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Just came back from Shenzen, seemed like most of the taxis were electric. You can tell because they're blue vs the red gas taxis. Another ingenious thing they d

Just came back from Shenzen, seemed like most of the taxis were electric. You can tell because they're blue vs the red gas taxis. Another ingenious thing they do is there's an added fee to ride red taxis, so people avoid them like they're plague-ridden when they have other options. I thought that was a brilliant use of taxing externalities, you let customers decide whether paying the fee is worth it.

marvin 8y ago
That type of taxation of externalities is really a no-brainer in the West too, but there’s just not democratic majority for implementing it. A tragedy. Tragedy of the commons, really, on a spectacular scale. A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship.
- njarboe 8y ago
  It might be if your most powerful general owned the national oil company.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    You mean like in the US? Oh wait...
- davedx 8y ago
  In the Netherlands they’ve just reversed subsidies for electric vehicles, increasing bijtelling for them which makes them a lot more expensive for business purchases and leases. It’s a step backwards.
  - rapnie 8y ago
    Yes, it is very frustrating. The Dutch are exceptionally good at talking the talk, when it comes to renewable energy transition, having years-long talk about the opportunity to become the best, most innovative player (e.g. in solar), and then not walking the walk. Suddenly stopping subsidies because of 'unprecedented success' is the norm, leaving all businesses who had invested out in the cold. Netherlands is now a laggard in sustainable energy in the EU. I guess we have 'pro-business' liberal-democratic ruling party (VVD) and greenwashing-only companies such as Shell to thank for that. They prefer 'lobbycracy' above democracy.
    - avar 8y ago
      Electric vehicles are excempt from the road tax in The Netherlands. E.g. in Nord-Holland you'd pay 1400 EUR/yr just in road tolls for a Tesla Model S (according to my searching around 2,250 kg), but you pay 0 EUR because it's an EV under the current policy. Over a period of some years this easily adds up to what other countries such as the US have been paying out in EV subsidies, add to that that fossil fuels are much more expensive than say the US and it's a very significant subsidy.
    - CalRobert 8y ago
      Given that the thought of the Netherlands conjures images of happy families in bakfiets {and jealousy on my part) I was startled to learn their per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the worst in the EU.
      - ovi256 8y ago
        They're an almost completely urban population with a high standard of living. Of course that needs energy and greenshouse emissions to make happen.
        isostatic 8y ago
        Urburnites claim that city living is cleaner (co2 wise) that living in the country
        CalRobert 8y ago
        Living near the people and things you need, walking, cycling, and taking electrified public transport to said things, and multi-family dwellings allowing the use of district heating (or heat pumps powered by renewable energy) can drastically reduce your carbon footprint compared to living in the burbs and driving to everything. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwellers-smaller-carbon-footprints https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwe... Of course, you _can_ have a low carbon footprint in the country, but it's really hard, because those places are hostile to cycling and walking.
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    Same in Ontario, our generous EV subsidy was killed by the new right-wing-populist provincial gov't, cap'n'trade eliminated (leaving a $3b hole in the budget), and various green programmes turfed. Then they had the gall to turn around and promote the fact that Ontario has dropped its CO2 emissions by 25% in the last 10 years. All due to the actions of the previous government that they railed against with "lock her up" type chants.
  - evandijk70 8y ago
    The reversal is only for cars priced over 50 000 euro (~ 57000 usd). Even for those cars, you can still get the subsidy for the amount up to 50 000 euro. The subsidy mostly helped people get a Tesla Model S as a company car. And it is still subsidized for about 17% of 50k, which is 8000 euro a year. While the Tesla Model S is more environmentally friendly than a similar sized gasoline car, buying of smaller electric cars (like the volkswagen e-golf, tesla model 3, etc) should be encouraged more. I don't think it was a bad idea to cap the subsidy at 50 000 euro.
    - davedx 8y ago
      Fair point, I forgot about the cap. The Model 3 is arriving just in time for Tesla sales.
- mtgx 8y ago
  So do you think Saudi Arabia will introduce a carbon tax anytime soon?
  - starbeast 8y ago
    Might be wise for them to do so - https://phys.org/news/2010-05-future-temperatures-livable-limits.html https://phys.org/news/2010-05-future-temperatures-livable-li...
- dmurray 8y ago
  Lots of Western countries have heavy tax on gasoline. This passes the cost for the externality on to the taxi owner instead of the customer, but comes to pretty much the same thing.
  - Tepix 8y ago
    Yet none (?) have a tax on kerosine. Which is arguably worse for the environment for multiple reasons. Airplanes are a lot less efficient than buses, ships or trains. Also airplanes release their exhausts up in the atmosphere which is worse for global warming.
