>>>>> "MT" == Michael Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
MT> Just because the industry may be engaging in "typical
MT> arguments and overwrought warnings of terrible consequences
MT> that come from any industry when legislation is proposed to
MT> curb that industry's pollution" doesn't invalidate Dyna's
MT> points, nor mean that any substantive remedies will result
MT> from the trucks not idling. They are an extremely small
MT> problem compared to the buses (they spew a buttload of fumes,
MT> idling or not, and if you think I'm kidding, be in the car
MT> next to the exhaust pipe of one of those beasts), firetrucks,
MT> city vehicles, and utility trucks and all the other vehicles
MT> that will be exempted whose engines will be required to idle
MT> so those vehicles can get their jobs done. (I love exemptions
MT> to "pollution" ordinances. It's as if only certain vehicles,
MT> the ones that are "bad" like commericial vehicles, pollute,
MT> and buses, which are "good" vehicles, don't.)
The obvious difference is that buses and school buses don't idle
outside your window in the middle of the night while you're trying to
sleep.
MT> But I don't think the ordinance was "proposed to curb that
MT> industry's pollution." That's a nice, pretty, trendy way to
MT> label it for sale to whoever will buy it. I think the
MT> ordinance as proposed is not about pollution at all......it
MT> is, quite simply, because the neighbors don't like the trucks,
MT> and had them banned. (Not unlike the smoking ban... that
MT> wasn't about the health of workers, it was about a subset of
MT> people that don't like smoke.... and imposition of will, but
MT> that's a different thread).
I think you may be underestimating the inconvenience imposed on a few
people who are habitually subjected to having trucks idle overnight
near their houses. Your argument above, which seems unnecessarily
aggressive, is that these are people who are just fussy. What grounds
do you have to make this accusation?
MT> Anyway, as a consequence, trucks will probably still be able
MT> to come into the city to unload their goods, but it will make
MT> it a heck of a lot less convenient for them to do so. Prices
MT> may go up. I hope they do. I hope truckers charge more, or
MT> they charge some sort of "Delivery to Minneapolis fee." It
MT> certainly shouldn't be a problem for those people who are
MT> "Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota."
This is a case where we suffer from not having more centralization in
government regulation (note that I'm not arguing for more
centralization --- there are pro's as well as cons to
decentralization). If we had more centralized regulation, we could
establish a discipline of using the electrical plug-ins, that would
level the playing field, both between Minneapolis and surrounds, and
between truckers, since the cost of the plug-ins would just be rolled
into the cost of products for everyone.
The current arrangement is one of those cases where we have a race to
the bottom --- nobody should pay to use the electrical plug-ins,
because that just penalizes them vis a vis their competitors. An
alternative approach to regulation for those who prefer market
solutions, would be to make people pay for the idling in some way, so
that individuals would be motivated to solve the problem.
In the current case, though, nobody in the trucking industry or the
regulators thereof is motivated to solve the idling problem, which
leaves us with the city council trying its own solution. About that
solution, you think the cost to the truckers is more important than
that of people living near idling trucks, and others think the exact
opposite.
My guess is that we're not going to come to a consensus about that
issue, and probably we ought to stop talking about it, because we're
just going to get more and more hot under the collar to no great
purpose.
Best,
R
--
Robert P. Goldman
ECCO
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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