By Eric Peters
It appears the state of Oregon may legalize Kei trucks – which are small, export-market trucks made by Japanese and Korean manufacturers – but only those at least 25 years old.
We are supposed to be grateful.
It is a measure of our unconscious servility – as a people – that we take such crumbs tossed from the master’s table as a boon rather than an insult, hurled with contempt in our direction. How did we – as a people – become so habituated to this business of accepting that it is the government’s rightful business to tell us what kinds of vehicles we’re allowed to buy? More finely, to threaten us with violence if we dare to buy – and drive – a vehicle the government – this gang of thugs – has decided we ought not to be allowed to buy or drive?
Yes, violence.
Threatened – and actual. Both serving the same purpose. If you manage somehow to buy a vehicle that the government – federal or state or both – says cannot be sold in this country, usually on the pretext that it is not “safe” or “clean” (meaning it does not fully comply with all the federal and state regulations, which is not the same as being unsafe or dirty) the goons employed by government will treat you to the Hut! Hut! Hut! Meaning, they will seek you out and forcibly take your vehicle – that you bought with your money from someone willing to accept in return for the vehicle; i.e, on a free exchange basis. They will force you to hand it over and if you “resist” – as what was once understood to be self-defense is now commonly styled by the goons enforcing the laws – you will be physically assaulted, perhaps killed. Definitely “arrested” – meaning, they kidnap you just any other gang might do, except the other gangs (the illegal ones) have the honesty and decency to not call it “arresting.” They just kidnap you. And they would never have the effrontery to tell you what kind of car you’re allowed to buy – though they might try to steal it.
The government won’t allow you (in most states) to “register” the unapproved vehicles – such as the Kei trucks. That is, beg for government permission to be allowed to use them on the government’s roads. This is changing in Oregon – maybe. A few other states have already deigned to grant the serfs permission to buy and register the Kei trucks, but – once more – only those that are at least 25 years old. The newer models – let alone the brand-new ones that you can buy outside the United States – are disallowed.
Here we come to an interesting thing. The government says the brand-new ones are not “safe” and “clean” and that is the pretextual basis for not allowing people to buy them. But the government allows people – in some states – to buy (and register) the same kinds of vehicles if and only if they are at least 25 years old.
Now, if anything, these 25-year-old-and older Kei trucks are less “safe” and less “clean” by dint of the fact that they are 25-years-old-or older and are both old (and so by definition no longer in new/perfect operating condition) and made 25 or more years ago, when vehicles were not as “safe” or as “clean” as they are now, in terms of advancements made in both categories over the past quarter-century.
But we’re allowed – oh, thank you massa! – to buy and maybe register the 25-year-old ones. Why the exception? Why, because after 25 years there aren’t many 25-year-old Kei trucks available that are in serviceable condition. Put another way, there are vastly more brand-new ones available – at least potentially. They are being stamped out right now in the thousands. In the tens of thousands. If it were legal to import these and legal for people who wanted to buy them to do so, there would plenty to choose from.
But that isn’t allowed – even though these brand-new Kei trucks and other illegalized vehicles such as the $13,000 Toyota HiLux Champ pickup are objectively safer and cleaner than a 25-year-old vehicle of the same type, if only because the brand-new vehicle’s frame will be pristine rather than rusty and its brakes will be in perfect operating condition and it won’t be riding on dry-rotted tires, either. The engine will be tight because it is new and that means it will run cleaner than a 25-year-old engine.
Never mind these facts.
The only fact that matters is that were the government to allow the importation of brand-new Kei trucks and any other vehicles people wanted to buy there would be alternatives to the kinds of vehicles the government wants to force people to buy. It creates a “market” for the latter by disallowing the former.
When there’s just one size, it fits all.
Oregon State Senator Anthony Broadman says “small businesses, farmers, and Oregonians across our state are asking for practical, cost-effective transportation options. This legislation simply makes it legal to use a tool that’s already proving useful across the Pacific Northwest.”
Oh, thank you boss! You a good massa! No massa better’n you, massa!
A free people does not beg permission to be free. It just is.
And that’s why we aren’t