    - dmurray 8y ago
      There are lots of taxes (and subsidies) on air transport, and no real alternative to fossil fuels for powering planes. Adding a kerosene tax - instead of, say, a "landing tax" or a grant of land to build an airport - would just slosh the money around a bit, it wouldn't create an incentive for people to take electric planes.
      - hamilyon2 8y ago
        Some alternatives are skyping, VR and bullet trains.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      There's a problem in that it's effectively banned by international treaty as part of the ICAO. I believe people are working on changing this but it will be slow going.
      - benj111 8y ago
        The UK has the Air Passenger Duty. Which is kind of similar (you are charged more for flying a farther distance). So there are ways of structuring it legally.
        8y ago
- vixen99 8y ago
  There seems to be an 'if only' tone to your stating the obvious.
- antaviana 8y ago
  This. Just see the "Yellow Vests" riots in France because of the tax raise on fuel.
  - RugnirViking 8y ago
    Worth mentioning that while that is indeed how that movement started, its difficult to say that it's about just that nowadays. More a general culture war between cosmopolitan and rural/less fortunate france if I understand correctly
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > Just see the "Yellow Vests" riots in France because of the tax raise on fuel. Problem with the French protests is that the fuel tax raise didn't take care of poor-ish people. Most "eco" politics doesn't care about these people either - no matter the country - and that's the reason why Trump and other right-wingers can hate so successfully against anything environmentally-friendly.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      The problem is that getting off of fossil fuels (or solving pretty much any other large politically charged problem) will cost a lot of money and in society it's always the people who have the least power and influence who are left with the bill so until the middle and upper classes can figure out how to stop screwing poor people at every turn there will always be opportunity for populist leaders to gain power by promising to actually solve people's problems, drain the swamp, etc, etc. It's not a left vs right thing. It's a the people calling the shots are out of touch with what the day to day problems of the masses are thing.
      - mschuster91 8y ago
        > It's not a left vs right thing. It very much is. Take a look at ANY right-wing political party and look who gets screwed over: always the lowest class people first. Women, PoC, migrants, poor persons. The right-wing strategy is to distract the masses with "it's the fault of the foreigners/the Muslims/Deep State/Swamp" while at the same time enacting policies that benefit only the ultra rich.
- ctdonath 8y ago
  A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship. It's ideas like this why Americans are heavily armed. Nobody can explain how a "co2 tax" would actually do good, yet you implicitly advocate killing people to enact it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - adrianN 8y ago
    A CO2 tax would do good because it would reduce demand for goods and services that cause the release of CO2, proportional to how much they release, while also providing the funds necessary to clean CO2 from the atmosphere. Not that hard to explain.
  - francisofascii 8y ago
    A CO2 tax would reduce the following: pollution, resource depletion, suburban sprawl, commute times, obesity, loneliness, traffic related deaths. So there will be less people killed with a C02 tax.
  - mijamo 8y ago
    I don't see how heavily armed Americans change anything. Personnal weapons would not change a dictatorship. If anything it would just justify killing opponents for armed rebellion/terrorism. It's not like your gun will stop tanks...
- ams6110 8y ago
  Taxes are hard to implement in many countries, including the USA, because people have seen that the tax money is not spent on what proponents say it will be spent on. You'd have a hard time getting a CO2 tax passed because it would just end up going into the general fund and get spent on pet projects, not on anything that really addressed CO2 emissions, or helped with the cost of alternative fuels or vehicles.
  - 794CD01 8y ago
    Even more good could be done if the money were spent well, but the fact that the tax must be paid at all serves as the incentive that pushes behavior in a more environmentally friendly direction.
    - kodablah 8y ago
      There are less regressive ways to incentivize change. Taking money from people hurts the people that rely on money more. Rather, investment and encouragement of particular industries is less punitive, but again goes back to valuable spending of public funds.
      - mbostleman 8y ago
        It would be great if someday those who want to "make a change" or "progress" society understood that succeeding at actually changing their neighbors' minds is more effective than succeeding at getting laws passed that confiscate their neighbors' wealth so that some government program may or may not end up being effective at getting to their end goal. The effort to defend political tribes is so high - imagine if it was used to help create a natural demand in various markets to achieve a given outcome.
