TECHNOLOGY TRANSITIONS
Those Stupid Vehicles
And they call it progress
It’s hard to believe, but there are those among us who want to replace our tried and true methods of moving ourselves and our goods with an unproven and less capable system.
Yes, the foolish among us want the whole world to use horseless carriages.
There are so many things wrong with this ludicrous idea. One might think that with all the accumulated wisdom available in this day and age, such poppycock would be rejected out of hand. Sadly, no.
Consider this:
Horses are self-feeding, self-controlling, self-maintaining, and self-reproducing, but they are far more economical in the energy they are able to develop from a given weight of fuel material than any other existing form of motor.
But the foolishness goes well beyond ignoring an energy in, energy out calculation. Just think of all the liveries across the nation. You can’t find a town without one. You can always find a place to rest your horse as you travel from town to town. What are people going to do with these horseless carriages? Leave them in the streets without care?
And what about the jobs? What are all those people who raise and care for horses going to do? What about the teamsters, streetcar operators, carriage manufacturers, groomers, coachmen, feed merchants, saddlers, stable keepers, wheelwrights, farriers, blacksmiths, buggy whip makers, veterinarians, horse breeders, street cleaners, and the farmers who grew grain and hay.
The nation will be ruined if we abandon our horses.
A horse can negotiate rough terrain. The horseless carriages demand smooth road surfaces with nary a bump. The cost of creating these bumpless roads for horseless carriages will be overwhelming! Maintaining the many miles of roads we have now in America is a herculean task. How will we ever support more and smoother roads?
The horseless carriages may carry people too far, too fast. No one will ever know where anyone else is. That kind of speed should be limited to nicely defined tracks for racing or to trains that run on stationary tracks from town to town. Horseless carriages will carry people helter-skelter at great speed from anywhere to everywhere. How will we find each other?
And show me the horseless carriage that will ever drop a foal.
Don’t forget that these unreliable motor coaches are dangerous! Gasoline, the horrid-smelling fluid used to power them, is apt to explode at any time. That’s how they work…little explosions over and over again to generate the power that makes them go. It is no stretch of the imagination to think that on occasion, the fuel tanks the carriages must carry around will explode with great loss of life and limb.
Do you want to ride around atop a bomb? Remember that there is no case on record of a horse ever exploding. Not one!
Do you know how gasoline is made? It’s like kerosene, only worse. Black nasty oil is pumped out of the ground and cooked to create the stuff. Cooking explosive stuff! Does that sound like a business you want in your neighborhood?
How will the gasoline get to you? Will tanker carriages come ‘round to your house to fill up your tank delivering like the milkman? Will you be an accomplice to bombs big enough to destroy a city block wandering around the countryside?
Should you run out of gasoline while traveling, be ready for a long walk. You can’t just rest your machine and let it graze for a bit. When the propellant is gone, using your own legs is the only way to get to the next town. And who knows if they’ll have any?
And the damn things need tires to grip the road and absorb some of the shock when a bump is inevitably encountered. Tires filled with air under pressure. How long will the pressurized air stay in the tire? What about a puncture? Better carry a way to patch the rubber and a pump if you want to have any chance of getting anywhere. A horse may throw a shoe, but it’s a simple matter to correct the problem.
Can you imagine developing a relationship with a mobile mess of metal? You can thank beautiful Bessie or stalwart Scout for a fine ride, and feel the gratitude upon feeding or grooming, but a machine? Only a sick, sick person could love his motorbuckboard.
And while no one would encourage tipsy trips from the tavern, if you do happen to have a few too many, your horse knows the way home and will get you there even if you fall asleep. All you have to do is stay in the saddle or on the buggy seat. Try that with a horseless carriage and they’ll find your remains at the bottom of a ravine.
These fool contraptions are a waste of your time. They’ll never displace the horse.
This has been a paid message from the American Quarter Horse Association.
An old and very profitable industry emphatically points out all the difficulties with the new, completely ignoring the clear and present ill effects of their own. Does any of this have a ring of familiarity?
In 1900, New York City had a population of at least 150,000 horses, with some estimates much higher. Each horse would drop 30 pounds of manure and a gallon of urine every day. Is it any wonder that knee-high boots were the fashion of the day? And don’t forget how attractive such an environment is for flies. Did the legions of flies darken the sky?
But the health problems and stench created by waste and dead horses abandoned in the streets were never mentioned by those yelling, “Get a horse!”
A fledgling industry was ridiculed and shown lacking vs. an established one. Just like today.
How foolish for anyone to buy an electric car because it:
- Has limited range
- Takes too long to charge
- Has batteries that don’t last forever
- Has batteries that may explode (A favorite…uh hello…gasoline!)
- Relies on electricity generated en masse with environmental costs (Really? Versus petroleum?)
- Needs a charging infrastructure and capacity that is not in place. (Should we expect these to be available from the get-go?)
Perhaps the real foolishness is that we consumers seem to want a new technology to immediately do everything the previous technology could do and more for the same or less cost. Noting some of the weaknesses of electric vehicles, shouldn’t we first attempt to produce them for applications where they provide the greatest advantage? Wouldn’t a lightweight glorified scooter that doesn’t use gas and is one or two steps up from an eBike (Vespa Elettrica, anyone?) for city travel make sense?
Regardless, plugging in at home overnight promises a cleaner “fill up” for significantly less money. Eventual infrastructure, capacity, and high-efficiency home solar chargers may remove motorized travel from the profit centers of energy corporations. This threat is the real driver of organized resistance.
The biggest difference between the horse-to-auto transition and the gasoline-to-electric transition (or hydrogen, or whatever) is that the horror stories, misinformation, and occasionally accurate and realistic critiques are produced clandestinely and circulated via social media.
Do you remember how images captured on film would always be superior to those you snap with your cell phone?
Corporations standing to lose in a technology transition will use any and all means at their disposal to delay and thwart the change.
