Certainly, there are transaction costs to imposing a tax but that’s no justification for not imposing it. Besides, as you mentioned, we already tax gas, simply raising the tax would not increase transaction costs.

Okay, that’s clear enough, thanks.

I don’t disagree; but it would be invalid to assume:

(a) That the costs of such negative externalities are not already applied, reasonably, to the creator of it. For example, there already are taxes on gasoline, about 40 cents per gallon here in Ohio. I don’t know if that is too high, too low, or just right. But there is a tax. And there are other taxes, on licenses and car sales, that are supposed to pay for some of this. And,

(b) That these things can be completely quantified and assigned fully. The factory next door case is fairly blatant. But you can only get so far. Or, another way to put it, you experience the law of diminishing returns.

After all, if we’re going to talk about third-party negative consequences, how about the third-party negative consequences of the policies, taxes, regulations and mandates that are aimed at solving the problem, but create new problems?

And that’s why (almost) all of us advocate a tax on gasoline. At the very least consumers should have to pay for the pollution that gasoline consumption causes. Those of us who are concerned about global warming also want the price of gasoline to reflect that cost to society.

Well, it’s entirely possible I did. Help an old guy out, and translate “negative externalities” into smaller words, and then I’ll know if I ignored them.

You really are confused.

And, no what Europeans do is not just their business– it is the business of our common humanity. Their policies are more geared to safegaurd creation than is the case with SUV-driving Americans. You implicit assumption is once again the radical individualism that often flies in the face of the common good.

I was not proposing to offer an exposition of Catholic Social teaching, nor economics for that matter; I was offering critiques of the post and its comments, as I said.

Where did you get the idea that Catholic Social Teaching says government intervention in the market is something to be all cheery about, and anyone who has any qualms is not in “full assent” to Catholic Social Teaching? I said, and I reiterate, that when government does so, it raises real moral questions, and i do maintain that it’s something to be leery about. I do not assert that government may never, ever act in such a way as to affect prices and availability of goods and services; that would be ridiculous. That the government may do so, at times, is not in question. Or do you maintain Catholic Social Teaching says government can do it whenever it pleases, without any great concern about when, and why? Or did you forget about the right of private property, subsidarity, and Centessimus Annus? I stand my what I said, that such intervention is morally problematic: “Doesn’t anyone ever think about the moral problem of empowering government to manipulate the price of essential things?” Do you disagree? Do you disagree with me that government needs sufficiently good reasons to do so?

Another Straw Man: I never said “we produce, production is good, therefore moral,” and I do not accept that as a fair description of what I did say. Again, I was responding to the original post, which said, “The American propensity for driving enormous anti-social vehicles is the equivalent of giving the finger to the rest of humanity, those born and yet to be born. Let’s hope this changes.” I find the moralism in that statement unsubstantiated. What is “anti-social” about a Range Rover?

I think what I actually did say to be lucid enough, perhaps you might want to comment on that.

You conclude with, “Are you seriously arguing that Americans have a “divine right” to drive whatever cars they like and not give a hoot about the impact on the rest of humanity, both present and future? Very Calvinist of you.”

Haha, that’s funny.

While I rather doubt God gives me the “right” to “drive whatever car” I like, I do question the assumption that God gives you and sanctimonious environmental and anti-growth pressure-groups (Al Gore and likeminded folks come to mind) , armed with questionable science propped up by fad sentiment, to tell me what sort of car I ought to drive.

I do happen to give at least three or four hoots about the impact of my decisions on the rest of humanity. But your statement evades the more important question: is that impact good or bad? Compared with what alternatives?

How much energy the Europeans use is entirely their business; I am not attempting to boss anyone around, but rather opposing that sort of behavior in others. Whether their policies are as good as they might be– by all the way “good” can be measured — is another question we aren’t going to address here.

I’m sure you are familiar with Catholic social teaching. And yet hwo can somebody who I assume gives full assent to Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno start making ideological statements about the government interfering with market prices? In fact, you are off the mark not on on Catholic social teaching, but on economics. Every economist worth his salt understands the concept of social cost and negative externalities.

You argument is almost Marxist in its reach, in that you are arguing a materialist conception of value “we produce, production is good, therefore moral”. Again, where does Catholic social teaching fit in. Are you seriously arguing that Europeans should not be producing the same as America at far less energy efficiency? (By the way, productivity in Europe is the same as in the US, so you can’t use that old argument). Are you seriously arguing that Americans have a “divine right” to drive whatever cars they like and not give a hoot about the impact on the rest of humanity, both present and future? Very Calvinist of you.

God bless you.

I mean, on balance. All our energy use does, as I said, produce something. It produces, to speak broadly, a society that has successfully dealt with, and conquered, any number of things that have been the scourge of humanity for all our history — and still are for much of the world. Maybe that’s why the rest of the world is trying to reach the point we have; because it means living a whole lot better. South Korea uses a lot more energy than North Korea; you think that’s coincidental with the vastly better lives they live in South Korea — which, by the way, helps keep North Korea from starvation?

Of course, not everything our society produces, with its energy, is positive: Original Sin and freedom are pesky things.

