Scary!
(posted by Jim Henley)
Looks like PA is going to come right in at my 55-45 prediction. Okay, I said 55-44-1, with Edwards or somebody getting the votes of a handful of the disgusted and despairing. I award myself a biscuit anyhow. This has to count as the worst possible result for the Dems as a party: it’s the minimum spread to count as a decisive victory for Clinton, but not so decisive as to start a stampede away from Obama. Punksatawny Phil sees six more weeks of lapel pins and Balkan snipers - or rather, heh heh heh, their absence . . .
Meanwhile, Yglesias responds to a Virginia Postrel entry on gas prices and the candidates that I also cited on my home blog. My one quibble with Matt is about a possible law-of-unintended-consequences violation. He writes:
Rising gas prices clearly carry a lot of sting for a lot of folks, but the responsible reaction is to come up with policies that make it easier for people to cope with higher gas prices by making it easier to get along while using less fuel. More transit and intercity rail, more and better sidewalks and bike paths, more fuel efficient vehicles, etc. leading over the long run to different patterns of development and living so that a high price on carbon remains consistent with a high quality of life.
Seems to me that what all that would do is make real estate relatively more expensive in urban areas and less expensive in poorer ones. Wasn’t the pattern for centuries in the west that the rich lived in the city while the poor made do on the outskirts? That pattern could reassert itself.
Mind you, libertarians can find a potential unintended consequence in any proposal. I’m not even saying, “Let private business build mass transit if there’s a market for it!” (Not quite. It does seem like trams and private buses may have a footprint and expense advantage over light rail even though governments remain stubbornly enamored of light rail. And private businesses may be less inclined to dig huge tunnels with their own money for ten years before getting a revenue stream going.) But the massive resorting of America into a country of richer, whiter people out here and poorer darker people in there was pretty messy. If we end up reversing that - an order of magnitude more gentrification than we’ve already seen - that will be pretty messy too.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:16 pm
A standard libertarian would be to let gas prices rise and…well, people will switch transportation methods out of pure interests of pocket book. This hasn’t happened so far, but historically speaking these gas prices are not all that high, and fuel efficiency has been increasing for the average car buyer.
If oil reserves are dwindling, then there will be a switch to other fuels. But if they aren’t, then carbon pollution may very well mean forcing us to use other fuels. I’ve heard that contrary to popular fact, oil reserves are not about to run out. Uh oh for libertarianism’s invisible hand…
As for private initiatives that compliment public transportation, I know that in NYC there were some renegade cabbies and vans operating some time back. Their multiplicty meant a closer approximation to cars and their ability to take you exactly where you want to go (a big drawback to bus lines, etc.), but they were squashed by jealous transit workers and their allies in office.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 pm
I mean standard libertarian reply.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Dain: I/we are working on an option to let commenters edit their own replies. Or at least, I’m lobbying for it.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Local government could just stop subsidizing sprawl, which presently imposes costs on working people. It might, for example, eliminate zoning barriers to mixed use development in the burbs, and to walkups and other cheap housing downtown, so that the need for commuting is reduced. It might stop funding subsidized road and utility infrastructure to new developments with higher rates on working folks in the older part of town. It might also shift the property tax off of buildings and entirely onto site value, which would lower land prices in the city by reducing the amount of undeveloped land held out of use for speculative purposes.
And more compact population distribution doesn’t necessarily mean the kind of class divide you mention. One third way might be a return to the kinds of compact railroad suburbs, with their own town centers, that predated the car culture.