Never Hear Them Coming
Small wins.
The Danish Energy Agency allocated EUR 4 million for public and private electric car projects. This will bring 1500 new electric cars to the streets of Denmark in 2014. With about 6 million people, they are approximately 1.5% the population of the US.
Bhutan, the Himalayan kingdom of 700,000 people, measures progress by the gross national happiness index. They also export 72% of their electricity. Nissan is helping them to build a complex infrastructure for charging their whisper-quiet Leaf electric cars.
Electric cars are so smooth, nimble and silent — you don’t even hear them coming.
In the United States, we have oil lobbyists fighting against the existence of electric cars to their last breath, all part of our historically vaudevillian political system where money and power are sadly trumping progress. Getting these jackals to finally back off enough to even allow rational conversations about electric cars will require such a widespread public demonization of oil, that cowboys will have to kneel before the masses and swear that Texas tea is really made from fresh butterfly milk.
Remember, the United States (and arguably Canada and South Africa) has Elon Musk, the baddest-ass electric car maker in the world, headquartered right in Palo Alto. A ruthless innovator, rocket launcher and inventor like this hasn’t been seen since “The Great and Powerful Jobs”. And what do the bureaucrats do to Musk through lobbyists and political baboonery? They tar, feather and shit on him. He’ll eventually take his magic ball and teleport to another playground. But, we’re too busy punching the nerd in the face to notice that we’re actually slugging an invincible warlock.
And such is our system. Obese and overwrought with so much rotten sausage that if we keep it up, we are likely to fall behind even the developing world in a generation or two. By the time we pluck our heads out of our own posteriors and realize that politics ain’t reality tv, it’ll be too late.
To get electricity you have to start with an alpha particle.
You want electric cars? You might have to travel to tiny Norway. In March 2014, Norway became the first country where over one in every 100 registered passenger cars is plug-in electric. Among the existing government incentives, all-electric cars are exempt in Norway from all non-recurring vehicle fees (including purchase taxes — which are extremely high for ordinary cars), and 25% VAT on purchase, together making a whisper-quiet electric car purchase price competitive with conventional cars. Take that oil lobbyists…
You want your government out of net neutrality? You might have to go to smart, little Brazil for internet freedom. Remember, when you disrupt the flow of free ideas by allowing money to clog the pipes, you’ll have such a backlog of slime that you’ll need to hire Godzilla the plumber to clean them out. And as we all know, Godzilla makes a big mess.
It’s also why a small agency wins. Small is nimble. Nimble is smart. Smart is quick. And assuming the person at the top of a small agency is open minded and searching for a future not caught in the past, then the possibilities are endless.
Made in NYC? Yea, I’ve heard of it — The Mechanism helped to write that book for the past 13 years. We’re nimble, speed-hungry, cockroaches, nestled in the bowels of New York City. We’re surviving, and we’re whisper-quiet.
And you know what? You never hear us coming either.
