Were I a bit more clever, witty and inclined to make a living by writing, I think I could sell a decent number of books with the title, “Driving Oneself Crazy: Obsessing About Economics from Behind the Wheel of a Car” or something to that effect. Maybe that’s a short project worth pursuing with an interested student or two. These observations need not be merely reactionary, there’s lots of cool stuff going on while we drive our cars, and we can illustrate a good deal of what we talk about in our classrooms by doing it. But today’s installment is certainly along the lines of the typical things that make my hair warm up a few degrees.
In today’s installment I was driving westbound on I-490 when I was passed by a car (in this case I think the make and model don’t add to the story, part of the unwritten book would recognize that much can be learned from makes and models) that had the now familiar “No Frack” bumper sticker on it. It sorta looked like this:
I totally respect people not wanting to see fracking happening even as I myself really want to see more of it (well, only those for whom there may be a legitimate property rights violation because of it). But what was interesting about our fractivist was that he … was smoking a cigarette.
And just because I feel like my daily posts ought to have more information in them than this, I’ll offer up an unrelated question for you to ponder, but which again would be explored in my Driving Myself Crazy book: what would happen to your (everyone’s) purchase of hybrid or electric cars if there were absolutely no way to display/demonstrate to others that the car itself was a hybrid or electric?
I’m sure that everyone with those stickers considers himself/herself quite educated on the topic.
I assume you have copyright rights for that title. After the book sells a million, you could branch out into hand tools and fuel additives, toys, etc.
I wonder if he smokes while shaving at the sink with the water running.
I look forward to your book tour. I bet they won’t feature you on Book TV.
I like the way the working families of America combine bad language with ignorance all in one zippy bumpersticker.
I keep waiting for Mario Cuomo to find out that the Utica Shale might sit under the statehouse in Albany.
What a fun title. You should publish it in e-book format as a collection of whimsical essays, e.g. driving from Chicago and wonder why you must go through twelve-hours of corn, how easy it is to get a trucking job in North Dakota, and what bumper stickers suggest about drivers.
Godfather Rizzo owns the title.
It could be a good platform not just for musings about supply and demand, but those items could be incorporated into Driving Myself Crazy V.
If you want some supportive book jacket comments, I will help.