In the idealized theory, the market must have perfect information about products.
I think you mean to say that in an ideal world, the market *participants* have perfect information. Participants in markets don't need to have perfect information for markets to be preferable to other methods of distribution. Communism (for example) doesn't become superior because you have to call around town to find the best price, and you decide to stop searching before you've called them all, in other words.
I suspect that the Wii is likely to re-invigorate the controversy of video games. For example, in Red Steel, instead of just pushing buttons and killing fake people, you are moving your full upper body, which if intense enough, will get your heart pumping and feel more "real". You're then going through the actual motions. While I wouldn't agree with the complaints of people like Jack Thompson, I can see why it would worry them more.
Well, not quite. Someone who is rational but ignorant is likely to be skeptical. "If I don't have the time to properly weigh the merit of this change [if they believe it is a change compared to the status quo], just say NO." That doesn't excuse them for being ignorant, but it's not dishonest -- it's just being risk-averse. (Risk-averse within their knowledge -- they don't know the *true* risk.)
That's a great point. When you bring up how vouchers would draw students away from public schools, show them to be inferior, and then make people's property values drop because they bought their house specifically to be in a good school district (which no longer matters), they'll start to oppose vouchers.
Great fuckin' point there. We should all oppose vouchers for that reason.
If you were to remove all traffic other than busses, the bus routes for me would still be significantly longer than using a car in the worst rush hour traffic
I never believed anyone could be smart enough to type, yet still dumb enough to say this.
I guess I partially missed your point. However, until the extra, faster bus routes become available, people in my position will not be able to switch to the bus, and until enough people switch to the bus, they won't start new routes.
Really? They can't solicit reservations for new bus lines, or have van pools in the interim, or plan over the year before it's implemented, or anything else requiring more than ten seconds of thought to come up with? Then again, if you thought for more than ten seconds before posting, I wouldn't have had to hear your little story about taking your kid to school. Hey, it got you modded up! (Even if you did miss the whole point.)
Er, nice strawman there, AC. I'm refering to people who propose *replacements* for the GDP, such as "quality of life indexes" that factor in (what the left considers) "environmental destruction". The things you've listed are supplements to GDP, not replacements for it.
Now, try again, and this time, respond without emotion.
I think the problem is that you are talking about "clearing the market" when you are assigning pricing to an arbitrarily high level. With the "clear the market" imagary you are invoking, you'll be left with millions in the market wanting to buy with money in their hands that find the price raised above the value of the service.
No. If it is set correctly, any significant number of additional cars will cause traffic to stop where it should be continuously flowing. THEN you would have a situation where "people will be willing to pay" but not have a gridlock-free trip to work. I think you're defing the market too narrowly. If you consider e.g. the market to be "clearing" if it's (to use an old example) the Soviet Union and people wait in line for bread for eight hours. I consider that a shortage, even if, heck, if you stand in like long enough, the bread will arrive. But most people understand the market to be clearing only when someone can get the good *on demand*.
And, hundredth time: drop the obsession with "cost the limit of price". No market looks like that. They move in that direction, but actually seeing it is the exception, not the rule.
The problem is that free market terms don't work when you have a monopoly and artifically set prices by an entity that is trying to convince people to not use the service.
"Only a Sith speaks in absolutes."
A lot of people (who should know better) like to say, "well, we don't have a 100% pure free market in good X, so OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY no inference from classical/neoclassical/Austrian economics can have any relevance here whatsoever". It's ridiculous. Yes, it's not a genuine free market, but selling the good at market price where it is quite obviously scarce will prevent its overuse. If you have a way to return the roads to a free market with minimal rights violations, WE'RE ALL EARS. However, since as you note, the land for the roads has been in continuous use by many people, everyone has a stake in them, and the best we can (barring sigificant long term changes) is at least not make a laughable use of them.
Ah, you make up definitions for terms and then declare them to be correct because you know what they mean.
No, I'm merely following the convention that normal, well-adjusted people use. I was referring to rush hour traffic when cars are stopped a significant fraction of the time on what are nominally freeways. Following the usage of others is the *opposite* of declaring them to be correct.
But I guess it is like your "market pricing" where "price fixing" is by far the more appropriate term. You make up the terms you think give the best emotional light to your intentions, then claim it is the obvious definition. If that were the case, then I wouldn't be here trying to find out what you mean.
