Currently you have the opposite trend. People lease the panels rather than buying them, and this depresses the value of the house since potential buyers don't want to deal with the burden of the long-term contract.
Your individual usage doesn't matter, because we can pool your behavior and work out fair payment using statistical models. Money is fungible, so NV doesn't care if it gets your exact dollar or not - it only cares whether or not it gets the right number of dollars in total.
I didn't mention privacy, which is a whole can of worms in itself. My main concern is the cost-benefit of having the government develop a massive new infrastructure to accommodate the collection of this data, and then having a system in place for billing and disputes. I think the cost-benefit for exactly measuring usage vs. the "good enough and cheap" method of using statistical models to decide where people drive comes out in favor of the latter.
A lot of what you list as potential benefits have other solutions which may be far cheaper. For instance, once everyone is being billed for usage anyway, it would be relatively trivial to replace EZ-Pass with license plate readers which bill your account. Statistical information about road usage could be gleaned by working with existing companies who collect such data, like Google and Apple... why build a parallel, redundant system when this data already exists? Potholes are already reported by mainstream apps like Waze - you can go on waze.com (the live map) right now and see every pothole reported in your area, no additional cost to the government at all.
GPS is a neat idea, but I think 90% or more of what you seek can be done more cost effectively through existing (or slightly modified) infrastructure.
That's one way to look at it. Another way is that all manufactures receive the same benefit, but some stretched it out over more years than others. One way or another, GM and Tesla get exactly the same amount of total money as Toyota and Volkswagen.
I guess it depends what you want... are you trying to create an incentive for a first-mover benefit, or are you trying to be sure that every manufacturer develops an electric car?
In any event, I share your distaste for rebates... they have too many undesired consequences compared to simpler incentives like your example of a sales tax exemption. To be fair, this can't happen in the US because there is not a federal sales tax to be exempt from! And people who buy electrics are already free of our national gasoline tax - which is an incentive all by itself.
Read the odo, base registration fees on it, and then offer monthly billing for people who can't afford the lump-sum. Way cheaper and the infrastructure already exists.
Why are they a nightmare? Cars are perhaps the most recycled thing on the planet. You need raw materials, but it's not like mining for rare earths and lithium is particularly bad compared to petroleum extraction. Battery production has some negative local effects on the environment, but nothing like an oil refinery. Batteries can be an environmental hazard when not disposed of properly, but nothing compared to leaky gas and oil tanks and people improperly disposing of engine oil.
It does not scale with the price of the car. Any fully-electric car is eligible for the full $7500. A plug-in hybrid like a Volt only gets about half.
Maybe what you are thinking of is not everyone pays $7500 in tax, so they would only be able to take the credit up to their tax liability. With this particular credit, you cannot carry over the credit to the next year, so you use it or lose it.
If we are lucky enough to get enough electric vehicles on the road where tax policy becomes more than an interesting speculative topic, well that would be a huge win.
I can think of many ways to tax electric cars: raise registration fees, base registration fees on mileage, install toll booths or license plate readers, tax tires, install express lanes with a toll that varies by traffic conditions and use that to finance the "free" side of the road as well, etc.
Right now the best-selling electric cars cost about $50,000. In most states this will yield around $3000 in sales taxes - so, for now, rich people buying electric cars may be paying less in gasoline but they certainly are paying more in sales tax. As the cost comes down and the volumes go up, I agree it could become an issue of perceived "fairness".
Maybe you'll be dismissive of my use case... while I use a couple of them where speed certainly does not matter, I did put one in an arcade cabinet and more speed would have been pretty sweet. Even without overclocking, it could emulate most games up to around the turn of the millenium... more power could only improve that situation.
I can not deny access to e.g. Jews or women or gays or even people at random.
There is a very narrow band of unlawful discrimination, and it actually varies by state. On a federal level, you cannot discriminate based on race, religion, or sex. Pretty much anything else is open to discrimination. Perhaps there is some obscure FCC rule that could be bent to go after YouTube, but I'm pretty sure they have full editorial control over their own website. You could absolutely ban nutjobs from your bread store, too. You could forbid people from buying bread if they don't ride a red bike to your store, or if they belong to the American Nazi party. You can absolutely refuse service for any reason that is not explicitly protected.
The solution to "not all opinions are valid" is to vette the speakers. Since we are talking about anonymous speech, that is not possible - you'll never know if a person is even remotely qualified to speak about the topic at hand. So you are left with technical solutions.
Why do you think a "controversial" bonus would elevate racist posts? A quick check at reddit shows that searching for racist topics and posts has the vast majority modded down into oblivion. And what is wrong with elevating racist posts if the number of people giving a thumbs-up to a racist post is approximately equal to the number of people giving it a thumbs-down? Clearly that is something that community needs to talk about.
Some of the past US state laws about public use of private property open to the public for political use can become interesting.
Ugh, I hope not. I feel like we already treat IP too much like real property and we need to be going the other direction - not expanding in bold new directions.
They already restrict content, so they can't claim any benefit of being a neutral platform. Once you are stuck self-censoring, you might as well set up the censorship to your liking. Anyone can post anything they want on the internet, so it's hard to argue that they have some kind of monopoly... just post a video somewhere.
So you think that controversial subjects have simple, uncontroversial solutions that will float to the top of online discussions? Yeah, I'd post AC too.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they don't have tens of thousands of dollars.
In the US, this would not be an issue.
Currently you have the opposite trend. People lease the panels rather than buying them, and this depresses the value of the house since potential buyers don't want to deal with the burden of the long-term contract.
Your individual usage doesn't matter, because we can pool your behavior and work out fair payment using statistical models. Money is fungible, so NV doesn't care if it gets your exact dollar or not - it only cares whether or not it gets the right number of dollars in total.
