And I wasnt arguing for trains. I merely stated that traffic jams are tge result of externalising most of the cost of driving. I wasnt arguing for any particular alternative. That said. If I was I would point out that the cost of polution means the externalized cost of driving a car is almost three orders of magnitude higher than anything else. If you factor in climate change its conservatively at least 5 orders of magnitude more than anythibg except perhaps airtravel.
Dont get me wrong. I agree. Im in favour of publicly owned resources. But that doesnt change that the bulk of the cost for choosing to drive this morning wasnt paid by you. If it was gas would be 3000 dollars a gallon.
Yes its theft. Yes its a market failure. These terms are not mutually exclusive. Its easy for something to be both. Externalities are market failures where part of the cosy of transactions are shifted onto unwitting 3rd parties. By definition it is not political however. When it is poliical that is called government failure. When it happens from the ordinary behavior the market without or despite government intervention it is a market failure. The definition of a market failure is any situation where a party to a transaction ends up worse off because of it. When that party us an involuntary participant who was not part of tge transaction decision and could not object bearing tge cost that is an externality. And externalities are a form of theft. They are far worse than taxes. Everything libertarians hate about taxes is true of externalities as well but we pay far more to externalities, get absolutely nothing at all in return and cant vote to reduce them or direct how they are spent.
The taxes was only a teensy bit of the cost of driving. It changes that cost by maybe 1.5% so who cares ? Even then your disputation is entirely Americacentric. Where I live all taxes help find roads and gas taxes are not enough to cover the cost so indeed non drivers are subsidizing drivers. Whether its more or less than what goes to public transport does not actually change that contrary to your claim - no even in your home where more gas taxes goes to public transit than normal taxes go to roads its still true. Any taxes going to roads make it true. I didnt compare subsidies. I said taxes from nom road users help pay for roads. Even if 99% of all taxes went to trains and from the other 1% only one solitary dollar was spent on roads it would still be a true statement. You didnt understand and disproved a claim I didnt make with a claim that is far from universal. It still gets more complicated than that. What about people who use neither ? Who walk to a job they live closr to. I lived in a small town for a few years. My job and every amenity that existed was within three blocks of my house. It made no sense to ever not walk anywhere. I was hardly unique. I still paid taxes though. So I was subsidizing both public and private transport and all I got was sidewalks and streetlamps. It still gets more complicated. Freight pays fuel taxes. They recoup that in the price of goods. So everybody pays some fuel taxes. Even a bedridden old pensiom earning hermit who hasnt left the room in 40 years have been subsidizing drivers all that time.
Dont have a citation but studies that support the opposite have headlined/.many times before. Honestly I had no idea it was even a controversial idea. I thought it was a stock example of politicians ignoring reality. There was even a story a few years ago about a UK town that got id of them entirely based on that research. Apparently the issue is more complex than I thought.
So you reduced my final estimate with that correction by what ? 1% ? 1.5% in some regions ? Yep that totally makes it n9t a market faillure. You should inform the world's economists. Since traffic is literally the text book examply used to teach economics students about externalities there is a nobel prize out there with your name on it if you prove that wrong.
Oh I almost forgot.... what the hell is your alternative explanation for traffic jams ? Are you seriously convinced that billions of people seriously enjoy them and subject themselvez regularly to that experience by choice ?
Except I didnt say the full cost is shared. A great deal of it is paid by everyone else in society even those who never drove or even owned a car. Even if you only ride tge train your taxes still help pay for roads - so they cost more. In smoggy cities lots of people get respiratory illnesses with expensive treatments and if anything those are worse on poorer communities who are less likely to own cars. The vast majority of road deaths are pedestrians: death is a huge expense. If you only affected other drivers by driving the market would be functioning but your actual cost is a lot more than that. Imagine if every driver had to pay a tax sufficient to supply a fund that pays full treatment costs for all respiratory illness sufferers and pays out the EPA estimate for economic value of a human life (7.5 billion dollars) to the family of every pedestrian who died on the road and covered the full dissability cost for every one that gets mangled and and and.... the only sane choice would be for everyone to hardly ever drive so that those costs are kept tiny. Which they would because currently that tax would be tens of thousands of dollars per driver per month.
