Comments on: New York Times: Is Privacy Worth Sacrificing to Save on Insurance? http://www.privacylives.com/new-york-times-is-privacy-worth-sacrificing-to-save-on-insurance/2010/03/25/ monitoring the pulse of privacy Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:09:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: steve http://www.privacylives.com/new-york-times-is-privacy-worth-sacrificing-to-save-on-insurance/2010/03/25/comment-page-1/#comment-50717 steve Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:48:53 +0000 http://www.privacylives.com/?p=7538#comment-50717 Atrios has been on about this for quite some time now. I agree with his take: this is idiocy. There is already a tax which is tied very closely to the number of miles driven. It's called a gas tax. It already exists. It's easy to add another couple percent. Of course, a gas tax allows some drivers to pay less on a per-mile basis, because they are driving more gas-efficient vehicles... but isn't that a positive incentive? And inversely, the gas tax might have a disproportionately large impact on people who drive old pickup trucks and inefficient SUVs. Which, again, is a positive outcome. But no, of course it's much more efficient to force all automobile manufacturers to install GPS tracking modules in their vehicles, pass state and federal laws making it a crime to tamper with the electronics, create state and federal government entities (or even better, private-sector government contractors!) to track the data and issue billing statements, write and print literature explaining how this system is better for everyone involved... *facepalm* Atrios has been on about this for quite some time now. I agree with his take: this is idiocy. There is already a tax which is tied very closely to the number of miles driven. It’s called a gas tax. It already exists. It’s easy to add another couple percent.

Of course, a gas tax allows some drivers to pay less on a per-mile basis, because they are driving more gas-efficient vehicles… but isn’t that a positive incentive?

And inversely, the gas tax might have a disproportionately large impact on people who drive old pickup trucks and inefficient SUVs. Which, again, is a positive outcome.

But no, of course it’s much more efficient to force all automobile manufacturers to install GPS tracking modules in their vehicles, pass state and federal laws making it a crime to tamper with the electronics, create state and federal government entities (or even better, private-sector government contractors!) to track the data and issue billing statements, write and print literature explaining how this system is better for everyone involved…

*facepalm*

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