At least where I live, both the local Edison, and the water company base their rates on how much you use. Stay below a certain pre-determined limit and you pay one rate for the month. Go over that limit, and you’ll incur a surcharge for all those long showers and never turning the basement light off because it’s just too creepy down there. This works out to be an effective way of encouraging conservation and staving off the need to build new power plants or start towing icebergs from the arctic. And it’s easy to do because the users are stationary and constantly metered.But would something similar work for petrol? Imagine if you would, paying a discounted $3.00 a gallon for gas because your car gets over 40 MPG highway. Now imagine a surcharge for your neighbor – oh, let’s call him Frat-boy Biff – and he pays six bucks a gallon because his Suburban sucks the dead dino juice to the tune of 18 MPG. Frat-boy Biff pays more because he uses more, and his overly consumptive behavior means that he is forced to subsidize your fuel cost, making it cheaper for you. Ha, ha, sucker. That would not only encourage conservation but it would get a lot of those massive SUVs that are so hard to see around off the road. Naturally, there would be concession’s for commercial vehicles, and old people too, because you don’t want to piss off the fogies.
How would you do this? The same way that the Quik-Pass lets you rocket through toll booths secure in the knowledge that at the end of the month you’ll receive a tidy bill in the mail, and not a summons for a court appearance. RF transceivers tied into the car’s OBD II or some other system would broadcast to the pump what it was and hence what to charge. The surcharge would be collected, and the discount would be applied through a virtual escrow account. The gas stations and oil companies would still get their asking price, this would be separate from the transaction.
Why would you want to do this? Well, if you’re one of the unlucky ones saddled with a gas hog, then you wouldn’t, but then you don’t have to participate – there’s always Canada. Kidding. As social engineering, it would be an effective way to shift the country to smaller more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, and as those cars demand less gas, by Keysian logic, supply would exceed demand and the price of gas would stabilize, or not increase quite as fast.
Now, for those of you sharpening your pitchforks and lighting your toiletpaper wads on sticks, yeah, it’s a radical idea. It’s also one that those who typically would rather harm themselves than do anything that is socially responsible deride as Socialism, a term that has been dusted off and is being used as the new boogie man without significant regard to its actual applicability.
We have other forms of social contract – smoking constraints and, of course, speed limits – that attempt to moderate and sustain the social order, and while you might grumble about each, it’s the glue that keeps us together. But would you buy into this kind of contract to keep gas prices from going all Europe on us? Yes, the current rise in pump prices is being caused by investor speculation, not supply constraints, but the fact remains that we could stand to push back from the energy table earlier and more often than we now do. If not this way, how would you suggest we become less-consumptive of liquid dinosaur?
How would you do this? The same way that the Quik-Pass lets you rocket through toll booths secure in the knowledge that at the end of the month you’ll receive a tidy bill in the mail, and not a summons for a court appearance. RF transceivers tied into the car’s OBD II or some other system would broadcast to the pump what it was and hence what to charge. The surcharge would be collected, and the discount would be applied through a virtual escrow account. The gas stations and oil companies would still get their asking price, this would be separate from the transaction.
Why would you want to do this? Well, if you’re one of the unlucky ones saddled with a gas hog, then you wouldn’t, but then you don’t have to participate – there’s always Canada. Kidding. As social engineering, it would be an effective way to shift the country to smaller more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, and as those cars demand less gas, by Keysian logic, supply would exceed demand and the price of gas would stabilize, or not increase quite as fast.Now, for those of you sharpening your pitchforks and lighting your toiletpaper wads on sticks, yeah, it’s a radical idea. It’s also one that those who typically would rather harm themselves than do anything that is socially responsible deride as Socialism, a term that has been dusted off and is being used as the new boogie man without significant regard to its actual applicability.
We have other forms of social contract – smoking constraints and, of course, speed limits – that attempt to moderate and sustain the social order, and while you might grumble about each, it’s the glue that keeps us together. But would you buy into this kind of contract to keep gas prices from going all Europe on us? Yes, the current rise in pump prices is being caused by investor speculation, not supply constraints, but the fact remains that we could stand to push back from the energy table earlier and more often than we now do. If not this way, how would you suggest we become less-consumptive of liquid dinosaur?
Image sources: [Skeptically.org, bigpicture.com]
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