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[GE Morton]

The "environment," not being an economic actor, does not sustain any costs. It undergoes changes, but it, not being a sentient creature either, is indifferent to those changes. The only calculable costs are those the changes impose on sentient creatures.

Semantic obfuscation.

It is semantic clarification. It translates a non-cognitive populist abstraction into propositions which have determinable truth values.

[Ecurb]

GE Morton wrote: ↑Today, 9:26 am


If it is not in any one individual's interest to do anything about the degradation, then it is not in the interests of any collective of those same individuals either. Collectives have no interests not reducible to the interests of the individuals who constitute it.

That may be so, but my point still stands. The reason that it is not in an individual's interest to stop driving is that the impact of one person's driving boycott is insignificant. Global warming can be reduced only if a high percentage of individuals join into the effort. It is true that the costs of global warming are also (relatively) insignificant to any one individual -- so our driver's impact on the problem is not worth the effort (to him as an individual). However, because he is a rich American or European, he has a far greater impact on global warming than the farmer in Khazakstan, who doesn't own a car or a tractor. However, the benefits of slowing global warming are conferred on both the rich man and the poor man. So if we add up the benefits, and deduct the costs, refusing to drive a car ends up on the plus side, although not for the car driver. Since the car driver is interested mainly in his own cost/benefit ratio, he does not stop driving. This is the road (four lane highway?) down which the Libertarian point of view drives us.

[Sculptor1]

The "environment," not being an economic actor, does not sustain any costs. It undergoes changes, but it, not being a sentient creature either, is indifferent to those changes. The only calculable costs are those the changes impose on sentient creatures.

Semantic obfuscation.

It is semantic clarification. It translates a non-cognitive populist abstraction into propositions which have determinable truth values.

No you are just using the excuse of semantics to avoid talking about the problem. You are transparent.

[Sy Borg]

The other day, I was out in public and I came across a vending machine for soda. Just for fun I selected a drink and the price was $2.

You take a tonne of ore, crush it, heat it melt it. From it you extract 1 kg of alluminium which is rolled 100 times and bent into a can.
Water is pumped from a well, filtered, puified. to that is added an exotic blend of naural and artificial fruit flaviniods and sugar. The liquid is then injected with carbon dioxide. The can having been printed with designs which have been advertised internationally to achieve sufficient notoriety to attract a buyer.
The liquid is hermentically sealed into the cans, paked in carboard boxes and transported over 100s or 1000s of miles to reach its distrinution centre, re-transported and has to be placed by hand into the vending machine which requires electricity and regular maintainance and coin collection....
And you complain it is only $2??

😆 The concept of "cost" rarely takes into account the actual, er, cost of creating and producing a 'product'. In fact, perhaps the biggest step we could take to combat global warming and climate change is to change our intuitive understanding of "cost" so that our first thought is about cost-to-the-environment, not cost-in-$$$.

Indeed it did occur to me as I thought about what it takes to put a can of coke in a vending machine that extreme about of energy it also takes. The real cost (to the earth) is all that destruction, warming and carbon.
I suppose if you care about the earth's environment then you should save your money and take a drink if water from a tap.

Every now and then I wish the forum has a Like button. 100% agree. High quality tap water, as found in much of the developed world, is underrated IMO.

In the end, almost all prices rise like crazy because fiat money always inflates, as it has done whenever the value of money has been determined by central decree. Technology tends to reduce that impact with efficiencies, but it seems that inflation seems to be one of the few things that can outpace technological progress.

I'd also like to point to the extreme costs - both environmentally and socially - of planned obsolescence put in place by cartels as governments turn a blind eye.

[Sculptor1]

The other day, I was out in public and I came across a vending machine for soda. Just for fun I selected a drink and the price was $2.

You take a tonne of ore, crush it, heat it melt it. From it you extract 1 kg of alluminium which is rolled 100 times and bent into a can.
Water is pumped from a well, filtered, puified. to that is added an exotic blend of naural and artificial fruit flaviniods and sugar. The liquid is then injected with carbon dioxide. The can having been printed with designs which have been advertised internationally to achieve sufficient notoriety to attract a buyer.
The liquid is hermentically sealed into the cans, paked in carboard boxes and transported over 100s or 1000s of miles to reach its distrinution centre, re-transported and has to be placed by hand into the vending machine which requires electricity and regular maintainance and coin collection....
And you complain it is only $2??