  - mlinksva 8y ago
    That's the genius of a carbon tax that returns 100% of the collections as a citizen dividend, like the bipartisan bill recently introduced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_Dividend_Act_of_2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_D...
- moduspol 8y ago
  Why stop at a CO2 tax? All kinds of problems could be solved with a dictatorship.
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    It's not having a dictatorship -- it's having a national economic strategy and a popular will to make decisions without letting very particular selfish interests get in the way. It does not require an authoritarian central leadership. But it does require stopping and rolling back the capture of political bodies and the public sphere generally by private interests.
    - moduspol 8y ago
      Respectfully, it's a pipe dream. If gas, energy, or home heating prices double, whoever's in power is going to be voted out. It's not the capture of political bodies that drives that--it's normal people. It'll take a suspension of democracy or a long time to make a measurable impact on climate change.
      - MagnumOpus 8y ago
        Not if the tax revenues get distributed back as a carbon dividend - then the only people against it are heavy polluters who lose out. (And since emissions are not distributed linearly, the losers from a cost-neutral carbon-tax with per-capita-dividend will always be a minority.)
        moduspol 8y ago
        Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but: From what I'm being told, fundamental changes need to occur in our consumption to have a measurable impact on climate change. That won't happen with normal people continuing to consume at the same rates they have. Could a carbon tax be designed such that normal people are effectively reimbursed and heavy emitters pay more? Yes. But you're not going to measurably impact climate change without somehow incentivizing people to use less. At some point, people need to use less, and when you force them to (through taxes or restrictions), it won't be popular politically.
omarforgotpwd 8y ago
I agree, but it’s not such a no brainer. You’re making a common purchase more expensive. Meanwhile EVs are only similari price because they are heavily subsidized by governments all around the world.
mtgx 8y ago
How is it so ingenious? It's very common to tax the things you don't want your citizens to use much of. Like taxing alcohol or drinks with sugar, etc.
- jai_ 8y ago
  In the case of taxis, the additional taxation of fuel for example would affect the taxi owner more directly than the customer. Applying the additional charge on-top of the original taxi fare itself, affects the customer more and directly influences the market dynamics better than a tax, which does it indirectly.
InGodsName 8y ago
It works in china because CCP thinks, "if it's better for business/control/money/people, we'll do it, doesn't matter if some of us loses in this" Basically, if you are in goverment and you've stock holding in Gas cars, and they are lobbying, gas cars stay. But in China, CCP will simply acquire controlling interest in new winning EV firm if it's better from the perspective of power/money/control over an industry, so they'll completely ignore the gas car companies. In China, Government is Business and business is Goverment who have to think about their bottomline above all. Less pollution = more tourism and more content public with air quality = more incoming revenue from other countries/ Less outrage from public. EVs = No need of importing Oil as china has enough hydropower capacity and electronic and software/AI/ML industries along with rare metal industry = less money going out of the country
- FooHentai 8y ago
  And yet, in a weird way it's working in a way that aligns to wider, long-term, individual interests. By making the government the controlling monopoly, China ends up with a form of capitalism where externalities apply to other countries rather than surrounding corporations and citizens. That's kinda interesting compared to how most other capitalist nations are handling their shit right now. You can do 'common good' stuff like force meme EVs on a significant national scale, where other developed nations are absolutely floundering. What's even more interesting is how rapid that has occurred as compared to how recently China was an absolute polluting demon. Still are, but the rate of change/velocity towards addressing it is worth paying attention to.
  - fiala__ 8y ago
    This is kind of similar to how the USSR industrialised in the 1930s. Western nations were simply stunned at the rate of change, and while we now know it was underscored by unspeakable atrocities, it still applies that such a tightly controlled economy can be very agile and responsive to threats such as climate change.
    - bluGill 8y ago
contingencies 8y ago
The plates are green for EVs. The blue electric BYD taxis are newer, quieter, cleaner and better maintained, and - significantly for foreigners - substantially more spacious. It's not just the cost, it's the comfort.
janekm 8y ago
All the buses are electric too, they finished replacing them at the end of the last year. Like you said taxis seem to be about 95% replaced now (was only about 30% last year, this city moves crazy fast, there are around 20000 taxis in the city). It helps that BYD is a Shenzhen company and all the electric taxis and most of the buses are made by them.

