🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <820011@hpcc01.HP.COM>, gph@hpcc01.HP.COM (G. Paul Houtz) writes:
> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
> 
> ># By not taxing the gasoline sufficiently, our government screws us by
> ># allowing too many cars on the road which results in poor air quality, to
> ># say the least.  People drive their cars without a second thought about
> ># how much harm that causes to the atmosphere and to the fellow human beings.
> >It sounds like an argument for a pollution tax -- not a fuel tax.
> >If someone comes up with a car that produces very little pollution,
> >but gets low mileage, why a higher fuel tax be a benefit?
> 
>    Because reliance on non-renewable fuels is part of the problem.
>    By taxing the fuel, you encourage both non polluting forms of
>    transportation (i.e., carpools/buses/trains), and you encourage
>    development of renewable energy sources like solar.

Carpools, buses, and trains are LESS polluting forms of transportation,
though all of them, with the right patterns of non-use, can be
equivalent to, or worse than individual car ownership.  (The bus with
one or two passengers, for example; the train with 10% of the seats
full; the two person car pool in a 10 mpg car vs. a single driver in
a 30 mpg car).

What makes uses of renewable energy sources necessarily better?
As a commodity's supply declines, the price rises, encouraging
switchover to replacements.  It's not at all clear that there
is any reason to worry about non-biological non-renewable resources.
The problem is pricing -- and current pricing strongly suggests
that petroleum products are not in short supply, nor are they 
likely to be for the near future.

Let me give you a hypothetical example to consider.  What if there
were a commodity that was non-renewable, but was in very abundant
supply at $1/ton.  Now, imagine a renewable alternative available
at $100/ton.  By your reasoning, the renewable resource is
preferable -- even though the costs of using it will dramatically
lower everyone's standard of living.

>    It's not perfect, but it's not bad.

It may not even be necessary.

> >#I would like to see federal taxes on gasoline phased in over a couple of years
> ># where the cost of gas would be about $5.00/gallon, and the money raised
> ># would go toward creating a viable system of public transit and encouraging
> ># the use of alternative (non-polluting) energy.
> >
> >There's no such thing as "non-polluting" energy.
> 
>   Let's not shave the barber.  While there is no such thing as non-polluting
>   energy, there are forms of energy that are much less polluting than 
>   gasoline powered cars, for instance, electric cars and solar chargers
>   for those cars.   The idea is to encourage investment and interest in
>   those areas, rather than just using oil until it's gone.

Why do you assume that oil will ever be "gone"?  The price rises
to reflect scarcity, channeling use of it into highest value
uses.  This is generally true of any commodity.  (Major exception:
where the commodity is a lifeform, it is possible for the 
commodity to be exploited to the point where insufficient diversity
in the gene pool persists, and the species loses some or all of
its capability for existence).

> >OK.  But let's require that the money be used to subsidize privately
> >owned competing transit systems, with no labor unions involved.  
> >Still interested?
> 
>    Why must you impose political restrictions?   Why not allow the 
>    people working on the transit systems to decide for themselves 
>    whether they need a union or not?

Because it looks to me like one of the reasons for the pressure
towards government owned mass transit is to increase union
membership, and to make the population more dependent on a 
monopoly that can shut a city down unless their pay demands,
no matter how exorbitant, are met.

If the government stops maintaining the roads, they are still
operable for weeks, even months, until needed repairs make
the roads impassable.  If the government stops running a mass
transit system, people relying on that system are stuck,
immediately.

I still have strong and unpleasant memories of the Southern
California Rapid Transit District's long, long strike in the
mid-1970s.  I had a car -- many others were reduced to
hitchhiking, and some found that they could no longer get
to work, and lost their jobs.

Concentrations of power are to be feared, and any system that
makes us reliant on such a fragile system, without competition,
is a concentration of power.

-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid,pixar,tekbspa}!optilink!cramer
"Well, maybe the Holocaust was right *for that culture*." -- a moral relativist
with whom I work.
You must be kidding!  No company would hold opinions like mine!