The concept of "cost" rarely takes into account the actual, er, cost of creating and producing a 'product'. In fact, perhaps the biggest step we could take to combat global warming and climate change is to change our intuitive understanding of "cost" so that our first thought is about cost-to-the-environment, not cost-in-$$$.

Indeed it did occur to me as I thought about what it takes to put a can of coke in a vending machine that extreme about of energy it also takes. The real cost (to the earth) is all that destruction, warming and carbon.
I suppose if you care about the earth's environment then you should save your money and take a drink if water from a tap.

Every now and then I wish the forum has a Like button. 100% agree. High quality tap water, as found in much of the developed world, is underrated IMO.

In the end, almost all prices rise like crazy because fiat money always inflates, as it has done whenever the value of money has been determined by central decree. Technology tends to reduce that impact with efficiencies, but it seems that inflation seems to be one of the few things that can outpace technological progress.

I'd also like to point to the extreme costs - both environmentally and socially - of planned obsolescence put in place by cartels as governments turn a blind eye.

Thanks for the like.
The sad fact about the economy in which we live is that it only thrives by people throwing their money away on things they do not need, such as coloured sugary liquid in cans.
Governments create money with computers to "lend" to people, and spend it on roads and schools and bailouts . The borrowers have to pay it back with "interest" and it is that interest which justifies the creation of more money.
When the money becomes too much the government collect it back with taxation and destroy the money.
The roads and schools and other infrastucture project create a world in which useless object are exchanged for useless money earned by people doing mostly useless jobs and the whole cycle runs the earth's resources dry polluting the atmosphere and poisoning the other living things which are going extinct.
Xmas is the annual frenzy of destruction.
Yet some people deny this can "cost" the earth.

[GE Morton]

Since the car driver is interested mainly in his own cost/benefit ratio, he does not stop driving. This is the road (four lane highway?) down which the Libertarian point of view drives us.

But it doesn't. The libertarian driver will likely be concerned, not only with his own cost/benefit ratio, but with the costs to his children and grandchildren. So he may well support efforts to mitigate those costs, provided a proposed mitigation strategy doesn't entail even greater costs. And in any case, he will recognize that he has but one vote on questions concerning management of that natural common, and will consider himself bound by majority rule.

[Ecurb]

But it doesn't. The libertarian driver will likely be concerned, not only with his own cost/benefit ratio, but with the costs to his children and grandchildren. So he may well support efforts to mitigate those costs, provided a proposed mitigation strategy doesn't entail even greater costs. And in any case, he will recognize that he has but one vote on questions concerning management of that natural common, and will consider himself bound by majority rule.

Perhaps you're right -- but most people are pretty self-interested. Also, there is no "majority rule". The vote of Khazak has no impact on the policies of the United States with regard to global warming.

[Sy Borg]

😆 The concept of "cost" rarely takes into account the actual, er, cost of creating and producing a 'product'. In fact, perhaps the biggest step we could take to combat global warming and climate change is to change our intuitive understanding of "cost" so that our first thought is about cost-to-the-environment, not cost-in-$$$.

Indeed it did occur to me as I thought about what it takes to put a can of coke in a vending machine that extreme about of energy it also takes. The real cost (to the earth) is all that destruction, warming and carbon.
I suppose if you care about the earth's environment then you should save your money and take a drink if water from a tap.

Every now and then I wish the forum has a Like button. 100% agree. High quality tap water, as found in much of the developed world, is underrated IMO.

In the end, almost all prices rise like crazy because fiat money always inflates, as it has done whenever the value of money has been determined by central decree. Technology tends to reduce that impact with efficiencies, but it seems that inflation seems to be one of the few things that can outpace technological progress.

I'd also like to point to the extreme costs - both environmentally and socially - of planned obsolescence put in place by cartels as governments turn a blind eye.

Thanks for the like.
The sad fact about the economy in which we live is that it only thrives by people throwing their money away on things they do not need, such as coloured sugary liquid in cans.
Governments create money with computers to "lend" to people, and spend it on roads and schools and bailouts . The borrowers have to pay it back with "interest" and it is that interest which justifies the creation of more money.
When the money becomes too much the government collect it back with taxation and destroy the money.
The roads and schools and other infrastucture project create a world in which useless object are exchanged for useless money earned by people doing mostly useless jobs and the whole cycle runs the earth's resources dry polluting the atmosphere and poisoning the other living things which are going extinct.
Xmas is the annual frenzy of destruction.
Yet some people deny this can "cost" the earth.

