Netherlands To Tax Drivers By the Kilometer | Hacker News Reader

Netherlands To Tax Drivers By the Kilometer

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13 pointskgermino19 comments

The Dutch government is batting 10 for 10 when it comes to pushing through legislation that mocks the idea of privacy openly. Another stellar idea they had: gather fingerprints for every single person in the country and store them in a central database. I know it sounds like a bad joke, but it's not (http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2009/09/fingerprints_i...). The law was passed without any problem, and only now privacy groups are fighting back.

It's scary when your government is so obviously looking out for itself, rather than you, and failing to even see the difference. After all, what's good for the government is good for the people, eh?

Honest question, can you or someone explain to me why is fingerprinting everyone bad? And if so, how does it weigh against benefits that gives to effectives of police? Where I live we all have unique citizen no.'s and fingerprinting is mandatory when issuing an ID card (also mandatory) for I believe 60 years already, and no problem whatsoever.

Where?

California also requires a fingerprint to get a driver's license

Croatia, and before that ex Yugoslavia.

I've already decided to literally give them the finger when the time comes to renew my passport.

This it's been done with every newborn in a few European states for a few years

Doesn't the gasoline tax we pay in the US accomplish the exact same thing without all the fancy GPS and central data gathering business?

No. If reducing emissions is the goal, gas taxes are actually superior because the price is proportional the emissions you make. This tax doesn't provide a disincentive against gas guzzlers, but they already have insanely high gas taxes in Europe. To me, this seems like a supremely over-engineered means of taxation.

But if reducing congestion is also a goal, as the second sentence of the article states, a per-kilometer tax is superior. A GPS-based system can also target those who drive at peak hours and on congested roads. Given that the Netherlands is small and population-dense, they might be very interested in reducing congestion.

One problem with that is, that you can't increase the tax too much or many people will refuel across the border and evade your tax that way. After all its a small country.

They already have high fuel taxes there compared to the US. The majority of the cost of fuel is tax pretty much anywhere in Europe.

Apart from hating the big brother aspects of this, it won't reduce greenhouse gas as effectively. Fuel taxation would do the same thing and be more efficient at reducing CO2.

The GPS is clever for reducing congestion, but I doubt they're able to evaluate if you're not contributing by, say, taking back roads to work. EZPass or license cams would be better for congestion charges.

It's a stupid approach and it will never see the light of day.

NL has a long history of spending lots of money on large infrastructural projects that get abandoned. But I'm sure some big contractors will clean up on it.

Until not that long ago we had a complete lock complex sitting at the head of a non-existent channel...

Lets hope so. Now that the government is tracking everyone on public transport with the "OV Chipkaart", and is going to track everyone in cars, there is no easy way for normal citizens to move across the country anonymously. Of course big criminals will have no problem avoiding being tracked.

Phone, internet, passport, transport, health care, cameras everywhere. When do I get a free webcam for my home? Why is the government so afraid of us?

I live in Amsterdam. The public transportation has a similar system: pay for each kilometer you travel. The system is pretty complicated and user unfriendly (I lost twice 4.75€ due to some confusion). I believe they want some fairness, but if you ask me, the old system (pay per travel) was better.

"Each vehicle will be equipped with a GPS device that tracks how many kilometres are driven and when and where. This data will be then be sent to a collection agency that will send out the bill"

I'm far more concerned about the implementation than the concept.

This does not seem to reward fuel-efficient vehicles that get more mileage per unit of fuel.

love the photo of a 'traffic jam' - they should visit Auckland sometime - they'd probably call that a parking lot ;-)

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