Michael Perelman wrote: >> Good idea, but not Pareto optimal, unless you offer something to the auto >> industry. Remember Pareto optimality is a formula for inaction.
and: >>Not unless the automobile companies were compensated for their losses. Robert Naiman wrote: > I am offering something to the auto industry - the opportunity to make their > vehicles more fuel-efficient at zero (production) cost. > > After all, the auto industry could argue, what really matters is not how > many miles the _vehicle_ gets per gallon, but how many miles per gallon it > gets _per passenger_... Don't these companies worry more about _profits_ per mile? > Suppose the car comes (voluntarily) equipped with a little electronic box. > Every time you take a trip in the car of more than X miles, you get some > kind of economic/pollution control credit if more than one person made the > trip. You demonstrate this by everybody in the vehicle swiping their cards > in the electronic box, like frequent flyers on an airline. The electronic > box has a GPS that counts the miles. Each time the driver and passengers > earn credit, the auto manufacturer earns economic/pollution control credit > too, giving them an incentive to promote the program... good idea, but I'd prefer Kaldor-Hicks hypothetical compensation. It's like what the IMF/World Bank does to third world countries: if you go free market all the way (privatizing, deregulating, etc.) it will increase efficiency so that _in theory_ the losers could be compensated for their losses. Of course, under these worthies' rule, the lonely hour of the compensation never comes. -- Jim Devine / "Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business." -- Tom Robbins _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
