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Why do we still allow drivers to externalize most of the costs associated with cars? There is existing technology to extract co2 from the atmosphere, and the cu
by dukoid 1y ago
Why do we still allow drivers to externalize most of the costs associated with cars? There is existing technology to extract co2 from the atmosphere, and the current cost of this should be the free market-based price for co2 emissions.
- SkiFire13 1y agoBecause drivers are still a majority of the population, so this would be wildly unpopular
- dfxm12 1y agoGovernments do a lot of wildly unpopular things. I can't speak specifically for Switzerland, but one recent example is UK's Online Safety Act 2023. Even related to drivers, speed cameras are enabled despite being unpopular.
- sofixa 1y agoUnfortunately, that's not how Switzerland operates, because it's a very direct democracy where the status quo and the will of the majority takes priority over common sense and long term thinking. Full franchise (women being allowed to vote) didn't happen in all cantons until the 1990s (after it being made possible in the 1970s), because the existing voters (men) just voted against it.
- dotancohen 1y agoEven disregarding your quip about when women got the vote, your post reads like another anti-Western agenda post that has become very popular in the past two years.
- bondarchuk 1y agoIt's true though, quite amazingly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...
- dotancohen 1y agoWhy do you double down on this when I specifically disregarded that aspect of your comment from my post? And why is pointing out anti-Western agenda posts always met with multiple simultaneous downvotes, whereas my other unpopular opinions are downvoted one by one?
- bondarchuk 1y agoBecause I (different person btw) was curious about whether it was true, that's all, no further "agenda". There's some discussion on the talk page btw about whether or not it is indeed attributable to direct democracy btw.
- rented_mule 1y ago> And why is pointing out anti-Western agenda posts always met with multiple simultaneous downvotes Maybe because acknowledging flaws in "y" is not necessarily "anti-y"? In fact, it is often "pro-y". I want to improve things I care about. A critical part of that is identifying flaws so they can be learned from and sometimes fixed.
- mikestew 1y agoAnd why is pointing out anti-Western agenda… Perhaps folks don’t feel as if that’s what you’re actually pointing out. The post you replied to was referring to the direct democracy of Switzerland, not castigating all of Western society. I mean, from my point of view, by “disregarding” you basically ignored the entire point of the comment to support a narrative.
- dkiebd 1y agoI completely reject the notion that direct democracy is bad because Politicians Know Better. It’s borderline if not completely authoritarian and frankly disgusting. Maybe consider that Switzerland is one of the best if not the best country in the world because people can choose what they want it to be.
- Avicebron 1y agoThis issue with direct democracies is that the they can get out of hand pretty fast unless your population is somewhat homogenous and reasonable. Aka Switzerland. If you're too young to remember twitch plays Pokémon, that's direct democracy and it was wild. A direct democracy could decide tomorrow that we wanted to fuck China sideways with nukes because it's funny and based all because a tiktok went viral.
- 1718627440 1y agoI think people rule differently depending on how much impact it has. People claiming "We should nuke them" knowing it will never happen is very different from them really deciding on that matter.
- sofixa 1y ago> This issue with direct democracies is that the they can get out of hand pretty fast unless your population is somewhat homogenous and reasonable. Aka Switzerland Sorry, but that's just a racist dogwhistle. Switzerland has four main ethnic groups, and has had multiple rounds of migration (e.g. after the Yugoslav wars). Look at their various national sporting teams. Just because you can't look past people's skin colour that doesn't make them "homogeneous". You need an educated and engaged populace that understands their civic duties.
- Avicebron 1y agoI left out race specifically to plumb for people whose mind jumps and fixates on that > educated and engaged populace that understands their civic duties. This describes a homogeneous group. An environment that cultivates this unilaterally (relative to an arbitrary standard), is by definition more homogeneous than one that does not. It's a politics, standard of living, and equality economics dogwhistle that has nothing to do with race.
