The road to a planned economy is paved with “good” regulations.
tgirsch, over a Say Uncle’s, sits on the fence over the Detroit bailout. The post attracts quite a few comments and things go off on several tangents. So I ask him if the over-regulators are ready to fess up their responsibility in the SUV craze:
…and speaking of too tight, are you liberals ready to admit that the whole SUV/Truck/Crossover craze is a fault of those who tried to legislate innovation by requiring the CAFE standards? Or maybe you have some other reason why the Cadillac Eldorado transmorgified into the Cadillac Escalade?
The answer? With apologies to Kevin Baker, the answer is, “do it again, only harder!”
Err, how does that follow? The problem isn’t that we instituted CAFE standards — it’s that we did it and then stopped there.
…[a chunk of statistics I haven't fact-checked snipped]…
All that said, I fail to see how the Cadillac Escalade is somehow the fault of 1970’s fuel efficiency targets that most manufacturers meet easily, and could substantially exceed almost equally easily.
Clarifying a bit, the real reason car companies started pushing Escalades and the like is because the CAFE standards weren’t stringent enough — they held light trucks and SUVs to a lower standard.
My answer (I get a little sarcastic in the second sentence):
As long as you stereotype every single consumer of the auto/truck industry as being just like yourself, this makes sense. Detroit holds a gun to the drywall contractor’s head and makes him buy that shiny white pick-up truck, otherwise he would be happy with a subcompact.
So, tgirsch breaks out the L-word (which over at Say Uncle is loophole):
How does this invalidate my point, exactly, or help yours? That corporations took advantage of a loophole in the regulation and aggressively marketed to maximize their profits from doing so doesn’t mean that the regulation is at fault in the first place. The answer seems simple: increase the standards for trucks and/or modify the “truck†exemption so that pickup trucks and other work trucks are included, but SUVs, wagons, and SAVs are not. Preferably the latter.
That way, your proverbial drywall contractor is unaffected, while the hordes of suburbanites who never haul anything, apart from a few kids, are.
Yes, there are really people who think like this. When the existing regulations don’t bring about the desired behavioral change the answer is just more and more regulations. I suppose the consumer, to get around the latest proposed “loophole”, might just order the bare bones “work truck”, and hand the whole thing over to a third party for customization. I haven’t a clue where the over-regulators would go from there. Perhaps they would ban the entire auto accessory aftermarket? Perhaps you would have to prove your “need” to be able to get a permission slip to be able to buy a large vehicle? Bring your child’s birth certificates, or proof of intent to form a van pool, or other justification to the highest law enforcement officer in the county for a chit that would let you purchase a SUV of your choice? Perhaps a dealership would retain a local expert to help consumers get the needed blessings from the state?
I also like the way he takes the consumer out of the equation altogether. Those evil corporations “took advantage of a loophole in the regulation” and “aggressively marketed” those SUVs. It wasn’t like the consumer demanded larger, more practical vehicles that met all their needs or anything. The subliminal brain-washing made zombie-like consumers walk into the dealerships and spend, spend, spend!
Obligatory Wikipedia link: Planned Economy
DirtCrashr Says :
In Germany where there is a lot more auto regulation than here, accessorizing and the aftermarket is also heavily regulated.
2008-11-21 20:57 PermalinkAbout the only thing you can do (if I remember correctly) are some kinds of inconsequential cosmetic things of little or no actual performance or utility impact. Or it’s real expoensive and has to be done by an approved shop with certifications and training and bla-bla-German stuff…
Tino Says :
I’ve done some thinking about this very issue, and my conclusion is: unless attitudes change, eventually the control freaks will *have* to resort to some kind of licensing and rationing scheme. For the record, I think an attitude change is more likely.
The Left wants desperately to keep people from driving vehicles that are ‘too big’, or ‘too inefficient’; to keep people from living in ‘McMansions’, i.e. houses that are ‘too big’; to keep them from eating Twinkies, red meat, and other things are are ‘unhealthy’: you can probably come up with similar examples for every field of human endeavor.
The obvious answer is to tax the hell out of all of these things, as the government already does with liquor, cigarettes, etc.; but they’re very sensitive to charges that such taxes hurt ‘the poor’ and ‘minorities’ — for instance, your drywall contractor — while not having that much of an effect on ‘the rich’.
The solution? Licensing and rationing. Everyone would get some kind of EBT card as are currently used for food stamps; Twinkies, gasoline, etc. could only be purchased with the appropriate ration points. Large vehicles could only be registered upon presentation of some kind of official certification that you ‘needed’ the vehicle because of your employment (drywall contractor, *licensed* plumber, community organizer, etc.) or because of the size of your family (if you haul kids around, remember that of late all vehicles have at least one less legal seat than they used to), or because you have sufficient pull.
Not only would this keep ‘the rich’ from consuming more than their ‘fair share’, but it would create an enormous bureaucracy and allow the government another point of leverage over ’sex offenders’, ‘drug abusers’, scofflaws, etc., etc.
As I said: I don’t think this is at all likely, because I think that Americans would instinctively recoil from something like this — not because it doesn’t fit perfectly well with how much of the governing class sees the populace.
2008-11-24 12:23 PermalinkStandard Mischief Says :
DirtCrashr:
I’m surprised that you went overseas for an example. I know enough about CARB (California Air Resources Board) to know they step way beyond their chartered purpose to clean up auto emissions and actually dictate which accessories you may or may not install on your private property. I’m not sure exactly how they work but isn’t there also fourth amendment-violating “random spot checks”?
Tino:
Indeed. I actually scraped your site for something to link to rather than writing my own post. You have a few posts tangently related to the topic, but nothing specifically.
You solution lacks a critical step. You must actually start issuing actual coupon books first before you switch to the EBT card. That way you can claim all sorts of efficiency improvements when you upgrade.
tgirsch has responded to this post, where he claims that due to CAFE standards. fuel efficiency in autos has doubled. Unfortunately, the “goal” is to use less fuel per capita, and that little statistic seems to have remained flat. Once I settle on who to cite, writing the rebuttal ought to be fun.
2008-11-25 09:07 Permalink