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Comment by ipqk | Hacker News Reader

You don't have to "take away" the trucks, but just make them more impractical:

- sales tax on cars/trucks is by weight and exponentially increases the heavier the vehicle gets

- increase taxes on gasoline

- require a special license to operate a vehicle over XXXX lbs.

- rewrite laws or encourage DAs to prosecute drivers that injure other people in cars or pedestrians even if it's unintentional

- illegal to have passengers in the truck bed (some states still allow this).

These are just off the top of my head.

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Do you really think what you're suggesting doesn't map to "taking away" to the people involved?

News flash: People aren't stupid, and you're not that smart. NFA tax stamps aren't still a thing because people don't see the tax loopholes as a ban or infringement on the 2nd Amendment. They absolutely do. They've just grudgingly accepted there may be some positive utility to it. What you're talkong about is nothing but velvet gloved taking by policy.

And other posters are right. It'd be a shitstorm.

Yes it would be a shitstorm, but only because some grown adults act like big babies. None of these ideas are "taking away," they are merely requiring that people finally take some personal responsibility for their actions.

And the sort of person that is big about "personal responsibility" for others but calls personal responsibility for themselves "taking away" is actually somewhat stupid in their hypocrisy.

Unless all that "personal responsibility" is actually just backwards justification for a system that's rigged against people without wealth and power and the right skin color, but it couldn't be that could it?

Have you seen what pickemuptrucks cost these days? None of these financial changes would matter.

People will wail and cry and scream about their freedom being taken from them...

Do a Carbon Dividend and other people will scream when taking away the gas tax means taking away the dividend.

We need to stop these cowardly politics appeasing automobile users. This is how.

Because it is in fact taking away their freedom

The public roadways have never been especially free, not as in beer nor as in speech. It's a pretty unfortunate choice of setting for expressing individualism. Many have put some of their identity into how or what they drive anyway, of course.

sure, although metaphorically salting the earth through global warming for future generations arguably is also taking away freedom

Yes: Their freedom to pollute the environment and to endanger other people's lives. Hey, there are laws against murder and robbery too. "How dare they take away my freedom to relieve others of their life and property!"

Perhaps it's time Americans stopped reacting like conditioned Pavlovian dogs to the mere word "freedom"? Not all "freedoms" are unequivocally good.

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