DoomYoshi wrote:Step one: make single family homes illegal.
Step two: stop all immigration, so less people want more houses.
Gas taxes don't make any sense. Even if it was a million dollars per liter, I still need to drive to work every day and Timmies 3 times a day. Oil is one of those products that does not have a cost-demand relationship. In theory people could move closer etc. However, it's cheaper to buy a mansion and drive a Ferrari into Toronto than it is to live in Toronto.
Oil certainly does have a cost-demand relationship. Not just in driving: before the Arab Oil Embargo of '72, most people kept their home thermostats at 75 or 73. Then most people went to 70, and the common recommended thermostat setting was 68. Eventually 68 became common, and then 64 and even 60.
If gas was a million dollars per litre, you would certainly ride a bicycle to work. Or walk, or take a bus, or find a closer job even if it meant working for less money.
But what individuals can do is just the tip of the iceberg. Companies could also take initiatives. There used to be tax breaks for companies that organized car pools and many companies did. Then the tax breaks went away and they stopped. If gas had a serious price tag attached, good car pool programs would become a selling point for companies when seeking employees and they'd again have an incentive to organize them.
But it's more than that. You at least do a job for which you have to be physically present, but many people don't. There's no reason whatsoever for clerks, accountants, programmers, writers, and a whole host of other job descriptions to physically travel at all. We've had the technology for 30 years or more for most office jobs to be done remotely (and paperlessly, too!) but companies keep demanding that these people be physically present in the office, just because they're a little easier to supervise that way. If driving to work became a serious expense, there would again be a lot more pressure on companies to create opportunities for remote work. The revolution that's been delayed by 30 years could finally get underway.
Hell, even if all you did was push a bunch of urban cowboy wannabes out of their Silverados and into Corollas, you'd be saving about 20% of the fuel they're burning now.
In summary, at least a third of the North American workforce shouldn't be traveling to work at all, but working remotely. Of the rest, the lion's share could take transit, carpool, walk, or ride bikes. Of the very few left who live so far from anything that none of those is an option, they could at least drive something smaller than they do now.
But people driving to work is far from the whole story. Companies used to buy things in bulk, ship them by the most efficient means possible -- ship, train, or truck only as a last resort -- and store them. But then somebody came up with the idea of Just-In-Time inventory control. Companies could order only what they needed for the week and save themselves the warehousing cost. Then a week became a day, then a day became a shift, then a shift became a half-shift. Quite literally. Many factories now order only enough supplies for four hours and expect one truck waiting at the dock at the start of the shift and another one waiting there after lunch.
That incredible swarm of trucks moving down the 401 every day are mostly rushing goods to Just-in-Time customers. The loss in efficiency is incredible. For starters, trucks use 10 times more fuel per tonne mile than trains do. (
US figures here) (Ships are even more efficient, but not everyone is lucky enough to have a canal in their back yard, so we'll just compare trucks to trains.) But the extra fuel burned is only part of the problem. The never-ending expansion of the highway system burns incredible amounts of crude oil in the form of asphalt and the energy needed to maintain it. The bulldozing of forests to make room for the highways is a further environmental disaster. The companies that adopted Just-In-Time inventory practice weren't really saving money. They were just downloading their costs onto the taxpayers. Because railroads are built by private investors but highways are built by the taxpayers, the Just-In-Time revolution wasn't just an environmental disaster, but a fiscal disaster too.
I would roll back the Just-In-Time revolution with a flat tax per tonne-mile of cargo, with rebates for being efficient. Order only full truckloads, get 20% back. Ship your stuff by train instead, get 60% back. Ship your stuff by ship only, get 95% back. Send it on a sailing vessel, get complete remission of the tax.
But ultimately even that's not enough. Ultimately we need to make less shit. There's no reason for every house to have four different wide-screen TVs. People were happier when the whole family gathered around a 14" black-and-white. There's no reason for people to have a complete wardrobe change every three months. If the stuff isn't full of holes you don't need to replace it. (And those who assuage their guilt by donating their old shit should know that
84% goes to the landfill anyway.) There's no good reason for people to have "living" rooms full of furniture that nobody uses. There's no reason for paved driveways; gravel driveways work just fine and in fact reduce stress on the environment by sending water into the ground instead of into the sewers. There's no reason for frozen sausage to come in three layers of packaging -- one is plenty, two is a luxury, three is just idiotic.
Our entire system -- governments, NGOs, academia, business, religion, social clubs -- have to stop obsessing about Growth and think that maybe we're big enough already. Or maybe it would be nice to get a bit smaller....
Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 11:54 pm