Grow up. You already know what I mean: I mean, solve the commute problem by charging tolls that bring rush hour traffic close to traffic at other times. It's really not a difficult concept. You're diverting the discussion into little side topics about what the PURE ABSOLUTE TRUTH ON WHAT THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE SAY GRIDLOCK IS. There is no ambiguity. You're just full of yourself. If you need a clarification, 1) Grow up, and 2) ask.
If you had a substantive remark, you would have made it by now. Unfortunately, all you have to offer is "buses on empty streets are slower than cars in rush hour traffic" and "YOU JUST WANT TO MAKE PEOPLE RIDE BUSES YOU BASTARD" and "all goods must always cost exactly what it previously cost to acquire them". *yawn* You're a lightweight. Let someone else take over for you.
That doesn't fit a single definition of "market price" that I've ever heard.
Sure it does -- the price that "clears the market", i.e. gets demand to match up supply. Everyone willing to pay the price can get another unit. The unit here being "heavy-congestion-free trip to work." Certainly, government owns it all. But it can still charge a market-clearning price.
I understand what you are saying, but I don't understand what "market price" has to do with "government assigned price based on artificial scarcity."
Dude, the scarcity of road capacity is *real*. Wishing won't change it. Bitching that you "already paid for it" definitely won't change it. Widening can only do so much -- you still have to dump the load onto smaller roads at some point, at which it backs up.
There is no "market" in your case, just buyers and a set price based off factors unrelated to the product.
Um.... please tell me you're aware that factor prices have nothing to do with what consumers will pay in "normal" markets? Certainly, and excess of one over the other will *direct investment* in some way, but it's not a hard and fast rule. Consumers don't care how hard you worked for it.
So I'm presuming you'd rig the price to favor busses.
Grow up. I'm not "rigging" it to "favor" anyone. The price would be set to be proportional to the impact on capacity. A bus certainly would be charged more than an SUV, which would be a tad more than 4door sedan, which would be more than a motor cycle. But the bus almost certainly would be cheapest per person. For a bus capable of carrying 20 passengers, it's probably going to have less impact on capacity than 20 cars (but more than one car for sure).
People who can still afford to drive, would.
As for "gridlock" I think you don't know what that means.
I do, and I'm using it in the lay sense. Get over yourself.
And I've never seen a place where the busses on empty streets could beat a car in rush hour for actual transportation time.
??? Are you high? A bus on empty streets would be much, much, much faster than a car in heavily backed up, stop-and-go traffic you see every day on the way in/out of the suburbs in ruch hour. Of course, in fairness, you were speaking from experience, which is apparently that of Manhattan. I don't have incredibly high expectations of their unionized bus drivers, so you may be right about NYC.
I have never seen a proposal that would work for existing suburban neighborhoods. Busses just aren't practical when people are spread out 1 or 2 families per acre.
I've seen (poor) attempts at buses (where road prices don't reflect real capacity scarcity), and it's not unthinkable. You just have people DRIVE to a depot. And then blaze through the rest of the commute. While their destinations are varied, they are generally still clustered, although of course there's room for improvement.
If, even with your loaded conditions, cars are still much better than busses, why do you think anyone would consider so many regulations against the cars they love to promote the inferior transportation of the busses?
Think outside the box for once in your life. It isn't "cars vs. buses". It's "capacity vs. no capacity". I fully accept that many would still be able to afford to drive, and would continue to do so in tandem with buses. You seem to think I have this central plan I'm rigging it toward. I'm not. The beauty of this is that road prices reflect the real scarcity, and leaves the market (in transportation methods) to emerge with an optimal solution.
What is a "market price" for driving? Say roads cost $1,000,000 per lane mile.... So, given the actual cost for the real estate of the road I'm using, how does that differ in rush hour vs off peak hours?
Hint: the market price of something is unrelated to its production costs.
If you claim that the demand should make it cost more, then I'd argue one of two points: Either the cost of mass transit should also increase at the same rate as driving for the crowded times,
It "shouldn't" "do" anything. The market price of the road during rush hour is the price that makes it so it has about the same density on rush hour as off. The buses will charge what the market will bear -- they will have tolls to cover, themselves too.
or the solution could just as easily be to add more roads to increase supply.
