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Comment by _Nat_ | Hacker News Reader

It was amusing until this part:

> There’s a message from the Fed: “You have already spent more than the $400 maximum weekly limit on fossil fuels specified in the FedWallet User Agreement. Your remaining account balance cannot be used to purchase non-renewable energy resources.

At that point, the conspiracy-theory vibe stopped seeming ironic. If the government wanted to phase out gas-usage, wouldn't they just raise gas-tax? Having cheap gas, but a sudden limit leaving motorists stranded, just seems a little too wacky, even for a thoughtless comedic argument.

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No conspiracy theory, it's all what governments - of the free-world (sic) - will be able to do. Well, it turns out they can already do many of those things, albeit not that easily: freezing assets of CBs (Russia), freezing assets and properties of protesters (Canada) ... But this is going to make things much easier for them. Instead of freezing assets (and in the case of Central Bank spending a lot of time to patch any loop hole), they will just simply press the delete button - broke a "rule", money gone.

Tracking who spend for what, where and when is the holy grail of our great democracies.

One shall not become indifferent to the upending trend of freedoms of these last 2 years

It is very common to impose rationing instead of taxation.

CAFE standards don't tax cars by fuel consumption; they ration fuel consumption. California electric bills are a mix, complicated by the quasi-governmental status of PG&E, but you can get a small ration of electricity at a high price, but anything beyond your ration comes at an extremely high price. During the late 70s energy crisis, US rationing measures limited how much fuel you could put in your car or truck not per week but per gas-station visit, resulting in truckers having to fill up their tanks only halfway at each fuel stop. California's new measure, when it goes into effect, will not tax gasoline generators; it will just prohibit selling new ones, and it's built on a regulatory framework that rations pollution rather than taxing it. Fuel rationing is also historically extremely common in wartime.

As Wes points out, one political reason for this is that rationing is felt to be less unjust than Pigovian taxation because the burden falls equally on everyone rather than disproportionately on the poor. Often this is only true in theory, as the trucker example demonstrates.

There is every reason to expect that making rationing rather than taxation easier will further increase its use as a tool of social policy.

CAFE isn't fuel-rationing.

It's a miles-per-gallon efficiency standard. And non-compliance is punished with fees -- fees that're apparently so small that some luxury-brands seem to prefer to just pay them than comply.

Leaving drivers stranded at a gas-pump, unallowed to use their own cash to buy gas, would be an entirely different thing.

My comment was unclear; I didn't mean to say it was fuel rationing. I meant to say it was fuel-inefficiency rationing. (Unfortunately, "fuel consumption" is more easily interpreted in the way I didn't intend; I meant "fuel consumption per kilometer", a concept for which I will use "lpkm" below.) Each car is allowed to consume up to a certain lpkm, averaged over the manufacturer's offerings. It's true that a strict rationing scheme would simply stop sales rather than merely levying a fine, and that being stranded on the way to work is a worse outcome than either one.

There are two key aspects of the CAFE that are more ration-like than Pigovian-tax-like:

1. The fine is zero for manufacturers whose "fleets" are more efficient than the standard requires, so it provides no incentive to reduce lpkm below the quota.

2. The quota is averaged across all the manufacturer's vehicles, so it is in a sense a per-vehicle lpkm quota that the manufacturer can choose to redirect from some vehicles to others, so a luxury car maker can evade the "tax" by merging with an economy subcompact car maker.

There's a third aspect, though, that cuts in the opposite direction. CAFE is calculated on reciprocal lpkm, so I think adding excess lpkm to an already-inefficient "fleet" costs less than adding the same excess lpkm to one that's just violating the quota. So a car maker that greatly exceeds the quota can reduce the "tax" by splitting a division that roughly meets the quota out into a separate company.

I might be miscalculating that result though.

I'm not getting the relevance.

For example, gas-stations already ration gas: they won't sell you more than so much at a time (because the pumps only go so fast). And gas-stations ration how many vehicles they'll fill (because they only have so many pumps). And they won't sell more than so much gas at a time in the event of a rush (because the gas-station only has so much available between refuels). And your car rations how much gas you're able buy at once (because the tank is only so large).

But.. I feel like that's just a framing we can push onto about anything; we're basically just looking for things to apply the word "ration" to.

Communication can be difficult. I'm sorry I wasn't able to communicate with you. I agree with your evident opinion that the things you enumerate are not rationing.

I think what OP means is that CAFE rations the rate of consumption rather than absolute quantity.

You could also ration food and other goods this way. Only X lbs of meat can be purchased per month. Only X Liters of soda. Only X rounds of ammunition.

And based on recent events in Canada, they'll definitely use: "We see you donated to a cause we don't approve of. Your account has been frozen pending review."

Yeah, there have been some quiet yet serious proposals about personal carbon rationing in recent years. People on the farther left are uncomfortable with carbon taxes or tradable credits because of inequality.

or the HN comment I read that said something along the lines of "if you buy a ferrari and it's not electric, you should be arrested"

Tradable credits will happen no matter what.

Let's say we impose a $100/week gas limit via CBDC. Immediately I would list ads on CL to trade my $100 credits for $200.

Gov can't stop it. Rationing just breeds further market inefficiencies.

In this scenario, gov could easily penalize or ration conversions to cash, limiting this escape hatch. They wouldn't go that way immediately because outrage, but it'd get increasingly doable and tempting as people get used to CBDC. (Lots of precedent for this pattern.) I've already read one economist's proposal to tax cash withdrawals in order to support negative interest rates, a couple years ago.

Agreed. It would be a cat & mouse game.

Instead of cash trades, the gas-consumer could buy me a $200 Amazon gift card, etc. with their CBDC. There are always ways around restrictions, especially when people that aren't deterred by illegality and jail time like me exist. It would be an arms race.

You can use damn carbon taxes to pay out a carbon ubi that democratized pollution rights.

For some reason everyone wants an autocratic economy.

How is it much different than someone's SNAP card being shut off? We already limit the amount and type of food that the poor can purchase with their Fedbuxx. Fuel seems like a logical next step.

or "We have detected you are spreading disinformation about anti-depressants and we suspect you have purchased illegal psilocybin mushrooms. Your credit score has been negatively impacted, and you are required to purchase FDA approved anti-depressants. We are trying to help you."

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