[lbo-talk] more on fuel economy

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Jul 20 09:26:11 PDT 2007


Jordan, Dwayne and AndyF:

Jordan:

One thing I was thinking about this morning vis Wojtek's "tax them until they bleed" scenario is: taxation is a very inefficient mechanism for change. Ok, so you got the guy paying a tax.

[WS:] This misrepresents what I wrote. I argued for user fees not taxes. The key difference is that user fees are targeted and contingent on specific use or behavior, whereas taxes are not (or perhaps less so.). Tolls and gasoline sales taxes are user fees, flat vehicle registration fees and insurance premiums are in between user fees and taxes (since they vary to some extent depending on the use, but you still have to pay them whether you use a vehicle or not.)

User fees on vehicles can be collected very efficiently by systems like EZ-Pass or at the pump - and paying them or not is entirely up to the individual, providing of course that alternatives exist (for example I can avoid paying a toll by taking a train or an alternate route.) So what is inefficient about them?

Dwayne (and John who makes a similar statement): " I don't care about changing people's minds; I only care about making sure the machines we use are de-carbonized."

[WS:] That is a really lame cope-out, Dwayne. The two are highly correlated, one is virtually impossible without another. One cannot help but to change human behavior to introduce new technologies. It is not the question whether but how. The history of capitalism was to impose technological changes on people from above to boost profits. When it comes to transportation, we are talking about changes from below - changing human behavior to induce changes in technology which seems to be more democratic. So when you say that you do not care about changing about human minds, what is the alternative that you propose? The old capitalist way of forcing new technologies down people's throats?

Andy F: " That such pricing would be hard on the not-so-rich sounds like a problem of economic equality, not carbon policy."

[WS:} I think this supposed hardship on the poor is a red herring. We are talking a few bucks here and there, not thousands of dollars. If someone can afford $150 snickers or a $300 ipod, he can certainly afford a $5 fluorescent bulb.

The whole point here is to make pricing a mechanism of change - which means that it needs to be felt to matter, but it cannot be prohibitively high. $6-$10 for a gallon of gas is certainly felt but it is not prohibitive - in fact this is the price of gasoline in Europe! - so it is precisely the right mechanism to encourage people to drive less and use alternatives more (car pools, transit, bicycles, etc.)

Wojtek



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