Posted on 10/27/2010 11:10:25 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Yup. I agree completely.
All of the suggestions, and they are splendid, do not take in to account that we will be a petro-based world for at least the next 150 years, for which there are more than adequate supplies.
Actually, that's not correct; they do, but I don't address that specifically here. Most of what I was writing about in this excerpt is addressing congestion induced by unnecessary trips, which is far more expensive than fuel consumption, particularly where real estate costs are high. The point was to get people thinking about multidisciplinary approaches to problems through libertarian principles, to show that they can and do work.
IMHO, the biggest macro-economic calamity to hit the Western World is the phenomenon of the two-income family.
The purpose of which was to have the government raising the kids, a communist goal which would have horrified America only forty years ago.
Tax policy? It is against the two-income family already.
It's against families period.
Robert Poole's solutions don't exactly strike me as left-wing. However, it has been said that the Reason Foundation is a corporate front for international toll road companies.
And I thought it was called the Houston Comical.
But even accounting for those factors, something like 60% of fossil fuels are consumed by transportation and 60% of transportation is commuting to work and school. So eliminate even 40% of the commuting and you've eliminated, or at least postponed, the need for new roads, new sources of fossil fuel and all the problems attendant thereto.
The biggest barrier to such an outcome is, of course, government. Fewer people moving about mean fewer sources of revenue from gas taxes and payroll taxes because, face it, many jobs depend on the need for people to be constantly moving about and support the transportation infrastructure which bleeds much of that income off these same people.
Better batteries charged by nuclear power.
The Carbuncle (a pus filled boil) is better when looking a the foul opinions they publish instead of news.
Either way, they lost another 10% of readership this year alone. Good riddance !
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