4 ms·

Getting people to use less oil is easy. Tax it to make it more expensive. I don’t mean to say that that would necessarily be good policy, but it would be a hell

• dredmorbius 10y ago
  That's one of the lessons of economics that seems to be largely lost: To discourage use of something, make it more expensive (or less efficient). To encourage use of something, make it less expensive (or more efficient). Increasing efficiency increases overall consumption: the Jevons paradox (1865). Jevons was also an early peak-fossil-fuels theorist, though his area was coal (oil had just been discovered, the 4-cycle internal combustion engine was 20 years off).
• ryanwaggoner 10y ago
  Where do those taxes go without creating a situation where the beneficiaries of the tax no longer want oil consumption to drop? And most alarming, how do you avoid politicians (who are best suited to solve the collective action problem here) not wanting to give up big sources of income that the taxes provide?