Re: User Taxes
 

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so how do you know how much of the car tax-money that should go to pollution prevention and how much to roads?

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That's one of the reasons these things should be taken care of by local communities who own their own roads, and address their common local concerns. Further down the thread I proposed a model.

Re: User Taxes
 

Except that the big backbones of the internet are not really privately own.

The problem for me is roads that only has a few users, in rural places and so on. The roads really are necessary, somehow the food has got to come from the farm to the consumer, but the farmer(s) can't really absorb the price of them.

Re: User Taxes
 

Like I said, I think one of two asian countries have a system like that. You buy special liscence plates that determine what roads you can drive on and when. I forget all of the details of the specific countries. You'll have to look it up yourself.

Re: User Taxes
 

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Except that the big backbones of the internet are not really privately own.

The problem for me is roads that only has a few users, in rural places and so on. The roads really are necessary, somehow the food has got to come from the farm to the consumer, but the farmer(s) can't really absorb the price of them.

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The farms could absorb the price, because people have to eat. Farmers have voluntarily built some of the most successful cooperatives I've ever seen. It's the issue of backbone connections that leads me toward a fuel tax. My original point however, was that a fuel tax more equitably correlates use and cost -- and it can be avoided as a direct tax simply by not purchasing fuel.

Re: User Taxes
 

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The problem for me is roads that only has a few users, in rural places and so on. The roads really are necessary, somehow the food has got to come from the farm to the consumer, but the farmer(s) can't really absorb the price of them.

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People need roads and people need food. We'd figure out a way to get both. I don't want to give a specific answer because there are so many potential solutions to this problem.

Re: User Taxes
 

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People need roads and people need food. We'd figure out a way to get both. I don't want to give a specific answer because there are so many potential solutions to this problem.

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The fact that you can't give a specific answer is often cited as a weakness, but the point is that it doesn't matter what YOU think - the "correct" answer will arise naturally out of the competitive process. It doesn't require some bureaucrat to "bless" the right answer.

Too many people either A) can't imagine anything happening without a plan or B) are afraid of things happening without a plan. And by "plan" I mean a plan approved by some central authority figure.

Re: User Taxes
 

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Except that the big backbones of the internet are not really privately own.

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Is this true? I'm pretty sure it's not true in the US anymore, but I don't know about Europe.

Re: User Taxes
 

I agree you don't need a plan for everything. The whole of Manhattan Island gets fed every day without any master plan. Free market conditions allow all those millions of people to eat without any government master plan (of course there are health regulations as a checks-and-balance system... thank god).

But I think the OP point was to assess the mind-set of the libertarian... and their views on Government involvement.

There is a great book (for the life of me I can't remember the name) about the auto-industry.

It takes a look at how the car lobby really screwed over America. Before cars (trains and trolleys) it was the manufactures responsible to provide the method of transportation: i.e. rail-lines, cables, ect.

But somehow... the car industry duped tax-payers into footing the bill.