You can't. You can widen, double-deck, whatever, the existing huge pipes (freeways). But those pipes still have to dump their loads onto small pipes, which you can't widen (without destroying existing buildings) or double-deck (without making most roads into caverns).
If you tried "market cost" for both driving and mass transit, then you'll end up pushing for distributed start times and the elimination of rush hour. I don't think that would go over too well.
*One* possible (but unlikely) result is the spreading of the workday so some people have 5am-2pm, some have 10am-9pm, etc. The more likely one (that I explained twice above) is that people would pack into more dense (but not necessarily more uncomfortable) forms of transportation, like buses. If one bus replaces 20 cars, the traffic at rush hour will be about what it is for the rest of the day -- no gridlock, and people can keep their work hours. With much less commute time. And no need for the government to run the buses.
Their style guide is boneheaded and doesn't seem to have had any input from a native English speaker. "Wii" just doesn't automatically parse, when heard verbally, as a proper noun. "I have Wii" "You mean, you have... us?" "No, I bought a wii." "You bought away? You bought a wee...?" "No, I bought a Nintendo Wii." "Oh, I see. Nice, short name there."
You're right. You wouldn't take the bus. Because you didn't understand the point of my proposal (clarified here) which was to show the changes resulting from charing market prices for peak hour usage, which would vastly expand the number of bus lines and decrease the duration of a bus commute.
But it's okay -- your parent poster misunderstood likewise and got modded up, so you have a good chance of getting modded up to.
Let me know when you want to respond to what I actually said.
Geez, is this idiot day on Slashdot? I mean, objecting to my posts doesn't make you an idiot, but objecting out of complete ignorance and failure to read my posts does:
toll the roads? In Toronto (Canada) almost all of the roads were built on public money and are maintained by public money (ever heard of taxes?)
Yes, I have, and the idea is to switch their funding to tolls. I know you "already paid for them". Bitch, bitch, bitch. However, a lot of people aren't getting their full use because they're so heavily overused. That's why tolls are needed.
don't take public transit, haven't been in a bus or a subway car or a street car in many many many years now and I am not going to no matter what the cost. My convenience in this life is much more important to me than almost anything else, thus I will work harder to pay for the convenience and will not change my habbits (and I don't like having neighbours too close either.)
GREAT! Then you'd be one of the non-zero people that continue to drive themselves instead switching! What that was supposed to establish, I don't know.
Jesus fuck, there is so much wrong with your post, I don't know where to even begin. You're acting like everyone out there is just completely clueless and doesn't know how to respond to any economic change whatsoever. Your post reeks of a secret desire to be a central planner.
You don't know how many buses are available. There are lots of private buses that, for the right price, will switch their current buses over to this new use. There are qualified drivers who aren't driving right now but would if higher pay (spurred by the new demand) were offered.
Oh geez, I feel like I lost brain cells responding to you. Hon, all kinds of economic decisions are made every day that would just astound you. You really need to get out there instead of fussing about how anyone is going to figure out what changes to make in response to new demand.
"The" bus company? "They" would have dozens ready?
Um, hi statically-minded thinker. The point I was making (third time) is that when suddenly over half the commuters find it economically advantageous to ride a bus, there will be *gasp* new entrants into the bus market. And another cute thing you might learn is that there are buses... outside your city! Really! And when a demand pops up, they might *rent those buses* until they can build new ones!
It's a bright, dynamic economy out there, hon. Entrepreneurs react with all kinds of innovative tricks. You just kinda have to think outside the box for once in your life.
Yes, very true. My point was that even if you produced the energy for the electric aspect the same, there's still significant room for environmental improvement *if done properly*. And like you just said, you can further *supplement* this environmental savings by powering your car (at least partially) from even friendlier sources such as windmills. So people don't really appreciate the potential.
Well, ElleyKitten, like I said to the sibling poster who also didn't see the point I was making, if you toll roads that way, people can still afford to get to work -- on a private bus! And because there's a massive new market, suddenly someone will *want* to provide that convenient service.
You have to build the public transportation system first, then do things to reduce car traffic, because people can't just sit around without transportation for a few years while you figure out how to transport them.