marvin 8y ago

That type of taxation of externalities is really a no-brainer in the West too, but there’s just not democratic majority for implementing it. A tragedy. Tragedy of the commons, really, on a spectacular scale. A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship.

njarboe 8y ago
It might be if your most powerful general owned the national oil company.
- jacobush 8y ago
  You mean like in the US? Oh wait...
davedx 8y ago
In the Netherlands they’ve just reversed subsidies for electric vehicles, increasing bijtelling for them which makes them a lot more expensive for business purchases and leases. It’s a step backwards.
- rapnie 8y ago
  Yes, it is very frustrating. The Dutch are exceptionally good at talking the talk, when it comes to renewable energy transition, having years-long talk about the opportunity to become the best, most innovative player (e.g. in solar), and then not walking the walk. Suddenly stopping subsidies because of 'unprecedented success' is the norm, leaving all businesses who had invested out in the cold. Netherlands is now a laggard in sustainable energy in the EU. I guess we have 'pro-business' liberal-democratic ruling party (VVD) and greenwashing-only companies such as Shell to thank for that. They prefer 'lobbycracy' above democracy.
  - avar 8y ago
    Electric vehicles are excempt from the road tax in The Netherlands. E.g. in Nord-Holland you'd pay 1400 EUR/yr just in road tolls for a Tesla Model S (according to my searching around 2,250 kg), but you pay 0 EUR because it's an EV under the current policy. Over a period of some years this easily adds up to what other countries such as the US have been paying out in EV subsidies, add to that that fossil fuels are much more expensive than say the US and it's a very significant subsidy.
  - CalRobert 8y ago
    Given that the thought of the Netherlands conjures images of happy families in bakfiets {and jealousy on my part) I was startled to learn their per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the worst in the EU.
    - ovi256 8y ago
      They're an almost completely urban population with a high standard of living. Of course that needs energy and greenshouse emissions to make happen.
      - isostatic 8y ago
        Urburnites claim that city living is cleaner (co2 wise) that living in the country
        CalRobert 8y ago
        Living near the people and things you need, walking, cycling, and taking electrified public transport to said things, and multi-family dwellings allowing the use of district heating (or heat pumps powered by renewable energy) can drastically reduce your carbon footprint compared to living in the burbs and driving to everything. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwellers-smaller-carbon-footprints https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwe... Of course, you _can_ have a low carbon footprint in the country, but it's really hard, because those places are hostile to cycling and walking.
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  Same in Ontario, our generous EV subsidy was killed by the new right-wing-populist provincial gov't, cap'n'trade eliminated (leaving a $3b hole in the budget), and various green programmes turfed. Then they had the gall to turn around and promote the fact that Ontario has dropped its CO2 emissions by 25% in the last 10 years. All due to the actions of the previous government that they railed against with "lock her up" type chants.
- evandijk70 8y ago
  The reversal is only for cars priced over 50 000 euro (~ 57000 usd). Even for those cars, you can still get the subsidy for the amount up to 50 000 euro. The subsidy mostly helped people get a Tesla Model S as a company car. And it is still subsidized for about 17% of 50k, which is 8000 euro a year. While the Tesla Model S is more environmentally friendly than a similar sized gasoline car, buying of smaller electric cars (like the volkswagen e-golf, tesla model 3, etc) should be encouraged more. I don't think it was a bad idea to cap the subsidy at 50 000 euro.
  - davedx 8y ago
    Fair point, I forgot about the cap. The Model 3 is arriving just in time for Tesla sales.
mtgx 8y ago
So do you think Saudi Arabia will introduce a carbon tax anytime soon?
- starbeast 8y ago
  Might be wise for them to do so - https://phys.org/news/2010-05-future-temperatures-livable-limits.html https://phys.org/news/2010-05-future-temperatures-livable-li...
dmurray 8y ago
Lots of Western countries have heavy tax on gasoline. This passes the cost for the externality on to the taxi owner instead of the customer, but comes to pretty much the same thing.
- Tepix 8y ago
  Yet none (?) have a tax on kerosine. Which is arguably worse for the environment for multiple reasons. Airplanes are a lot less efficient than buses, ships or trains. Also airplanes release their exhausts up in the atmosphere which is worse for global warming.
  - dmurray 8y ago
    There are lots of taxes (and subsidies) on air transport, and no real alternative to fossil fuels for powering planes. Adding a kerosene tax - instead of, say, a "landing tax" or a grant of land to build an airport - would just slosh the money around a bit, it wouldn't create an incentive for people to take electric planes.
    - hamilyon2 8y ago
      Some alternatives are skyping, VR and bullet trains.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    There's a problem in that it's effectively banned by international treaty as part of the ICAO. I believe people are working on changing this but it will be slow going.
    - benj111 8y ago
      The UK has the Air Passenger Duty. Which is kind of similar (you are charged more for flying a farther distance). So there are ways of structuring it legally.
      - 8y ago
vixen99 8y ago
There seems to be an 'if only' tone to your stating the obvious.
antaviana 8y ago
This. Just see the "Yellow Vests" riots in France because of the tax raise on fuel.
- RugnirViking 8y ago
  Worth mentioning that while that is indeed how that movement started, its difficult to say that it's about just that nowadays. More a general culture war between cosmopolitan and rural/less fortunate france if I understand correctly
