The state’s monopoly on violence should be used judiciously and sparingly to secure our individual rights, not as a catch-all tool for coercing (or outright forcing) people into making the choices you want them to.
(For instance, Hummers are allegedly already technically illegal by weight on California residential streets. When was the last time that was enforced? When was the last time an owner paid fines on that?)
This old article mentions a lot of advantages of electric velomobiles vs cars like doing average commutes in roughly the same time, dramatic increase in road capacity, tiny power consumption if everyone was to switch etc etc
But write-ups hardly ever mention how hard it is to damage a pedestrian with it. Crashes involving just velomobiles usually leave little more than a scratch.
May I steal this, please? I know a few people who don't get my political philosophy, and I want to help them understand.
Absent this, one of three conditions exist;
1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.
2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious. This is your condition of tyranny (unaccountable power).
3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition the State.
The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy
Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California P. p. 54.
https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...
There's an excellent explanation of the common misunderstanding in this episode of the Talking Politics podcast: https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership
The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard, and was further popularised by Nozick.
Of course. Glad it was cogent enough to be useful.
We as humans only really internalize the things we see.
Farther out in the sticks, sure, those things may be so inconvenient or unavailable that it's not an option, but it is for the average Suburban Assault Vehicle owner.
Doesn't make sense to make e.g. farm tractors that rarely see a public road, pay for public road maintenance when fuel's purchased for them. Or trucks and other vehicles (some farms are really big and may include road-worthy vehicles that hardly drive on a public road more often that the tractors do).
If you're going to only drive on private land, you also don't need tags/plates for your car, at least around here. No registration. Just personal property tax and you're good to go.
Where exactly do you stop?
[Yes this is my subverted version of "I, pencil"]
Include other highly polluting industries with that, and while you may not get 100% coverage, it would definitely cover the majority of carbon intensive products and services and lead to a drastic reduction in emissions.
CCL estimates that the annual administrative cost of a carbon tax in the US would be about $4 to $5 billion per year, which is about 6.8 percent of revenues in year one ($15/ton of CO2e year one, rising by $10/ton each year), but as revenues grow along with the fee, it drops to only about 1.7 percent by year 10.
True, it definitely is trickier, but it can be managed to some degree.
> The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act has a provision built in to protect trade competitiveness: a ‘Carbon Border Fee Adjustment’ imposed on covered fuels and ‘emissions-intensive trade-exposed’ (EITE) goods that cross our border in either direction. These goods include products like steel, aluminum, cement, glass, certain chemicals, and some agricultural products. Goods that fall under this EITE classification and are imported from a country that does not have a carbon price equivalent to ours will have to pay a surcharge to make up the difference. Conversely, domestic EITE products exported to any country will get a refund for the carbon fee paid.
I think the current state of affairs is actually worse than that -- big trucks are popular not just because some people like big trucks, but also because there are regulations that prevent small trucks from being a viable market segment in the U.S.: that class of vehicle has much more stringent fuel economy standards (perversely forcing people into larger vehicles with looser regulations), and light trucks imported from other countries are subject to a 25% tariff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
The only light truck I know of that you can get currently is the long version of the Jeep Wrangler. I'm not sure if they actually meet the fuel economy standards, or if they can somehow claim to not technically be a light truck. Maybe there are some others, but as far as I can tell almost all trucks sold in the U.S. are huge and have comically tall grills.
If I wasn't already in the middle of an EV conversion project, I'd be tempted to get something like an old Datsun 620 and load it up with batteries. I wish there was a product on the market like that.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/44642/imported-1000-hp-henness...
I'm fairly low emissions but mostly by accident. I work from home and have until recently been too poor to travel like that. I just always found it annoying when people who are jetting around the globe complain about other people's cars. You on the other hand have a leg to stand on in that regard.
That said, I do truly believe travel makes you a better person, so if you can afford it now you should get out there and see it before it all burns down. Use my “credit”. :-)
Vast majority of people with a truck or off-road vehicle have one for work - they’re working vehicles.
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/why-hummers-arent-good-for-off-...
If their owners wanted to actually go off road, they'd have bought something else. They really have no purpose other than to mark you as a person with more money than sense.