No, buses can be ready the moment you switch over. (Companies would have significant warning before the switch.) The only infrastructure they need is sparser roads, which the tolls provide.
I believe you, but with all due respect, I'm not sure you followed my point. Yes, right now the bus ride takes longer, and the depot is poorly accomodated. My point was that if you tolled the roads at a high enough rate to make rush hour traffic close to non-rush hour, all commutes would be shorter, including and especially the buses. With a new profitable market (taking a private bus is much cheaper than paying the toll, and will save you on insurance costs), providers can have more departures and generally provide more convenient service, addressing most of these concerns. I make no pretense that buses (in America) are currently feasible for most people.
Electric motors are zero-emissions at the point of use, but the coal plant on the edge of town will belch a little more if you're drawing from the grid.
Yes, but that doesn't mean there's no potential environmental advantage. Think about it this way: if everyone drove a car with an electric motor, all of that coal could be burned in one central place (preferably, like, far away from anyone). Since it's all concentrated in one place, the pollution is far cheaper to clean up per mass-unit of pollutant. (For reasons I'm sure you can figure out.) And then there's no pollution in the major cities from motors. (And yes, I know it would be waste to do ALL of America on one plant because of distribution costs -- it's just the principle I'm getting at.)
The problem of course, is that if you explain to an environmentalist that this is what's actually going on, they'll suddenly be against it.
Why tax the gasoline? Tax the ROAD USAGE. Slap on a toll on roads high enough to clear up the rush hour traffic. (We have the technology for this.) Then, the market will have all the incentive it needs to give buses that can blaze through the sparse roads. Probably save on commute time too. (But of course, people would rather spend an hour in traffic each way than half an hour on a private bus. Go fig.)
And we're subsidizing gasoline companies [ucsusa.org] through preferential tax codes?
I've always heard people argue about "subsidies" to oil, and they always fall through on closer examination.
I read the article, and it's more of the same. Let me give a brief refutation.
1) Tax benefits: it alludes to certain exemptions, but doesn't actually name any of them, so I can't quite respond. It then claims states tax gasoline less at the pump, but the average federal+state take (which isn't applied to other products) is 40-45 cents a gallon, LARGER than typical sales taxes.
2) Net government expenditures: it refers to government projects not funded by user feets, mostly with transportation. But the transportation is a subsidy to anyone who transports themselves that way, whether or not they use "oil", so it can't really count. It claims energy research is subsidized, and this may be true, but research is mainly to make better use of any kind of energy so it's unclear how oil particularly benefits. It lists the military interventions, which are ridiculous, as every other country somehow manages to buy oil without those interventions. Just because the government claims they "need" a military to get that oil, doesn't mean it's, well, true. Ditto the SPI. (Not necessary in a world with energy futures contracts.)
3) Environmental costs: these can't be reliable because they count deaths related to consuming oil, but don't subtract the lives saved. Also, drivers already spend significant amounts making vehicles pollution compliant. To the extent there are externalities, I accept that victims should be compensated, but because of the small amount a *single* car produces, it wouldn't come out to much per gallon.
What's funny is that they also want me to accept that huge cash grants to renewables "don't count".
I hate being in the position where I essentially agree with someone yet can't endorse any argument they make toward my conclusion.
Yes, there are many problems with the GDP measurement, and those misunderstandings can lead to poor policy ideas. But it is not, and never was intended to be, the be-all/end-all of economic well-being metrics. RFK is eminently justified in saying that the GDP doesn't measure "integrity, wit, or joy" -- that's because those are really hard to measure, and extremely subjective. (In fact, as for joy, economists have pretty much given up quantifying it, and try to use only the concept of a "preference" without respect of its intensity.) It does, however, have a loose correlation to the abundance of material wealth in a society, and can be helpful for very large difference.
At the same time, the people most vocal about how flawed GDP is, propose alternatives which are little more than left-wing laundry list of goals. So, I agree that the measurement of GDP is flawed, but that shouldn't be an excuse for elevating equally flawed metrics.
(In case your wondering, my idea for improving it would be to subtract all legal and emergency medical services, as well as insurance payouts and (most) government expenditures.)
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In the idealized theory, the market must have perfect information about products.
