Trying to save $$$ with a hybrid? Well tough luck!

Try a hybrid / electric vehicle tax!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/04/28/hybrid-taxes-gas-tax-highway-funding/2110297/

All you selfish assholes trying to conserve energy are lowering tax revenue for your state and highway system! You should be ashamed of yourself! That's why we need gas guzzlers: to keep the government road system alive. :bobby:

Gee, maybe the funding policy needs an adjustment to keep up with the times. Don'tcha think?

Gotta love that government.... They become dependent on certain taxes to the point they're halting human advancement. Seems like a never ending cycle.

I wonder if these issues present valid arguments for changing the whole way the roadway systems are funded.

 

I really don't think private ownership is the solution here, which is probably what you're getting at.

The solution is to restructure communities so people are less dependent on vehicles in general... private ownership of the road would just mean more toll booths and fewer repairs to the roads, and it would end up costing even more.

If privately owned major roads was ever a good idea profit-wise, the capitalists would have already seized control just like they have done with the plum production roles in society.

 

Less dependent on personal transport?
Yeah that's why we have personal transport, because public transport is disgusting.

 

cut the governors pay check and use it to [pave the roads] DUH..

 

I think that'd be grossly undermining what they actually get paid. For instance there is a house here with a drive way, a single drive way, it is about 70meters and it cost the owners €300,000 to have it paved.

 

Not necessarily. I'm advocating open discussion and idea exchange.

What draws you to that conclusion? Have privatized roadways ever been attempted at a city sized scale?

Most public transportation vehicles rely on the same roadways that survive on gasoline taxes. Somehow, I doubt the sales of bus tickets alone will be enough to maintain all the roadways.

 

Well, judging by your post history I felt pretty safe in assuming where you stand. But yes, I think open discussion is a good thing.

See, yeah... I figured that this was where you stand.

No, it hasn't been attempted on a large scale-- probably because it's such an absurd idea.

Without there being tax revenue, people would have to pay to use the roads.

It would be impossible for poor people to afford it-- the money they save in taxes wouldn't likely be able to pay the road tolls. So even if they could somehow afford a car, they wouldn't be able to use the road. If they're sick, they wouldn't be able to get to the hospital.

And a private highway is a monopoly. If it is owned privately, then it's not like another corporation (and it would be the corporations who owned these things) can build another highway next to it. Unless you want the entire country to be nothing more than a series of highways that completely destroys the environment forever, there could be NO competition.

You would have corporations strategically buying up roads in an attempt to bankrupt/disrupt the workability of their competitors-- say 2 car manufacturers are competing and one of them owns the only road into town... the other company can either bribe the government to create a parallel road, force their employees to move to a different part of town, create apartments in their factories, or they end up paying their competitor a fee that could end up bankrupting them.

 

Who knows? It's never been attempted before. How can anyone make conclusions without conducting a trial?

I'm not a hardcore advocate of privatizing all the roads like a typical libertarian as I can see the advantages and disadvantages. I actually have mixed opinions on this issue. I'm ok with some sort of balance if that's achievable. Tolls nowadays could be read with fab ID tags you can attach to your windshield, which means booths and stopping points are becoming obsolete.

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I don't think it would result in a 15 lane highway consisting of 3 or more different sponsors all over the place. Some places it's geologically impossible. It seems that building more lanes for traffic in places where traffic doesn't need extra relief, only for the sake of competition, would be completely redundant and wasteful (like you say). I'd predict the road maintenance and construction companies would probably try to compete for time duration contracts to acquire certain roads for a given length of time. That's how contract-related business works. An example of this would be how Nike recently acquired the contract to make all the jerseys for the entire NFL, which was something that Reebok had been doing for decades. Perhaps there'd be competitive pricing for the motorists and other users of the road.

We could keep things the way they are: we could jack up the gas tax to keep up with fuel efficient technologies; we could allow a tax on electric vehicles and hybrids (not to mention kill the existing tax write-offs to purchase one), or we could take it a step further by taxing bicycles or even tax shoes to pay for sidewalks. Hell they could get orwellian enough to tax you based on the amount of miles you've traveled and how fast you drive.

If you're worried about the poor, they're guaranteed to get screwed over anyway in the current system we've got. Especially if gas taxes are going to increase to pay for the maintenance and construction we currently got (due to the newer cars consuming less, and more people taking public transit). While they don't exactly drive the electrics and hybrids, they are more likely to drive older shoddy cars that aren't tuned up to their best efficiency.

I think a disadvantage of private roads would be the ability to ban and prohibit peaceful protesters from rallying. But I agree with you that it is quite possible the companies that own these roads might be discriminatory to their competitors, and the owners may not entirely be strictly a road maintenance company. That and it's likely the number of roadside advertisements are very likely to increase significantly.


