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What I think people do not realise is that incentives to adopt cleaner car are just one side of a coin. The alternative would be making petrol-car drivers payi

What I think people do not realise is that incentives to adopt cleaner car are just one side of a coin. The alternative would be making petrol-car drivers paying for the actual costs of cars including healthcare for diseases related with pollution, possibly at any level of the production chain and so on. Hidden costs are often cut away and offloaded on community (I couldn't find anything specifically related with cars (didn't have time to look for), but for comparison here's a short video that shows the real costs of meat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZDsSnpYZrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZDsSnpYZrw). Incentives make it a little bit more explicit. While it may be true claiming that Teslas cost would be higher without incentives, for sure Ford's car would be way more expensive if everything had been taken into account.

sp527 10y ago
Exactly. Maybe I should have been more clear earlier that I'm referring to incentives- driven intervention. Penalizing companies for the negative externalities they inflict on society is practically a first principle of good governance, and USG has failed dramatically. What's sad is that so many people seem to take an all-or-nothing stance on this politically. Either laissez faire or nanny state. Moderation is a dying art.
- tigroferoce 10y ago
  Yes, moderation is dead. To embrace moderation one need to have doubt about his beliefs, to accept that someone else might hold a part of the truth. It's difficult and tiring and imply to constantly change one's state of mind and ideas. Moreover, it's much more fun and easy to treat everything as a sport match where you choose one side and you are against the other side. In some way I notice the irony that these incentives for automakers (aimed to reduce pollution, to keep jobs, to communitize part of the drawbacks related with cars, ecc...) are a form of socialism in the US. Well done Yankees.

sp527 10y ago

Exactly. Maybe I should have been more clear earlier that I'm referring to incentives- driven intervention. Penalizing companies for the negative externalities they inflict on society is practically a first principle of good governance, and USG has failed dramatically. What's sad is that so many people seem to take an all-or-nothing stance on this politically. Either laissez faire or nanny state. Moderation is a dying art.

tigroferoce 10y ago
Yes, moderation is dead. To embrace moderation one need to have doubt about his beliefs, to accept that someone else might hold a part of the truth. It's difficult and tiring and imply to constantly change one's state of mind and ideas. Moreover, it's much more fun and easy to treat everything as a sport match where you choose one side and you are against the other side. In some way I notice the irony that these incentives for automakers (aimed to reduce pollution, to keep jobs, to communitize part of the drawbacks related with cars, ecc...) are a form of socialism in the US. Well done Yankees.