The economy wide productivity gains from having tax funded roads mean it doesn’t make sense to have roads be profitable or break even as an individual entity.

Similar thing probably goes for internet access.

Gotta be careful what you measure though. If I spend a bunch of money owning and maintaining my car, it's possible that that could've been spent on other things that would be overall better for the economy.

Taxes are not flat, just like caps, so there’s no contradiction.

Do you seriously want every road you drive on to charge you? Roads should be a public good that we all benefit from

I would happily pay for congestion pricing because it would allow me to go where I'm going faster.

Right now we have this weird sunk cost and lack of obvious incremental charges to driving, that encourages driving when there are other better options for some trips.

You already are charged by every road you drive on, just not explicitly.

Personally, that sounds pretty wonderful. Better yet, charge by vehicle weight. I'd like to be able to ride a bike on the road and have everyone think the guy in the car is imposing inconvenience rather than the other way around.

> Ironically roads should also have caps and/or tolls, so this take is strange.

We'll set up electronic tolls on your cul-de-sac and every light and stop sign, or toll you by mile driven using an odometer beaconing out to the tax authorities per drive and registered to your tax ID number (US) or equivalent. And then cap you on the number of miles you're allowed to drive per year on all cars unless you pay an additional fee.

Older cars must be retrofit at the driver's expense.

Also the auditing and anti-fraud infrastructure must be instituted for all of this.

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Or we can just do flat taxes and chill.

Flat taxes are regressive and inefficient, but I suppose we can still chill.

I'm absolutely down for vehicle registration fees to relate to miles driven and weight classifications, and major highways being funded by extra tolling.

The streets in my neighborhood cost way less per mile for maintenance than giant highways with massive bridges and interchanges. It makes sense they'd cost more to use.

Showing the real cost of these things to consumers might make them change their minds about riding the train. These days a lot of people don't even think about the cost of driving their car across town, but gosh that metro day pass is $5? How expensive!

> gosh that metro day pass is $5? How expensive!

Nah, metro day pass should cost as much as howevermany miles the buyer traveled. Otherwise people who buy the passes for just one stop would be subsidizing the costs for people who travel from one end of a line to the other.

It'd be pretty shit to meter one and not the other.

What is ironic about you're opinion disagreeing with the status quo in some countries?

It’s ironic because they’re arguing against caps but talk about roads, but roads in the United States are in terrible shape due to certain groups, such as construction vehicles not paying their fair share to begin with.

This partly why gas tax is even a thing.