You are right. And the simplest solution to this is to increase the cost of fuel /energy (typically by increasing taxes on it). This automatically directs us in the right direction. More fuel efficient cars. Or public transport and bicycles instead of cars.

Same with electricity. It also has to cost more. Right now electric cars are not very good for the environment either. They are bigger than necessary and consume too much electricity.

Unfortunately governments have never managed or dared to increase it. And unfortunately it often creates a lot of tension among the population.

The population likes to complain that it is the banks which are to blame (because the invest or lend to oil companies) or that the oil companies are to blame. But it is the people using the cars (unnecessarily big cars) which are to blame. And the politicians which do not enforce a higher cost on burning energy, by not increasing taxes on energy usage.

Due to the war in Ukraine we finally see some movement on this and it will become more important with energy efficiency and finally we see even governments send out flyers and inform of methods to save on energy. Why did they not do that before? There has been those COP meetings with presidents for over 20 years, but they have not been capable of doing the most basic things because they are afraid of affecting growth.

Unfortunately they don't understand that a fuel efficient car can transport as much as a non-fuel efficient car.

We had one of these, a carbon tax and cap-and-trade scheme, and it got dismantled after a few years :( forever unsure why "taxing externalities" isn't popular

> Right now electric cars are not very good for the environment either.

Relative to internal combustion engines, electric cars are better, even when you consider total lifecycle cost.

Yes, electric cars could be smaller. This is feasible technically with some range tradeoffs. The demand side is less clear.

You and the parent aren't disagreeing. The problem is defining "negative externalities" which is inherently political.

If electricity is produced cleanly I don't think it should be more expensive though.

While I generally agree with your sentiment, I think the health insurance example is not a good one. There are several factors that are wrong with it, for one people with insurance have advantages over people without, so you are creating a system where your access to healthcare depends on how much you earn. Secondly, it essentially creates an artifical market for insurances with pretty much guaranteed customers, the insurances don't even need to offer that much over the state system because it's cheaper anyway. If you want have the universal health care not be as loaded, simply raise income/wealth/other taxes and use that funding to prop up health care. That's a much fairer solution.

If you have insurance-based healthcare then you need some mechanism to prevent a death spiral.

I'm not sure I understand. The Australian system is weird that it isn't a insurance based system (like e.g. Germany), but they give tax insentives to high earners to get insurance. However those insurances don't pay for the basic stuff paid by the medicare system, but for extra things, for example you get faster treatment for elective surgery.

Isn't it relatively easy to bypass? The legal owner and the person that actually uses the car might be different people. E.g. a family might swap cars to lower their taxes.

That's why it's better to tax the energy itself directly. Instead of inventing a lot of complicated tax schemes and deductions and incentives, just increase the tax on gasoline/diesel. It steers people to fuel efficient cars, which steers the manufacturers to provide those cars.

The comment that started this thread though was about rich people being able to just pay the tax which is relatively smaller to them. Hence the idea to couple it to income.

Good point. Tie it to the registration cost.

Doesn't it result in a similar scenario? Rich people can still opt to drive heavier cars and even fewer poorer people still cannot afford them.

I get that adding taxes is less fascist than straight bans, but it also raises inequality.