Rusty Saber: Chinese motorists bid for right to drive

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.

One can only hope it's an idea whose time has not come.

The recent demand for automobiles in China has created heretofore unknown problems of traffic congestion.

If the response by a major Chinese city, Shanghai, were to be tried here, it might lead to the second American revolution.

It is no surprise that auto makers are running at full speed trying to fill orders for the millions of Chinese anxious to ditch their bicycles and join the ranks of car owners.

Apparently, the American-made Buick is the favorite of the Chinese middle class. The massive demand in China for gasoline is considered a prime cause of the recent increase in American gas prices.

According to The Wall Street Journal, China will become the world's largest auto market.

If you think gas prices are high now, wait until that huge market is saturated with cars.

China's economy is booming. I think it's safe to say the best thing that can happen to a Communist country is an injection of massive doses of Capitalism.

It doesn't take a complex formula to calculate the strength of China's economy. All that's necessary is to note how often "Made in China" can be found on merchandise in stores throughout America. Point in fact, it's difficult to find anything not bearing the China label. American consumers are shoveling the coal fueling China's economic boom.

Shanghai's answer to its burgeoning traffic problem, according to The Wall Street Journal, is to auction off automobile license plates.

Residents of major cities around the world can commiserate with the concerns of a Shanghai official who laments that if everyone wanting a car could have one, Shanghai would be one giant parking garage.

Many Americans, sick of traffic congestion, might applaud the curtailment of cars on the road, as long as their cars aren't among those curtailed.

Driver's licenses in Shanghai are easy to come by; 1.3 million have them. Car tags are a different matter. Let the auction begin.

Each month the number of licenses available is determined by a formula based on monthly car sales and older cars that have been junked.

According to WSJ, last month more than 20,000 people bid for 6,233 car tags. The scheme includes a complicated mix of kinds of cars and licenses, and works something like a silent auction. Bidders must pay a deposit the equivalent of $250 American and then name a figure they are willing to pay. The average bid in May was $4,133.

Say what?

High bidders get car tags, low bidders ride bicycles or walk. I have a sneaking suspicion that the only Americans who might not be completely opposed to the Shanghai solution are environmentalists who hate fume-belching, internal-combustion engines.

Otherwise, in America, the unfortunate official suggesting a similar policy would be kicked out of office, and I do mean kicked. To Americans, the right to own a car is exceeded only by the right to breathe.

In your mind's eye, try to visualize Bill Gates and Donald Trump bidding for license plates for their limousines. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to get into that sort of bidding war.

No doubt about it, reducing the number of cars on the road would be a good thing, but this isn't the way to do it.

Restricting ownership to only the richest drivers would never happen in America. If, for no other reason, civil libertarians would run over each other getting to court and elbow each other out of the way to be the first in the courtroom to bring the idiotic auction action to a grinding halt.

Thankfully, this is an idea whose time has not come in America, at least.