Only the big ones. We won the battle against bacteria but we are losing the war and so far virusses are still beating almost everything we throw at them.
There is overwhelming evidence that speed cameras do not affect driver behavior at all. If they did, they would not be such a complete waste of time. The purpose of speed cameras are definitely not to make roads safer. Maybe they once were but not for a long time. The purpose of speed cameras are to give the council an additional revenue stream.
But that itself is part of the proof of their failure. If speed cameras actually achieved their stated goal - that revenue stream would be steadily declining and councils would have to subsidize them and defend them in the budget !
Actually the cycle is a bit more interesting than that.
You institute a charge. People don't want to pay to sit in traffic so they don't. Traffic gets cut down a lot. Now people see a different sum altogether: for a nominal charge, I get to drive when the roads are mostly empty because nobody else wants to pay. Suddenly it's worth paying. A lot of people do the same math. Soon the road is congested again, but now everybody is paying and because they are already doing so - they now rationalize the cost away. So the authorities raise the charge yet again...
Traffic jams are a prime example of market failure, in this case due to externalities, the vast bulk of the cost of your choice to drive (as opposed to say - taking the train) is not paid by you but by other people (and that's without considering climate change costs). A lot gets amortized over everybody else who drives (they all take longer to get there - time has value), some gets paid in medical bills from smoggier cities etc. etc. etc. If you had to personally bare the full cost of driving, far fewer people would choose to drive and the market would function correctly. Traffic jams would be virtually non-existent and those who have to drive would be rewarded for their expense with very fast trips indeed.
For fossil fuels though thats far from the only factor. Big generators will always be cheaper per joule there because they have access to a wider range of fuels (when oil is expensive crank up the gas generators) and much better economies of scale. Coal by the ton costs a lot less than coal by the kilo.
I think its both. I want an electric car because electricity is a shitload cheaper than petrol or diesel here. The enviromental benefits are a bonus though. By that reasoning nobody would buy electric cars when their grid is fossil fuel powered. It reduces the benefit it does not negate it.
So you're example of a past attempt is from circa 1989 ? You do realize that practically every piece of technology in the tool-chain up to and including the batteries (and their charge times) have gotten orders better in the decades since then ? That's like saying "New horizons was an impossible mission because when we launched Apollo 11 it could barely make it to the moon and back".
You may well be right - but I think the idea is to be able to charge while you drive. Even if it is wildly inefficient and almost certainly can't give you continuous driving (at least no time soon) - it could likely extend the range of an electric vehicle by a good 30% or so, which many people would value. The cost of the infrastructure will be high but since it's value is spread over so many beneficiaries it's cost-per-user is actually quite low.
Have you read the Bible ? That was nowhere near the most brutal thing they advocated and did. Yet another reason not to have your morality dictated by stone age barbarians.
In this case it sounds like that's basically exactly what happens for Linux users, we'll be basically immune to Neutrino since the server will refuse packets from us.
Which is a pretty good analogy. Most peoplr think not donating in that situation would be despicably murderous. But its not illegal. The state does not force you to give up your bodily autonomy for a living person's life. Heroism cannot exist if it is mandated. So forcing somebody to do so for a clump of cells which is about as humanlike as a tadpole should not be legal either.
I am a socialist libertarian in the vein of Chomski and the tradition dating back to proudhom. But I agree with the left on enough things to pragmatically join forces with them. Its about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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Thats hardly typical though. But good on you.
And I wasnt arguing for trains. I merely stated that traffic jams are tge result of externalising most of the cost of driving. I wasnt arguing for any particular alternative. That said. If I was I would point out that the cost of polution means the externalized cost of driving a car is almost three orders of magnitude higher than anything else. If you factor in climate change its conservatively at least 5 orders of magnitude more than anythibg except perhaps airtravel.
