I’m on my hobby horse today. From the BBC:
What if everyone had a car?
Technology offers potential solutions to traffic congestion and pollution – but getting there will take time, R&D dollars, and an incentive for people to make the shift to smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles.
For starters, how about getting rid of subsidies and taxing petrol use?
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Wrong again dude, it is a "sin" passing on diffuse costs to consumers like kapchai riders uninterested in environmental protection,hahaha . Fuel subsidy abolition is indeed welcome but I would target the petrol variety while leaving diesel subsidy ( piffling by the way)untouched. That way, transport and haulage costs are contained with minimal spillover to costs of goods and regular RAPID, Transnasional addicts. I would go further and provide incentives for NGV and bio-d use but no petrol tax. As for cars, am game for reducing duties all along provided on a "graded" basis- local and foreign non greenies gassies on same rates while greenies like hybrids, electrics,NGvs go lower. Net result,cheaper cars, contained costs of goods plus some enviro impact and no gasoline tax. Makes everyone happy, contented and responsible (for their discretionary spend) while I getmyvotes cept from Proton n Perodua maybe.....hahahaha .
ReplyDeleteAside: always wonder what makes a proton/ Perodua merger soooo difficult?. Would make for economies of scale and broader mart segmentation ( Perodua= small car, proton= mid sedan)...all common sensical ...but I give up.
The reason why PR dint go along your logical fault line ( as in the thread below) is cos they are trapped in the " pandering to the median voter" syndrome, an affliction that bugs all majoritarian democratic systems. The very syndrome that will assure many of their orange promises will remain just that = oranges which by default equates change = no change. You can already witness that for instance in Penang ( the tunnel, rampant property development to enviro' detriment etc etc). You can call them PaRiahs, bare faced liars etc etc but they are hostage to pleasing median voter demands,just like any political animal would. Iversen and Soskice have their take on it here:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfiles/Iversen-Soskice2006.pdf
While Lipschy and pals have their take on the recent DPJ fiasco in Japan(some interesting similarities with the malaysian context)
http://www.stanford.edu/~plipscy/JEASIntroduction.pdf
Me, I prefer my slavegirl autocracy anytime, anywhere......hahahaha......makes governing and policy formulation n delivery easy peasy ( talking on personal and public levels of course....hahahaha) and that also explains why personally I feel voting is a tiresome, inane, waste of time and resources exercise unless you have a proportional rep system in place ( and that too is imperfect!)
Dude, you might be interested in this efficiency clientalism thingy here as it touches on your favie enviro concerns with regard to cars, tolls and carbon blah2.
http://www.stanford.edu/~plipscy/JapanDPJEnergyEfficiency.pdf
But again you will note how the fear of the median voter kicks a£&e (oops..kids will reading, warrior! hahahaha). Ok...enjoy the interesting arts while I enjoy Timbuktu.....been a while if two weeks a while.....hahahahaha
Warrior 231