if tony judt and i ever met, we'd annihilate each other like matter and anti-matter. you cannot be sitting there bemoaning the fact that there's no law against colorful cabs??? look you're just identifying collectivity with coercion. well, you are deeply, deeply confused. happily that fact is trivial, because you're not - thank the good lord - actually in charge of anything, much less everything. but at any rate the first thing you'd have to do is morally justify the coercion you are proposing, show that the power is morally legitimate by which you make me repaint my car or change my clothes in accordance with...what? your taste? your vision of a world that coheres in virtue of its obedience to your arbitrary whim, or pulls together because if we don't you'll chuck us in the clink? even if for some impossible reason we all agreed that this black cab thing was a good idea, you'd have to show that the benefits that would follow would outweigh the possibility that the power you are constituting will be abused to the tune of total oppression or much much worse. well, good luck with that. maybe kim jong il needs a minister of mediocrity. thanks chris bray.