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ikendu said:
This "shift the tax from one fuel to another" idea would get people to shift to more fuel efficient engines and position them to use biodiesel some day if that ever really takes off.

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This sounds like a great idea, but it will never work. Opponents will paint it as a huge break for scary "BIG CORPORATIONS" (i.e trucking companies and their customers) at the expense of the "little guy." Gas taxes ARE regressive, after all.

Of course, the little guy pays all taxes in the end anyway, but that kind of logic will never surface in a a debate like this where emotional arguments get all of the TV time.
 
Us who know will never buy another NEW gasoline engine. I will at some point hopefully buy an easily 20mpg + used automobile for use when I'd like a bit more class in my transportation. Although I guess it MIGHT be possible to get a diesel VW of some sort to be that vehicle.

But my next truck purchase will be diesel baby! And if diesel/electric hybrids come about, it COULD be one of them.

All we can do is talk about it as much as we can to as many people as we can, and HOPE to see a SEA CHANGE while we are still here to witness it!!!
 
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tylerdurden said:...This sounds like a great idea, but it will never work.

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Got any notion of what might work? I'm sure open to other ideas.
 
Well, any form of punitive taxes on dinosaur-tech isn't going to fly. As I said, it's regressive. Tax credits for cleaner vehicles is a start, but the general public doesn't know about these.

Personally, I think letting the free market work on its own is the best solution. When the market decides that gas is too expensive, alternatives will get more attention.
 
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tylerdurden said:
Personally, I think letting the free market work on its own is the best solution. When the market decides that gas is too expensive, alternatives will get more attention.

[/ QUOTE ]Playboy nailed it. The problem with the "free market" in this case is that we'll be reactionary and too damn late to do something intelligent. 30 years ago we had all kinds of choices we could have explored. We didn't explore them (for the most part) because of that pesky "free market" that reduced the price of energy to low enough where, once again, we didn't care about alternatives. When the "free market" finally does decide to change, we'll have to go with the most expedient alternative, instead of the most effective one.

Here's the big problem though. With gasoline subsidies, and subsidies for our largest gas-burning vehicles we can't possibly hope for a free market. So, if we all agree that a free market is the way to go, how do we achieve THAT? We'd have to stop using our military to guard our oil, we'd have to hold ALL vehicles to the same emissions and fuel economy standards... or eliminate them altogether. But right now we don't have anything even approaching a "free market" in automobiles and their fuel.
 
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Darell said:
The problem with the "free market" in this case is that we'll be reactionary and too damn late to do something intelligent. 30 years ago we had all kinds of choices we could have explored. We didn't explore them (for the most part) because of that pesky "free market" that reduced the price of energy to low enough where, once again, we didn't care about alternatives.

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That's kinda the idea. You would prefer higher energy costs?

Also, I don't buy the crisis mentality. There are plenty of people working on alternatives already. As we get closer to using up the last bits of easily-obtainable petroleum, the amount of effort into these alternatives will increase DRAMATICLY. Mankind has solved tougher problems than this.

The market will solve that problem. Not now, though. Energy costs are still too low to really justify the development of an alternative to fossil fuels - as evidenced by the poor performance of solar, wind, etc in the market. As crude oil gets more expensive, the market incentives for the alternatives will automaticly rise. The market WILL pick the best solution, if allowed to.
 
Thirty years ago I was 14, and we all KNOW that for the most part teenagers know NOTHING! Admit it! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

I didn't care then /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twakfl.gif . I care now! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mecry.gif. And am ashamed /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sick.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif that I can't do much more than /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif about it.

For the foreseeable future, I think mostly what we'll be doing is /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/banghead.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/banghead.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/banghead.gif.

But I still intend to talk about it with anyone who will listen. And HOPE that some day in my life, I can drive a cool EV, perhaps even using it as my work vehicle. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/popcorn.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/popcorn.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/popcorn.gif
 
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tylerdurden said:
That's kinda the idea. You would prefer higher energy costs?

[/ QUOTE ]Hmmmm. Kind of a leap from where I was going with my comments. The up-front cost of energy isn't nearly as important to me as the hidden costs. The pollution, the social and medical issues. To that end, fossil fuels are the most expensive sources of energy that we have available to us today. They simply cost less at the pump.

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Energy costs are still too low to really justify the development of an alternative to fossil fuels

[/ QUOTE ]Again... if we didn't subsidize the cost of gasoline products today, and if there were none of the hidden costs I mentioned above - THEN I'd be right there on board with you. As it is today, gasoline costs us more than solar, wind, etc. We just don't pay those costs at the pump.

