What do you mean? Do you mean whether gasoline efficiency should be dictated by a free market, or whether it is, or whether it's good or bad that it is?
No. The free market has, by and large, done a shit job of it here. Either we need higher consumption taxes on fuel - I'm talking about levels that will bring our cost equal to that in, say, Switzerland or the UK at $5-7 or more a gallon - or some serious, we're-not-fucking-around standards on fuel economy. That's the only way we'll be able to move away from our excesses of consumption, and even approach the levels of economy you see in Europe.
I tend to agree. I think the major problem with leaving it to market forces is that they just work too slowly. Like it or not, bitch gotta eat: gotta drive to work to make money. Sometimes taking public transportation is just not an option, and drivers have no other option but to pay out the nose
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I say yes. That way, people will eventually get the shock of their lives when the market goes too high. Then, they will demand that there be some real solution to the problem.
Look, we can't rationally think about consequences in advance in America and avert them using preventive means. We have to create a crisis and then freak out.
Holy shit, gas is $8 a gallon! I demand we nationalize the oil industry!
To say "eventually" and "a shock" is kind of antithetical, Will-- minds don't work that way. They get used to things.
I wonder if the market will create a crisis quickly enough for us to notice it a crisis. Just last week I paid $2.65 a gallon. Ten years ago it was 99 cents. In my mind that increase is a crisis--but it's not seen as enough of a crisis for other people, because the entire industry hasn't shown any sign of caringOil companies are larded with profit, and people continue to buy SUVs despite three-dollar gas prices and seventeen-mile 'efficiency.' The costs at some tanks around here are where they were at the peak last summer, man, remember? It'll only get worse this year, and every year, like it always does
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Assuming 'gasoline efficiency' to mean the rate at which an engine consumes gasoline:
I know a man who, in his youth, worked for Ford. He designed an engine that used less gasoline as a private project. The company paid him for his design, and then filed it away in that warehouse where the Ark is. Car companies use clout, bribery, money and threats to keep things as they are, and to keep things from becoming too efficient.
So, assuming we live in a free market system (which I'm not at all sure of): thumbs down.
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Look, we can't rationally think about consequences in advance in America and avert them using preventive means. We have to create a crisis and then freak out.
Holy shit, gas is $8 a gallon! I demand we nationalize the oil industry!
- Will
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I wonder if the market will create a crisis quickly enough for us to notice it a crisis. Just last week I paid $2.65 a gallon. Ten years ago it was 99 cents. In my mind that increase is a crisis--but it's not seen as enough of a crisis for other people, because the entire industry hasn't shown any sign of caringOil companies are larded with profit, and people continue to buy SUVs despite three-dollar gas prices and seventeen-mile 'efficiency.' The costs at some tanks around here are where they were at the peak last summer, man, remember? It'll only get worse this year, and every year, like it always does ( ... )
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I know a man who, in his youth, worked for Ford. He designed an engine that used less gasoline as a private project. The company paid him for his design, and then filed it away in that warehouse where the Ark is. Car companies use clout, bribery, money and threats to keep things as they are, and to keep things from becoming too efficient.
So, assuming we live in a free market system (which I'm not at all sure of): thumbs down.
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Freaking English majors. (Fragment!)
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