The roadkill called the Chevy Volt is what happens when the "wisdom" of planners and social engineers in Washington overrides and overrules the logic of the free market. Shouldn't the lessons it teaches raise red flags everywhere else this sort of top-down, command-and-control approach is being applied, from energy to education to economic policy?
Leave all such decisions to Washington and the entire American economy will turn out just like the Chevy Volt.
Showing posts with label social engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social engineering. Show all posts
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Automakers Make Lousy Social Engineers
There's good news and bad news out of Detroit this week.
The good news, according to this blog, is that greens and automakers, after decades of being at loggerheads, now seem to be singing from the same sheet music on the need to produce environmentally-friendly cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. The shaming, badgering and blunt-force bludgeoning of automakers by Gang Green and government regulators finally has bent Motown to the will of the efficiency enforcers. Now these former adversaries are as cozy as two peas in a pod.
And the bad news? The bad news -- and it's a minor glitch, really -- is that American car-buyers just aren't interested in buying most of the environmentally-correct rides Detroit is selling. Paint them any color one chooses, green cars are by-and-large a flop with the people who count most. But that's what happens when you listen to social engineers instead of the market.
The full extent of the flop has yet to be publicly acknowledged. Government Motors has not been eager to honestly report sales figures for the Volt, and, as the piece linked just above explains, the blow has been cushioned (not surprisingly) by government fleet purchases, which are obviously being done for public relations benefits, since paying more for a vehicle that can do less, performance-wise, certainly isn't doing the taxpayers any favors.
One can't help wondering, especially in GM's case, how great an influence government ownership had in the decision to vest so much in a model, the Volt, that any layperson could have recognized as a longshot. Perhaps, sometime soon, an enterprising investigative writer will tell the whole terrible tale. And might it not be easier for a company to take such risks when it knows it has a direct line into the U.S. Treasuy if this misadventure in social engineering undercuts the bottom line? How could it not be?
Such are the hazards when the line between big government and big business becomes as blurred as it is now.
The good news, according to this blog, is that greens and automakers, after decades of being at loggerheads, now seem to be singing from the same sheet music on the need to produce environmentally-friendly cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. The shaming, badgering and blunt-force bludgeoning of automakers by Gang Green and government regulators finally has bent Motown to the will of the efficiency enforcers. Now these former adversaries are as cozy as two peas in a pod.
And the bad news? The bad news -- and it's a minor glitch, really -- is that American car-buyers just aren't interested in buying most of the environmentally-correct rides Detroit is selling. Paint them any color one chooses, green cars are by-and-large a flop with the people who count most. But that's what happens when you listen to social engineers instead of the market.
The full extent of the flop has yet to be publicly acknowledged. Government Motors has not been eager to honestly report sales figures for the Volt, and, as the piece linked just above explains, the blow has been cushioned (not surprisingly) by government fleet purchases, which are obviously being done for public relations benefits, since paying more for a vehicle that can do less, performance-wise, certainly isn't doing the taxpayers any favors.
One can't help wondering, especially in GM's case, how great an influence government ownership had in the decision to vest so much in a model, the Volt, that any layperson could have recognized as a longshot. Perhaps, sometime soon, an enterprising investigative writer will tell the whole terrible tale. And might it not be easier for a company to take such risks when it knows it has a direct line into the U.S. Treasuy if this misadventure in social engineering undercuts the bottom line? How could it not be?
Such are the hazards when the line between big government and big business becomes as blurred as it is now.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Great Big Toll Booth in the Sky
Years ago, while working as a journalist in Washington, I wrote a few short pieces about how then-newfangled technologies, being developed by a few universities with grants from the federal government, were going to crack open the door to a whole new method of taxing motorists by the mile -- something I described back then as The Great Big Toll Booth in the Sky.
Instead of taxing us by the gallon, a longstanding practice that just isn't meeting the government's insatiable demand for revenue, the then-emerging ability to track every vehicle's every move from space, via satellite, might one day allow authorities to impose a mileage tax, I warned, possibly in addition to, not in lieu of, the good old gas tax.
