[di4na]

I have. And I think it is definitely worth it to read it, because he brings a lot of clarity to a lot of things.

Buuuuuut. In the end, I think Illich fail his own test. He claims to analyze systemic impacts, but fail to recognize the systemic impacts of his own solutions.

I always use the "speed" example for this. Illich basically advocate for more or less banning the use of any mean of transportation faster than a bicycle. The arguments do make sense actually, in a lot of ways, and it is important to keep these in mind. But he acknowledge that there are real use case for engine driven vehicules and fast speed, for things like medical or emergency needs. Make sense right?

So from his pov, noone should have engine car, except for ambulance, medical transportation (like transplant), fire engine, etc. Where it becomes a net good.

What he utterly fail to realise is that without the fast transportation and the whole system built to ... actually build and distribute these cars to everyone, then building these emergency vehicules and developing the engineering for them cannot happen.

Not only it is cost prohibitive (because of reuse of means of production, mass production impact on cost, etc) but also it is really hard to actually engineer this stuff without a lot of experiments and needs for it, which do not happen if you restrict the use of these stuff to a limited niche.

Engineering need practical use of the tool to be able to learn about the use to make it more efficient and better to the point that it benefits everyone. That of course does not negate the point that these technologies do have negative impact on society. But thinking that you can wholly separate the positive from the negative, banning the later but getting the former, is not as simple as calling it out. You need to consider the systemic effects and really think through the long term and systemic impact of your action.

Something that Illich seems to only apply to other people actions, but not to his own remedy or analysis.

[palata]

> Not only it is cost prohibitive (because of reuse of means of production, mass production impact on cost, etc) but also it is really hard to actually engineer this stuff without a lot of experiments and needs for it, which do not happen if you restrict the use of these stuff to a limited niche.

Couldn't one argue that there is not that much engineering needed to keep producing emergency vehicles that we already have? It's not like an ambulance fundamentally changes every year.

Would each unit be more expensive without mass production? Most likely, but... it's not like firefighter trucks are mass-produced for people who use them to go to work, and some of them are adapted for firefighters, right? Still it seems like it's not cost-prohibitive.

Another example is military equipment, where I believe countries try to produce more locally (for obvious security reasons). Military equipment is typically much more expensive than consumer products, but still... it's there.

So it seems like it's not completely impossible, right?

[di4na]

You forgot the road themselves. Note that Illich also refuse train, so you have to build them with all logistic to build them on bicycles cargo.

On top of this, the ambulance we know how to build today are not the one from when we first managed to go faster than a bicycle (average human).

Which means you would be stuck at state of the art engine, car, brakes, etc from the 30s. Or maybe the 10s even, as it was already valuable in first world war.

Same for planes. Trains. Etc

And would we really build the infrastructure for them to actually drive on if it was so limited?

As the other answers point out, this fails to acknowledge the systemic impact of such rules.

My usual test for a lot of critics of current systems that offer something "far better" with nearly no downside compared to the current one is to ask if they could invent, develop and produce MRIs in enough quantities.

It is actually really hard to build systems that would. This is a taller order than you think.

[palata]

> My usual test for a lot of critics of current systems that offer something "far better" with nearly no downside

The current system absolutely depends on fossil fuels, which are not unlimited. Also it brought us into a mass extinction (we are in it, that's a fact), and it is bringing climate change (which will just be a complication on top of the energy crisis when we pass peak production of fossil fuels - pretty soon).

I don't see that as "no downside"; our system is literally about to collapse.

[justsomehnguy]

> Couldn't one argue that there is not that much engineering needed to keep producing emergency vehicles that we already have

And what you would do when the necessary knowledge would be lost? 'It wouldn't be' you want to say? But who would want to spend an entire life for doing things what would be replaced like once in a decade?

> It's not like an ambulance fundamentally changes every year.

Not every year but modern ambulance and the one from 30 years are quite a different things, despite they are both just box on wheels and a stretcher.

> Would each unit be more expensive without mass production? Most likely, but... it's not like firefighter trucks are mass-produced for people who use them to go to work

But ambulances are produced on the chassis of the common (and cheap) designs which are mass-produced for all other markets and sectors. If your idea of firetruck is American behemoths then sure, they are not like firetrucks in other countries which just use... the common chassis from the cargo trucks. Yes, they are deeply overhauled, but the main benefit is what they get that chassis and parts cheap because they are mass-produced. And if they are not - they are no longer cheap.

> Military equipment is typically much more expensive than consumer products, but still... it's there.

And just like American firetrucks they share a lot of parts (and means of production) with their civilian counterparts.

And by the way, ambulances and firetrucks, good. What about delivering a new AC unit to you? It's no longer 40 minutes on the highway from the warehouse. It's a multiday affair and hours and hours of manual labor. Do you expect to still pay $20 for that?

