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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Doug writes:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>'But if the price of transportation isn't adequately reflecting the
<BR>costs of environmental damage, their choices are based on false
<BR>information.'</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But then, as I posted just now, nearly three
quarters of UK fuel prices are tax.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The explicit point of the tax is to factor in the
environmental costs.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The net effect is nil for the environment (or
negative on your estimate), </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>since no car journeys appear to be foregone because
of the cost.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>For the chancellor, the effect is wholly positive -
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>more money to spend on sending troops to Iraq, or
maybe building hospitals, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>but whichever it is, it is unlikely to be subject
to any meaningful democratic scrutiny.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Maybe you think that fuel should be ten, or twenty
times its cost of production.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>That might achieve a result, but what result,
exactly?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>That car travel should be the preserve of the rich,
and that the rest should go on buses, or shanks' pony.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Why not just pass a law saying that women and
people of colour should be barred from driving, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>if you think that cars should be resticted to
elites? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(that's a rhetorical, not a serious proposition,
let me add, before I get into any trouble)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>That apart, I think the methodology of fixing
prices to introduce non-economic exigencies is at best confused.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It is an attempt to assimilate all of social
reality into the market, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>when it is precisely the failure of the market to
accomodate social reality that indicates its limitations.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Put another way, it is an attempt to save the outer
husk of the market mechanism, in the face of its failure to approximate human
needs.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The attempt to make prices reflect non-economic
goods misunderstands what prices are: </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>*spontaneous* expressions of the existing division
of labour, in the exchange ratios of goods.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The spontaneous character of prices is a necessary
appearance of labour-time in a non-planned economic order.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The theory that prices are only a conventional
set of arrangements understates their spontaneous character.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Practical attempts to fix prices usually involve
some kind of legally enforced instrument, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>like a license, that attains the character of a
commodity only by virtue of government enforcement.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Over time, market exigencies generally work around
them, or engulf them, or take hold of them to make more profits.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>As a conservative impulse to contain change,
they generally work to reinforce the existing distribution of
goods.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>