The Work of Tolls

Your every movement counts (and each one is gonna cost you)

Do the work

I don’t always see eye-to-eye with Donald Trump (longtime readers know my various misgivings), but on this issue — New York’s congestion-pricing fiasco —I’m with him 100%. The rhetoric used in support of his move to “kill” the new Manhattan tolls might strike some gentler souls as risible, but I applaud the underlying message: Enough with the fixation on pricing our every movement.

And no, I’m not exaggerating. During the “Peak Lockdowns” period¹, there really were a few road pricing experts who speculated that they could avoid heavily-policed Chinese-style movement zone restrictions by levying Fitbit-enforced tolls on every halitosis-wracked breath or wobbly slippered shuffle into the street.²

Such “pencil-necked geek” policy wonks would obviously be happier living like ascetic monks in neatly arranged Excel spreadsheet cells, far from any filthy, vermin-infested megacity³ that can’t be gently regulated into neoliberal, pay-by-the-mile oblivion. The fact that these immodest proposals could even be discussed with a straight (virtual) face — and not laughed out of the policy lab — says plenty about how far we’ve veered from common sense.⁴

That’s why I took to the mechanical keyboard and banged out the satirical piece you’ll find behind the paywall below.⁵ It’s not merely a jab at congestion tolls; it’s a reaction to the unsettling way that some “serious” planners and academics cheerfully promote “nudging” us as they turn our streets, sidewalks, and maybe even our lungs, into a permanent revenue stream. So read on — breathe that “free air” while you still can! — and enjoy this brief satirical detour into their dystopian vision of a pay-per-existence future.