Forgive me for not making myself clearer — the moral issue to which I was referring is “On what basis is it decided who gets to coerce whom?” Or, as Lenin put it, “Kto kogo?”

I think we are arguing from considerably different premises with respect to acceptable levels of public policy intervention. However, if you were to say in response, “That boat done sailed,” the evidence suggests you have a point.

I also think I should oughta lighten up a little. I do acknowledge that your proposal comes from good will, and I can respect that while remaining skeptical as to the effectiveness or desirability of the proposal itself. If administered by the best people, it might be benign, at least in terms of what can be seen (I’d like to withhold judgment with regard to what cannot be seen). Thank you for staying engaged.

Part of my skepticism is rooted in the belief that — as you sort of alluded, if I understand you — we don’t have the best people to administer it. However, in the spirit of working with the people and system we have, not those we wish we had, allow me to see you and raise: Recalculate the level of gas tax required to replace federal income _and payroll_ taxes, and let’s repeal the 16th Amendment into the bargain (since it would require an amendment, we can ban payroll taxes for good and all while we’re at it). If the net-positive level of taxation will have the positive effect suggested, a higher tax ought to be even more effective, and if citizens are able to start from a position of having nearly all the money they earned in the first place, the market signal will be much less distorted than otherwise.

It might be ignored just as most of the rest of the Constitution is now, but I have forgotten my Tolkien (perhaps the foremost moral philosopher of the 20th Century):

“Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

I reckon I could unbend my stiff neck to support a modified proposal such as I’ve outlined above, for the succor of those years wherein we are set.

Best regards.

Ken writes: “Because top-downers cannot face this moral issue squarely, they cannot make the sale other than by force…which, of course, is at the bottom of this proposal as well.”

This is unfair, Ken. We live in a democracy, and what the masses demand the masses get. (Which is why we’re in such a mess, by the way.) So I’m trying to face the moral issue squarely by arguing that the net-positive gas tax is a critically important step forward and by convincing you that it will be effective and PALATABLE. Not very successfully, I see. It appears that an even bigger challenge is convincing y’all that we are about to smacked down hard by scarce oil resources unless we take action now. I’d thought that that was a no-brainer, but apparently not. At least Kunstler agrees, in today’s article on ‘Strange Days of Debt, Peak Oil, and Stock Rallies’, in which he says: “peak oil means no more ability to service debt … and the global economy will crash”.

We used to call ‘em principles, but tomato, toh-mah-to.

I guess. Note also that it’s a mere rehash of “We must act now, lest the sky fall!”

“Regarding pricing signals, how did you like those signals we were clobbered by last year?”

They were a bloody nuisance, of course. I note that my family and I somehow managed not to miss any meals. Were gas still $4 (or more) a gallon, that would still be true.

“Regarding the powers and abilities of ordinary mortals, the average human is incapable of planning for a future outside his own experience. This is a serious impediment. But the geological facts and their economic consequences are certain for those with open eyes. Denial or trust in providence is irresponsible.”

So who gets to decide who these other-than-average humans with open eyes, these Philosopher Kings, are?

I would say that I would consider Dr. Doddington’s prescription were it implemented by constitutional amendment following the enumerated procedure, but in the end I suppose it would be one more thing to be ignored when the next crisis So Dire We Cannot Allow You To Decide For Yourselves How To Deal arises. We have a vast store of empirical evidence what happens when we turn decisions that should be made by free individuals over to Those Who Know Best. It’s called the 20th Century, and its monument is a mountain of skulls. Because top-downers cannot face this moral issue squarely, they cannot make the sale other than by force…which, of course, is at the bottom of this proposal as well.

I’m confused. If you believe this, then it seems to me that you can’t believe there’s a net benefit to any change in the tax code that doesn’t solely involve slashing the tax rate, so why be willing to give the government even a taste of that additional power anyway?

“A fourth criticism is that the poor will suffer because they won’t be able to manage their windfall gain from the tax. This is insulting to the poor, because being poor does not imply being stupid.”

If it seemed I have the opinion that the poor are stupid, please be assured that is not the case. All I intended to observe is that the windfall was relatively more money for the poor than for the rich.

If you’ve ever been poor–and since you have a PhD it’s likely you have at times sacrificed your ability to earn money to complete your education–you’ll remember times when you would go without essentials like food or heat for a few days for the lack of a dollar or two. I doubt you’ll find many rich people who, even now, have the same problem.

And if you’ve ever followed the news about lottery winners, or welfare recipients, or the recent news about stock brokers and the way they frittered away their enormous windfall bonuses of the previous few years, you’ll find that very few of any of those groups bothered to save their windfall instead of spend it. I think it’s better to let people keep their money than to take it from them and then give it back in a way that does its level best to get them to squander it.

“The motivation for the tax is to anticipate the inevitable escalation of the price of oil, in order to give us the needed time and the motivation to adjust to limited oil. ”

So we need to raise the price of oil before the price of oil goes up on its own so we can get used to high oil prices before we need to get used to high oil prices? I ignored that part of the argument because it sounded so ridiculous to me once I wrote it out that I figured it couldn’t possibly be what you were trying to say.

