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Of
course, the Teamsters union backs this idea.
The union is at war with independent owner-operators
who are not susceptible to the blandishments
of union organisers, and thus have supported
environmentalists in their quest to ban
them from harbour drayage on the grounds
that they are less able to keep up with
rocketing compliance costs and ever-more
stringent regulations.
It
has also been pointed out that because the
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
has shortened the hours of work, there will
be tens of thousands of new drivers required.
At the same time, the qualifications of
the new drivers have increased, requiring
more training, resulting in the more costs
in hiring trainers and drivers which all
get put on to the cost of goods shipped.
Serious
social crazes with political impact were
seen in the 1970s compared with crazed teenage
bobby sobers swooning over Frank Sumatra
in the 1940s or rioting Elvis fans of the
'50s or the Beatle maniacs of the '60s.
Social crazes have political impact and
regulations with fines and jail time attached
for things that people did not do rather
than what they did do.
A
popular book that accompanied the global
cooling scare, or the New Ice Age craze,
was "Famine 1975". Its big idea
was that polar regions would advance towards
the equator depriving northerners of arable
land, leading Russians, Mongolians and northern
Chinese to pour southward to take over the
food producing lands. Starving Canadians
would be banging on the gates of the United
States desperate for food.
This
was a time when oil shock was the craze
du jour, and Arab-Israeli conflict closed
the Suez Canal and the megaships of the
day carried the oil around the Cape of Good
Hope to America and Europe.
And
in the Excited States of America, a panicky
federal government, decided to reduce speed
limits to 55 miles per hour. No one had
to move at a high speed, they reasoned and
we would all slow down and save on oil consumption.
Europe
came under some pressure to do the same,
but the head of Michelin dissuaded governments
from following the American way by providing
a cost benefit analysis, arguing that if
speeds were reduced, so would deliveries
and this would flow negatively through the
entire economy.
One
can say the same for the new hours of work
rules. People buy things because the price
is right. Some are rich enough that it does
not matter, but they do not outnumber those
for whom price does matter. If it costs
more to deliver the goods, and fewer people
buy them, it will cost even more to make
those are made because unit cost goes up.
So there will be fewer deliveries and fewer
sales and fewer factory jobs because less
will be made in response to diminishing
demand.
Environmentalists
were filled with dire predictions in those
days in the '70s. For completely opposite
reasons they are filled with dire predictions
today. Back then they were backed by the
Club of Rome's computer model, suggesting
that if we did not drastically limit oil
consumption we would all be in a horse-drawn
world by the year 2000.
Of
course, all this proved to be nonsense.
But yet it was the wisdom of yesteryear
as widely accepted by the good and the great
as global warming is today. While the 55
mph speed limit was still on the books,
it faded from use a few years later when
an oil shortage was followed by an oil glut.
Motorists - even the police - found it hard
to go slowly on roads built for higher speed
for reasons that no longer existed if it
ever did. In 1987, it was quietly repealed.
It
is good to keep in mind that if yesterday's
wisdom is today's foolishness, then today's
wisdom is likely to be the idiocy of tomorrow.
In any event, let us see our transport lobbies
join together and demand a cost benefit
analysis on whatever fashionable enthusiasm
is coming down the regulatory pike.
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