4 ms·

How do you price in the fact that heavy trucks destroy the road faster, causing them to be replaced more often, causing more pollution? In other words, how do

How do you price in the fact that heavy trucks destroy the road faster, causing them to be replaced more often, causing more pollution? In other words, how do you price in the pollution? And do you really want to?

Taek 6y ago
Yes, you really do want to. It would be lovely if we could charge proportional to the externalities. As for how... beats me. Best we can do is rough approximation, and accept that we will continually find out we were wrong and have to adjust the cost structure.
- epistasis 6y ago
  We could get the approximations quite wrong and still get massive economic improvements from where we currently are! However the challenge isn't the approximations, but the political difficulties. Even taxing based on mileage would cause an uproar. And taxing large pickups proportional to their economic toll on infrastructure would probably start a violent revolution.
  - lostapathy 6y ago
    Large pickups aren’t an appreciable part of the problem here - 18 wheelers are.
    - epistasis 6y ago
      There are a lot of smaller roads where 18 wheelers never travel, and where a 2x weight increase means 10x the road wear (between the cube and fourth power of weight, according to simple models in this thread).
shawnz 6y ago
Charge the asphalt companies a carbon tax, and let municipalities create road taxes based on vehicle weight/usage to pay for the extra costs created for road maintenance
lkbm 6y ago
The how is difficult -- studies like this are part. "Do you really want to?" is a clear yes. It's called a Pigovian tax, and it's the most unambiguously "correct" way to tax things: you tax things in accordance to their harm to third-parties (and subsidize things in accordance to their benefits to third-parties). Markets only work if we internalize the externalities, which can most efficiently be done through taxation. Pollution is one of the standard examples of an externality.

Taek 6y ago

Yes, you really do want to. It would be lovely if we could charge proportional to the externalities. As for how... beats me. Best we can do is rough approximation, and accept that we will continually find out we were wrong and have to adjust the cost structure.

epistasis 6y ago
We could get the approximations quite wrong and still get massive economic improvements from where we currently are! However the challenge isn't the approximations, but the political difficulties. Even taxing based on mileage would cause an uproar. And taxing large pickups proportional to their economic toll on infrastructure would probably start a violent revolution.
- lostapathy 6y ago
  Large pickups aren’t an appreciable part of the problem here - 18 wheelers are.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    There are a lot of smaller roads where 18 wheelers never travel, and where a 2x weight increase means 10x the road wear (between the cube and fourth power of weight, according to simple models in this thread).

shawnz 6y ago

Charge the asphalt companies a carbon tax, and let municipalities create road taxes based on vehicle weight/usage to pay for the extra costs created for road maintenance

lkbm 6y ago

The how is difficult -- studies like this are part. "Do you really want to?" is a clear yes. It's called a Pigovian tax, and it's the most unambiguously "correct" way to tax things: you tax things in accordance to their harm to third-parties (and subsidize things in accordance to their benefits to third-parties). Markets only work if we internalize the externalities, which can most efficiently be done through taxation. Pollution is one of the standard examples of an externality.