Dont get me wrong. I agree. Im in favour of publicly owned resources. But that doesnt change that the bulk of the cost for choosing to drive this morning wasnt paid by you. If it was gas would be 3000 dollars a gallon.
Yes its theft. Yes its a market failure. These terms are not mutually exclusive. Its easy for something to be both. Externalities are market failures where part of the cosy of transactions are shifted onto unwitting 3rd parties. By definition it is not political however. When it is poliical that is called government failure. When it happens from the ordinary behavior the market without or despite government intervention it is a market failure. The definition of a market failure is any situation where a party to a transaction ends up worse off because of it. When that party us an involuntary participant who was not part of tge transaction decision and could not object bearing tge cost that is an externality. And externalities are a form of theft. They are far worse than taxes. Everything libertarians hate about taxes is true of externalities as well but we pay far more to externalities, get absolutely nothing at all in return and cant vote to reduce them or direct how they are spent.
Thats because nobody in the US walks anywhere :p
The taxes was only a teensy bit of the cost of driving. It changes that cost by maybe 1.5% so who cares ? Even then your disputation is entirely Americacentric. Where I live all taxes help find roads and gas taxes are not enough to cover the cost so indeed non drivers are subsidizing drivers. Whether its more or less than what goes to public transport does not actually change that contrary to your claim - no even in your home where more gas taxes goes to public transit than normal taxes go to roads its still true. Any taxes going to roads make it true. I didnt compare subsidies. I said taxes from nom road users help pay for roads. Even if 99% of all taxes went to trains and from the other 1% only one solitary dollar was spent on roads it would still be a true statement. You didnt understand and disproved a claim I didnt make with a claim that is far from universal.
It still gets more complicated than that. What about people who use neither ? Who walk to a job they live closr to. I lived in a small town for a few years. My job and every amenity that existed was within three blocks of my house. It made no sense to ever not walk anywhere. I was hardly unique. I still paid taxes though. So I was subsidizing both public and private transport and all I got was sidewalks and streetlamps.
It still gets more complicated. Freight pays fuel taxes. They recoup that in the price of goods. So everybody pays some fuel taxes. Even a bedridden old pensiom earning hermit who hasnt left the room in 40 years have been subsidizing drivers all that time.
Dont have a citation but studies that support the opposite have headlined /.many times before. Honestly I had no idea it was even a controversial idea. I thought it was a stock example of politicians ignoring reality. There was even a story a few years ago about a UK town that got id of them entirely based on that research.
Apparently the issue is more complex than I thought.
Since LEOs dont usually get to write their own budget I think greedy local politicians that want a revenue stream is a more likely explanation.
So you reduced my final estimate with that correction by what ? 1% ? 1.5% in some regions ? Yep that totally makes it n9t a market faillure. You should inform the world's economists. Since traffic is literally the text book examply used to teach economics students about externalities there is a nobel prize out there with your name on it if you prove that wrong.
Oh I almost forgot.... what the hell is your alternative explanation for traffic jams ? Are you seriously convinced that billions of people seriously enjoy them and subject themselvez regularly to that experience by choice ?
Except I didnt say the full cost is shared. A great deal of it is paid by everyone else in society even those who never drove or even owned a car. Even if you only ride tge train your taxes still help pay for roads - so they cost more. In smoggy cities lots of people get respiratory illnesses with expensive treatments and if anything those are worse on poorer communities who are less likely to own cars. The vast majority of road deaths are pedestrians: death is a huge expense.
If you only affected other drivers by driving the market would be functioning but your actual cost is a lot more than that. Imagine if every driver had to pay a tax sufficient to supply a fund that pays full treatment costs for all respiratory illness sufferers and pays out the EPA estimate for economic value of a human life (7.5 billion dollars) to the family of every pedestrian who died on the road and covered the full dissability cost for every one that gets mangled and and and.... the only sane choice would be for everyone to hardly ever drive so that those costs are kept tiny. Which they would because currently that tax would be tens of thousands of dollars per driver per month.