- lclc 1y agoYes, how horrible when people get to have a say. Where will this end? In the case of Switzerland, it's ending up as one of the wealthiest countries, with a median wealth of $182,248 per adult. Also, since when is a political ruling class known for long-term thinking? Besides, cars are already taxed based on weight/power (what you considered common sense).
- qcnguy 1y agoThat's because women themselves voted against it. Which is actually the history of the female franchise everywhere. The suffragettes were reduced to bombing campaigns because fellow women did not agree that women should be allowed to vote. In the UK it was only WW1 that changed things. Maybe in the UK female franchise would also have been much delayed if not for the huge social upheavals caused by the world wars.
- tzs 1y ago> That's because women themselves voted against it That's rather confusing. If women didn't have the right to vote, how would they be able to vote on the question of whether or not to grant women the right to vote?
- 1718627440 1y agoPublic opinion and newspaper influence. I think the idea that any policy is about a male/female divide is wrong. I also think, that women in the past having no influence on politics only because they weren't putting their name on documents, is flawed.
- n4r9 1y ago> women themselves voted against it Do you have a source for this? According to Wikipedia, > An earlier referendum on women's suffrage was held on 1 February 1959 and was rejected by the majority (67%) of Switzerland's men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...
- komali2 1y agoIt appears that 200,000 people live in Geneva, and daily there are 700,000 "boarding passengers" in Geneva, which I take to mean that if someone transfers a bus, they get counted twice. That said, I suspect based on these numbers that the vast majority of the population are also public transit users. https://opendata.tpg.ch/pages/accueil/ https://opendata.tpg.ch/pages/accueil/
- dmoy 1y agoGeneva Metro area has a million people. Still could be a majority of people using public transit. If true, I suspect it's not the vast majority though Switzerland as a whole is still majority car commuters I think.
- dfxm12 1y agoAuto industry is pretty powerful, worldwide, but also particularly locally around Switzerland. I mean powerful enough to shape people's opinions and sway regulations.
- pkulak 1y agoThat is crazy to me that the country with a national identity built around trains also has a powerful car lobby. You really can’t escape it.
- Vegenoid 1y agoAutomobiles are extremely seductive. They offer a lot of benefit to an individual. The trouble comes when everyone is using cars, at which point their advantages to the individual are substantially diminished, and their harms to the populace substantially magnified. A thing like this is tough to stop, because by the time you really want to stop it, it's entrenched.
- theappsecguy 1y agoThis is a very naive take. For one, we don't do this because a lot of people in a lot of places have no other choice. Not everyone lives in a developed European country, good luck living without a car in Texas.
- lucb1e 1y ago> a lot of people in a lot of places have no other choice. Not everyone lives in a developed European country Then let's start with the people from developed European countries who can afford this and built it out from there. "I have no choice but to pollute your planet" is a bit of a thin argument to me, surely we can (as a society) find a way to make that not necessary. Collect funds, build the system we want, use it. That's the point of a government, it doesn't exist just because we like to pay taxes
- dukoid 1y agoI am not arguing against cars. I am just arguing against the "right" to pollute the environment without taking responsibility for adequate cleanup.
- const_cast 1y agoThe reason we have so many cars in Texas is because we don't pay the costs. Source: I live in Texas. Part of the problem of automobiles is that we put the industry on such extreme welfare that it makes no sense to do anything else. If we remove that welfare, the industry will be forced to shift.
- misja111 1y agoI'm not sure if you're referring to the article, but that was about Ozone pollution. In most countries cars are already taxed, in Switzerland as well. The tax is proportional to the weight of the car, so it compensates for higher fuel consumption. For similar reasons, EV's are taxed less.