Like I said, this is an open discussion. There ought to be plenty of options worthy of discussion, exploration, and debate. What would be your ideal solution, Fraggle? How would you restructure the communities like you mentioned in post 2?

 

“The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.”
― Nikola Tesla

 

I guess I can't make any definite conclusions-- my point is that there are very large concerns over this kind of thing and that it isn't altogether unlikely that they would come to pass.

In those places it would just be a straight monopoly.

The NFL has leverage with Reebok and Nike because both companies have the same amount of resources, the same amount of material, the same Chinese sweatshops, etc.

I'm not completely sure here, but it seems to me that Reebok and Nike can reach an agreement because it's in their best interest to do so. If there was a bidding war, the prices might drop-- but if they agree to share, the prices remain higher, and they get to charge consumers more. Meanwhile, the NFL gets a cut of their commercial sales, so everyone except the consumer wins.

Even if the contracts were based on fair competition instead of what should probably be called price fixing (which happens across the business world and is tolerated in the name of profit), then if the NFL wasn't happy with Nike, they can just switch to Reebok... or someone else. This gives them leverage and gives Nike incentive to keep their prices low or, as they have realized, to work out an agreement with their competition that gouges the consumers while keeping the NFL, Reebok AND Nike CEOs rich in the long run.

But if there's only ONE highway and it's an absolute necessity that drivers use it every day for work, how are the drivers going to have any leverage whatsoever with its owners? There wouldn't even be any incentive to share/price-fix amongst competitors-- they could just flat out charge whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, for whatever reason.

Who are they going to turn to if the nastiest bastard fights his way to the top of the shitpile with zero incentive to share with anyone else? Are drivers going to take some long, convoluted route to work? Get up 2 hours early so they can avoid using the expensive roads? Practice medicine at home? Use 3-D printers for food? Where's the incentive to work out a time-share type deal for another owner? Where's the incentive to lower your prices?

Even if the road was full of holes and covered in broken down cars and dead bodies, etc, people would still use it if it was the only way to work. They can't just stay home all day and not work/buy groceries/not get the medicine or surgeries they need.

So would their employers pay for them to get to work? So now businesses need to deal with the road monopolists-- at which point the owner of the road could easily squeeze the business dry, probably so that they could end up owning the company. Are we going to trust the weak,underfunded libertarian government to regulate this kind of thing? How are you going to pay for the regulators without taxes?

Maybe I'm missing something here?

It's not a problem I have a solution for... but I do think that this specific instance is more about a state protecting its industries than a legitimate need to fund the roads.

I was under the impression that Libertarians were big on charity-- why not ask the rich to help out with the roads? We all know how much they love to help people!

Eventually I think the solution is going to be to stop monetizing everything and worrying about what everyone 'deserves' and simply put our individual efforts towards recognizing and addressing needs, making sure those needs are met and not worrying about our personal material gains.

Marxism's end goal is a transformation of consciousness more than the end of exploitation via wealth redistribution... when people actively want to help each other instead of only performing an activity for a reward, we will have a better society.

But as for an immediate solution to the problem, I can't say... it would seem like the money is there, it's just not moving.

Yes, the poor are always being screwed-- that doesn't mean that they wouldn't be even more screwed by privatization. Just because it's a change, it doesn't mean it's always going to make things better.

I think that more efficient/practical housing would be a good start... smaller, more compact, more affordable spaces in urban environments to reduce the amount of commuters... it's always good to stop selling prime urban real estate to rich foreign investors and monopolists. The roads wouldn't need as much maintenance if they weren't so crowded-- but really, since the oil barons are responsible for the country being geared towards helping them profit, it only seems fair that they should be required to put more money into the roads.

Personally, I think the solution is smaller, more self-contained communities that can look after their own needs better, reducing the need to travel and reducing the wear and tear on the roads.

 

actually they once were, in the Feudal days - are you willing to be owned by a King in order to have private roads everywhere.

 

The answer isn't in any one thing in particular, it's gotta be a mixture of things.

First of, as a society, we need to turn to our scientists, to find out if there is another formula that build the composition of our roads so that they can last longer and endure more LONG TERM, rather than short term, even if the initial cost would be higher compared to the short term costs.



Also electric vehicles tend to be less heavy, so yes they use the roads, but they don't ware them down equally.

The big elephant in the room, is that the trucking industry, is responsible the most of wearing down the highway system and public roads, but no policy maker (politicians) wants to address taxing them more because they are so vital to national commerce of goods and services.

 

You can still buy a hybrid though, just buy a whole bunch of gasoline to use as an accelerator to burn down something