Comments on: The Politics of Late Merging? http://www.howwedrive.com/2008/08/19/the-politics-of-late-merging/ Just another WordPress weblog Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:57:08 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Mike Adamsky http://www.howwedrive.com/2008/08/19/the-politics-of-late-merging/#comment-1170 Mike Adamsky Sat, 27 Sep 2008 02:46:56 +0000 http://www.howwedrive.com/?p=194#comment-1170 Hi, Tom. Glad to hear you liked my letter. The NY Times edited pretty significantly. In case you’re interested, here’s the original text I sent them:

Dear Editor,

Oh my goodness if Cynthia Gorney’s “The Urge to Merge” is not a perfect allegory for this political season, I don’t know what is.

Gorney’s the classic Democrat, fretting about power balances and whether or not someone’s getting ahead “unfairly”. She rails against the sidezoomers, even though she’s taught by experts that full utilization of all lanes is the most efficient mode. Surely she’s also on the side of repealing the so-called “Bush tax cuts” even though every bit of data shows that these “cuts” resulted in a greater proportion of overall taxes being paid from the high-income group.

Padilla, the operations worker, is the classic Republican and, not surprisingly, appears only briefly at the end of the piece. He sees the opening and seizes the opportunity. Is this fair? He thinks so. The open lane that allows him to get ahead is, after all, equally available to everyone. He probably supports drilling in Anwar. Why? Because he wants cheaper gas, dammit, and we’ve got it sitting right there!

Morgan, the cop, is the classic Libertarian. We’ve got enough rules governing behavior already. The lanezoomer is fully entitled to try to cut, the lineupper is fully entitled to try to keep him out. No blood, no foul. Morgan stays the heck out of the vast majority of interactions. Let the games begin. This man regrettably is not represented on the current political scene.

Fortunately, Gorney shows us how it’s all supposed to work best: we all just have to learn to behave like ants — productive little creatures not known for brooding or wasting energy pounding dashboards.

Sincerely,
Mike Adamsky

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I wrote the letter mostly in jest, but the political allegory feels more applicable now than it did when I suggested it. Some people want to police everyone. Some people want individual freedom. Sure, it’s a lighthearted discussion, but it’s useful in an odd sort of way.

]]> By: sasha http://www.howwedrive.com/2008/08/19/the-politics-of-late-merging/#comment-261 sasha Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:38:23 +0000 http://www.howwedrive.com/?p=194#comment-261 This weekend the Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, published an article on merging. It was from the perspective of a woman and how she and her husband are very different drivers. The article refrenced recently released Traffic, by Tom Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt discusses merging in the first part of his book citing that now one has looked at merging hatbits in terms of gender. Margaret Wente, who wrote the article in the Globe goes on to say that Vanderbilt’s book also points out that we all think we are better driver’s than we really are. I can’t wait to get my hands on the book and read it!

Margaret’s article Zoom, Zoom, Crash, Bang can be found at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080816.COWENT16/EmailTPStory/

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