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The market WILL pick the best solution, if allowed to.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm not sure where this confidence comes from, though I admire it. The market hasn't yet managed to pick the best solution because it hasn't had a "free" market in which to do so. The market we have today is skewed heavily to the use of fossil fuels. We can't subsidize an energy source and call it a free market! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

I'm not prepared to roll over a play dead when I'm confident that we aren't headed in the right direction BECAUSE we have no free market. To be where we both say we want to be, we'll have to work toward removing subsidies for fossil fuel use.
 
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tylerdurden said:
Darell,

What, exactly, are these subsidies you keep mentioning?

[/ QUOTE ]Seriously? You haven't heard of any? My guess is that the info won't be valid if it comes from me. Before voting on any energy policy, I hope that you'll discover the answer to this question from a source that you trust.

If you don't find anything (has been discussed many times in many different threads right here in the CAFE) then I'll be happy to give you some hints. I'm not trying to be snotty - I have just realized from experience that people only believe info when it comes from a source of their own finding.

One for free: My solar power has never been protected by my federal tax dollars as has my oil supply.
 
Has your solar power needed protection?

Come on, Darell, if these subsidies are so obvious, you surely can give me some details instead of vague innuendo. I'm not exactly sure what you're alluding to, so spell it out for me.

I did a quick search around the web. I found several essays and papers mentioning these subsides, but very few with specifics. Greenpeace does have a report listing several subsidies, but I discounted many of their items.

http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/oil/fdsub.html

e.g. 2. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is a subsidy? This isn't like the government buying up a lot of wheat and burning it to keep the supply low and prices high. We accumulate the oil, it retains its usefulness, and we derrive value from having a stockpile.

Many of the others were things like Army CoE and Coast Guard costs that benefit lots of other industries. I didn't see any attempt to discount these.

Given those "subsidies," I'm surprised they didn't list the government's annual expenditure on fuel itself. Hey, it's money they're "giving" to the oil industry, isn't it?

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Darell said:
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tylerdurden said:
That's kinda the idea. You would prefer higher energy costs?

[/ QUOTE ]Hmmmm. Kind of a leap from where I was going with my comments.

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Is it? You bemoaned the "pesky "free market" that reduced the price of energy to low enough where, once again, we didn't care about alternatives." That sure sounds like you wern't happy about low energy prices.


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The up-front cost of energy isn't nearly as important to me as the hidden costs. The pollution, the social and medical issues. To that end, fossil fuels are the most expensive sources of energy that we have available to us today.

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The market is obviously less concerned with these problems than you are.

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The market WILL pick the best solution, if allowed to.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm not sure where this confidence comes from, though I admire it. The market hasn't yet managed to pick the best solution because it hasn't had a "free" market in which to do so. The market we have today is skewed heavily to the use of fossil fuels. We can't subsidize an energy source and call it a free market!

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You ignored the "if allowed to" in my post, I guess.

I suspect you are vastly overestimating the costs of these subsides versus the value we recieve from them. If we spend $1 in a subsidy that results in saving $2 in energy costs, is that a bad thing?

If you're going to counter that the $1 invested in an alternative would produce more than $2 in savings, I'd love to hear it, but please provide some data.

BTW, these text entry boxes need to be a LOT bigger.
 
BTW Darell,

I agree with most of what you're saying. There are very few true "free" markets in existence today. I just get irritated when I see constant references to something (like "oil subsidies") and not even an attempt to document their actual existence. This is especially irritating when part of your argument is that people in general don't know about them!
 
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tylerdurden said:
Has your solar power needed protection?

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You've just made my point.

We subsidize oil with our federal tax money by protecting it with our military. Because we have to. And it costs lots of money. Money that we don't see at the pump. Can I infer from your question above that we've stipulated that fact? If we paid for that protection at the pump, it would be more expensive to buy gasoline at the gas station, and I think you'd agree that we'd then use less of it. THAT is a subsidy, yes? One that solar energy does not enjoy.

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Come on, Darell, if these subsidies are so obvious, you surely can give me some details instead of vague innuendo. I'm not exactly sure what you're alluding to, so spell it out for me.

[/ QUOTE ]Of course I can give you more details. But this is why I'm shy to do so. I just provided you with one of the most obvious ones that is easy to prove, and you swept it under the rug as if it didn't count for anything. If you believe my position is wrong, I'm not going to waste my time trying to change your mind.

