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Assorted links
1. Interesting arguments against a carbon tax
2. What are the longest drives on Google Maps?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 2, 2008 at 12:47 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Heh, good for Lane! I'm starting a Ph.D. in sociology at UA, and I met the guy. Very warm and mellow, engaging guy. Reading his responses, I just nodded the whole time and thought that it perfectly sounded like him all the way through. Congratulations, Lane.
Posted by: Dee at May 2, 2008 2:32:40 PM
1. He's looking for a shorter way to say what took him 20 paragraphs. How about this: externalities are very difficult to quantify; all externalities are costs; methods for internalizing costs are also costly, which costs are also difficult to quantify.
2. Proves that Google is still N.Am.-centric
3. Who cares?
4. Matt Yglesias proves once again that he can think of all sorts of wonderful way to spend my money. What a guy.
Posted by: M. Hodak at May 2, 2008 2:38:00 PM
*NOT all externalities are costs (please amend #2)
Posted by: M. Hodak at May 2, 2008 2:39:27 PM
"if we were to raise the gas tax, then rebate half the revenues to citizens on some kind of flat per person basis, and make the other half available to fund transit projects, there'd be no net burden on the population."
Aren't the owners of oil companies part of the population, too? His argument boils down simply to "Oil consumers are people and oil producers are not." How exactly is this kind of garbage any different from all the types of bigotry that aren't considered acceptable? My little, sweet old grandmother in law who passed away basically had one asset - stock in Occidental Petroleum from when her husband worked in the oil fields. I had the silly idea at the time that she was a person, worthy of our concern in terms of rights and fairness.
Is he making this distinction knowingly because it's a slight of hand that allows him to push a certain point of view, or is he unaware of it? As with bigots who have disregarded rights for people of color, jewish people, gay people, etc., I'm not sure what is worse.
Posted by: kebko at May 2, 2008 4:40:48 PM
Some segments of the Google Maps "longest drive" are by ferry. Should it really count?
Posted by: Peter at May 2, 2008 7:29:09 PM
