One thing I do agree with you about, in terms of the approach, is that we should increase CAFE standards and let the car companies figure out how to meet them.
That's not a real agreement. I don't agree with that approach. It wasn't even the "least worst" alternative out of the alternatives I mentioned. I just considered it better than mandates for hybrids combined with massive subsidies.
If it means they have to stop selling Hummers, I'm not going to cry about it.
Hummers aren't exactly one of the most common cars on the road. I don't think they effect the CAFE averages very much.
If, each time somebody in America needs a new car, they get either a hybrid, or some other kind of highly efficient, especially one that uses some kind of renewable fuel, within a decade or so 80 percent of the cars on the road would no longer be guzzling gas. Within 15 years it would be more than 90 percent.
I would be against such a mandate, not just for reasons of economic efficiency but also because I support freedom.
And how does a slower solution turn out to be more efficient, necessarily?
Its not automatically or universally more efficient, but if you have more time you have a number of advantages. You can try different solutions on a small scale and see the results before you scale them up. You can replace existing investment when it is worn out or totally obsolete rather than having to spend extra on quicker replacement. Also even if the cost was the same its easier to shoulder if you spread it out over more time.
Let me ask you this - how efficient is the war in Iraq?
Can you explicitly develop that argument rather than just imply it. I don't want to attack a possible straw man because I guess wrong about your intended argument.
I submit that market efficiency is not always, nor should it be, the primary consideration in formulating public policy.
Of course not but its normally a major factor, and should always be a major factor when your talking about investments of trillions of dollars. |