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > Just see the "Yellow Vests" riots in France because of the tax raise on fuel. Problem with the French protests is that the fuel tax raise didn't take care of poor-ish people. Most "eco" politics doesn't care about these people either - no matter the country - and that's the reason why Trump and other right-wingers can hate so successfully against anything environmentally-friendly.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    The problem is that getting off of fossil fuels (or solving pretty much any other large politically charged problem) will cost a lot of money and in society it's always the people who have the least power and influence who are left with the bill so until the middle and upper classes can figure out how to stop screwing poor people at every turn there will always be opportunity for populist leaders to gain power by promising to actually solve people's problems, drain the swamp, etc, etc. It's not a left vs right thing. It's a the people calling the shots are out of touch with what the day to day problems of the masses are thing.
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      > It's not a left vs right thing. It very much is. Take a look at ANY right-wing political party and look who gets screwed over: always the lowest class people first. Women, PoC, migrants, poor persons. The right-wing strategy is to distract the masses with "it's the fault of the foreigners/the Muslims/Deep State/Swamp" while at the same time enacting policies that benefit only the ultra rich.
ctdonath 8y ago
A general CO2 tax wouldn’t be hard to implement if we were a dictatorship. It's ideas like this why Americans are heavily armed. Nobody can explain how a "co2 tax" would actually do good, yet you implicitly advocate killing people to enact it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- adrianN 8y ago
  A CO2 tax would do good because it would reduce demand for goods and services that cause the release of CO2, proportional to how much they release, while also providing the funds necessary to clean CO2 from the atmosphere. Not that hard to explain.
- francisofascii 8y ago
  A CO2 tax would reduce the following: pollution, resource depletion, suburban sprawl, commute times, obesity, loneliness, traffic related deaths. So there will be less people killed with a C02 tax.
- mijamo 8y ago
  I don't see how heavily armed Americans change anything. Personnal weapons would not change a dictatorship. If anything it would just justify killing opponents for armed rebellion/terrorism. It's not like your gun will stop tanks...
ams6110 8y ago
Taxes are hard to implement in many countries, including the USA, because people have seen that the tax money is not spent on what proponents say it will be spent on. You'd have a hard time getting a CO2 tax passed because it would just end up going into the general fund and get spent on pet projects, not on anything that really addressed CO2 emissions, or helped with the cost of alternative fuels or vehicles.
- 794CD01 8y ago
  Even more good could be done if the money were spent well, but the fact that the tax must be paid at all serves as the incentive that pushes behavior in a more environmentally friendly direction.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    There are less regressive ways to incentivize change. Taking money from people hurts the people that rely on money more. Rather, investment and encouragement of particular industries is less punitive, but again goes back to valuable spending of public funds.
    - mbostleman 8y ago
      It would be great if someday those who want to "make a change" or "progress" society understood that succeeding at actually changing their neighbors' minds is more effective than succeeding at getting laws passed that confiscate their neighbors' wealth so that some government program may or may not end up being effective at getting to their end goal. The effort to defend political tribes is so high - imagine if it was used to help create a natural demand in various markets to achieve a given outcome.
- mlinksva 8y ago
  That's the genius of a carbon tax that returns 100% of the collections as a citizen dividend, like the bipartisan bill recently introduced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_Dividend_Act_of_2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_D...
moduspol 8y ago
Why stop at a CO2 tax? All kinds of problems could be solved with a dictatorship.
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  It's not having a dictatorship -- it's having a national economic strategy and a popular will to make decisions without letting very particular selfish interests get in the way. It does not require an authoritarian central leadership. But it does require stopping and rolling back the capture of political bodies and the public sphere generally by private interests.
  - moduspol 8y ago
    Respectfully, it's a pipe dream. If gas, energy, or home heating prices double, whoever's in power is going to be voted out. It's not the capture of political bodies that drives that--it's normal people. It'll take a suspension of democracy or a long time to make a measurable impact on climate change.
    - MagnumOpus 8y ago
      Not if the tax revenues get distributed back as a carbon dividend - then the only people against it are heavy polluters who lose out. (And since emissions are not distributed linearly, the losers from a cost-neutral carbon-tax with per-capita-dividend will always be a minority.)
      - moduspol 8y ago
        Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but: From what I'm being told, fundamental changes need to occur in our consumption to have a measurable impact on climate change. That won't happen with normal people continuing to consume at the same rates they have. Could a carbon tax be designed such that normal people are effectively reimbursed and heavy emitters pay more? Yes. But you're not going to measurably impact climate change without somehow incentivizing people to use less. At some point, people need to use less, and when you force them to (through taxes or restrictions), it won't be popular politically.

