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, Sun, 31 May 2009 09:46:10
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"You really think that our guzzlers of the 70's would have become efficient on their own? What about emissions standards? None of these would have become better without government intervention."
Gas hog sales dropped dramaticly in 2007, when gasoline price went up, no change in CAFE standards was taking place at the time. The same thing happened in the 70's. What's so magical about government intervention through CAFE standards? It's not like it's a magic button, if you buy a car less than 17.5mpg, your head blows up. It's fine; i.e. the cost of owning a new car goes up. What makes you think someone willing put up with 15mpg vs. 20mpg, i.e. 200 gallons or $800/yr difference in operating cost due to fuel consumption difference would care about the couple hundred dollar difference in cost of the car for the life of the car? In fact, they do not. BMW has been the top payer of CAFE fines in the past couple decades. CAFE regulation, just like most other regulations, is government pretense to force companies to pay up bribery in the form of lobbying. That's precisely what happened when revised emission standards made the original Honda Civic (CVCC) illegal despite its previous track record of being a low cost low emission fuel mizer. The emission numbers were re-rigged to make the car illegal . . . and Honda learned a lesson in the value of political lobbying.
"People do buy minivans for practical reasons because few people think they're cool like SUV's."
Then you are only proving yourself to be too young to be around in the 1980's. Minivan was the cool replacement for wagons, just like SUV's later became the cool replacement for minivans. Early minivans did not offer much practicality advantage over big station wagons at all, aside from being truck-based hence being able to circumvent CAFE rules.
"Again, you misinterpreted my comment. I'm not proposing a fascist state in which the government controls our every daily move. I was just listing examples of how we don't do what's best for us in the long term."
You may not have seen the inevitable logical conclusion from your assersion, I was just pointing out the obvious: if as you claimed, individuals needs the government to tell them and force them into doing what's best for themselves, a fascist police state would indeed be preferrable way of running the world. A religious preference in freedom/liberty wouldn't protect us from being steam-rolled by fascism if fascism were superior in allocating resources. Freedom/Liberty is superior to fascism because discrete decision making in a free market place is economicly superior to fascist central planning.
If you believe that individuals are incapable of doing what's best for themselves in the long run, what makes you think putting the robes of officialdom would suddenly make them capable of doing what's best for others (even after deducting the cost of paying for such officials and their corruptions)? You are conflating "government" with "God." Sure, you can envision a God that is all-knowing, all-powerful, doesn't draw a salary, and has no friends to pay off; unfortunately, God is not applying for a job at your government office. The only applicants are the same pool of people that you are decrying too dumb to think even for themselves.
" We would still be using leaded fuel and driving guzzling vehicles without any safety features or basic safety standards."
That's completely nonsense. Eco-friendly coolant sells quite well despite the absence of regulation to use them. Do you use lead pitchers for water in your house? There is no law against its use. Every single safety feature was present in the market place long before government law mandated its use. You may not have self-preservation instinct (which I serious doubt), but most people certainly do. Did you buy a beat-up Yugo for your last car? They are still legal to buy and operate, you know. So why didn't you? Government regulation is not the answer. You were willing to pay up a little more for safety! That's what fundamentally make car mfrs research for new safety devices. Government regulators did not invent the safety devices.
"We would have used up a lot more oil by now."
And what would be wrong with that if it allows people enjoy better lives? especially save lives.
"if the government slowly ramped up gas taxes, we would all be driving more efficient vehicles."
Why don't we just outlaw all gasoline, and force people to go back to bicycles and horses? The whole economic advantage of gasoline is that it is a less expensive source of portable form of energy. Constantly raising tax on it is tantamount to undoing the invention/discovery of gasoline internal combustion engine, one increment at a time.
"I think a sliding scale gas tax/rebate depending on the fuel efficiency of the vehicle you buy would be the ultimate solution,"
Then you do not understand how real life works. Can you imagine all the skulldudgery that will come along with that scheme?
" but CAFE is already established. No system is perfect, but that doesn't mean you don't need a regulation system of some kind."
The existing CAFE standards already proved itself to kill people by putting them into tincans and/or keeping them in cars older than would have been the case . . . also proved to be the big driver behind the emergence of Minivans and SUV popularity, turning the fuel saving goal on its head. So now we need a new CAFE standards. As they say, suckers are born everyday, suckers not in terms of deciding what's best for themselves but when they think about public policies. You obviously did not buy a beat up Yugo for your last car despite its being legal to buy and own, yet somehow you are convinced that other people would all be buying unsafe cars if not for government regulations. Go figure.
posted by 76.118.39...
, Thu, 28 May 2009 09:07:56, Wed, 27 May 2009 14:39:08, Thu, 4 Jun 2009 06:34:56, Sun, 31 May 2009 01:35:25, Sun, 31 May 2009 09:46:10, Wed, 27 May 2009 14:39:47
, Wed, 27 May 2009 06:45:45, Wed, 27 May 2009 16:07:04, Wed, 27 May 2009 15:56:01, Wed, 27 May 2009 19:27:34
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