BIKE: Proposed law for $5 MB set aside

[Chuck_Thomas]

Thank you Patrick for that fine economics lesson.  Karl Marx would be
proud.

Why don't we just try the easy and cheap way first.  Install donation
lockboxes at trail heads along with pretty signs encouraging users to
contribute. Properly managed, this approach could add substantial income
without forcing anybody to do anything and easily covering its meager
cost.

-----Original Message-----
From: forum-bicycleaustin.info-bounces
[mailto:forum-bicycleaustin.info-bounces] On
Behalf Of Patrick Goetz
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2005 9:10 AM
Cc: forum
Subject: Re: BIKE: Proposed law for $5 MB set aside

Chuck_Thomas wrote:
> Yeah, but it's not fair.  Someone on a $2,000 super bike is consuming 
> the same amount of bike roadway resource as I am on my $100 clunker. 
> The % method would ask expensive bike owners to pay more for the same 
> amount of resource consumed.


[Now that we've determined that a $5 tax on bikes will indeed save the
world, as environment-trashing mountain bikers morph into docile bicycle
commuters before our very eyes, maybe it's appropriate to chime in
here.]

I think that this depends on one's definition of fair.  I'm guessing Ms.

Gray's definition of fair is in terms of ability to pay rather than in
terms of consumption of resources.  Bicycles in general consume so
little roadway resources in comparison to cars that this metric is
inconsequential.  On the other hand, people who buy $2000 bicycles by
definition have a lot of expendable income, hence can easily afford to
pay a higher tax than someone who is barely able to afford an $80
Walmart bike.

You might counter that just because someone is *able* to pay more,
doesn't mean that they *should* be forced to pay more, and that forcing
them to pay more is *unfair*, but this (very prevalent argument) is also
*incorrect* and demonstrates a lack of understanding of how money works.

  Since this is a bicycle and not an economics list I won't go on about
this, but suffice it to say that money's ability to make more money
makes it a strong attractor in a dynamical systems sense, and the only
way to counteract this effect (i.e. prevent all the money from ending up
in a small number of places) is to lessen the force of attraction by
removing some of it from the pile that is accumulating (and put it back
into the social system that allows it to accumulate in the first place).

But if you insist, I would say that a $2000 bike frequently does consume
more resources than a $100 bike, since the $100 bike will generally be
used for knocking about town, while a lot of $2000 bikes are used for
mountain biking, which severely damages natural ecosystems and trails. 
Since the money is going to be spent on trails, one might even argue
that only mountain bike sales should taxed, and perhaps at a rate
comensurate with the cost of the bike (for reasons of economic
fairness).

Some bike shop owners (unnamed) are eager to see poor people purchasing
bikes for basic transportation be forced to subsidize the construction
of more trails so that they can sell more $2000+ mountain bikes to the
people who will be using these trails.  I'm guessing that these same
shop owners would be screaming bloody murder if the cost of this tax is
placed squarely on these same high-dollar mountain bikes rather than
being just another tax on the poor, thus hurting rather than helping
their sales.  Just my cynical guess.

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