And if the girl is still carless, well, that only means that she’s still taking driving lessons and working to get her license, without the least doubt that she is on the verge of becoming a full-fledged driver.
The workplace is overflowing with young women from universities out in Barnaul who have come to the big city with the conscious goal of career advancement, and the subconscious goal of finding a good husband (and isn’t that the best way to advance your career anyhow?). Subconscious because, ultimately, what else do you need a diploma and work experience for, really, if not to burst into tears and throw it back in your husband’s face in response to some incautious statement on his part about the grocery bilclass="underline" “I’m not just some run-of-the-mill trade-school girl! I have a higher education! And if I hadn’t devoted my whole life to you, I would have become the CFO of some big corporation long ago, and would now be earning more than you do! I had real potential! How dare you get on my case about these petty expenses, you ingrate!” (Of course, some girls get the short end of the stick: They actually do have to become executives and make more money than men, which puts a damper on this particular attack. But their time, too, will come…) And so now here they are in the northern capital, where they spend half the workday scrolling through car ads on the Internet and discussing the pros and cons of all the different models with their friends.
At one point Maximus had tried to cool the acquisitional zeal of his young female colleagues, asking them where they thought they were going to get enough money to buy and maintain an automobile. Blondes and brunettes alike performed the same arithmetical operation, which was shockingly simple: Loan payments are 12,000 rubles a month, right? And I earn 16,000, right? That’ll cover it. And there will even be some left over. Hm… maybe I should look into a more expensive model?
In vain did Semipyatnitsky remind them that there is more to owning a car than just the loan payments; what were they going to put in their refrigerators, for one? And a car wouldn’t relieve them of the desire to dress in the latest fashions each season. Or did they think they would drive naked? Though that of course would be interesting…
An automobile, over and above its purchase price, necessitates endless expenditures for fuel, insurance, parking, and repair. Maximus came up with an apt metaphor, one that every woman was bound to understand. It was like adding another person to your life. Like having a baby. So now everything—food, drink, shoes, medical care, housing—had to cover two. Not to mention all the time and worry. Maximus watched the girls’ eyes go all moist, and realized that his example had hit a little too close to home, and that now they would be all the more eager to become car owners.
The real reason a girl suddenly wants a car the moment she hits puberty is that she can’t have a baby yet. That’s what she really wants, but she has to suppress that desire. She has to work on an equal basis with men. In exchange for her sacrifice, the modern economy offers her the option of buying a car—a cute little Tamagotchi on wheels that she can love like her firstborn.
Thus is the maternal instinct exploited for the expansion of the automobile industry.
Maximus thought that the underpopulation crisis could be solved by banning auto purchases by women and denying them drivers’ licenses. There would be nothing left for them to do but have babies.
Maximus often pondered issues of global importance. He was quite sure that if he were the Khagan he could fix everything that was wrong in the country. Not just the country—the whole world!
Clinging onto the overhead strap in the metro car, Semipyatnitsky found himself empathizing with the Chinese. It’s even worse over there. Thanks to the wise and flexible leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, everyone’s standard of living has improved. It’s not so obvious in the provinces, but in the capital, Beijing, and other big cities the changes are striking. The problem is that prosperity has brought along with it Western ideas about the good life, which decree that everyone must have his or her own car. And if there are one and a half billion of those car-hungry people?
A thick cloud of exhaust hovers in the air over Beijing, visible even from outer space, and it will never clear.
And where are you going to come up with enough fuel to supply all of China?
Even if the government of the People’s Republic manages to buy up all the oil deposits and refineries in Africa, it still won’t be enough.
Semipyatnitsky had watched a show on the Euronews channel about the Chinese automobile crisis.
This problem, like many others, Semipyatnitsky believed, required a solution not patterned after the American notion that “bigger and faster,” ever-increasing growth would save the day—this was already leading civilization into a dead end—but rather a Completely Different Principle (CDP). And he had come up with what he considered to be a very good one.
Long before the advent of the pseudo-science of marketing people like Philip Kotler, the writer Mark Twain (or was it O. Henry?) taught that if there was no demand, then demand must be created. And he’d written a great short novel in which a young man, a diplomat representing the United States of America on some tropical island, comes up against what would seem to be an impossible challenge: The inhabitants of the island go barefoot year ’round. His fiancée’s father is obsessed with the idea of starting a shoe business, and has had an entire shipload of footwear delivered to the tropical paradise. So as not to disappoint his future father-in-law, the diplomat, American to the marrow, comes up with an elegant solution: He buys up tons of prickly thorn seed pods from farmers on the continent and secretly, overnight, with the help of some friends, strews them all over the island’s lawns and pathways. He then follows up with a PR campaign teaching the islanders that these prickly pods, which they have never seen before, are in fact a swarm of poisonous insects that has flown in from across the ocean. And the only way to protect themselves is to wear shoes at all times…
The reverse theorem must also be true. Call it anti-marketing, a theory devised by Maximus Semipyatnitsky, mid-level manager, writer on the side.
If demand cannot be satisfied, it must be destroyed.
What do we need cars for? I’ve already dealt with the female side of the problem; let’s talk about men now. If we discard the nonessential, quasi-religious views propagated by aggressive advertisers, automobiles serve one basic purpose: driving people around. Primarily to and from work.
Every morning employees flood out of the residential districts to their offices, and every evening they head back home. Sociologists call this phenomenon “pendulum migration” and consider it to be one of the most serious problems facing modern society.
But why go to the office in the first place? Who even needs an office?
Ninety percent of office work can be done anywhere, any place that has Internet and phone connections—at home for example. And even the remaining ten percent—briefings and business meetings—can be conducted virtually, using modern technology, from any distance.
People also use cars to do their shopping, though. But this problem will disappear on its own when, as Semipyatnitsky predicts in another as yet uncompleted book, everyone leaves their apartments and houses to live in the malls full time.