politburo diktat 2.0

Filed under “Liberal Entrepeneurship” at MYDD, this on Car-free Consulting, an idea in which consultants would be paid for advising people on how to get by without cars, introduced with:

A couple of weeks ago at Cambridge Drinking Liberally, my fellow drinkers and I chatted about peak oil, and the world of hurt we’re all going to be in as oil prices start to climb irreversibly. … We all had a good old fashioned freak-out about an impending environmental and humanitarian catastrophe.

It’s in the spirit of delaying environmental apocalypse that I’m posting this idea, hoping that somewhere, an enterprising liberal will pick it up, turn it into a serious business, make serious money, and save serious amounts of oil.

That sets the stage quite well. The idea?

The goal of a car-free consultant is to help her clients go about their daily lives without having to own a car. … the consultant and her client would work together to nail down the client’s weekly schedule, and to find ways for the client to get through as much of the week as possible without using a car. The consultant’s work would involve helping her client puzzle through mass transit and commuter train schedules, apartment listings, bicycle regulations, ZipCar marketing literature, employers’ child care policies, etc.

…

I’d certainly like to see some progressives run with this idea.

Imagine Jeff Bezos writing “Selling books over the internet is a good idea. I’d like to see someone else run with it.”