Back in 2001, when I did the stories, it all seemed like a nutty fantasy, dreamed-up by some mad technocrat in the bowels of the department of revenue. But it's no futuristic fantasy now. Now, it's very much on the verge of becoming a reality, as this news story out of Minnesota attests:
"GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. -- The Minnesota Department of Transportation is looking for 500 people to test technology that could someday be used to collect a mileage-based user fee.
Mn/DOT anticipates a fee on road usage might someday be necessary as more fuel efficient and hybrid cars are on the road, decreasing revenue from the gas tax.
"This research will provide important feedback from motorists about the effectiveness of using technology in a car or truck to gather mileage information," said Cory Johnson, project manager.
"We are researching alternative financing methods today that could be used 10 or 20 years from now when the number of fuel efficient and hybrid cars increase and no longer produce enough revenue from a gas tax to build and repair roads."
So, is The Great Toll Booth in the Sky really 10 or 20 years off? It's probably half that far off, if we're lucky -- and unless people rebel.
And isn't it odd that the same government prodding and pushing Americans to be more fuel efficient, by urging us to choose more environmentally-friendly rides, is at the same time hatching new schemes to squeeze more money out of us, as our "reward" for conserving? It's not odd at all, given the fickle nature and constant desire to tinker among social engineers.
It's probably too much to expect that Minnesota's mileage tax guinea pigs will grasp the fuller implications of this demented experiment and refuse to participate, as conscientious objectors to the next great innovation in taxation. So our only hope of derailing this idea is to warn the people of what's ahead and hope they raise hell.
I tried to do it back in 2001, even if it then seemed far-fetched. I'll try to do it again now, when it's just around another bend in the road. Apply the brakes now if you want to stop this from happening.
Instead of taxing us by the gallon, a longstanding practice that just isn't meeting the government's insatiable demand for revenue, the then-emerging ability to track every vehicle's every move from space, via satellite, might one day allow authorities to impose a mileage tax, I warned, possibly in addition to, not in lieu of, the good old gas tax.
Back in 2001, when I did the stories, it all seemed like a nutty fantasy, dreamed-up by some mad technocrat in the bowels of the department of revenue. But it's no futuristic fantasy now. Now, it's very much on the verge of becoming a reality, as this news story out of Minnesota attests:
"GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. -- The Minnesota Department of Transportation is looking for 500 people to test technology that could someday be used to collect a mileage-based user fee.
Mn/DOT anticipates a fee on road usage might someday be necessary as more fuel efficient and hybrid cars are on the road, decreasing revenue from the gas tax.
"This research will provide important feedback from motorists about the effectiveness of using technology in a car or truck to gather mileage information," said Cory Johnson, project manager.
"We are researching alternative financing methods today that could be used 10 or 20 years from now when the number of fuel efficient and hybrid cars increase and no longer produce enough revenue from a gas tax to build and repair roads."
So, is The Great Toll Booth in the Sky really 10 or 20 years off? It's probably half that far off, if we're lucky -- and unless people rebel.
And isn't it odd that the same government prodding and pushing Americans to be more fuel efficient, by urging us to choose more environmentally-friendly rides, is at the same time hatching new schemes to squeeze more money out of us, as our "reward" for conserving? It's not odd at all, given the fickle nature and constant desire to tinker among social engineers.
It's probably too much to expect that Minnesota's mileage tax guinea pigs will grasp the fuller implications of this demented experiment and refuse to participate, as conscientious objectors to the next great innovation in taxation. So our only hope of derailing this idea is to warn the people of what's ahead and hope they raise hell.
I tried to do it back in 2001, even if it then seemed far-fetched. I'll try to do it again now, when it's just around another bend in the road. Apply the brakes now if you want to stop this from happening.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Voluntary . . . For Now
The social engineers who run Boulder have come up with a clever new way to encourage environmentally-correct lifestyle choices: residents are being asked to leave their cars at home and find alternative means of transport on certain days, based on the color of their vehicles:
Boulder to use car colors to discourage driving
Got a blue car? The city of Boulder wants you to consider commuting sans car on Mondays.
Red car? Take a break from driving on Wednesdays. White? Thursday is your designated day of the week to leave your vehicle at home.