Yup. If environmental cost was factored into product prices, there would be very different spending habits.

[chewybrian]

Yup. If environmental cost was factored into product prices, there would be very different spending habits.

You know what really gets me about the land of the free here in the US?

We have most of the cost of driving taken out of our paycheck before we consider whether to gas up or even to buy a car. I prepay $75 a week or whatever to pay for roads and oil subsidies and highway patrol and oil wars and such and then decide if I want to spent more to drive at a subsidized price. Real freedom would be getting the $75 in my hand and then deciding if I want to gas up. Gas would cost 10 bucks a gallon or so, but as people made rational economic decisions based on real costs, we would naturally find alternatives popping up, like public transportation that suddenly made sense to use.

People would live closer to their jobs, learn to ride scooters and motorcycles and (gasp!) even bicycles and learn to consolidate trips and share transportation. They would do these things not because they were being made to sacrifice something they 'deserved', but only because they were faced with the true (well, truer...) costs of their choices. They would be free to drive (or not!).

[GE Morton]

We have most of the cost of driving taken out of our paycheck before we consider whether to gas up or even to buy a car. I prepay $75 a week or whatever to pay for roads and oil subsidies and highway patrol and oil wars and such and then decide if I want to spent more to drive at a subsidized price.

Please provide a breakdown of your "$75 or whatever." Until the last couple of decades federal and state highways in the US are were financed primarily (about 80-90%) with fuel taxes. That figure is now about 50%, due to diversions of the fuel tax revenues to other purposes, such as public transit boondoggles and even to supporting public schools.

https://reason.org/policy-brief/how-muc ... rom-roads/

The resulting shortfalls are made with with federal pork-barrel allocations (largely deficit-financed) and by allowing the roads to deteriorate.

The above figures don't include city streets, which are primarily financed through local property taxes. But all property owners benefit from those streets, whether they drive automobiles (or scooters or bicycles) on them or not. Without them your mailman could not deliver your mail, UPS could not deliver your packages, your relatives could not visit you, and the fire department could not get to your burning house.

We discussed so-called "subsidies" to the oil industry in another thread, most of which turned out to be tax deductions available to businesses generally (such as depreciation). The oil industry in the US receives virtually no real subsidies.

[Alias]

The concept of "cost" rarely takes into account the actual, er, cost of creating and producing a 'product'. In fact, perhaps the biggest step we could take to combat global warming and climate change is to change our intuitive understanding of "cost" so that our first thought is about cost-to-the-environment, not cost-in-$$$.

The "environment," not being an economic actor, does not sustain any costs. It undergoes changes, but it, not being a sentient creature either, is indifferent to those changes. The only calculable costs are those the changes impose on sentient creatures.

The environment, not being an economic actor, undergoes changes, but, not being a sentient creature either, doesn't give a damn when and in how much agony e go extinct. That's fair.

[chewybrian]

We have most of the cost of driving taken out of our paycheck before we consider whether to gas up or even to buy a car. I prepay $75 a week or whatever to pay for roads and oil subsidies and highway patrol and oil wars and such and then decide if I want to spent more to drive at a subsidized price.

Please provide a breakdown of your "$75 or whatever." Until the last couple of decades federal and state highways in the US are were financed primarily (about 80-90%) with fuel taxes. That figure is now about 50%, due to diversions of the fuel tax revenues to other purposes, such as public transit boondoggles and even to supporting public schools.

In 2018, state and local motor fuel tax revenue ($50 billion) accounted for 27 percent of highway and road spending while toll facilities and other street construction and repair fees ($22 billion) provided another 12 percent. The rest of the funding for highway and road spending came from state and local general funds and federal funds.

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cr ... penditures

It can only be a "whatever". There are many hidden costs of excessive driving, like environmental costs and the costs of wars we fought to protect the cost of oil and the subsidies for oil exploration or pipelines and such that you don't seem to think are real.

We discussed so-called "subsidies" to the oil industry in another thread, most of which turned out to be tax deductions available to businesses generally (such as depreciation). The oil industry in the US receives virtually no real subsidies.

