And people in my town STILL don’t seem to get the message. It remains an ongoing problem, in part because it’s mostly done by juveniles.
To me, “wasting fuel” would be more an environmental issue - dumping it inappropriately, that kind of thing.
Agreed. Just trying to minimize the number of variables at play. Didn’t want the thread to become Republicans want to drill for oil in my living room to line their own pockets vs Democrats want to give gasoline away to illegal immigrants for free.
As mentioned above, there are several scenarios which could cause the crisis. I think that war would most rapidly criminalize the waste, and climate change would be the slowest.
And if someone is wasting electricity by driving excessively?
That energy has to come from somewhere.
I did nothing of the sort. I described market economics. If you use a resource in a profligate manner, you increase demand, which raises prices for everyone. The effect may be miniscule for one person, but when you sum up widespread waslefulness, it becomes visible. And motor fuel affects far more than just the people driving around in their cars, as the stuff we buy in the stores has to get there somehow, and I am going to venture that somehow does not involve horse-drawn buckboards.
As I read through this thread, I was thinking the idea of criminalizing fuel wastage sounded very similar to one of the background elements in the SF novel Cool War by Fred Pohl, 1981. My memory may be imperfect but the above scenario involving Israel sounds exactly like another of the story’s background elements.
In the novel, the offense was called “Power Piggery”, probably a vernacular term in the America of that future. Idling a car was one of the things against the law, also cooling a building lower than strictly necessary was another. At one point in the story the protagonist blows the official 20 amp fuse in his house and he gets a summons in the mail for his violation.
It was clear that public sentiment in that future history was really slanted against power pigs, to the point the protagonist reacted very angrily to seeing a government bigwig sitting idling in an expensive car.
The rest of that future was also pretty darned dystopian. I wouldn’t want to live in it.
I understand macroeconomics. Yes, overuse will cause prices to go up. Which limits access. That has absolutely nothing at all to do with your being entitled to that resource. The only philosophy which carries that entitlement is socialism. If that’s your position, own it.
OP didn’t ask that question though. I answered OPs question. Whether this has knock-on effects is a different discussion.
I think we would have to be in a state of war, the national oil reserves would have to be critically low, our imports cut off, the major domestic oilfields (meaning Texas) and offshore platforms (GoM) already nationalized and lost to the enemy, and our pop-up extraction facilities (eg: ramp up in Alaska, OK, etc) and synthetic oil plants (coal liquifaction and/or syngas synthesis) must have proven insufficient for the war effort. Not only that, no. We also must have tried and failed rationing petroleum products, and there must be an excessive amount of oil lost to civilian waste despite draconian rations. In such a case the government, operating under martial law, might consider such an outrageous measure, such a futile, foolish law, not even contemplated by the fuel-starved fascists of the twentieth century, to felonize the waste of fuel by civilians.
~Max
Entitlements are are just as much a part of capitalism. If you want to take out a contract on the head of, say, your business competitor or your lover’s spouse, capitalism entitles you to do that (and provides the mechanisms to accomplish that). It entitles you to use your money as you see fit and makes no judgements as to sources of your funds. Capitalism is entirely amoral, as is socialism. Society provides the legal code that tells you that you may not hire that hit man. It is not socialism (or even anti-capitalist) to tell you to behave decently and be considerate of others: that is outside the bounds of economic constructs.
To be fair, the OP didn’t say felonize, simply criminalize. Later they even used the example of giving out tickets for extraneous travel, implying that it would be a misdemeanor, not a felony.
I mean, what you say here is actually a pretty good argument for socialism, as you admit the severe flaws in capitalism and it’s lack of regulation of externalities, and it focus on providing what people want at the expense of providing what people need.
To be fair, escheral’s hypothetical doesn’t describe socialism. The strongly implied solution to his problem - that the government should step in to regulate the distribution and consumption of the essential resource - absolutely is.
Which is fine. Socialism isn’t a dirty word except in conservative America, where it is defined as “the government spending money on the wrong sorts of people.”
Was on an F-roll.
~Max
Never let inaccuracies get in the way of alliteration.
The society has (to some extent) agreed that we have a collective responsibility to to feed and house the poor and to care for the sick, they are entitled to that simply by being citizens. Those laws and taxes which fund those social support systems and socialist in nature. If you want to create a legally binding social structure that says that affordable natural resources are also an entitlement we can discuss that, but that’s another socialist action. And it’s much farther up the spectrum on that sliding scale. This is usually the point where we see revolutions.
I didn’t expect this to be a controversial point. I know “socialism” like just about everything these days has become a loaded term. But academically speaking I’m being accurate here.
I’m not intending to place any kind of value judgment on it one way or another. Solutions do have unintended consequences though.
That’s fair, but his follow up posts seem to try to argue against that point.
As do ignoring problems. Capitalism certainly has its benefits, but it also has its flaws. Pointing out and working to mitigate the damage of those flaws is not trying to replace capitalism with socialism, it’s trying to make capitalism work.
It’s when capitalism doesn’t work, when people are suffering due to the flaws not being addressed, that you end up with a push for actual socialism, not the soft socialism that you are using as your “academic” definition.
Isn’t the best defense against waste raising prices?
Make gas cost $10/gallon (or whatever) and I suspect waste will go down. A person no longer makes five trips to stores over a week. They make one. And so on…
There is a reasonable argument (long pdf c. 25y/o) that $10/gal is right around where the price of motor fuel ought to be to begin with. The market is so distorted by subsidies and skipped-over externalities that it seems like the approximately $8/gal the Europeans have paying all along is already a bargain for consumers.
So your position is that these truckers wasting gas could push people to start clamoring for discarding capitalism entirely?
Let’s force an analogy here. Many nations have some form of socialized medicine. Many citizens of those nations perform unhealthy and dangerous acts. Smoking, hard drug use, dangerous sports and activities, driving too fast etc. Issues resulting from those drive up the cost and scarcity of healthcare resources. Should they be outlawed?
That’s why I am all for a massive gas tax hike.
Getting it up to $10 a gallon may be a bit steep, but I’d support it.
Especially if we do the “socialist” thing and do a bit of wealth redistribution, giving out vouchers for say 10 gallons of gas a week or so to means tested individuals.