On Labor Day weekend, the city plans to launch a campaign to encourage residents to "do their 14.3 percent" to cut down on the number of cars on the road -- reducing air pollution, cutting carbon and road rage -- by making a commitment to go car-free on the day of the week that's correlated to your vehicle's color. Those that stick to their car-less commitments can win prizes from the campaign's sponsors.
"We want to attract people to something other than driving for one day a week or more in a fun easy way," said Cris Jones, a transportation planner with the city's GO Boulder program.
Participation in the program -- called Driven to Drive Less -- will be voluntary, and so is the day that participants choose to take a break from being behind the wheel. (There's no penalty for red-car-owning participants who commit to being car fee on the white-car day.)
The connection to car colors -- and the program's whimsical Web site, driventodriveless.com -- is part of an intentional drive by the campaign's designer, Sukle Advertising, to give a light-hearted feel to the car-cutting movement."
But the problem with such "voluntary" efforts is that they have a troubling tendency to become mandatory if the public refuses to respond to the initial, milder attempt at conditioning. "Light-hearted" can turn heavy-handed if the social engineers don't get the results they want, using good-natured cajoling or peer group pressure. And even this purely "voluntary" approach is creepily coercive in a politically-correct bastion like Boulder.
Just imagine the social stigma that you would suffer, and the shame you would feel, and the looks of opprobrium you would get, for driving your blue SUV to the office on a Monday, or pulling into Starbucks on Wednesday in your red sports car (unless it's a Tesla Roadster, of course.). This city-sponsored bifurcation of drivers into two camps -- those who supposedly care about saving the planet and those who don't -- might even encourage episodes of road rage, as those who decline to conform become targets of verbal abuse, shaming or worse from the eco-authoritarians in their midst. Sounds like a way not of uniting people, around a common goal, but of dividing them, based on nothing more than the color of the car they drive.
Most such attempts at social conditioning have a darker side. If the social engineers can't get the results they want using a carrot, sooner or later they reach for the stick.
Boulder to use car colors to discourage driving
Got a blue car? The city of Boulder wants you to consider commuting sans car on Mondays.
Red car? Take a break from driving on Wednesdays. White? Thursday is your designated day of the week to leave your vehicle at home.
On Labor Day weekend, the city plans to launch a campaign to encourage residents to "do their 14.3 percent" to cut down on the number of cars on the road -- reducing air pollution, cutting carbon and road rage -- by making a commitment to go car-free on the day of the week that's correlated to your vehicle's color. Those that stick to their car-less commitments can win prizes from the campaign's sponsors.
"We want to attract people to something other than driving for one day a week or more in a fun easy way," said Cris Jones, a transportation planner with the city's GO Boulder program.
Participation in the program -- called Driven to Drive Less -- will be voluntary, and so is the day that participants choose to take a break from being behind the wheel. (There's no penalty for red-car-owning participants who commit to being car fee on the white-car day.)
The connection to car colors -- and the program's whimsical Web site, driventodriveless.com -- is part of an intentional drive by the campaign's designer, Sukle Advertising, to give a light-hearted feel to the car-cutting movement."
But the problem with such "voluntary" efforts is that they have a troubling tendency to become mandatory if the public refuses to respond to the initial, milder attempt at conditioning. "Light-hearted" can turn heavy-handed if the social engineers don't get the results they want, using good-natured cajoling or peer group pressure. And even this purely "voluntary" approach is creepily coercive in a politically-correct bastion like Boulder.
Just imagine the social stigma that you would suffer, and the shame you would feel, and the looks of opprobrium you would get, for driving your blue SUV to the office on a Monday, or pulling into Starbucks on Wednesday in your red sports car (unless it's a Tesla Roadster, of course.). This city-sponsored bifurcation of drivers into two camps -- those who supposedly care about saving the planet and those who don't -- might even encourage episodes of road rage, as those who decline to conform become targets of verbal abuse, shaming or worse from the eco-authoritarians in their midst. Sounds like a way not of uniting people, around a common goal, but of dividing them, based on nothing more than the color of the car they drive.
Most such attempts at social conditioning have a darker side. If the social engineers can't get the results they want using a carrot, sooner or later they reach for the stick.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Make Way for Road Clogs
None of us likes a road hog. But an even bigger nuisance in the near future could come from road clogs. I'm talking about those environmentally correct but not-ready-for-prime time vehicles -- those glorified golf carts -- that the better-living-through-smaller-cars crowd wants us all to drive.