- aaronmdjones 1y agoIn the UK, VED is based on the vehicle's CO2 emissions per kilometre traveled under prescribed driving conditions. This means the registered keepers of EVs (and some hybrid ICE/EVs) pay nothing. There are talks about scrapping this system as more and more of the country transitions to EVs, and taxing them by vehicle weight instead (the same way driving licences are classed). This would reverse the current status quo, with EV owners paying the most due to the greater weight of their vehicles. I'm not sure I like that idea, but I also appreciate that as the revenue goes down under the current scheme, they may feel tempted to introduce something even worse to make up the deficit instead, like a tax per mile traveled.
- connicpu 1y agoSome states in the US with large numbers of EV drivers are already kinda doing this. I now have to pay a flat EV tax on my registration, although it's still less than I'd pay annually in gas tax if I drove an ICE car.
- lupusreal 1y agoThose taxes pay for road upkeep, as well as other state programs, but not carbon sequestration.
- connicpu 1y agoAnd I don't believe any states manage to cover the full cost of just their infrastructure and upkeep through use taxes (gas tax, registration, tolls). Non-drivers still end up subsidizing the remainder.
- smsm42 1y agoGas and cars are already heavily taxed. In California, for example, it's 61c per gallon now. I am not sure what's the situation in Switzerland, but last time I have been in Europe gas prices there was very significantly higher than in the US (even in California). Given as European gas doesn't seem to be a different product than US gas, I have to conclude Europeans already pay a lost of costs when buying gas. Same with car prices. So claiming car drivers do not pay the costs is just plain wrong.
- pkulak 1y agoThat 61 cents doesn’t even come close to covering road maintenance, let alone pollution and every other negative externality of personal car use.
- bkettle 1y ago> So claiming car drivers do not pay the costs is just plain wrong. We can’t determine that that is the case simply because the cost seems like a lot. California has the highest gas taxes in the US, so even if California is correctly pricing the externalities of consuming a gallon of gas (which I very much doubt), the rest of the country is under-pricing those externalities. The EU has a minimum gas tax of $1.60 per gallon, so if they are correctly pricing the externalities, California must be under-pricing them by over half.
- lillecarl 1y agoIt is a different product, across the world. In Sweden you can't buy anything below 95 octane whereas I've seen 89 in Australia and 87 seems to be common in USA according to Claude. Editorialized: US "gas" is cheap crap
- striking 1y ago> An octane rating, or octane number, is a standard measure of a fuel's ability to withstand compression in an internal combustion engine without causing engine knocking. The higher the octane number, the more compression the fuel can withstand before detonating. Octane rating does not relate directly to the power output or the energy content of the fuel per unit mass or volume, but simply indicates the resistance to detonating under pressure without a spark. from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating It just lets higher performance cars achieve higher compression ratios. I believe technically this means it has a little bit less raw combustion potential the higher the octane rating. But none of this actually matters in practice as long as you feed your car what it asks for.
- MangoToupe 1y agoI'm not sure I trust either consumers or market effects well enough to rationally move away from car usage.
- bevr1337 1y ago> There is existing technology to extract co2 Source? As I understand it, co2 sequestration is still in R&D and not viable at scale. We can hit neutral, like a tree does, but that doesn't improve the situation. Like desalination, it sure seems like an easy problem but is not.
- lupusreal 1y ago> As I understand it, co2 sequestration is still in R&D and not viable at scale. I'm sure he knows. He's just tacitly saying cars should be defacto banned for anybody who's not a multimillionaire. The reason this isn't done is because trying something like that is how you lose elections. So really it's a fantasy about having authoritarian control over everybody else.
- SilverElfin 1y agoWhy single out cars? I may like using cars to get to destinations. Maybe you walk but do other things that have various environmental impacts like having kids or buying trendy clothes or pick something else. It seems unfair to let some people externalize their life’s costs but charge others.
- adolph 1y ago> existing technology to extract co2 from the atmosphere I wonder what would be the energy cost of onboard co2 extraction for vehicles? Could there be a theoretical automobile that used a carbon-oxygen cycle fuel but which emitted nothing, where a "gas station" would push fuel into the vehicle and then pull out the stored material that was formerly emissions?