[palata]

I do agree that dramatically reducing the number of private cars is a challenge. But I strongly believe that we don't have a choice.

I see it this way: our society is built upon abundant energy, which is mostly (and by far) fossil fuels. Yes, renewable grow fast (while still being marginal), but they grow fast in a world of abundant fossil fuels. Cut the fossil fuels entirely today, and we are dead.

The thing is: fossil fuels are not unlimited; in the close future, we will have passed the peak of production for all of them (conventional peak oil was in 2008, Europe feels it since then). So we are going towards a world with less fossil energy, and we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today). Hence it seems pretty reasonable to think that we will have less energy in the future. And therefore, we need to do less, and it will be more costly.

That's not necessarily the end of the world, that's just different (though probably more complicated).

> Do you expect to still pay $20 for that?

No. I expect to have to do less with less. I am not saying that I will necessarily live better, just that my survival depends on my society being able to do it.

[pdonis]

> we don't have a solution to replace it (we can hope for technological breakthroughs, but we just don't have the solution today)

Yes, we do: nuclear. The reasons why nuclear energy has not taken hold as widely as it should have are political, not technical. We could be at the point today where no fossil fuels need to be burned anywhere in the world if we had started building nuclear plants on a larger scale back in the 1970s, as soon as it became clear that OPEC was not going to play nice when they thought they could extract more money from their customers by restricting supply.

[palata]

That's likely wrong, or at least it would be a very risky bet. If we started today to build nuclear plants everywhere, it's not like we would replace fossil fuels tomorrow. It takes time. Then we would need to replace absolutely everything that uses fossil fuel to use electricity.

This is wishful thinking. What's most likely is that we need to start building a lot of nuclear plant today, and we still need to degrow. Because nuclear plants won't compensate fossil fuels, but obviously even with a degrowth we will need some energy. We will have less energy, hence the degrowth.

[pdonis]

> If we started today to build nuclear plants everywhere, it's not like we would replace fossil fuels tomorrow. It takes time.

Replacing fossil fuels with anything will take time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't start doing it.

> Then we would need to replace absolutely everything that uses fossil fuel to use electricity.

No, we wouldn't. For applications where electricity is not practical (such as, for example, commercial aviation), we can use electricity to make liquid fuels from the CO2 and water vapor in the air, by reversing the chemical reactions that take place when the fuels are burned.

> nuclear plants won't compensate fossil fuels

They will gradually reduce their usage, eventually to zero. You simply refuse to consider the possbility of gradually shifting energy usage in order to not have to "degrow" and lower people's standard of living. Good luck convincing the rest of the world of that. Particularly when "degrow" for most of the rest of the world translates into "stay in poverty forever". Poverty has negative consequences too.

[paganel]

It's not only emergency vehicles, it's also stuff like mini-vans and lorries that keep us well-fed. It's about who's going to pay for those highways once the personal cars are gone? How are you going to keep a Western logistics network in place without those highways and roads? No, extending the railway network to its past glory days (like the left-hand map in this photo [1]) won't work and will definitely not happen anymore. Do we really want to go back to stuff like this [2]?

[1] https://64.media.tumblr.com/81242bedb09cc3087fc0855deb381f50...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/e02ilyAatbM

[palata]

> It's about who's going to pay for those highways

Those who are paying now. And if it's only for emergency vehicles and trucks that bring food to cities (because you are right, cities need them to survive), then don't you think you need less infrastructure? Doesn't seem to me that 6-lanes highways are fully used by emergency vehicles and trucks.

> won't work and will definitely not happen anymore.

It's not black and white, it's a gradient: you can definitely try to move from the right-hand map towards the left-hand one.

[paganel]

> trucks that bring food to cities (because you are right, cities need them to survive), then don't you think you need less infrastructure?

You'll still need the current paved roads to remain pretty much in place. Granted, the highways with 3 or more lanes could lose them (the extra lanes, that is), but we're still going to need 2-lane highways in order to connect the bigger centers of interest.

To say nothing of the fact that less personal cars will also mean much more expensive gasoline/diesel in order to cover up for the last sales (once you get rid of personal cars), lots of economies of scale will vanish over night. The same discourse should be gad regarding the current forced push to electrification.

[di4na]

Note that illich is against cities. In his mind, a more atomised world would emerge from such a ban, more localised and focused on communities in neighborhood, with less dependencies outside.

So the only thing using roads would be emergency. Food would need to be local too or transported slowly by speed of walk or bicycle.

Which means that we would all be taxed pretty high for something rarely used.

[paganel]

> Food would need to be local too or transported slowly by speed of walk or bicycle.

I'm sure he knew that, and I'm a genuine fan of Illich (with all his pluses and minuses), but what he proposes will certainly lead to future famines.

[palata]

Well big cities are a problem we need to address. They absolutely depend on fossil fuel for trucks to bring food into them.