Driving Big Brother

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Big Brother is now slouching in the passenger seat, making a mockery of ownership, right to repair and our agency.

Buyers of new vehicles have an odious passenger they are powerless to eject: Big Brother is now slouching in the passenger seat, making a mockery of ownership, right to repair and our agency–control of our lives and what we nominally own.

This is of a piece with the global emergence of Neofeudal Autocracies that supersede all the obsolete ideological divisions–left and right, “capitalist” and “socialist,” etc.–that we’re constantly bludgeoned with to keep us distracted from the oh-so-profitable immiseration of our daily lives and agency via a remorseless dialing down of quality, durability and true choice and a relentless dialing up of Big Brother schemes of extraction and extortion: what I call the Mafia Economy of privatized Totalitarianism:

What’s the difference between a totalitarian autocracy of “free market” corporations and billionaires and a totalitarian autocracy of Party Insiders? There is none. In both cases, a delusional fantasy–”free market capitalism” on the one hand, and “egalitarian Communism” on the other–are deployed as inspirational cover stories for totalitarian control mechanisms being passed off as “Progress,” with technology being the cudgel used to beat us into submission.

A correspondent neatly summarized this centralized-autocratic global tightening of control:

“What we see is a Government legislating our agency into the history books and doing a persistent job of turning average people back into Serfs. The regulation burden that prevents people from doing productive things that are good for themselves, their families and the communities they live in is getting more and more crushing by the month.”

Which brings us to the odious backseat driver in every new vehicle: Big Brother in all his “for your own good” manifestations that just so happen to generate we-can’t-escape profit streams for the Mafia-Economy corporations and the politicians they’re enriching via the 24/7 auction of political influence.

Mechanic Sends Huge Warning: Don’t Buy New Vehicles in 2026. (16:50 min)

Then there’s the inexorable clawbacks of the right to repair as owners are being forced to use dealerships for simple repairs and computer re-programming at exorbitant costs.

The Biggest repair scam in todays Auto repair! You need to Hear this. (21:43 min)

An expanding number of young people are waking up and seeking to own older cars, as part of a larger movement to own analog rather than Big Brother digital.

Old Cars and The Analog Resistance (11:53 min)

States are starting to pass pernicious emission-control laws that end up preventing the driving of older vehicles.

The New Laws That Can Make Your Classic Car Illegal to Drive (10:05 min)

Since we own a 1998 Honda Civic, I have skin in this game. This is a 28-year old car. I can report that our original but well-maintained CVCC engine easily passes smog checks.

Isn’t it obvious what’s going on? Big Brother not only wants to monitor your vehicle and force you to pay stupidly overpriced repair and maintenance costs, he also wants to force us to junk our perfectly functional old vehicles so we’re forced to buy stupidly overpriced crapified, loaded-with-Big-Brother vehicles.

There’s no hiding from Big Brother. Even poor Gilligan on his remote island is affected.

And we all know how reliable digital devices that need constant reprogramming are:

And of course there are now AI control features, too:

Thank you, S.T. for the topic suggestion.

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Source: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2026/07/driving-big-brother.html