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e.g. 2. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is a subsidy?

[/ QUOTE ]Um... no.

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tylerdurden said:
You bemoaned the "pesky "free market" that reduced the price of energy to low enough where, once again, we didn't care about alternatives." That sure sounds like you wern't happy about low energy prices.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, it is a leap. I am not happy with the low *aparent* cost of gasoline, specifically. I love the idea of low energy costs. But not ones that decrease my security and health. Hell, one of the two reasons I put in my solar system is because of the long-term money savings! Let's take more tax money and lower the cost of CLEAN energy, not the dirty stuff. Much of the money we spend on gas goes out of the country - never to be seen here again. If gas is cheap, we buy more of it, and keep supporting unstable countries that we wouldn't otherwise be speaking to. Money spent on domestic alternative fuels STAYS HERE and feeds American families. The pump price of gasoline is not the only thing we need to consider here. Our foreign policy is based on this stuff!

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The market is obviously less concerned with these problems than you are.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes it is. Do you think this is because the "market" is more aware of the problems we face with our choice of fossil fuels?

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The market WILL pick the best solution, if allowed to.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm not sure where this confidence comes from, though I admire it. The market hasn't yet managed to pick the best solution because it hasn't had a "free" market in which to do so. The market we have today is skewed heavily to the use of fossil fuels. We can't subsidize an energy source and call it a free market!

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You ignored the "if allowed to" in my post, I guess.

[/ QUOTE ]I didn't ignore it. I was merely pointing out that we don't have the entity (the free market) so how can we even talk about it "allowing" anything. My son can pick winning lotto numbers every time. But he was never born.

You accuse me of missing your point, and I think you missed mine. And around and around we go.
 
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tylerdurden said:
I agree with most of what you're saying. There are very few true "free" markets in existence today. I just get irritated when I see constant references to something (like "oil subsidies") and not even an attempt to document their actual existence. This is especially irritating when part of your argument is that people in general don't know about them!

[/ QUOTE ]I don't mean to be irritating, and I'm glad we agree on the free market thing. These documents that you are asking for are all but impossible to nail down. It isn't like they're advertised, or cataloged somewhere on a web page.

It is public knowledge that we use the military to guard our oil supply in many parts of the world. If you don't agree, then please stop reading right here. Seriously.

To make this easy, I won't even dip my toe into "military actions" that may or may not have had anything to do with securing our oil rights. We'll just stick to the fact that we use US military personnel and hardware to protect our supply.

Now, to answer your own question, and to make my research easier, I invite you to find that "oil protection" cost to the taxpayers. Find me the indisputable references that spell out this cost. Or, if easier, show that we don't actually spend federal tax money to protect our oil.
 
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led-lurker said:
I drive a large SUV (Toyota Sequoia (sp?) I fill it up about every 12 days.

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Let's be honest abut it, if there iver was a market for this kind of vehicles, this would be it. Considering the amount of passengers being transported, the MPG divided over the amount of people carried would still be pretty good. Compact fule-efficient cars are not suited for this purpose. The VW Caddy offers high MPG with 7 seats, but then there is little room for luggage left. You're into the Mercedes Vans with this amount of space needed and I don't know if they are that much more efficient, certainly not worth the extra cost.

One thing which I havent seen mentioned in this entire thread are ecotyres. Are those not available in the US? I have some from Michelin for use in the summer and I have winter tyres as well from Michelin. And in the intermediate season (spring and autumn) when road conditions are the same, I do notice a 10% increase in the MPG I can drive on ecotyres as compared to the winter tyres. So as most SUVs have tyres to go off-road, but little of them do need them, is there no tyre available which optimisez fuel consumption? You'd get better MPG with the same comfort and car with very little extra cost (one set of tyres, which you'll need anyway)
 
tylerdurden said: ...letting the free market work on its own is the best solution.

Well...I'll agree on one aspect of this. A free market will certainly work toward the "cheapest" solution.

American industrial history is full of examples where the "free market" was allowed to operate with no regulation and no oversight. From that we got chemicals dumped in rivers (cheaper that way), mining tailings left to leach out heavy metals into our water supply (also cheaper that way), strip mines left as open sores on the landscape (definitely cheaper that way), etc.

Right now, the cheapest thing (at least in the short term) is to import oil from around the world. 25% comes from the middle east (we import 60% in total). While it appeared to be the "cheapest thing" in the short run, it is turning out to be highly expensive now...and will only get more so.