On the other hand it could help keep the roads clear of snow :p
>We've eliminated predators
Only the big ones. We won the battle against bacteria but we are losing the war and so far virusses are still beating almost everything we throw at them.
Did anybody get an interview with the professor of vindictive astronomy ?
Isn't that like saying he is an apple, and he is a fruit ?
There is overwhelming evidence that speed cameras do not affect driver behavior at all. If they did, they would not be such a complete waste of time. The purpose of speed cameras are definitely not to make roads safer. Maybe they once were but not for a long time. The purpose of speed cameras are to give the council an additional revenue stream.
But that itself is part of the proof of their failure. If speed cameras actually achieved their stated goal - that revenue stream would be steadily declining and councils would have to subsidize them and defend them in the budget !
Actually the cycle is a bit more interesting than that.
You institute a charge.
People don't want to pay to sit in traffic so they don't.
Traffic gets cut down a lot.
Now people see a different sum altogether: for a nominal charge, I get to drive when the roads are mostly empty because nobody else wants to pay. Suddenly it's worth paying.
A lot of people do the same math.
Soon the road is congested again, but now everybody is paying and because they are already doing so - they now rationalize the cost away.
So the authorities raise the charge yet again...
Traffic jams are a prime example of market failure, in this case due to externalities, the vast bulk of the cost of your choice to drive (as opposed to say - taking the train) is not paid by you but by other people (and that's without considering climate change costs). A lot gets amortized over everybody else who drives (they all take longer to get there - time has value), some gets paid in medical bills from smoggier cities etc. etc. etc.
If you had to personally bare the full cost of driving, far fewer people would choose to drive and the market would function correctly. Traffic jams would be virtually non-existent and those who have to drive would be rewarded for their expense with very fast trips indeed.
For fossil fuels though thats far from the only factor. Big generators will always be cheaper per joule there because they have access to a wider range of fuels (when oil is expensive crank up the gas generators) and much better economies of scale. Coal by the ton costs a lot less than coal by the kilo.
I think its both. I want an electric car because electricity is a shitload cheaper than petrol or diesel here. The enviromental benefits are a bonus though. By that reasoning nobody would buy electric cars when their grid is fossil fuel powered. It reduces the benefit it does not negate it.
Today. But just a few years ago it was the population of a small suburb. That number is liable to grow exponentially.
So you're example of a past attempt is from circa 1989 ? You do realize that practically every piece of technology in the tool-chain up to and including the batteries (and their charge times) have gotten orders better in the decades since then ? That's like saying "New horizons was an impossible mission because when we launched Apollo 11 it could barely make it to the moon and back".
You may well be right - but I think the idea is to be able to charge while you drive. Even if it is wildly inefficient and almost certainly can't give you continuous driving (at least no time soon) - it could likely extend the range of an electric vehicle by a good 30% or so, which many people would value. The cost of the infrastructure will be high but since it's value is spread over so many beneficiaries it's cost-per-user is actually quite low.
Have you read the Bible ? That was nowhere near the most brutal thing they advocated and did. Yet another reason not to have your morality dictated by stone age barbarians.
In this case it sounds like that's basically exactly what happens for Linux users, we'll be basically immune to Neutrino since the server will refuse packets from us.
Which is a pretty good analogy. Most peoplr think not donating in that situation would be despicably murderous. But its not illegal. The state does not force you to give up your bodily autonomy for a living person's life. Heroism cannot exist if it is mandated. So forcing somebody to do so for a clump of cells which is about as humanlike as a tadpole should not be legal either.
I am a socialist libertarian in the vein of Chomski and the tradition dating back to proudhom. But I agree with the left on enough things to pragmatically join forces with them. Its about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.