What you’re banking on is that the early high oil prices will spur on the market to do what the market will do anyway once the oil prices rise and hope that the government will somehow stay out of their own self-created nonsense. I wouldn’t bet on that last, but if we can trust them to do as you suggest, why not tax it double, triple, a thousand times what you propose? That will conserve even more oil and give even more back to the people in the form of the windfall rebates. And since oil is a finite resource, the prices will eventually get that high anyway. Might as well do it now before it happens on its own. Right?

We have an artificial energy scarcity and pay for oil in the blood of our fellow human beings right now, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, because our government has enormous power to tax and regulate and go to war. That much power attracts money and favors from special interests who try to skirt those taxes and regulations and get their grasping maw around some of those war dollars, which only makes the abuse of government power more likely. As Michael Cloud said, it isn’t the abuse of power that’s the problem, it’s the power to abuse. I’m not sure how encouraging the government to take on more power they can abuse will help this or any other situation.

I’m confused. If you believe this, then it seems to me that you can’t believe there’s a net benefit to any change in the tax code that doesn’t involve slashing the tax rate everywhere for everyone, so why be willing to give the government even a taste of that additional power anyway?

“A fourth criticism is that the poor will suffer because they won’t be able to manage their windfall gain from the tax. This is insulting to the poor, because being poor does not imply being stupid.”

If it seemed I have the opinion that the poor are stupid, please be assured that is not the case. All I intended to observe is that the windfall was relatively more money for the poor than for the rich.

If you’ve ever been poor–and since you have a PhD it’s likely you have at times sacrificed your ability to earn money to complete your education–you’ll remember times when you would go without essentials like food or heat for a few days for the lack of a dollar or two. I doubt you’ll find many rich people who, even now, have the same problem.

And if you’ve ever followed the news about lottery winners, or welfare recipients, or the recent news about stock brokers and the way they squandered their enormous windfall bonuses of the previous few years, you’ll find that very few of any of those groups bothered to save instead of spend. I think it’s better to let people keep their money than to take it from them and then give it back in a way that does its level best to get them to squander it.

“The motivation for the tax is to anticipate the inevitable escalation of the price of oil, in order to give us the needed time and the motivation to adjust to limited oil. ”

So we need to raise the price of oil before the price of oil goes up on its own so we can get used to high oil prices before we need to get used to high oil prices? I ignored that part of the argument because it sounded so ridiculous to me once I wrote it out that I figured it couldn’t possibly be what you were trying to say.

What you’re banking on is that the early high oil prices will spur on the market to do what the market will do anyway once the oil prices rise and hope that the government will somehow stay out of their own self-created nonsense. I wouldn’t bet on that last, but if we can trust them to do as you suggest, why not tax it double, triple, a thousand times what you propose? That will conserve even more oil and give even more back to the people in the form of the windfall rebates. And since oil is a finite resource, the prices will eventually get that high anyway. Might as well do it now before it happens on its own. Right?

We have an artificial oil scarcity and pay for oil in the blood of our fellow human beings right now, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, because our government has enormous power to tax and regulate and go to war. That much power attracts money and favors from special interests who try to skirt those taxes and regulations and get their grasping maw around some of those war dollars, which only makes the abuse of government power more likely. As Michael Cloud said, it isn’t the abuse of power that’s the problem, it’s the power to abuse. I’m not sure how encouraging the government to take on more power they can abuse will help this or any other situation.

I see Nature rearing back for a population smackdown, so I’m pre-emptively avoiding reproduction.

You can’t beat the system, but you can withhold participation.

Regarding pricing signals, how did you like those signals we were clobbered by last year? And that was just a warm-up. A net-positive excise tax will suppress gasoline consumption sufficiently to keep the price of oil under control and will redirect the profits from OPEC to U.S. consumers. Otherwise, prices will be higher and only OPEC will be smiling.

Regarding the powers and abilities of ordinary mortals, the average human is incapable of planning for a future outside his own experience. This is a serious impediment. But the geological facts and their economic consequences are certain for those with open eyes. Denial or trust in providence is irresponsible.

The net-positive excise tax is an effective way to hold down gasoline prices and allow U.S. consumers to pocket the difference. Everyone wins (except OPEC).

“We must act now, lest the sky fall” is just about exactly the argument advanced for the bailouts (if you can keep track of them as they go by), not to mention the quantitative easing that may upset the whole apple cart (I hope not, but hope is not a plan).

In fact, pretty much every proposed intervention by the State in the market (or the other natural-law liberties of individuals) is proffered as a way — usually the _only_ way — to avoid some or other disaster, present or future. The government intervention in the market Dr. Doddington advocates will not work any better than the others have. It cannot do. It will invariably make things worse:

1. It will distort the signals (provided by the pricing mechanism) by which entrepreneurs make decisions for allocating relatively scarce capital. Misinvestment and/or malinvestment inevitably follow.

2. People do not suddenly become endowed with powers and abilities beyond those of ordinary mortals when they take the king’s coin. Like every other State intervention in the market, the proposed tax will enable some to earn economic rents by political means, corrupting government in the process. Result: further corrosion of the domestic tranquility, which is already starting to look like a ’75 Vega around the quarter panels.

I understand that petroleum dependency is something to take very seriously for a number of reasons. This cure promises to be at least as bad as the disease, though.