The scourge of the road clog will become even greater than the danger of road hogs in the years ahead, as special lanes are established, and new rules of the road are written, that will force those of us who still use evil old gasoline, and choose to drive a bigger-than-government-approved vehicle, and are willing and able to go the speed limit, to accommodate the slower, under-performing, less reliable death traps that many alternative cars are.
We're seeing the first glimmer of this brave new world in Colorado, where a law is just kicking in that will force normal motorists to share already-overcrowded roads with glorified golf carts.
"One of 151 laws going into effect Wednesday, the 90th day after the end of the legislative session, it will allow smaller and slower electric car brands on more state roads. It aims to reduce gasoline consumption and pollution.
The law allows electric cars on state highways with speed limits of 35 mph or less and to cross state highways with higher speed limits. Currently, the vehicles are banned from all state highways and from crossing them because they're too slow."
It's a seemingly trivial change of law today; something we can shake our heads at and chuckle. But from such tiny acorns mighty oak trees can grow.
We'll find it less humorous when this attempt to integrate the roadways fails and segregation of the roadways occurs, as conventionally-powered, full-performance vehicles are forced to accommodate (and possibly even give preference to?) politically correct alternatives. We see this already, of course, in the creation of HOV lanes to reward car pooling -- and in the new push to allow solo drivers of certain social engineer-approved hybrid vehicles to also use those special lanes. But that's just a precursor.
Try to imagine how unmanageable, and potentially dangerous, the roadways will become when we're forced to accommodate significant numbers of undersized and under-performing vehicles. The road will be an even bigger mess than they are now.
Also becoming law today, not coincidently, is one bill that requires motorists to give bicyclists at least three feet of clearance when passing -- rules that will create conflict rather than curb it -- and another bill that allows motor scooters on more public rights of way. Any one else see a pattern emerging?
The legislator who gave the green light to golf carts hails from Snowmass, Colorado, not surprisingly, an elite enclave near Aspen that's about as far removed from the real world as it is physically removed from the congested Front Range cities of Denver, Colorado, Fort Collins and Pueblo (where this law also applies). The legislator noted that "citizens in Snowmass Village use the vehicles to run errands and take children to school. She hopes more households will buy the cars, which start at $9,000, instead of a traditional second car," according to one news story.
It's a pretty little picture, like all the pretty pictures painted by social engineers. But there are realities and practicalities to consider. People in Snowmass Village might be able to afford a $9,000 electric cart, for running kids to school or stopping by Whole Foods for a celery and sprout smoothie. But how and whether this law will work in the rest of Colorado -- in the real world -- remains to be seen.
The scourge of the road clog will become even greater than the danger of road hogs in the years ahead, as special lanes are established, and new rules of the road are written, that will force those of us who still use evil old gasoline, and choose to drive a bigger-than-government-approved vehicle, and are willing and able to go the speed limit, to accommodate the slower, under-performing, less reliable death traps that many alternative cars are.
We're seeing the first glimmer of this brave new world in Colorado, where a law is just kicking in that will force normal motorists to share already-overcrowded roads with glorified golf carts.
"One of 151 laws going into effect Wednesday, the 90th day after the end of the legislative session, it will allow smaller and slower electric car brands on more state roads. It aims to reduce gasoline consumption and pollution.
The law allows electric cars on state highways with speed limits of 35 mph or less and to cross state highways with higher speed limits. Currently, the vehicles are banned from all state highways and from crossing them because they're too slow."
It's a seemingly trivial change of law today; something we can shake our heads at and chuckle. But from such tiny acorns mighty oak trees can grow.
We'll find it less humorous when this attempt to integrate the roadways fails and segregation of the roadways occurs, as conventionally-powered, full-performance vehicles are forced to accommodate (and possibly even give preference to?) politically correct alternatives. We see this already, of course, in the creation of HOV lanes to reward car pooling -- and in the new push to allow solo drivers of certain social engineer-approved hybrid vehicles to also use those special lanes. But that's just a precursor.
Try to imagine how unmanageable, and potentially dangerous, the roadways will become when we're forced to accommodate significant numbers of undersized and under-performing vehicles. The road will be an even bigger mess than they are now.
