Links and quotes for June 3, 2016: Europe on strike, historical lessons on banning tech, and more

The European countries that strike the most – The Independent

When New York City tried to ban cars – the extraordinary story of ‘Gridlock Sam’ – The Guardian 

Few people know that, 45 years before the bike lanes and public plazas New Yorkers now take for granted, there were people inside the city’s transport department, people like Schwartz, trying to crack down on cars. Schwartz’s hair and beard are grey now, and it’s been two decades since he left city government to found a transportation planning firm, but he’s just as gregarious as he was back in the 1970s.

In those days, cars were the technology of the future. The automobile, despite being highly controversial in its early days, was as dominant in New York as it was in all cities across North America. Mass transit infrastructure was allowed to decay, or actively ripped up, even when doing so made a city’s transport network less efficient.

Under attack:  Curbs on free speech are growing tighter. It is time to speak out – The Economist 

Free speech is under attack in three ways. First, repression by governments has increased. … Second, a worrying number of non-state actors are enforcing censorship by assassination. … Third, the idea has spread that people and groups have a right not to be offended. This may sound innocuous. Politeness is a virtue, after all. But if I have a right not to be offended, that means someone must police what you say about me, or about the things I hold dear, such as my ethnic group, religion, or even political beliefs. Since offence is subjective, the power to police it is both vast and arbitrary.

Statistics refute Hillary Clinton’s claim that the economy does better under Democrats. – City Journal 

Is France’s Fifth Republic Doomed? – Real Clear World

After Vote, British Exit Could Be Faster Than Most Think – WSJ 

Ranking the states by fiscal condition – Mercatus 

The Swiss vote on guaranteed income and rich people’s problems – The New Yorker

The idea of a minimum guaranteed national income has been floating around since the nineteen-sixties, or, if you want to go back further, to Thomas More’s “Utopia.” That it is up for an actual vote now, though, is thanks largely to the efforts of a campaign kicked off by two German-Swiss filmmakers, Enno Schmidt and Daniel Häni, who presented their ideas in a 2008 documentary called “Grundeinkommen”—literally, “base income.” …

This is Marxism Lite. If the unfulfilled promise of Marxism included “from each according to his ability,” Grundeinkommen is more “from each according to how much he or she feels like putting in today.” Like traditional Marxism, it suffers from problems of credibility, and, like other grand welfare schemes, from issues of expense.”