Greg Krehbiel
WWED — What Would Edwards Drive?
by Greg Krehbiel on 29 August 2007
Edwards says we should “sacrifice” our SUVs. I couldn’t care less about SUVs, but I believe the last Democrat to call on Americans to “sacrifice” was a sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter.
The goofy thing about all these liberal feel-good efforts is that they have no correlation with reality. It’s just somebody’s cock-eyed utopian vision where economics and real-world decisions don’t matter. For example, we’re supposed to recycle paper and plastic and glass, but nobody wants the recycled stuff.
Economics is all about rationing scarce resources. When oil starts to get scarce, it will (absent government interference) become more expensive and people will look for alternatives. But forcing people into alternatives that aren’t driven by economic reality is intolerable government meddling. (Which is why I refuse to recycle. When somebody’s willing to pay me for the stuff, I’ll do it. Or, rather, I’ll have the kids do it.)
But then there’s the problem of “externalities.” E.g., if burning gasoline makes the air worse, and that makes everybody sicker, and that increases the burden on the hospital system, and since we’re playing host to billions of illegal aliens who use our health resources for free that ends up costing everybody else, then … the true cost of gasoline isn’t expressed at the pump, and people aren’t paying the “real” price.
Yeah. But how much of that do you really believe? It starts to sound like any number of other A then B then C then D then the end of the world sorts of arguments. E.g., if we allow brothers and sisters to rent apartments together it will destroy the fabric of civilized society, etc. etc.
We should require a clear correlation before we’re willing to allow the government to tamper. If somebody can prove that gasoline use leads to some additional cost — whatever that cost is — then a gasoline tax should be applied to offset that cost. Then consumers can make rational decisions based on cost, rather than on what John Edwards thinks will win him the most votes.
The goal of government policy should be to get people to mind their own business. So that, for example, if somebody chooses to buy an SUV, he’s paying the appropriate cost of his indulgence, so nobody has any right to make a stink about it.
2007-08-29 » Greg Krehbiel
30 August 2007 @ 12:06 am
Very well put!
30 August 2007 @ 8:20 am
Perhaps the political campaigners could save gas by taking buses across America.
I’m sure they feel they are “serving the taxpayers by travelling efficiently” in planes, or whatever.
They ought to trust Joe Average American to similarly decide.
And I’m with you, Greg on natural consequence economics. Only you’d have to create bubble lanes on the roads so all the asthma-attack inducing trucks and fume-spewing vehicles would have to breathe the air they yuck up. Having to live with your own garbage is a really good motivator. We get to ship it all “away.” Downstream, downwind, downcounty – but our affluence makes it work.
30 August 2007 @ 8:26 am
I’d love to see people have to pay the real price for gasoline. The estimate I saw is $16 a gallon. That means the oil companies have to hire mercenaries to defend their ships, no subsidies, etc.
Of course it is difficult to calculate externalities, as it is difficult to know what the true externalities are.
The problem with letting the market regulate conservation through pricing, is that there will always be someone willing to pay a ridiculous price for the last shark fin, for instance, and somebody willing to kill the last shark to get that price. If whaling had been properly regulated, they would still be whaling today. Cape Cod is likley to lose any income from fishing because of the refusal to face up to overfishing.
And there are externalities to recycling too. If you recycle glass, you save some energy. If you put glass on a truck and drive it a thousand miles to recycle, you have wasted that energy savings.
And don’t get me started on the greatest president of the twentieth century.