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0 pointsflavor86y ago0 comments

> One cannot coercively distort the market with government power and expect that life will not, "uh, uh, find a way."

Uh, yes you can. Just look at the different car fleets in Europe (where gasoline taxes are high) vs the US (where gasoline taxes are low.) The first thing I notice when driving from the airport either in Europe when I'm visiting or the US when I'm back is the different composition of cars on the road - the US has lots of pickups and SUVs, where Europe has a lot of small coupes and sedans. That's driven by gas pricing, and mpg standards.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fu...

> Great intentions do not always lead to great outcomes (often the opposite).

"Do not always" is not the same as "cannot". It is true that incentives can have unexpected results, but as another poster replied, the answer to that is to iterate and improve rather than "not try in the first place". Markets do not lead to perfection without guidance.

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njarboe6y ago

Why many people in the US buy trucks and SUVs over cars is due to a lot of factors. A major one that is not well known is that US auto manufactures have had a high incentive to promote them since a 1964 tax law[1] set a import 25% tax on light trucks.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

remarkEon6y ago

I'm skeptical that the import duty had a significant effect on truck and SUV sales in the US. A lot of this is probably cultural, coupled with the fact that much of the United States wasn't really settled and developed (at scale) until after WWII. Pickups are just more useful in places that are less dense. Plus, they look cool and are fun to drive.

>Robert Z. Lawrence, professor of international trade and investment at Harvard University, contends the tax crippled the U.S. automobile industry by insulating it from real competition in light trucks for 40 years.

This comment also made me laugh. I doubt that we'd be seeing everyone drive Tatas around the ranch instead of Fords if they didn't have a 25% import duty.

ianai6y ago

(my opinion) Sorry, but trucks are some of the ugliest vehicles. They’re basically big, fat blocky designs with annoying sound and air pollution. They’re also high set and often can’t corner well.

flavor8OP6y ago

Just look at what happened to SUV sales when gas prices went up in the 2000s. https://www.cbtnews.com/the-correlation-between-fuel-prices-...

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