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"The solution is to pay people not to buy cars." The solution, IMHO, is to tax car use, based on its areal footprint, its weight, and how much time it spends o
by ETH_start 3y ago
"The solution is to pay people not to buy cars."
The solution, IMHO, is to tax car use, based on its areal footprint, its weight, and how much time it spends on roads. That directly addresses the dangers and costs cars pose and incur, respectively, and counteracts the negative sum arms race whereby people buy increasingly large cars to make themselves safer from other people's increasingly large cars.
- heavenlyblue 3y agoWhat you are describing is basically petrol tax. Larger more frequently used cars use more petrol.
- fineIllregister 3y agoDamage to the road scales with weight to the fourth power. Fuel use does not go up that fast with weight. Also, it does nothing for the incredibly large and heavy electric vehicles coming out like Rivian and Hummer.
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoYeah you really need a weight-mile tax to pay for roads. This opens a bit of a can of worms: people don’t want the government tracking where they go, but you kind of need that info to collect the tax. Or at least enough info to know how many driven miles were in which taxing jurisdiction.
- ETH_start 3y agoYou can use zero knowledge proofs to anonymize tracking and payments.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y agoSure, but nobody would. The value of having that data is far too great.
- ETH_start 3y agoBesides being able to tax electric cars, road use taxes can also tax use of more congested routes, creating incentives for road use that encourage more efficient use of the road network.