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.
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 petrol 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 (chapter III, section 2, “Radical Monopoly”) to say what goes wrong when a tool is no longer one option among many.
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 mph (Energy and Equity, “The Energy Crisis” and “The Ineffectiveness of Acceleration”) 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?
Sources
- Illich, Ivan. Energy and Equity. London: Calder & Boyars, 1974.
- Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. https://archive.org/details/illich-conviviality.