From Alain Bertaud’s Order without Design (MIT Press, 2018). Los Angeles is apparently much better at getting people to work in a reasonable time than New York, Chicago, or Washington.

From Alain Bertaud’s Order without Design (MIT Press, 2018).

Los Angeles is apparently much better at getting people to work in a reasonable time than New York, Chicago, or Washington.

really i just wish someone would run the numbers on this so i don’t have to keep talking out of my ass

I think Alexander Field’s A Great Leap Forward (Yale, 2011) really shaped my thinking on automobiles and American growth.

Between the Great Depression and the Great Stagnation, American investment in highways was exceptional, and made exceptional contributions to American productivity growth. 

What made the 1930s (1929–1941) so unusual was the combination of still rapid advance in manufacturing with the effects of spillovers in transportation and distribution resulting from the buildout of the surface road network. Total factor productivity (TFP) growth within manufacturing slowed by almost half compared to its unparalleled record in the 1920s, though it remained world class by any standard of comparison other than the 1920s. And the sector grew, so its weight was larger. Nevertheless, if the argument advanced here is correct, there had to have been significant progress elsewhere in the economy. And there was. The second pillar of the story involves the organizational and technological transformation of transportation and distribution (wholesale and retail trade) made possible by street, highway, bridge, and tunnel construction.

[…]

The growth of public infrastructure resulted in large productivity gains in distribution and in transportation, where a striking complementarity developed between the rail system and the growing trucking industry. Together, the gains in manufacturing, transportation, distribution, and smaller sectors such as communication meant that the technological and organizational contribution to the growth of capacity across the Depression years was larger and more diversified in its sectoral origins than in other periods of U.S. history.

The collapse of public highway spending coincided with the end of the Golden Age and the beginning of the Great Stagnation.

We can also understand the retardation of productivity growth after 1973 as in part associated with, if not necessarily caused by, the decline in infrastructure spending following the completion of the Interstate Highway System.

That said, I am talking about something else, which I do not believe Alexander Field’s accounting captures, which is the extensive competition in American factor markets.

Highways do more than reduce shipping costs. They bring workers to work. How many more employers can you reach with that highway? How many more workers? They promote competition. How many more firms can you buy from?How many more do you have to compete with?

I started reading Alain Bertaud’s book on urban economics, Order without Design (MIT, 2018). He points out that urban productivity depends on scale, but scale depends on commute times. Cities must “minimize the time required to reach the largest possible number of people, jobs, and amenities” to benefit from those economies of scale. 

For the largest American cities, that means more public transit and more density. But for most Americans, the automobile did far more to “minimize the time required to reach the largest possible number of people, jobs, and amenities” than anything else.

i was going to post Arcade Fire’s “No Cars Go” but from the vantage point of 2018 it’s … not a great song

It just occurred to me that the automobile was probably the agent of man’s liberation from market power – the market power of the landowner and the railroad.

Postwar capitalism – post-1918 and post-1945 – was fueled by the automobile’s extension of markets for land, labor, and capital, and the weakening of the market power of less mobile factors of production –landowners and small capitalists. Workers could go further for work. Capitalists could go further for capital. As the country opened up, the landlords lost their power. It has taken them nearly a century to win it back.

The highway opened the internal frontier. The suburb was the new American homestead, the automobile its wagon. This extension of internal markets and the creation of a more competitive national market – this is the hypothesis – was more important to American growth and productivity than any external market. The highway did us more good than the container ship.

Today, the frontier is closed, and the landlords have returned to power. They have a new enemy, self-proclaimed: the urbanist.

Urbanists proclaim themselves the enemy of landlords, and market power in land. But they hate cars more than they hate landlords. They want fewer roads, fewer highways, and fewer cars. They hate the homestead and the frontier. They certainly do not want us to live there. 

Urbanists believe in the railroad. They love the railroad. They want to restore it. They want us to live by the railroad. But if we restore the railroad, we will restore its power. And if we live by the railroad, we live under its power.

Workers will not go as far for work. Capitalists will not go as far for capital. Markets shrink. As markets shrink, some lucky landowners and small capitalists will find themselves with more and more power. And the railroads will choose which landowners to make rich.

Maybe this is more efficient. Maybe it will save us from destruction. But it seems unwise to chain ourselves to the powers from which we have only just been freed.