The proof that ALL market interactions have externalities

Hybrids good, right?

People use less energy, create fewer greenhouse gases, and even make less noise than conventional automobiles....

.... and will apparently run over and kill blind pedestrians in larger numbers than was previously the case.

[Because they can't hear them coming.]

Now--in all seriousness--some pundits are considering artificial means of making hybrids louder.

I am sure this all makes sense in somebody's world.

Just not mine.

Comments

Anonymous said…

(My response posted on the original article as well...)

Hmmm…. This researcher apparently hasn’t bothered to point out that it is the DRIVER’s responsibility to watch out for pedestrians (blind or sighted… ;) and that in most states the law REQUIRES drivers to stop to allow blind people (usually self identified by canes and / or dogs) to cross…
This sounds to me like a responsibility copout, with a very NON-Libertarian solution…
Ironically, in the motorcyclists rights community, one battle is over exhaust noise, with one side advocating that “Loud pipes save lives” because car drivers can hear them - with the opposition complaining about the noise being a tresspass. Now this guy wants to FORCE owners of quiet vehicles to be committing a tresspass???!

ART
LPMA Operations Facilitator

August 7, 2008 at 8:10 PM

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

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More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba

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