"Commercial trucks should bear the fair costs to make it equitable"
Who do we think those costs will be passed on to....
Who do we think those costs will be passed on to....
Those costs are ALREADY passed on to everyone, that's the entire problem! Externalized costs are still costs, someone (or everyone) must still pay them. But when they're externalities instead of internalized, then they're hidden (which leads to gross inefficiency) and they're imposed on people who get no benefit and no choice (which is theft). Mass pollution is literally stealing money and life from a population and inefficiently funneling some of that back to the thief/thieves. It's as if transport companies were stealing 50% of the fuel they used to fill their trucks, and people came along saying "you need to pay for all the fuel you use", and then you argued against that saying "well who do we think those costs will be passed on to...."
When the costs are built into the price, then the direct participants pay, that filters out, and everyone can see exactly what they are and are appropriately incentivized to search for solutions to reduce them, same as every other cost that goes into a good or service. The Free Market is essentially a massively distributed constraint solver, and the "invisible hand of the market" is the cumulative billions of independent actions taken by participants in response to the system constraints and what they know. To function sustainably and efficiently, there has to be a high degree of information symmetry and cost internalization, or else decisions will obviously be distorted.
If one is worried about cost burdens, the best general place is direct unencumbered monetary payment to end consumers in need [0]. That is both very low administrative overhead, and still leaves them in a position to make the most efficient decisions for their own personal situation and fully reward producers who do a better job and reducing costs/improving quality.
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0: Or arguably even better, a universal flat payment to the whole population, but the politics of that are harder.
> Those costs are ALREADY passed on to everyone, that's the entire problem!
I think, you're confused about "the entire problem" - it's not that "costs are ALREADY passed on to everyone" it's about the alternative approach leading to the same result.
Actually, now the costs are passed mostly to drivers, in the case of making trucking pay more, they will be passed to all consumers, a minor difference.
> If one is worried about cost burdens, the best general place is direct unencumbered monetary payment to end consumers in need.
And the cost of that subsidy will be passed to? ... Again, everyone else of course. No change in actual outcome.
I'm not saying all subsidies are bad and I hate toxic fumes as much as anyone but solving these problems requires an approach much deeper than rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.
Prioritize routes that have higher-quality roads, rather than just going the fastest from point A to point B.
Improve emissions.
Reallocate loads where possible and helpful.
So I gotta ask:
What solution would you actually propose?
Do you genuinely think that the system as it exists today is the best it could ever possibly be?
Do you think we should be removing regulations? Sure, that would mean that big companies have even more freedom to ruin our roads and wreck our health, but hey, maybe an extra 3% of small businesses might be able to become profitable!
Because I'm pretty sick of people pushing the idea that any change we make to improve things is necessarily going to backfire and we're just too stupid and naïve to see it.
That's the opposite of my position, adding regulations can work both ways, I meant it the other way around.
> Do you genuinely think that the system as it exists today is the best it could ever possibly be?
Again, the opposite of what I said. Improving the system requires systematic approach, fixing here and there without it results in a mess worse than before.
> Sure, that would mean that big companies have even more freedom to ruin our roads and wreck our health, but hey, maybe an extra 3% of small businesses might be able to become profitable!
Removing the income of "extra 3%" which is many thousands people for a rather minuscule, supposed reduction of pollution isn't worth the tradeoffs. If you can't solve the big problem don't mess with an already unstable system - fix the system first.
> Because I'm pretty sick of people pushing the idea that any change we make to improve things
We're where we are because of much emotion and many changes to improve things, to paraphrase, The road to hell is covered with many changes to improve things. This is what happens without a systematic approach to improvement.
And no one is going to build rails to such areas like the 500 people living in Aniak, Alaska, or similar.
Edge cases shouldn’t determine our infrastructure and hybrid models have always been the norm.
Rail is not perfect for everything; however, it is a heck of a lot better than 100+ trucks all driving to the same place that a single train could go much more efficiently.
Ships aren't perfect either, but you don't see anyone driving a truck across the pacific do you?
Replace the majority of trucks with rail and use trucks for last mile (from the rail terminal to delivery point), or truly remote deliveries (from the nearest rail yard! even if that is 500 miles away).
To be fair, there's a counterargument - namely, that people who live a long ways away from infrastructure have been forced to by the very NIMBYs who made it illegal to build more homes where the infrastructure already exists. Population density near some BART stations is scandalously low.
If they could put this much rail up 100 years ago, its a cop out to say its too difficult today with equipment able to lift the equivalent of 1000 men.
If you forced trucks to pay for the damage they do to roads rail freight would be far more competitive.