I think you mean to say that in an ideal world, the market *participants* have perfect information. Participants in markets don't need to have perfect information for markets to be preferable to other methods of distribution. Communism (for example) doesn't become superior because you have to call around town to find the best price, and you decide to stop searching before you've called them all, in other words.
I suspect that the Wii is likely to re-invigorate the controversy of video games. For example, in Red Steel, instead of just pushing buttons and killing fake people, you are moving your full upper body, which if intense enough, will get your heart pumping and feel more "real". You're then going through the actual motions. While I wouldn't agree with the complaints of people like Jack Thompson, I can see why it would worry them more.
Well, not quite. Someone who is rational but ignorant is likely to be skeptical. "If I don't have the time to properly weigh the merit of this change [if they believe it is a change compared to the status quo], just say NO." That doesn't excuse them for being ignorant, but it's not dishonest -- it's just being risk-averse. (Risk-averse within their knowledge -- they don't know the *true* risk.)
Exactly my point :-)
I need to work on my sarcasm...
That's a great point. When you bring up how vouchers would draw students away from public schools, show them to be inferior, and then make people's property values drop because they bought their house specifically to be in a good school district (which no longer matters), they'll start to oppose vouchers.
Great fuckin' point there. We should all oppose vouchers for that reason.
Heh heh, PlaysForSure, more like PlaysForUnsure, LOL MI RITE?
If you were to remove all traffic other than busses, the bus routes for me would still be significantly longer than using a car in the worst rush hour traffic
I never believed anyone could be smart enough to type, yet still dumb enough to say this.
I guess I partially missed your point. However, until the extra, faster bus routes become available, people in my position will not be able to switch to the bus, and until enough people switch to the bus, they won't start new routes.
Really? They can't solicit reservations for new bus lines, or have van pools in the interim, or plan over the year before it's implemented, or anything else requiring more than ten seconds of thought to come up with? Then again, if you thought for more than ten seconds before posting, I wouldn't have had to hear your little story about taking your kid to school. Hey, it got you modded up! (Even if you did miss the whole point.)
Er, nice strawman there, AC. I'm refering to people who propose *replacements* for the GDP, such as "quality of life indexes" that factor in (what the left considers) "environmental destruction". The things you've listed are supplements to GDP, not replacements for it.
Now, try again, and this time, respond without emotion.
I think the problem is that you are talking about "clearing the market" when you are assigning pricing to an arbitrarily high level. With the "clear the market" imagary you are invoking, you'll be left with millions in the market wanting to buy with money in their hands that find the price raised above the value of the service.
No. If it is set correctly, any significant number of additional cars will cause traffic to stop where it should be continuously flowing. THEN you would have a situation where "people will be willing to pay" but not have a gridlock-free trip to work. I think you're defing the market too narrowly. If you consider e.g. the market to be "clearing" if it's (to use an old example) the Soviet Union and people wait in line for bread for eight hours. I consider that a shortage, even if, heck, if you stand in like long enough, the bread will arrive. But most people understand the market to be clearing only when someone can get the good *on demand*.
And, hundredth time: drop the obsession with "cost the limit of price". No market looks like that. They move in that direction, but actually seeing it is the exception, not the rule.
The problem is that free market terms don't work when you have a monopoly and artifically set prices by an entity that is trying to convince people to not use the service.
"Only a Sith speaks in absolutes."
A lot of people (who should know better) like to say, "well, we don't have a 100% pure free market in good X, so OBVIOUSLY, OBVIOUSLY no inference from classical/neoclassical/Austrian economics can have any relevance here whatsoever". It's ridiculous. Yes, it's not a genuine free market, but selling the good at market price where it is quite obviously scarce will prevent its overuse. If you have a way to return the roads to a free market with minimal rights violations, WE'RE ALL EARS. However, since as you note, the land for the roads has been in continuous use by many people, everyone has a stake in them, and the best we can (barring sigificant long term changes) is at least not make a laughable use of them.
Ah, you make up definitions for terms and then declare them to be correct because you know what they mean.
No, I'm merely following the convention that normal, well-adjusted people use. I was referring to rush hour traffic when cars are stopped a significant fraction of the time on what are nominally freeways. Following the usage of others is the *opposite* of declaring them to be correct.
But I guess it is like your "market pricing" where "price fixing" is by far the more appropriate term. You make up the terms you think give the best emotional light to your intentions, then claim it is the obvious definition. If that were the case, then I wouldn't be here trying to find out what you mean.