My bad - next time I'll google before trying to sound smart :)
I didn't mention privacy, which is a whole can of worms in itself. My main concern is the cost-benefit of having the government develop a massive new infrastructure to accommodate the collection of this data, and then having a system in place for billing and disputes. I think the cost-benefit for exactly measuring usage vs. the "good enough and cheap" method of using statistical models to decide where people drive comes out in favor of the latter.
A lot of what you list as potential benefits have other solutions which may be far cheaper. For instance, once everyone is being billed for usage anyway, it would be relatively trivial to replace EZ-Pass with license plate readers which bill your account. Statistical information about road usage could be gleaned by working with existing companies who collect such data, like Google and Apple... why build a parallel, redundant system when this data already exists? Potholes are already reported by mainstream apps like Waze - you can go on waze.com (the live map) right now and see every pothole reported in your area, no additional cost to the government at all.
GPS is a neat idea, but I think 90% or more of what you seek can be done more cost effectively through existing (or slightly modified) infrastructure.
That's one way to look at it. Another way is that all manufactures receive the same benefit, but some stretched it out over more years than others. One way or another, GM and Tesla get exactly the same amount of total money as Toyota and Volkswagen.
I guess it depends what you want... are you trying to create an incentive for a first-mover benefit, or are you trying to be sure that every manufacturer develops an electric car?
In any event, I share your distaste for rebates... they have too many undesired consequences compared to simpler incentives like your example of a sales tax exemption. To be fair, this can't happen in the US because there is not a federal sales tax to be exempt from! And people who buy electrics are already free of our national gasoline tax - which is an incentive all by itself.
Read the odo, base registration fees on it, and then offer monthly billing for people who can't afford the lump-sum. Way cheaper and the infrastructure already exists.
Why are they a nightmare? Cars are perhaps the most recycled thing on the planet. You need raw materials, but it's not like mining for rare earths and lithium is particularly bad compared to petroleum extraction. Battery production has some negative local effects on the environment, but nothing like an oil refinery. Batteries can be an environmental hazard when not disposed of properly, but nothing compared to leaky gas and oil tanks and people improperly disposing of engine oil.
It does not scale with the price of the car. Any fully-electric car is eligible for the full $7500. A plug-in hybrid like a Volt only gets about half.
Maybe what you are thinking of is not everyone pays $7500 in tax, so they would only be able to take the credit up to their tax liability. With this particular credit, you cannot carry over the credit to the next year, so you use it or lose it.
Why GPS? Odometers are a century-old technology that you can read at each inspection, and every car already has one.
If we are lucky enough to get enough electric vehicles on the road where tax policy becomes more than an interesting speculative topic, well that would be a huge win.
I can think of many ways to tax electric cars: raise registration fees, base registration fees on mileage, install toll booths or license plate readers, tax tires, install express lanes with a toll that varies by traffic conditions and use that to finance the "free" side of the road as well, etc.
Right now the best-selling electric cars cost about $50,000. In most states this will yield around $3000 in sales taxes - so, for now, rich people buying electric cars may be paying less in gasoline but they certainly are paying more in sales tax. As the cost comes down and the volumes go up, I agree it could become an issue of perceived "fairness".
Maybe you'll be dismissive of my use case... while I use a couple of them where speed certainly does not matter, I did put one in an arcade cabinet and more speed would have been pretty sweet. Even without overclocking, it could emulate most games up to around the turn of the millenium... more power could only improve that situation.
I can not deny access to e.g. Jews or women or gays or even people at random.
There is a very narrow band of unlawful discrimination, and it actually varies by state. On a federal level, you cannot discriminate based on race, religion, or sex. Pretty much anything else is open to discrimination. Perhaps there is some obscure FCC rule that could be bent to go after YouTube, but I'm pretty sure they have full editorial control over their own website. You could absolutely ban nutjobs from your bread store, too. You could forbid people from buying bread if they don't ride a red bike to your store, or if they belong to the American Nazi party. You can absolutely refuse service for any reason that is not explicitly protected.
Thank you for perfectly illustrating my point.
The solution to "not all opinions are valid" is to vette the speakers. Since we are talking about anonymous speech, that is not possible - you'll never know if a person is even remotely qualified to speak about the topic at hand. So you are left with technical solutions.
Why do you think a "controversial" bonus would elevate racist posts? A quick check at reddit shows that searching for racist topics and posts has the vast majority modded down into oblivion. And what is wrong with elevating racist posts if the number of people giving a thumbs-up to a racist post is approximately equal to the number of people giving it a thumbs-down? Clearly that is something that community needs to talk about.
Which is probably why only one of those two is in the database.
Some of the past US state laws about public use of private property open to the public for political use can become interesting.
Ugh, I hope not. I feel like we already treat IP too much like real property and we need to be going the other direction - not expanding in bold new directions.
They already restrict content, so they can't claim any benefit of being a neutral platform. Once you are stuck self-censoring, you might as well set up the censorship to your liking. Anyone can post anything they want on the internet, so it's hard to argue that they have some kind of monopoly... just post a video somewhere.
So you think that controversial subjects have simple, uncontroversial solutions that will float to the top of online discussions? Yeah, I'd post AC too.
Big Clive, AvE, and Cody's Lab?
I think I have a video of my kid playing pee-wee soccer on there. I'm C-R-A-Z-Y.
Until then we may just have to survive the fact that publishing unpopular opinions invites social censure.
...and we're back to one of the downsides of anonymous speech :)
It's a private platform. They could simply ban nutjobs.
Perfect example of how you can't fix stupid.