> Do you reject the idea that prices influence
> human behavior, or do you accept that they do but
> reject that on moral grounds?
I'll decline to answer because it frames your whole posting as some generic philosophical issue (and, per usual, projects absurdities like the "fact" that I must therefore be against charging fines for traffic offenses).
To keep it short, I'll reiterate that we can talk about making driving (more) unattractive once we make the alternative attractive, but in the mean time I'm totally against things like congestion pricing because they create more problems than they solve. Michael Smith would call this "having everything" but I think it's not too much to ask.
Dwayne writes:
> Still, if you want congestion pricing but you don't want to
> create asluggish toll booth situation ...
I don't want congestion pricing; I don't even want tolls on bridges. But hey, the Bush Administration wants it (notice how all the coverage focusses on the fact that with the failure of the NYC plan, a big Federal Grant was missed? Guess who didn't miss out: that's right, San Francisco![*]), and so does Reason Magazine. Yum yum, let's eat it up.
/jordan
[*] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/13/BACSVJBQE.DTL