They really don't. Ford did a similar study and found around the same number. Only 15% of pickup truck owners use them for work.
There are about 60m trucks on the road in the US [0]
There are 6m construction/mining workers, 6m installation workers, and 4m building maintenance workers. [1]
Using that definition, at most, 25% of trucks are used for work.
If you want to be extremely generous, there are also 13m transportation drivers (being very generous because that 60m does not include big rigs) and 8m factory workers (again, unlikely to use trucks for work).
Using that frankly incorrect definition, you still get only 62% of trucks being used for work.
So no, under NO circumstances are the "vast majority" of trucks in the US used for work.
[0]https://www.bts.gov/content/number-us-aircraft-vehicles-vess...
What’s this random collection of jobs and why do you think they’re the only people who use a truck for work?
Have you ever met for example a farmer? Crazy concept for people in tech, I know.
My brother works in road construction - he drives a 15,000 lb maintenance truck owned by his company. But he doesn't drive it home, it stays on the job site (which varies between 15 and 150 miles from home). He owns a truck, but like many suburban trucks, it's in pristine condition and he mostly only uses it to pull a trailer, he drives a Honda Civic to get to the job site.
Here's the other ones:
11-0000 Management Occupations
13-0000 Business and Financial Operations Occupations
15-0000 Computer and Mathematical Occupations
17-0000 Architecture and Engineering Occupations
19-0000 Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations
21-0000 Community and Social Service Occupations
23-0000 Legal Occupations
25-0000 Educational Instruction and Library Occupations
27-0000 Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations
29-0000 Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations
31-0000 Healthcare Support Occupations
33-0000 Protective Service Occupations
35-0000 Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations
37-0000 Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations
39-0000 Personal Care and Service Occupations
41-0000 Sales and Related Occupations
43-0000 Office and Administrative Support Occupations
45-0000 Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations
47-0000 Construction and Extraction Occupations
49-0000 Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations
51-0000 Production Occupations
53-0000 Transportation and Material Moving Occupations
Sure, maybe the 500k farming, fishing, and Forestry workers should be added to the list, but I'm curious as to what else you think should be.
EDIT: HN is banning me so this doesn't turn into a flamewar, but I'll leave you with this:
I am trying not to personally attack you, but I think you're kind of dipping into ad hominen attacks because you regret making statement that is not supported by data.
If you want to know why I think they shouldn't be included (and why I think you're really over your skis here), it's because the reality of farm work in the US is as follows:
1) The majority of the <1m US farm workers do the following job [0] [1]:
Manually plant, cultivate, and harvest vegetables, fruits, nuts, horticultural specialties, and field crops. Use hand tools, such as shovels, trowels, hoes, tampers, pruning hooks, shears, and knives.
It is not clear to me that this requires a truck (especially not one for each worker).
2) The average wage of farmworkers is $15/hour [1] and the average cost of a used F-150 in the US is $40k ($30k pre-pandemic) [2], so it's not immediately clear to me that this group of people own a large number of pick-ups.
Ultimately though, for someone to work at a large tech company, make their identity publicly available and to be so aggressive on a forum like this seems like a weird risk to take. If you want to delete all of this stuff and just move on, I'm ok with that.
[0]https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes452092.htm [1]https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/#wag... [2] https://pickuptrucktalk.com/2021/07/used-pickup-truck-prices...
[EDIT] I think, assuming you're posting all this in good faith, it may be a result of expanding a local perspective to the entire country. Some parts of the country definitely do have way fewer non-work trucks driving around, as a proportion of total cars. One might conclude that this is the norm over enough of the country that "the vast majority" of trucks are work trucks. It very much is not.
Incidentally, I saw tons of Hummers on the road around here in the '00s. Now... I thought they'd stopped making them. All those "I want a huge car because... I want a huge car" buyers must be getting expensive trucks or other kinds of big SUVs these days.
You’ll see people in areas like that driving a beat up truck barely large enough to fit 2 people or a tiny scooter that’s hauling a half ton of cargo.
Nobody is getting their hummer dirty or risking a scratch. And anybody going to a job site is going to prefer an actual truck over an oversized vehicle for bored suburban couples.