I think we can keep the positive externalities (most of them) without having (most of) the negative externalities. We have an aviation system that doesn’t actively kill anyone (due to safety issues), but still pollutes. But I believe we could have a system with alternative energy sources that did neither, with very little price uplift at…
I think we can keep the positive externalities (most of them) without having (most of) the negative externalities. We have an aviation system that doesn’t actively kill anyone (due to safety issues), but still pollutes. But I believe we could have a system with alternative energy sources that did neither, with very little price uplift at scale. But now we underprice automobility(obviously) and so over consume it and so have excess negative externalities — even if you allow for a fixed value of life —, and underspend on seeking change.
I agree that we can keep the positive externalities without having most of the negative ones. I partly agree that we underprice automobility, but it is a question exactly what we are overconsuming and how best to address each factor we are overconsuming. The cost of automobility is in fact mostly borne by automobile users when we consider that, as a system, most of the cost is in the purchase and operation of the vehicles themselves. Then much of the external costs, especially congestion delay, is borne by the operators of the vehicles too. The "pricing" we need to apply to resolve the negative externalities, would only represent a small percentage increase in the cost borne by the vehicle owner-operators; it is crazy that we don't do it. There is massive consumer surplus in automobility, which is why the "underpricing" of it might not be as significant as you think.
Currently we have policy makers assuming that prescriptive regulation of urban form is what we need to do, and are doing, to solve the negative externalities of automobility! But this is crazy - it has unintended consequences that increase the very externalities we claim to be addressing! Co-location is actually far more important than density; you can have low density and efficient co-location, and you can have, and we often do, have arbitrary density increases that play out into "pricing out" decreasing co-location! If we kept the urban land rent curve low by allowing greenfields development (even if the option ends up not being driven by the market), people responding to road and fuel charging would be more able to co-locate.
I regard the most important thing to establish in these current policy discussions, as the distortions to urban land rent and their consequences if we choose prescriptive land rationing as the "best" and only strategy.
Road pricing done right, would also INCREASE the distance drivers can travel in a given time, which is not a bad thing if less negative externalities rather than more, are created in the process. One thing that is certain is that the net of positive externalities over negative, would be increased.
I think we can keep the positive externalities (most of them) without having (most of) the negative externalities. We have an aviation system that doesn’t actively kill anyone (due to safety issues), but still pollutes. But I believe we could have a system with alternative energy sources that did neither, with very little price uplift at scale. But now we underprice automobility(obviously) and so over consume it and so have excess negative externalities — even if you allow for a fixed value of life —, and underspend on seeking change.
I agree that we can keep the positive externalities without having most of the negative ones. I partly agree that we underprice automobility, but it is a question exactly what we are overconsuming and how best to address each factor we are overconsuming. The cost of automobility is in fact mostly borne by automobile users when we consider that, as a system, most of the cost is in the purchase and operation of the vehicles themselves. Then much of the external costs, especially congestion delay, is borne by the operators of the vehicles too. The "pricing" we need to apply to resolve the negative externalities, would only represent a small percentage increase in the cost borne by the vehicle owner-operators; it is crazy that we don't do it. There is massive consumer surplus in automobility, which is why the "underpricing" of it might not be as significant as you think.
Currently we have policy makers assuming that prescriptive regulation of urban form is what we need to do, and are doing, to solve the negative externalities of automobility! But this is crazy - it has unintended consequences that increase the very externalities we claim to be addressing! Co-location is actually far more important than density; you can have low density and efficient co-location, and you can have, and we often do, have arbitrary density increases that play out into "pricing out" decreasing co-location! If we kept the urban land rent curve low by allowing greenfields development (even if the option ends up not being driven by the market), people responding to road and fuel charging would be more able to co-locate.
I regard the most important thing to establish in these current policy discussions, as the distortions to urban land rent and their consequences if we choose prescriptive land rationing as the "best" and only strategy.
Road pricing done right, would also INCREASE the distance drivers can travel in a given time, which is not a bad thing if less negative externalities rather than more, are created in the process. One thing that is certain is that the net of positive externalities over negative, would be increased.