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.
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.
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.
EDIT: There is a fixed VAT charge of 5% on electricity, as well as a currently 16% levy on electricity to cover various environmental and social benefit schemes. Which is hilarious, as the UK is moving away from fossil fuels for its electrical generation mix, while taxing electricity consumption much more than it taxes gas (5% VAT and 5.5% levies). This punishes those using electricity for heating and incentivizes people to continue using gas at home. This is on top of the fact that currently, gas is much cheaper (in unit rate, per kWh) than electricity. It's like they can't make up their mind on what they want to accomplish. For fuel, the tax is currently just under £0.53/L with 20% VAT added on top of the total as well.
PS: electricity is hard as there's a lot of volatile renewables, but I bet is still way easier than clever formulas.
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_Switzerl...
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?
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).
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.
Not politicians, experts and administrators.
And yes, most people are limited in knowledge and vision. Look no further than Brexit, where the average UK citizen couldn't comprehend the complexity of the situation or the question, yet voted. The most asked question on Google the day after the vote was what is the EU... And it took years to begin to untangle the mess.
And again, look at Switzerland and their human rights travesty of not allowing half their population to vote because the existing voters said no.
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.
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.
> 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.
No, it doesn't. People being educated doesn't make them homogeneous.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
"Degree of coverage of motorised road traffic infrastructure costs: 111%"
Gasoline is regulated both by federal, local, and state laws.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/fuels-enforcment-pr...
https://www.wearethepractitioners.com/index.php/topics/art-a...
Editorialized: US "gas" is cheap crap
from 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.
Cleetus McFarland ran a car on brake-clean which has really low octane rating so sure anything works if you care about nothing. https://youtu.be/0hYOgGYQ_c8
American big block naturally aspirated engines will be tuned for crap fuel, if you've got a modern efficient turbo engine you should buy premium fuel to not ruin your engine.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1270-dece...
Modern engines will pull back timing and decrease efficiency to prevent breaking down, raising the bar is in everyone's best interest, except the fat and happy Oil companies.