8 ms·
We need to start making manufacturers pay for their negative externalities.
by bix6 2y ago
We need to start making manufacturers pay for their negative externalities.
- acidburnNSA 2y agoAlso we need incentives to convince people to choose to drive lighter and smaller cars. Carrots and/or sticks should be considered. Alternatively, new tire technologies could maybe also solve the problem.
- danielheath 2y agoTyre wear is proportional to the fourth power of wheel load; reducing weight per wheel is the key here. Hiwever, taxing new tyres may be counterproductive, since encouraging folk to keep using their worn tyres is not a good outcome for road safety.
- potato3732842 2y agoTyre wear is proportional to the fourth power of wheel load; reducing weight per wheel is the key here. No, it's not. You're taking a very loose rule of thumb for road surface wear and baselessly applying it to tires. Tire wear follows the rubber the tire is made out of. Soft rubber wears faster. Once you control for that it's acceleration and braking loads (i.e. driving style) that dominate. After that is when weight starts mattering. If what you said was even remotely true then heavy vehicles would get obviously less life out of tires compared to compact cars when in reality they get about the same
- david-gpu 2y ago> If what you said was even remotely true then heavy vehicles would get obviously less life out of tires compared to compact cars when in reality they get about the same Are you assuming that the tires of heavy vehicles have the same thickness as lighter vehicles? My bike has much thinner tires than any car, and they can last ten thousand kilometers.
- danielheath 2y agoI'm not sure where you're getting these ideas from. Best estimate I can see of prime mover tyre lifespan is 40,000-120,000 km. I'd be quite happy if I could get that kind of lifespan out of my cars tyres.
- antisthenes 2y ago> I'd be quite happy if I could get that kind of lifespan out of my cars tyres Are you saying you can't even get 40,000 km out of your car tyres? You might have a defective product on your hands or need to look into the way you drive or inflate your tires.
- qwerty_clicks 2y agoTires these days are expensive. To make them cheaper, they have reduced quality as well. Likely wearing faster and with worse material
- forgotoldacc 2y agoIf it's not already obvious, in a lot of places, when regulations are promoted to reduce waste and benefit public/environmental health, a large number of people will get angry and vote for those who'll want to maximize damage just because. If regulations promoting smaller cars were ever suggested in these places, some smiling politician would announce a mandate that vehicles be 5 tons or greater with anything smaller being banned, and compilations of people who worried about the environment would be circulated and heavily mocked online.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoThis is misunderstanding why people respond that way. There are a lot of people who can't easily change their behavior, e.g. because your theory is that they should buy smaller cars but their business requires a vehicle that can carry heavy loads once a week and they can't afford to buy a separate vehicle for that so the larger vehicle has to be their daily driver. Then a tax meant to induce a change in behavior is received by them as an unavoidable tax hike, which they naturally resent and oppose, and because of the nature of politics they'll then propose the opposite of whatever you're trying to do to them. What you really need to do is to make it more possible for them to do the thing you want. For example, right now if you want to have a modern compact car for most use and an old truck you use once a week for truck stuff, you have to register and insure two vehicles. That isn't currently economical, but it's what you want to happen so they're not just driving the truck at all times. What you want to do is to make it economical. Only charge a registration fee for someone's primary vehicle and waive the cost for a second one, and make insurance work in such a way that having two vehicles doesn't have any higher liability premiums than driving the same total number of miles in one vehicle. Then they can do what you want, and in fact have the incentive to, because the smaller car will save them gas most of the time but they still have the truck when they need it.
- LeifCarrotson 2y agoIncentives and penalties need to also exist to encourage manufacturers to offer smaller cars. Many domestic manufacturers are finding that giant luxury SUVs and 100+ kW high-end BEVs are highly profitable, and aren't even selling small and light vehicles at all for customers to choose.
- Tiktaalik 2y agoWe need alternatives to cars too.
- Palomides 2y agothe majority of the pollution probably comes from semi trucks rather than passenger cars, due to the huge weight and number of wheels
- hackernewds 2y agothere are 200000x the number of private cars. are you sure?
- qwerty_clicks 2y agoSemi’s drive 12+ hours a day most days of the year. Passenger cars just go to work and they store and back.
- Palomides 2y agoit's widely accepted that trucks cause the majority of road wear, considering the tire is the softer part in contact there, it seems pretty plausible I don't have a citation to point to, though! edit: there are roughly 100x registered passenger cars in the US as semis
- SideQuark 2y agoWell, given a semi only averages 8x the miles of a car per year, your initial claim is wrong. https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10309 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10309
- vigna 2y agoHi SideQuark. I'm writing you here as there's no contact email on your profile--I wanted to ask you if you ever tried a SAT solver on RomuTrio to find cycles (or you can give me some hints). I'm referring to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22457101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22457101. You can write me at sebastiano.vigna@gmail.com. Thanks for any info! BTW, thanks for explaining that you cannot prove things about a single permutation using random permutations--it's so obvious that it is very difficult to explain, and the same absurd argument pops over and over.