Among the fuels, subsidies to oil products remained the largest single component of the total (USD 90 billion out of the total USD 180 billion).

https://www.iea.org/topics/energy-subsidies

Of course, the irony is that you completely ignored my point, which should be right in your wheel house. Who cares if it's $5 or $5000? The point is still the same, and it goes right to your worship of free markets. Why should I prepay the cost of driving, rather than paying the true costs as I go? By doing things as we are, we have distorted the market and encouraged people to make foolish decisions based on the tortured economics. If I want to drive to Tampa, I might spend $40 in gas, and that will drive my decision to do it or not. But, if I got the money in my check and THEN had to decide whether or not to drive to Tampa while bearing the full cost today, my bill might be $150 or $250 and the football game or fishing trip simply might not appeal to me at that REAL price.

People are making all kinds of wasteful trips and building houses 50 miles from their work and such, and this is only because they are unable to weigh the true costs of driving and make a rational decision on that basis.

[GE Morton]

In 2018, state and local motor fuel tax revenue ($50 billion) accounted for 27 percent of highway and road spending while toll facilities and other street construction and repair fees ($22 billion) provided another 12 percent. The rest of the funding for highway and road spending came from state and local general funds and federal funds.

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cr ... penditures

It can only be a "whatever". There are many hidden costs of excessive driving, like environmental costs and the costs of wars we fought to protect the cost of oil and the subsidies for oil exploration or pipelines and such that you don't seem to think are real.

Your source includes city streets in its totals. My figure excluded those (which are financed primarily through local property taxes). Many states still cover > 75% of highway costs from fuel taxes and other user fees, such as tolls and licensing fees. In several states the fraction is > 90%.

https://taxfoundation.org/state-infrast ... -spending/

We discussed so-called "subsidies" to the oil industry in another thread, most of which turned out to be tax deductions available to businesses generally (such as depreciation). The oil industry in the US receives virtually no real subsidies.

Among the fuels, subsidies to oil products remained the largest single component of the total (USD 90 billion out of the total USD 180 billion).

https://www.iea.org/topics/energy-subsidies

Well, you have to dig into those "subsidies." Nearly all of them are tax deductions that are identical or similar to those available to businesses generally.

Who cares if it's $5 or $5000? The point is still the same, and it goes right to your worship of free markets. Why should I prepay the cost of driving, rather than paying the true costs as I go?

You shouldn't. The entire cost of building and maintaining highways should be paid by those who use them. So should the costs of public transit, and of every other service the government provides. Nationally, transit users pay about 10% of the cost of their rides.

[Sy Borg]

We discussed so-called "subsidies" to the oil industry in another thread, most of which turned out to be tax deductions available to businesses generally (such as depreciation). The oil industry in the US receives virtually no real subsidies.

Let's consider taxpayer largesse towards the influential fossil industry: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fue ... port-finds

Coal, oil, and natural gas received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 — or roughly $11 million every minute — according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund.

... Explicit subsidies accounted for only 8 percent of the total. The remaining 92 percent were implicit subsidies, which took the form of tax breaks or, to a much larger degree, health and environmental damages that were not priced into the cost of fossil fuels, according to the analysis.

Note "only eight percent". Thus, we can say that, globally, fossil fuels are not subsidised beyond that of other industries at the rate $11,000,000 per minute. Rather, the fossil fuel industry's specific subsidies extracted from taxpayers is a mere $880,000 per minute.

That's the tiny sum of $472 billion per year in taxpayer largesse for special fossil fuel subsidies (not counting all the usual perks and tax dodges), over a third of third of Australia's annual GDP.

That's not counting health and environmental damage not factored into the price.

[chewybrian]

Coal, oil, and natural gas received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 — or roughly $11 million every minute — according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund.

... Explicit subsidies accounted for only 8 percent of the total. The remaining 92 percent were implicit subsidies, which took the form of tax breaks or, to a much larger degree, health and environmental damages that were not priced into the cost of fossil fuels, according to the analysis.

Note "only eight percent".

Exactly! That's why I said the cost was "or whatever", and I stand by that. When the fudge factor is over 90%...

What I do know (or at least believe strongly) is that we would be better off if we paid directly, as nearly as possible, for the miles we drove. Then each of us would only drive the miles that made sense to us, based on real economics. I don't know how much that would reduce driving, but it surely would have the effect of reducing miles driven.