Part of the reason why the United States had both a Senate and a House is to make sure that more rural states had adequate representation of their interests, which differ substantially from urban areas. Rural areas don't have pedestrians because the distances are too big.

Cities and heavily urban states could fix their pedestrian safety problems easily by creating massive local registration taxes on large vehicles, without a federal tax penalizing rural areas. The distance I travel to get groceries would be a net waste (financial, environmental, etc) if I had to make multiple trips rather than packing two weeks of food in one trip.

More broadly, I really wish activists / reformers (of any stripe) would recognize the limits of their own knowledge and experience and realize that the world has more diversity than dreamed of in their philosophy.

Are you feeding an army? I can't even imagine buying enough food at one time to even fill a small sedan

In their example they're buying groceries on a roughly two-week schedule. A family of four or so can go through a lot of food in two weeks. In college I'd get groceries about weekly and my roommate and I would fill the trunk of an Accord with groceries.

Fill is an interesting verb. I suppose you could try to tetris it up each trip to the store, but unpacking would just as inconvenient as packing. That said, if you buy a weeksworth of food for 3 kids, sedan may easily overflow.

It's difficult to square urban vs rural interests without creating a tyranny of a majority/minority on either side. Dense urban areas already subsidize rural and even suburban infrastructure and use less resources. Proposing that urban areas tax themselves even more to limit pollution isn't very equitable either.

The fact of the matter is that current CO2 emissions are unsustainable, and we have no choice but to address the issue. That might mean that some may need to go to the grocery store more than bimonthly.

Want to avoid tyranny and environmental disasters? Limit the scope of laws and regulations. If a surgeon is removing cancer, does the patient want their chest cavity ripped open or a laparoscopy? In the absence of compelling additional evidence, I would go with the laparoscopy, which risks far fewer unforeseen complications. At the level of policy, I don't think history looks very kindly upon the 18th amendment to the US constitution (prohibition of alcohol) despite the very real societal problems it was intended to address.

Part of my point was that, for me, going to the store more frequently, even in a smaller vehicle, would be a net environmental negative. Is there evidence (e.g., detailed simulations) that a blunt policy would have a better outcome (using your own definition!) than a narrowly craft one?

I am pretty confident that narrow policies also have the long-term positive effect of reducing tribalism, because the average person ends up dealing with far fewer negative externalities of poorly crafted policy by "the other side".

> It's difficult to square urban vs rural interests without creating a tyranny of a majority/minority on either side.

Or how about letting each side decide what they want to do for themselves, but not to the other?

Cities can pay for themselves. Rural areas can pay for themselves.

See how Switzerland does it.

> Cities and heavily urban states could fix their pedestrian safety problems easily by creating massive local registration taxes on large vehicles, without a federal tax penalizing rural areas.

Why? The majority of the US population (~80%) lives in urban areas [1].

Turning your suggestion on its head, rural areas and states could fix their supposedly over-penalized residents by providing them with money or other incentives to compensate.

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[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...