Grow up. You already know what I mean: I mean, solve the commute problem by charging tolls that bring rush hour traffic close to traffic at other times. It's really not a difficult concept. You're diverting the discussion into little side topics about what the PURE ABSOLUTE TRUTH ON WHAT THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE SAY GRIDLOCK IS. There is no ambiguity. You're just full of yourself. If you need a clarification, 1) Grow up, and 2) ask.
If you had a substantive remark, you would have made it by now. Unfortunately, all you have to offer is "buses on empty streets are slower than cars in rush hour traffic" and "YOU JUST WANT TO MAKE PEOPLE RIDE BUSES YOU BASTARD" and "all goods must always cost exactly what it previously cost to acquire them". *yawn* You're a lightweight. Let someone else take over for you.
That doesn't fit a single definition of "market price" that I've ever heard.
.... please tell me you're aware that factor prices have nothing to do with what consumers will pay in "normal" markets? Certainly, and excess of one over the other will *direct investment* in some way, but it's not a hard and fast rule. Consumers don't care how hard you worked for it.
Sure it does -- the price that "clears the market", i.e. gets demand to match up supply. Everyone willing to pay the price can get another unit. The unit here being "heavy-congestion-free trip to work." Certainly, government owns it all. But it can still charge a market-clearning price.
I understand what you are saying, but I don't understand what "market price" has to do with "government assigned price based on artificial scarcity."
Dude, the scarcity of road capacity is *real*. Wishing won't change it. Bitching that you "already paid for it" definitely won't change it. Widening can only do so much -- you still have to dump the load onto smaller roads at some point, at which it backs up.
There is no "market" in your case, just buyers and a set price based off factors unrelated to the product.
Um
So I'm presuming you'd rig the price to favor busses.
Grow up. I'm not "rigging" it to "favor" anyone. The price would be set to be proportional to the impact on capacity. A bus certainly would be charged more than an SUV, which would be a tad more than 4door sedan, which would be more than a motor cycle. But the bus almost certainly would be cheapest per person. For a bus capable of carrying 20 passengers, it's probably going to have less impact on capacity than 20 cars (but more than one car for sure).
People who can still afford to drive, would.
As for "gridlock" I think you don't know what that means.
I do, and I'm using it in the lay sense. Get over yourself.
And I've never seen a place where the busses on empty streets could beat a car in rush hour for actual transportation time.
??? Are you high? A bus on empty streets would be much, much, much faster than a car in heavily backed up, stop-and-go traffic you see every day on the way in/out of the suburbs in ruch hour. Of course, in fairness, you were speaking from experience, which is apparently that of Manhattan. I don't have incredibly high expectations of their unionized bus drivers, so you may be right about NYC.
I have never seen a proposal that would work for existing suburban neighborhoods. Busses just aren't practical when people are spread out 1 or 2 families per acre.
I've seen (poor) attempts at buses (where road prices don't reflect real capacity scarcity), and it's not unthinkable. You just have people DRIVE to a depot. And then blaze through the rest of the commute. While their destinations are varied, they are generally still clustered, although of course there's room for improvement.
If, even with your loaded conditions, cars are still much better than busses, why do you think anyone would consider so many regulations against the cars they love to promote the inferior transportation of the busses?
Think outside the box for once in your life. It isn't "cars vs. buses". It's "capacity vs. no capacity". I fully accept that many would still be able to afford to drive, and would continue to do so in tandem with buses. You seem to think I have this central plan I'm rigging it toward. I'm not. The beauty of this is that road prices reflect the real scarcity, and leaves the market (in transportation methods) to emerge with an optimal solution.
What is a "market price" for driving? Say roads cost $1,000,000 per lane mile. ... So, given the actual cost for the real estate of the road I'm using, how does that differ in rush hour vs off peak hours?
Hint: the market price of something is unrelated to its production costs.
If you claim that the demand should make it cost more, then I'd argue one of two points: Either the cost of mass transit should also increase at the same rate as driving for the crowded times,
It "shouldn't" "do" anything. The market price of the road during rush hour is the price that makes it so it has about the same density on rush hour as off. The buses will charge what the market will bear -- they will have tolls to cover, themselves too.
or the solution could just as easily be to add more roads to increase supply.
