safe Routes to School, How Children Get to School: School Travel Patterns from 1969 to 2009 (National Center for Safe Routes to School, 2011), 2, 4, https://www.pedbikeinfo.org/pdf/NHTS_school_travel_report_2011_0.pdf. ↩︎
- Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (London: Calder & Boyars, 1973), chap. 3, sec. 2, “Radical Monopoly.” ↩︎
- Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity (London: Calder & Boyars, 1974), secs. “The Energy Crisis” and “The Ineffectiveness of Acceleration.” ↩︎
Sources
- Illich, Ivan. Energy and Equity. Calder & Boyars, 1974.
- Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. Calder & Boyars, 1973.
- National Center for Safe Routes to School. How Children Get to School: School Travel Patterns from 1969 to 2009. National Center for Safe Routes to School, 2011. https://www.pedbikeinfo.org/pdf/NHTS_school_travel_report_2011_0.pdf.
- Statistics Canada. “Series A1: Estimated Population of Canada, 1867 to 1977.” In Historical Statistics of Canada. Statistics Canada, 1983. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-516-x/sectiona/4147436-eng.htm.
- Statistics Canada. “Series T147–194: Motor Vehicle Registrations, by Province, 1903 to 1975.” In Historical Statistics of Canada. Statistics Canada, 1983. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-516-x/sectiont/4147444-eng.htm.