When the Shah of Iran operated a secret police and torture chambers to stay in power...we looked the other way while he continued to pump oil to us at low prices. Iran once had an elected Prime Minister (kinda like Britain). Our CIA overthrew him for the Shah. Wanna talk "stain on democracy"? We bought that stain at the price of letting the "market" find the "cheapest thing".

If you want to look into oil subsidies, start with the "oil depletion allowance".
 
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Kristofg said:
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led-lurker said:
I drive a large SUV (Toyota Sequoia (sp?) I fill it up about every 12 days.

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Let's be honest abut it, if there iver was a market for this kind of vehicles, this would be it. Considering the amount of passengers being transported, the MPG divided over the amount of people carried would still be pretty good. Compact fule-efficient cars are not suited for this purpose. The VW Caddy offers high MPG with 7 seats, but then there is little room for luggage left. You're into the Mercedes Vans with this amount of space needed and I don't know if they are that much more efficient, certainly not worth the extra cost.

One thing which I havent seen mentioned in this entire thread are ecotyres. Are those not available in the US? I have some from Michelin for use in the summer and I have winter tyres as well from Michelin. And in the intermediate season (spring and autumn) when road conditions are the same, I do notice a 10% increase in the MPG I can drive on ecotyres as compared to the winter tyres. So as most SUVs have tyres to go off-road, but little of them do need them, is there no tyre available which optimisez fuel consumption? You'd get better MPG with the same comfort and car with very little extra cost (one set of tyres, which you'll need anyway)

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I am lookin through my "Consumer Reports" Magazine that has the 2004 buying guide. I do not know if all available cars in the US are in this issue but this is my favorite source of info and comparisons on major aspects of vehicles. The VW Caddy is not listed so I would assume it is not available in the US. There is a Mercedes-Benz M-Class SUV with 2/3/2 seating but the MPG is not listed. This means they have not had a chance to acutually test this vehicle yet. I would trust Consumer Reports MPG than the manufacturer because their testing give a composit milage of city and Hiway. My SUV is rated 14 City and 18 Hiway. But my personal composite is 15-16 MPG and my lowest has been as low as 12.5 MPG with equipment strapped on the roof with 4 people and crammed full of cargo.
 
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ikendu said:

Well...I'll agree on one aspect of this. A free market will certainly work toward the "cheapest" solution.

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No. The best. By definition, the solution that wins in the market is the best. The market selects the product that delivers the most value for the lowest cost. There are more things involved in "cost" than just the purchase price.

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American industrial history is full of examples where the "free market" was allowed to operate with no regulation and no oversight. From that we got chemicals dumped in rivers (cheaper that way), mining tailings left to leach out heavy metals into our water supply (also cheaper that way), strip mines left as open sores on the landscape (definitely cheaper that way), etc.

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These are not results from a true free market. In any case, the market does place value on long-term considerations. At the time these incidents occured, the market was either unaware of them (a perfect market requires all actors to have access to all information) or the market simply did not place a very high value on environmental impacts, or a combination of both.

The market does allow for social considerations to be a factor in deciding the "best" product, solution, etc. However, it lets each actor decide how much value to place on these. If enough people decide a cleaner product is worth the higher price, it can still win. Don't fault the market for the low number of times this occurs. Even with these "abuses" and manipulations (regulation, subsidies, etc) the market system is the best thing we've seen so far.

Just because you think this is an important issue doesn't mean everyone else does.

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While it appeared to be the "cheapest thing" in the short run, it is turning out to be highly expensive now...and will only get more so.

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It is more expensive now, so does that mean we should not have been using it when it was cheaper? I don't agree that today's prices are "highly expensive," either. There is still quite a bit of room for prices to increase before they become prohibitively expensive.

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When the Shah of Iran operated a secret police and torture chambers to stay in power...we looked the other way while he continued to pump oil to us at low prices. Iran once had an elected Prime Minister (kinda like Britain). Our CIA overthrew him for the Shah. Wanna talk "stain on democracy"? We bought that stain at the price of letting the "market" find the "cheapest thing".

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/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif I don't see what this has to do with anything, really. Bad things happen under any system. If we used one bad event to discredit any system, we'd never make any progress. Freer markets produce fewer of these abuses than any other system, FWIW.

I'm really not interested in arguing particulars. If you don't believe that a free market is a good thing, that's fine, go ahead. Historically, nations with economies based on freer markets have done better than those without.
 
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