Some may think that the whole world can’t sustain the same high-energy way of living that America does–hence the idea that when we use so much of the world’s energy, we are “taking” it wrongfully, from others. All I can do is refer you to the works of the late Julian Simon, who demonstrated so effectively the fallacy of this sort of thinking, and his insights have the advantage of being validated by actual, human experience.

* Raising fuel efficiency standards is the resentful response of those in power to the maddening refusal of people who buy and drive cars to change to the sort of behavior the elite approve of. In short, not enough people want to buy and drive cars with the higher mileage. Auto makers can’t perform magic: a big car with lots of space, and lots of weight, and lots of power (what Americans like) comes at a cost in mileage. So the automakers will continue to produce them, in numbers that people want. So what will the automakers do? They’ll have to put out more little cars, with higher mileage, and probably slash their prices, so that the sales result in higher “averages.”

(By the way, raising the cost of driving low-mileage vehicles means adding to the costs paid by larger families. If you have five or six children, you’re going to drive a big, gas guzzler. So hurray, let’s punish all those remaining families who are generously and sacrificially welcoming the gift of life!)

* Some note that the price mechanism is more likely to work, but again, a coercive, manipulative method is proposed — namely, to raise the price artificially. Doesn’t anyone ever think about the moral problem of empowering government to manipulate the price of essential things? It’s one thing to say, government must set taxes in order to collect needed revenue; but it’s a whole other thing to say, we want government to tax behavior we don’t like, and encourage behavior we like. I don’t particularly like the idea of a tyranny of the majority; and you won’t, when you find your self on the wrong side of the majority that doesn’t like what you like, and so makes you pay dearly for it.

* Some will say, but it’s justified by the environment or public good or so forth. That is very far from clear. Of all our choices in energy-production, every means has disadvantages, whether environmental or cost or net gain in energy. Oil has the fewest disadvantages (I didn’t say it has none.) Who says? The marketplace, which is to say, everybody, says, by actual choices rather than wishes. Other than the active resistance to nuclear power (and a certain powerful senator from Massachusetts, vis-a-vis wind power) no one is stopping alternate energy methods from taking their rightful place. You think the powerful energy corporations wouldn’t be delighted to make money from solar or wind or what-have-you?

If it’s true oil is running out, they want to have a successor cash-cow, right? If they, plus government subsidies, can’t make them work, then maybe we’re up against an unpleasant reality, at least for now. Meanwhile, we have the sad, strange side effect of the virtuous-feeling ethanol-subsidies: the price of corn is skyrocketing; how nice for hungry people!

* Someone lamented the layout of our cities, and how people spread out, in this country. Well, there are two reasons for this; the first one is freedom. Or, put it another way: if people like to live in houses that are farther apart from each other, and from cities, exactly how do you propose to stop them? Not build roads? Who thinks our country will be more–or even as–prosperous if we built only a few good roads?

Mass transit, such as trains and buses, don’t fit our nation for one, main reason: population density. The underlying infrastructure that is needed for such systems requires a certain sufficient quantity of people who (a) all want to go to and from the same destinations, day after day and (b) prefer to do it in buses or trains, rather than in their own cars; and only high-density areas provide that.

I live in a town off I-75 that used to have Greyhound bus service; not anymore. The bus whizzes by on the interstate. Why? Because Greyhound executives hate us? No, because not enough people here prefer riding the bus to alternatives. There are very sensible, rather obvious reasons why people like to drive. I don’t agree that they should be punished for those choices (through hiking the price they pay). No doubt, there are hidden subsidies all through the system, and by all means, wring them all out. But anyone who believes mass-transit would beat autonomous transit, sans all subsidies, is kidding himself.

* One reason, by the way, for outward development, is the effect of yesterday’s environmental cause du jour. Remember when we built up the EPA as a powerful advocate for the people against those dumping toxins; the EPA was going to make sure those areas were all cleaned up? Wonderful, right? No doubt it did have lots of wonderful effects, but less well known is one of the consequences: cities have a much harder time having anyone re-hab or redevelop declining areas within their boundaries.

I learned this lesson innocently enough: when I sought to buy a residential house, in slum condition, near my parish, to raze the house and use the lot for parking. “Be careful,” warned the diocese’s lawyers: you have to make sure there is no asbestos or oil tanks or other environmental concerns, first: because once you buy the property, you get to pay the tab for the cleanup, and that is high.

Providentially, none of these hazards was found, so we bought and razed the house. But it was an eye-opener: had I been a developer, looking to create a new housing development, why would I go through the hassle of acquiring all this potentially costly-to-rehab property, when I could buy farmland, with fewer nasty surprises? After all, which will be cheaper to do, and hence, can be sold for a better price? Hence what Darwin said: living in those nice, old neighborhoods is great, if you can afford it. (And that’s only one of the reasons older center cities can’t compete with suburbs.)

Bottom line: we do better to accept the messy reality of how people actually live, and realize their choices are, fundamentally, rational, rather than wish away that people wanted different things or valued other things according to a different scale. The marketplace will work; either petroleum will continue to be fairly plentiful (there is a lot out there we prevent ourselves from drilling and using, or it won’t be, in relation to demand; in which case, the price-mechanism will gradually drive changes in behavior as it has over the last 30 years — our economy is far less dependent on oil than it used to be, evidenced by the non-crisis that has resulted from rising gas prices. (Remember the ’70s? It was very different when it happened then.)