I’ve just come across a rare specimen – a friend back to work here after years in Australia (commuting because the family is refusing to come).  He has some troubling comparative judgements on what we’ve done to ourselves while he’s been away. 

But I’d never thought to question the warrant of fitness system. Here’s his comment:

“I watch with wonder the warrant of fitness system. Perfectly good cars are inspected every six months by guys who are second guessing Mercedes or Toyota.

I am sure that British cars in the fifties needed to inspected every other week.
Yet no state in Australia has a warrant of fitness scheme. No state in America requires mandatory car inspections.

 It is assumed that no one wants to kill themselves with a defective car. People fix cars when they are dangerous.

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In those countries if a policeman finds a problem with your car he can order it off the road.

You don’t need a vast infrastructure of buildings and mechanics to do that. The mechanics are better employed fixing cars not inspecting them.
A miniscule number of accidents are caused by the defects in the car. It is always other factors.
Yet the punishing effect on the less well off imposed by the warrant of fitness regime is crippling.

The sort of thing that gave communism a bad name and which eventually dragged them down.
Doing useless things day after day saps your strength in the end and diverts energy and intelligence and effort away from the things that bring prosperity.”