[pp.int.general] Energy taxation? /was Re: Basic income - how does that fit into the pirate ideology?

[Zbigniew Łukasiak]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Cal. <peppecal at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18 July 2013 10:58, Zbigniew Łukasiak <zzbbyy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This gets a bit off-topic - but it is quite interesting how raising
>> energy and transportation prices seem to be a kind of political taboo
>> in many countries.  I for one would welcome petrol prices high enough
>> to reduce traffic, congestion is a pure waste.
>
> Every freakin' human activity needs energy. It's very close to raising
> breathable air prices.
>
> And as of today, only means capable of sustaining our energetic needs
> are: coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear. (Yeah, I hate that anti-nuclear
> blabber [that. is. an. issue. here.], it spreads utter lies about
> renewables having that much power capacity, it makes govts burn coal.
> Which is waaaay worse.)

And in the original thread:

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Jack Allnutt
<j.allnutt at pirateparty.org.uk> wrote:
...
> Raising energy and transportation prices has a knock-on effect onto
> almost every other good and service in the economy.
>
> If the price of oil goes up, then the price of petrol goes up, then the
> price to transport raw materials to make the FooWidget goes up, thus the
> price of FooWidgets goes up etc. etc.

Yeah - that's the mechanism - but is it really so bad?  I mean
politically - probably yes - because people don't want to understand
how it works - but in reality this is exactly what we want - we want
everyone using transportation to pay for the collective good that is
being consumed by transportation.  If someone buys food and that food
requires transportation and this transportation consumes roads and
generates traffic jams and pullutes the air and ... - then we want him
to pay for this - don't we?  Having this in the price of the petrol
looks quite convenient for me - because the consumption of petrol is
very much correlated with the consumption of these collective goods,
not ideal but the best approximation we can have without making it
crazy complex.

--
Z.