- DecoPerson 2y agoManufacture in country A and sell in country B. Or vice versa. But never manufacture and sell in the same country, or the government might try to get you to pay for your negative externalities! And now, there’s this annoying predicament where as you introduce more laws and more enforcement, you only cripple your own economy and rarely cause any significant improvement along the lines of what you hope. Look at Australia — we have all these appliance safety laws, but all of the appliances are made overseas and there’s no good point for the government to inspect and enforce compliance with those laws. I just bought a generic vacuum sealer from an online shop the other day. It was cheaper than buying at a brick & mortar store, even with delivery, and it definitely does not comply with Australia safety standards. We’ve killed our local industry, and our economy is suffering for it. I don’t think the answer is to remove the safety/etc laws, but instead to tax all imports enormously. Be aggressive and unfair so that local industry is immediately viable. It’ll be painful, but it’s what most countries need. Comparative advantage turned out to be a terrible basis for international trade.
- danielheath 2y agoThis is what tariffs do well. When you tax a local manufacturer, you impose an equal tariff on imports.
- seventhtiger 2y agoThat only makes it fair within your country, but it doesn't remove the self-crippling effects.
- david-gpu 2y agoThat is why international agreements like the Montreal Protocol are so important.
- revscat 2y agoThat was 40 years ago. In the interim capitalism has won and democracy is failing. Agreements like Montreal will never happen again, at least not in our lifetimes. Look no further than the failure of the Paris Agreement and the ascent of authoritarianism worldwide. No one cares about environmental agreements, certainly not those in the rarified airs of billionaires, oligarchs, and other captains 9f industry.
- Hammershaft 2y agorevenue neutral externality taxes are great policy but terrible politics...
- revscat 2y agoI personally doubt that the American government has the power to be able to do such things. Regardless, the incoming administration will under no circumstances impose such restrictions, or push for them to be created. I seem to recall that the previous Trump administration removed restrictions around asbestos, to give you an idea. Libertarians gonna libertarian. Even if it kills everyone.
- rootusrootus 2y ago> Libertarians gonna libertarian. Even if it kills everyone. Plenty of blue states have shot down additional taxes. When it comes to pigovian taxes, nearly everyone in America is a libertarian.
- revscat 2y agoOh, absolutely. If you look at voting records, the overlap between neoliberals and libertarians is incredibly strong in this regard.
- SideQuark 2y agoWe need to start making consumers pay for their negative externalities. Until the externality cost is not baked into product cost it won’t be paid for.
- Aurornis 2y agoMaking manufacturers pay is equivalent to making consumers pay. The price is passed on to the consumer. The idea of “making manufacturers pay” in commoditized markets like tires is a feel-good myth. Any additional fees will go to the consumer price.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y agoCustomers have a price ceiling though.
- SideQuark 2y agoAnd producers have a price floor. In competitive markets production costs are nearing zero long term profits for manufacturers, so the externality costs must be passed on to consumers or the good stops getting made, since running at a loss isn’t a sustainable business.
- mvkel 2y agoConsumers are ultimately the party responsible for this pollution though, so we should pay.
- Spooky23 2y agoPaying taxes doesn’t reduce the harm. You can’t change a complex system with one knob.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoRaising the cost incentivizes finding alternatives. Your statement would only be true if no alternatives are ever available.
- Aurornis 2y agoManufacturers aren’t making tires and then turning them into microplastics alone. Pretending consumers aren’t part of the problem is misleading. We could add fees to tire manufacturers, but be honest: It will just get added to the price of the tire. That’s fine if the goal is economic incentives or funding remediation, but people start to lose interest in such fines as soon as they realize it comes out of their own pockets instead of from some imagined slush fund manufacturers are keeping to themselves. (See similar problems with conversations about tariffs, which people only like until they realize they will be paying for them.)
- meowkit 2y agoIts just one disincentive. Tax driving overall to push people to more efficient (from a tire plastic/energy usage) standpoint. Use those taxes to fund public transportation.
- brianwawok 2y agoAmerica generally isn’t laid out that well for public transit. You could build it and have it for free, in many places no one would ride it.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoPublic transit only works if people don’t have an option for private travel in a luxurious car.
- _yb2s 2y agoIn this case, how can the negative externalities actually be mitigated with money? Maybe R&D to develop a less toxic tire?
- psychlops 2y agoThis seems like an easily corruptible idea. For example, who measures the negative externalities? Certainly there are many, also certain is the ambiguity in measurement. Plenty of ways to game the system and for the system to play favorites.
- hx8 2y agoIt's actually very common to fine manufacturers for negative externalities. We even tax some manufacturers for some negative externalities. For example, we have a federal tax on cigarettes that pay for some health programs.
- 123yawaworht456 2y agoyou folx really hate working class scum, don't you
- bamboozled 2y agoIsn't the plan to basically destroy all regulation in the US from Jan 2025?