Slashdot Mirror
China Car-Tracking Scheme Could Allow Higher Fuel Prices For Gas-Guzzling Cars (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, traditionally a test-bed for nationwide infrastructure and technology schemes, 200,000 vehicles have been experimentally hooked into a real-time traffic-monitoring system based on RFID and roadside monitoring stations. China's state-owned Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASC) claims that such intense monitoring will be necessary for the driverless cars of the future, and to foil license-plate forgeries. On Monday the general manager of Chinese auto manufacturer Great Wall Motor suggested that a monitoring scheme of such scope could also be used to introduce a wide range of usage-based levies, and to easily ensure that less efficient cars could be charged more for fuel at gas stations.
Wouldn't this just end up punishing the poor more than people with big cars? People who do not have a lot of money might not be able to get the most efficient/clean cars, and those who can afford more efficient cars would just pay the fees and keep their nice big car anyway.
For those that aren't aware: the license plate can cost more than the car itself; hence the forgeries.
Life is not for the lazy.
...there is no constitutionally protected right to possess vehicles in the good US of A.
Yes, there is. It's implied. The constitution doesn't grant rights, it limits the government's power to restrict rights that citizens already have by default. The bill of rights, which include the second amendment's right to keep and bear arms (for example) was originally controversial because it was argued, is it really necessary to explicitly state that the government can't infringe on those rights when it has already been implied elsewhere in the document that the government has no authority to exercise authority in ways not already granted to it (when it comes to restricting rights that citizens have by default)? Also notice that the language used doesn't grant any rights to the people, but confirms that, no, we really mean it, the government has no power to infringe on a right that is inherently possessed by the citizens.