You can't. You can widen, double-deck, whatever, the existing huge pipes (freeways). But those pipes still have to dump their loads onto small pipes, which you can't widen (without destroying existing buildings) or double-deck (without making most roads into caverns).
If you tried "market cost" for both driving and mass transit, then you'll end up pushing for distributed start times and the elimination of rush hour. I don't think that would go over too well.
*One* possible (but unlikely) result is the spreading of the workday so some people have 5am-2pm, some have 10am-9pm, etc. The more likely one (that I explained twice above) is that people would pack into more dense (but not necessarily more uncomfortable) forms of transportation, like buses. If one bus replaces 20 cars, the traffic at rush hour will be about what it is for the rest of the day -- no gridlock, and people can keep their work hours. With much less commute time. And no need for the government to run the buses.
Well, I guess when all else fails, they can always go for the pity angle. "Oh!! Please help us ingrain Blu-Ray! We're fighting DISEASE!"
Their style guide is boneheaded and doesn't seem to have had any input from a native English speaker. "Wii" just doesn't automatically parse, when heard verbally, as a proper noun. "I have Wii" "You mean, you have ... us?" "No, I bought a wii." "You bought away? You bought a wee ...?" "No, I bought a Nintendo Wii." "Oh, I see. Nice, short name there."
You're right. You wouldn't take the bus. Because you didn't understand the point of my proposal (clarified here) which was to show the changes resulting from charing market prices for peak hour usage, which would vastly expand the number of bus lines and decrease the duration of a bus commute.
But it's okay -- your parent poster misunderstood likewise and got modded up, so you have a good chance of getting modded up to.
Let me know when you want to respond to what I actually said.
Geez, is this idiot day on Slashdot? I mean, objecting to my posts doesn't make you an idiot, but objecting out of complete ignorance and failure to read my posts does:
toll the roads? In Toronto (Canada) almost all of the roads were built on public money and are maintained by public money (ever heard of taxes?)
Yes, I have, and the idea is to switch their funding to tolls. I know you "already paid for them". Bitch, bitch, bitch. However, a lot of people aren't getting their full use because they're so heavily overused. That's why tolls are needed.
don't take public transit, haven't been in a bus or a subway car or a street car in many many many years now and I am not going to no matter what the cost. My convenience in this life is much more important to me than almost anything else, thus I will work harder to pay for the convenience and will not change my habbits (and I don't like having neighbours too close either.)
GREAT! Then you'd be one of the non-zero people that continue to drive themselves instead switching! What that was supposed to establish, I don't know.
Jesus fuck, there is so much wrong with your post, I don't know where to even begin. You're acting like everyone out there is just completely clueless and doesn't know how to respond to any economic change whatsoever. Your post reeks of a secret desire to be a central planner.
You don't know how many buses are available. There are lots of private buses that, for the right price, will switch their current buses over to this new use. There are qualified drivers who aren't driving right now but would if higher pay (spurred by the new demand) were offered.
Oh geez, I feel like I lost brain cells responding to you. Hon, all kinds of economic decisions are made every day that would just astound you. You really need to get out there instead of fussing about how anyone is going to figure out what changes to make in response to new demand.
"The" bus company? "They" would have dozens ready?
... outside your city! Really! And when a demand pops up, they might *rent those buses* until they can build new ones!
Um, hi statically-minded thinker. The point I was making (third time) is that when suddenly over half the commuters find it economically advantageous to ride a bus, there will be *gasp* new entrants into the bus market. And another cute thing you might learn is that there are buses
It's a bright, dynamic economy out there, hon. Entrepreneurs react with all kinds of innovative tricks. You just kinda have to think outside the box for once in your life.
Yes, very true. My point was that even if you produced the energy for the electric aspect the same, there's still significant room for environmental improvement *if done properly*. And like you just said, you can further *supplement* this environmental savings by powering your car (at least partially) from even friendlier sources such as windmills. So people don't really appreciate the potential.
Well, ElleyKitten, like I said to the sibling poster who also didn't see the point I was making, if you toll roads that way, people can still afford to get to work -- on a private bus! And because there's a massive new market, suddenly someone will *want* to provide that convenient service.
