Back to the Future?

Mark Twain famously remarked that "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Pithy and insightful, to be sure, but after reading an op-ed in today's New York Times, I suddenly think he's wrong. History really does seem to repeat itself.

After a much-ballyhooed junket of western journalists to the new Soviet Union in 1921, American reporter Lincoln Steffens famously remarked, "I've seen the future, and it works." The trip was a highly choreographed tour of the new country, designed to show left-leaning journalists the technologically advanced and prosperous USSR. The staggering bloodshed that characterized the country at that time -- the mass arrests, the secret police interrogation stations, the summary executions of tens of thousands of innocent people -- were conveniently hidden from Steffens and his credulous colleagues, who obligingly returned home and gushed about what they'd seen. (And from what I understand, Steffens filed the story that contains the now-famous phrase before the tour even arrived in the Soviet Union, which is utterly fitting.)

Decades later, we know better: 1921 was merely part of the unfolding drama that culminated in the 30s with the mass-starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants and the sprawl of the gulags. Steffens was certainly half-right: 1921 was a watershed year, pointing to a future that did in fact come to pass. But it was a dark future, ruled by totalitarian decree, where human life counted for little.

So you would think that, in 2008, when a massive, communist country puts on a dazzling display of state pageantry for all the world to see, western journalists wouldn't make the same exact mistake they made in 1921. But you would be wrong.

For behold Thomas Friedman of The New York Times and his slavish adoration for the fanfare of the Beijing Olympics: "China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work."

Frankly, I'd be more impressed if the Chinese could put on a meaningful democratic election, or refrain from censoring the Internet, or pull their troops out of Tibet. Not Mr. Friedman though; he was just so taken with all those amazing dancers and drummers and bullet trains, he simply couldn't be bothered about niggling details like human rights abuses.

Just look at the alleged Chinese virtues he chooses to praise: Planning. National investment. Concentrated state power. The same warm and fuzzy virtues that every monster since Lenin and Hitler has worshiped at the altar of human sacrifice. But weren't those fireworks just gorgeous!

Behold the power of ideology to trump rational thought or factual analysis. With seven years and $43 billion, the Chinese managed to create an amazing spectacle and Friedman goes all weak at the knees with sycophantic adulation. But in the same breath, he laments the time and resources America has devoted to preventing a repetition of the 9/11 attacks. Thanks to all that "concentrated state power," China has a whole lot of shiny new public infrastructure for its wealthiest cities, while rickety old America is falling apart.

Well, let's see. Just this past spring, a powerful earthquake struck rural, western China and killed about 70,000 people, largely because of poor-quality construction. Hurricane Katrina, by contrast, left about 1,800 dead. Three years later, the latter is still cited as proof of the woeful neglect of American infrastructure, while an exponentially more devastating catastrophe merited about a week of obligatory news coverage. But for twits like Thomas Friedman, the happy afterglow of the Olympics is what counts.

Why? What is it about the highly choreographed spectacle of thousands of anonymous dancers and drummers and other performers putting on a glittery party that so delights the Thomas Friedmans of the world? Is it the prospect of the faceless masses, each dressed exactly alike, marching in lock-step for the glorification of their country? Do they look at soldiers goose-stepping as they present the Olympic flag and see something good there?

I can't decide if the closing sentence of this op-ed is consciously echoing Lincoln Steffens 85 years later, or if it's just a sick coincidence: "I never want to tell my girls — and I’m sure Obama feels the same about his — that they have to go to China to see the future." Friedman frets that we'd better start teaching our children Mandarin. I would posit that we need to start teaching our children history.

Acura, Common Sense Refute Gas Crisis

These days, griping over high gas prices is ubiquitous, and that griping leads to ever more hand-wringing, which in turn translates into a mountain of punditry regarding various "solutions" to this "crisis." SUV owners wail into every available microphone about $4 gas, Green Peace screams for Exxon executives' blood, and a never-ending procession of self-appointed experts bombards the Internet and opinion pages with their pet solutions for easing Americans' "pain at the pump." Frankly, I'm finding it all a little bit tiresome, so yesterday I conducted an experiment that might just render all the complaining and crack-pot schemes moot. It was a very low-tech experiment. I slowed down a little.

For my low-tech experiment, I selected a stretch of US-50 West from Cambridge, Maryland (where my ailing grandfather lives) to Alexandria, Virginia, where I live. My primary piece of equipment for this experiment was the odometer on my 2006 Acura RSX, which the EPA claims will get 31 mpg in "normal" highway driving. In a previous test on this same route, I divided my miles driven by the exact quantity of gas I burned and obtained mileage of 36.5 without really making any effort to save gas. So this time, I made an effort, and got some interesting results.

Over 93 miles, I used 2.34 gallons of regular unleaded, which works out to 39.75 mpg. After hitting the "equals" button on my calculator, my first thought was, "And why is there a gas crisis in this country?"

I should note here that my car possesses no technological wizardry to enhance fuel efficiency. It's powered by a 2.0 liter, inline-four engine, mated to a five-speed automatic transmission. No hybrid engine, no regenerative braking. It's just a smallish car (2,800 pounds), with a smallish, efficient engine.

And all I did to wring the extra miles from each gallon was to drive a bit slower, and crack my windows instead of run the air conditioner. When the speed limit was 55, I drove 55. When the speed limit increased to 65 on the western shore of Maryland, I drove 60. When I got stuck in horrendous traffic thanks to the hordes of families returning from Ocean City and other beaches, I let the engine idle in neutral. Approaching red lights, I coasted. Taking off from green lights, I went easy on the go pedal and kept my engine revs low. Not exactly the sort of stuff that will win me a Nobel prize for physics.

So, cruising at a leisurely pace in the right-hand lane, I saw near-hybrid mileage with some pretty stodgy technology. I can only imagine what a small car with a more frugal engine and a more advanced transmission (or a manual) could do, especially without the traffic jams; I bet a Mini Cooper, a Yaris or an entry-level Civic would probably have cracked 45 mpg, and maybe even threatened 50.

But tooling along in the slow lane, watching 5,000-pound SUVs zoom by at 75 mph, I realized that cars like mine and drivers like me are in the minority. All whining and recriminations aside, the average American drives a big, heavy car with a big, inefficient engine, and drives it very inefficiently, which goes a long way toward explaining why we as a country consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil every day. So now more than ever, I'm sick to death of hearing about this "fuel crisis" and the need for radical new technology and heavy-handed government mandates to "rescue" us from expensive oil. We don't need salvation; we just need a little high school physics and an end to the piggish "bigger is better and I'm entitled to what's better" mindset that's shaped the auto market for the last 20 years.

I'm about the last person in the world who'd advocate for energy rationing, or restrictions on the cars consumers buy, or any of the other command-and-control solutions that green warriors secretly venerate, because as with so many alleged "crises," I know the solution will be worse. But I'll be the first to tell an aggrieved motorist who's complaining how expensive it is to tow his 30-foot boat with his V-8 pickup that in economics, as in physics, you reap what you sow.