PhoenixFeathersComments/SmokingAndPetrol

But it's a bit hypocritical.  I think I'd rather see something decisive like actually making smoking illegal than the halfway house of stopping advertising etc.  Half because it sweeps the problem under the carpet - we'll let you smoke, but only if you don't talk about it - and half because it's inconsistent with the stance on other drugs.  - Sally

Yes, I think I agree with that. I wonder what the official reasons are for not making it illegal? It might be that making it illegal is itself illegal, due to some silly mixing of rules... - SunKitten

Practicality.  You may be able to sell a ban on smoking around other people.  You may be  (well, were) able to sell a ban on advertising (Think of the children!)  -- but you probably won't be able to sell a ban on something that many many people enjoy doing.  --Vitenka

The thing is, people want to be able to afford things that they think they need to be happy.  And people are used to a very good, very busy standard of living.  Raising petrol prices just means that the poorer people suffer, and the rich people who are actually intelligent and articulate enough to put pressure on government about public transport don't really notice.  So while I'm against people using their car for unneccessary stuff, I'd hate more a two tire system where poorer people really couldn't afford to run a car at all. Sally

I'm not suggesting ways to have a better system, though goodness only knows we need one. I'm just wondering about the relatedness of the two measures. To be honest, I'd rather not be able to afford to run a car but have a decent affordable system of public transport (for goodness sake, if Russia can manage it why can't we?). But that and all the other debates are separate from this particular point - SunKitten

That particular typo is just too good to pass up (apologies to Sally)... I think a two tire system is the answer: everyone should take up cycling! --AlexChurchill, who'll stop spamming you now

Could petrol rationing be workable?  It would avoid Sally's problem, and there's also the hope that it would make people think harder about using the car. -- NickTaylor

(Damn editconflict...) A two - tire system? A typo (I think) in the realms of CategoryAwfulPun, although motorbikes are more fuel efficient in terms of mpg, if not life expectancy.  Seriously though, while petrol prices in the UK are exceedingly high relative to the US, or many parts of europe, being 75% tax, we generally pay less direct taxation as a proportion of GDP.  At least part of the problem is the over-reliance on the car.  Where are the local shops of 25 years ago?  All moved out of town, with the net upshot of needing a car.  So many people now live a very long way from where they work, with commuting by car being exceptionally common.  If you want to live in a leafy village and work in a concrete jungle then be prepared to pay the premium to do so.  Personally I do not drive, meaning I pay what I save in petrol and car tax/insurance as extortion in lives-close-to-work rent - the rent is more than the mortgage on the property would be, even at current market prices - but  despite being able to afford said rent I could not buy said house because I cannot borrow that much.  But that's another rant.  As a question, how much (as a proportion) of various wikizen's salaries is spent on petrol?  Is it really that much of your income as a fraction? Does a 2% increase in petrol prices actually cause you financial chaos?  --Jumlian

Zero, because I have a bike ;)  As I said - we need to radically alter our infrastructure if we want to downplay the car.  --Vitenka

And you always buy locally? Petrol prices affect more than individual car owners. Last night MoonShadow suggested raising the petrol price only for individual private use, which seems to sort that one out, but there's no way such a thing would get through - SunKitten

I live 20 minutes walk from an edge of town Tesco's, 25 minutes from the city centre Safeway's and 25 minutes walk from work.  I walk quickly, and Durham is small.  As to petrol affecting more than just car drivers, true. So why don't we sort out Rail freight properly and then get all of those hauliers off of the road?  Seemed to work in Sweden. Why have we allowed ourselves as a country to become so darn dependent on petrol anyway? --Jumlian

Personally I think that smoking at least should be illegal, but the effect a ban would have on existing nicotine addicts would not be pleasant. Petrol is necessary in some situations, especially with the shoddiness of public transport. Thus, we can't actually ban either of these things. However, it is inappropriate to allow the market to reach equilibrium as both these goods have a social cost separate from the cost of the damn thing - if you paid for cigarettes without paying duties, you wouldn't be paying for the damage you're doing to other people's air quality and the burden you're putting on the NHS. Thus it isn't appropriate to leave things like smoking and petrol completely unregulated.

The economics people use demand and supply curves to model the purchasing of goods. To reduce the amount of something bought, there are two main approaches - shifts of either the demand or supply curve.

The demand curve is affected by things that change the status of the consumer. For example, more cash means that people can buy more goods, or buy them at a higher price. However, advertising about how evil smoking is will, if it succeeds, shift the demand curve downwards, reducing the amount that people are prepared to buy (it will also tilt the demand curve as fewer people will be willing to buy at any price, but that's another story). This method is being attempted. Other methods in this category which have been proposed include banning smoking in public and making it harder for smokers to get access to NHS resources. Note: these attacks also tilt the demand curve as they target smokers only. A non-tilting attack would be to tax everyone so they have less money for cigarettes.

The supply curve is affected by the behaviour of suppliers. The aim of the supplier is to position the supply curve to optimise the amount of profit being made from selling goods, by adjusting the amount made and the price they're sold at. This curve can be shifted by either changing the tilt of the supply curve or shifting it. The main way to change the tilt is to adjust the competition in the marketplace, so eliminating all but one tobacco company would result in a reduction in smoking. However, this would be hard to do without going against the principles of antitrust, and would certainly be impossible to do with petrol without endangering national security (this was the cause of Gulf War 1 of course).

Shifting the curve can be done by changing the optimisation equation. If a duty is levelled on all cigarettes, then the amount of profit gained from selling cheply in bulk is reduced - it becomes more productive to sell at higher prices which pushes demand down (assuming the demand curve remains stationary). Taxing the companies themselves would have little effect in this area, although it could lead to fewer companies (which is, you may recall, good for people who don't like cigarette smoke, but bad for those who don't like large companies).

So, overall the best ways to reduce consumption of a good with bad side-effects is to either advertise how bad it is or to slap duties on it. The former costs money; the latter earns money. Guess which the government prefers.

More info at this [economics basics] type site. - CorkScrew

Fallacies

• Argument
  
  • Assumption
    

  Counterpoint
  

• Raising the price of petrol will stifle the economy. The price of all sorts of goods would rise because it'd cost more to get them places.
  
  • A raise in the price of petrol should necessarily affect everyone using petrol.
    

  Taxes alredy don't - consider red diesel. If the aim of raising the petrol price is to benefit the environment, it should be raised in a way that subsidises conscientious use - heavily tax one-person-per-car private cars, say, and use the cash to subsidise public transport and the rail network; leave hauliers unaffected, give small tax breaks to people carsharing, hybrid cars etc. Use your imagination :)
  

• Public transport is expensive, unreliable and inconvenient. It's gonna stay that way 'cos there's no money in making it cheap, ubiquitous and convenient.
  
  • Public transport should be run like a company and expected to turn a profit.
    

  Public transport is a public service. It should be subsidised like any other public service, and rewarded on the basis of how many people use it how often, not how much money it makes. What's that? Where does one get the money to pay for it? Well, weren't we talking about raising taxes on petrol for private use a few paragraphs up? Also, public transport need not be limited to trains, buses and taxis. Towns in other countries, for instance, have shuttle bus systems - you call the company and arrange a time and place, just like a taxi but with slightly more notice, and the people carrier or minibus comes and picks you up and drops you off, along with all the other people on the best calculated route for the day. Convenient like a taxi, cheap and environmentally friendly like a bus. Works for me. There's all sorts of other alternatives. The trick is not to get into "the buses in Cambridge don't come within a hundred metres of where I live and only go once every half an hour, therefore all public transport necessarily sucks" mode.
  

HystericalRaisins  --Vitenka