omarforgotpwd 8y ago

I agree, but it’s not such a no brainer. You’re making a common purchase more expensive. Meanwhile EVs are only similari price because they are heavily subsidized by governments all around the world.

mtgx 8y ago

How is it so ingenious? It's very common to tax the things you don't want your citizens to use much of. Like taxing alcohol or drinks with sugar, etc.

jai_ 8y ago
In the case of taxis, the additional taxation of fuel for example would affect the taxi owner more directly than the customer. Applying the additional charge on-top of the original taxi fare itself, affects the customer more and directly influences the market dynamics better than a tax, which does it indirectly.

InGodsName 8y ago

It works in china because CCP thinks, "if it's better for business/control/money/people, we'll do it, doesn't matter if some of us loses in this" Basically, if you are in goverment and you've stock holding in Gas cars, and they are lobbying, gas cars stay. But in China, CCP will simply acquire controlling interest in new winning EV firm if it's better from the perspective of power/money/control over an industry, so they'll completely ignore the gas car companies. In China, Government is Business and business is Goverment who have to think about their bottomline above all. Less pollution = more tourism and more content public with air quality = more incoming revenue from other countries/ Less outrage from public. EVs = No need of importing Oil as china has enough hydropower capacity and electronic and software/AI/ML industries along with rare metal industry = less money going out of the country

FooHentai 8y ago
And yet, in a weird way it's working in a way that aligns to wider, long-term, individual interests. By making the government the controlling monopoly, China ends up with a form of capitalism where externalities apply to other countries rather than surrounding corporations and citizens. That's kinda interesting compared to how most other capitalist nations are handling their shit right now. You can do 'common good' stuff like force meme EVs on a significant national scale, where other developed nations are absolutely floundering. What's even more interesting is how rapid that has occurred as compared to how recently China was an absolute polluting demon. Still are, but the rate of change/velocity towards addressing it is worth paying attention to.
- fiala__ 8y ago
  This is kind of similar to how the USSR industrialised in the 1930s. Western nations were simply stunned at the rate of change, and while we now know it was underscored by unspeakable atrocities, it still applies that such a tightly controlled economy can be very agile and responsive to threats such as climate change.
  - bluGill 8y ago

contingencies 8y ago

The plates are green for EVs. The blue electric BYD taxis are newer, quieter, cleaner and better maintained, and - significantly for foreigners - substantially more spacious. It's not just the cost, it's the comfort.

janekm 8y ago

All the buses are electric too, they finished replacing them at the end of the last year. Like you said taxis seem to be about 95% replaced now (was only about 30% last year, this city moves crazy fast, there are around 20000 taxis in the city). It helps that BYD is a Shenzhen company and all the electric taxis and most of the buses are made by them.