You have to build the public transportation system first, then do things to reduce car traffic, because people can't just sit around without transportation for a few years while you figure out how to transport them.
No, buses can be ready the moment you switch over. (Companies would have significant warning before the switch.) The only infrastructure they need is sparser roads, which the tolls provide.
I believe you, but with all due respect, I'm not sure you followed my point. Yes, right now the bus ride takes longer, and the depot is poorly accomodated. My point was that if you tolled the roads at a high enough rate to make rush hour traffic close to non-rush hour, all commutes would be shorter, including and especially the buses. With a new profitable market (taking a private bus is much cheaper than paying the toll, and will save you on insurance costs), providers can have more departures and generally provide more convenient service, addressing most of these concerns. I make no pretense that buses (in America) are currently feasible for most people.
Electric motors are zero-emissions at the point of use, but the coal plant on the edge of town will belch a little more if you're drawing from the grid.
Yes, but that doesn't mean there's no potential environmental advantage. Think about it this way: if everyone drove a car with an electric motor, all of that coal could be burned in one central place (preferably, like, far away from anyone). Since it's all concentrated in one place, the pollution is far cheaper to clean up per mass-unit of pollutant. (For reasons I'm sure you can figure out.) And then there's no pollution in the major cities from motors. (And yes, I know it would be waste to do ALL of America on one plant because of distribution costs -- it's just the principle I'm getting at.)
The problem of course, is that if you explain to an environmentalist that this is what's actually going on, they'll suddenly be against it.
Why tax the gasoline? Tax the ROAD USAGE. Slap on a toll on roads high enough to clear up the rush hour traffic. (We have the technology for this.) Then, the market will have all the incentive it needs to give buses that can blaze through the sparse roads. Probably save on commute time too. (But of course, people would rather spend an hour in traffic each way than half an hour on a private bus. Go fig.)
And we're subsidizing gasoline companies [ucsusa.org] through preferential tax codes?
I've always heard people argue about "subsidies" to oil, and they always fall through on closer examination.
I read the article, and it's more of the same. Let me give a brief refutation.
1) Tax benefits: it alludes to certain exemptions, but doesn't actually name any of them, so I can't quite respond. It then claims states tax gasoline less at the pump, but the average federal+state take (which isn't applied to other products) is 40-45 cents a gallon, LARGER than typical sales taxes.
2) Net government expenditures: it refers to government projects not funded by user feets, mostly with transportation. But the transportation is a subsidy to anyone who transports themselves that way, whether or not they use "oil", so it can't really count. It claims energy research is subsidized, and this may be true, but research is mainly to make better use of any kind of energy so it's unclear how oil particularly benefits. It lists the military interventions, which are ridiculous, as every other country somehow manages to buy oil without those interventions. Just because the government claims they "need" a military to get that oil, doesn't mean it's, well, true. Ditto the SPI. (Not necessary in a world with energy futures contracts.)
3) Environmental costs: these can't be reliable because they count deaths related to consuming oil, but don't subtract the lives saved. Also, drivers already spend significant amounts making vehicles pollution compliant. To the extent there are externalities, I accept that victims should be compensated, but because of the small amount a *single* car produces, it wouldn't come out to much per gallon.
What's funny is that they also want me to accept that huge cash grants to renewables "don't count".
I hate being in the position where I essentially agree with someone yet can't endorse any argument they make toward my conclusion.
Yes, there are many problems with the GDP measurement, and those misunderstandings can lead to poor policy ideas. But it is not, and never was intended to be, the be-all/end-all of economic well-being metrics. RFK is eminently justified in saying that the GDP doesn't measure "integrity, wit, or joy" -- that's because those are really hard to measure, and extremely subjective. (In fact, as for joy, economists have pretty much given up quantifying it, and try to use only the concept of a "preference" without respect of its intensity.) It does, however, have a loose correlation to the abundance of material wealth in a society, and can be helpful for very large difference.
At the same time, the people most vocal about how flawed GDP is, propose alternatives which are little more than left-wing laundry list of goals. So, I agree that the measurement of GDP is flawed, but that shouldn't be an excuse for elevating equally flawed metrics.
(In case your wondering, my idea for improving it would be to subtract all legal and emergency medical services, as well as insurance payouts and (most) government expenditures.)