Also becoming law today, not coincidently, is one bill that requires motorists to give bicyclists at least three feet of clearance when passing -- rules that will create conflict rather than curb it -- and another bill that allows motor scooters on more public rights of way. Any one else see a pattern emerging?
The legislator who gave the green light to golf carts hails from Snowmass, Colorado, not surprisingly, an elite enclave near Aspen that's about as far removed from the real world as it is physically removed from the congested Front Range cities of Denver, Colorado, Fort Collins and Pueblo (where this law also applies). The legislator noted that "citizens in Snowmass Village use the vehicles to run errands and take children to school. She hopes more households will buy the cars, which start at $9,000, instead of a traditional second car," according to one news story.
It's a pretty little picture, like all the pretty pictures painted by social engineers. But there are realities and practicalities to consider. People in Snowmass Village might be able to afford a $9,000 electric cart, for running kids to school or stopping by Whole Foods for a celery and sprout smoothie. But how and whether this law will work in the rest of Colorado -- in the real world -- remains to be seen.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Obamanomics at work in Pitkin County
"Spreading the wealth around" doesn't just occur at the federal level, despite all the focus that redistribution has received in the presidential contest. It takes place at the local level too, as a story in yesterday's Aspen Times makes clear.
Pitkin County commissioners are mulling a six-fold increase in their "affordable housing mitigation fee," according to the paper, which is actually a tax levied on builders -- and the buyers of what they build -- that's used to fund affordable housing projects in the area. It's redistribution of wealth, plain and simple: Some people pay more for a home or building than they need to, so the county can provide other people with subsidized shelter. This creates the illusion that "affordable housing" is increasing, when the net effect is to make building and housing county-wide much more expensive, deepening a "crisis" county leaders are trying to solve.
But this is what can happen when economic illiterates are in charge, and when do-gooder dogma supplants reason in policymaking circles.
As the cost of building these "affordable housing" units has risen -- a consultant hired by the county estimates that “a subsidy of $394,200 is necessary to make a 1,000-square-foot residential affordable housing unit in 2008” -- the tax extracted from builders (and passed on to customers) doesn't go as far. So now the county may raise the tax, possibly by a factor of 6, which will increase the overall cost of housing on most people in the county, while benefiting a minority of folks who win the affordable housing lottery.
If it really wanted to promote affordable housing, Pitkin County would be reducing barriers and costs for builders and developers, which would increase housing stocks and reduce sticker shock. But Pitkin County wants contradictory things: It wants to control "growth" and effectively punish developers, while offering ample affordable housing for its non-wealthy residents.
Until it recognizes the error of its ways -- and realizes that "spreading the wealth around" isn't just unfair, but also counterproductive -- the situation will only get worse.
Pitkin County commissioners are mulling a six-fold increase in their "affordable housing mitigation fee," according to the paper, which is actually a tax levied on builders -- and the buyers of what they build -- that's used to fund affordable housing projects in the area. It's redistribution of wealth, plain and simple: Some people pay more for a home or building than they need to, so the county can provide other people with subsidized shelter. This creates the illusion that "affordable housing" is increasing, when the net effect is to make building and housing county-wide much more expensive, deepening a "crisis" county leaders are trying to solve.
But this is what can happen when economic illiterates are in charge, and when do-gooder dogma supplants reason in policymaking circles.
As the cost of building these "affordable housing" units has risen -- a consultant hired by the county estimates that “a subsidy of $394,200 is necessary to make a 1,000-square-foot residential affordable housing unit in 2008” -- the tax extracted from builders (and passed on to customers) doesn't go as far. So now the county may raise the tax, possibly by a factor of 6, which will increase the overall cost of housing on most people in the county, while benefiting a minority of folks who win the affordable housing lottery.
If it really wanted to promote affordable housing, Pitkin County would be reducing barriers and costs for builders and developers, which would increase housing stocks and reduce sticker shock. But Pitkin County wants contradictory things: It wants to control "growth" and effectively punish developers, while offering ample affordable housing for its non-wealthy residents.
Until it recognizes the error of its ways -- and realizes that "spreading the wealth around" isn't just unfair, but also counterproductive -- the situation will only get worse.
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