Diesel should cost a lot more, almost all of the road damage is by heavy trucks. Trucking is being subsidized by all of us.

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sokoloff 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And the advantages are being enjoyed by all of us, at least in the US.

If you’re the kind of person who eats food, uses toilet paper and paper towels, and lives inside a building made of lumber, insulation, HVAC, pipes, and electrical components, those all got to your point of use on a truck.

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bryanlarsen 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The US has a really good freight train network. Yet there's a good chance the products you discussed didn't use the much more efficient train for the long distance portion of their transit.

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gryfft 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If it's more efficient, is that not an arbitrage opportunity?

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bryanlarsen 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

- it's less convenient. If the cost difference is small because trucking is cheap people will pay more for convenience.

- the cost difference is smaller than it should be. Trucking is highly subsidized, since diesel taxes don't come anywhere close to paying for the roads. OTOH railroads have to maintain their own infrastructure.

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andrew_lettuce 2 hours ago | parent [-]

... Usually on the best land they were gifted for building the railway line on the first place, so heavily subsidized as well

	▲	bryanlarsen 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They were gifted the land when the land was close to worthless because the transport costs for western products were higher than their value. The train is what made western land valuable. That land had value before the train came through was almost pure speculation -- people bought and settled land assuming that it would have value once a train arrived. It was a real subsidy, but it was small and it was > 100 years ago. OTOH, the land the freeways and roads were built on already had significant value before it was expropriated for road construction and wasn't paid for with diesel tax revenue, so it's yet another subsidy for truck traffic.

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Zambyte 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's efficient in terms of energy, but slow after decades of neglect. People pay for fast.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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thelastgallon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Businesses will have an incentive to transport goods efficiently, if the costs are not subsidized by consumers.

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BenoitP 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Diesel, or rather energy, is also a way bigger part of every single aspect of our modern world. Let's take drinking a can of coke as an example:

First degree: It came into your home from the factory through the shop. 80% product + 20% diesel.

Second degree: Product is aluminum can + water + ingredients. Aluminium came to be a can through 70% refined aluminum + 15% diesel (transport) + 15% electrical energy (pressing the can). Water was pumped locally: free from the ground + 100% electrical energy. Ingredients came from a farm: 80% local product + 20% diesel.

Third degree: Electrical energy came from 40% gas turbines, 30% hydro, 30% wind farm. Ingredients from farms came from soil 40%, 35% nitrogen fertilizer (== gas), 25% diesel (machines)

... and so on

If you decompose everything all the way, the global tally is either matter, which is given to us by nature for free. Or energy; The sources of which being vastly composed of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel prices affect everything.

These fossil resources being finite we can also conclude we're experiencing a centuries-long hay-fire. But hey, we're merely plateauing right now; and most of us won't be here for the harder part of the crash.

And I didn't even mention climate change.

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lotsofpulp 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why does that matter? If you consume more toilet paper and paper towels and lumber, insulation, HVAC, pipes, and electrical components, then you would end up paying proportionally more.

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wat10000 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just because everyone benefits from it doesn’t mean it’s good to subsidize it.

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andrew_lettuce 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This is basically the definition of something that should be subsidized. Same story for public education, health care, clean drinking water, etc

	▲	abenga an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Those others have far fewer externalities than burning diesel to move heavy trucks.

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toynbee_cunt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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jefftk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This should be a per-mile fee that varies based on weight, modeling road damage. Set the tax to specifically counteract the implicit subsidy.

Otherwise you are taxing diesel sedans and tractor trailers the same amount per gallon when a gallon to the latter does far more road damage.

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vocram 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Actually fuel it’s a good proxy for that: its use is proportional to mileage and weight

	▲	jefftk an hour ago \| parent [-]
		But fuel usage it not proportional to mileage and weight across vehicle classes, and damage is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. A diesel sedan might use 1.25 gal for 100 ton-miles, while a tractor trailer might use a third of that (though, to be fair, I thought this would be a bigger delta before I looked). But then if you look at "Equivalent Single Axle Loads", a tractor trailer is ~2 ESAL while a diesel sedan is ~0.0003 ESAL. So we're talking maybe 0.13 ESAL/gal for the former vs 0.0001 ESAL/gal for the latter.

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saejox 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

there are two sides of this argument.

only way we are able to eat affordable food is because some diesel truck is transporting it.

so maybe we must subsidize diesel fuel, to decrease grocery prices?

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thelastgallon 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> only way we are able to eat affordable food is because some diesel truck is transporting it.

False, if poor people can't afford food, there are already food stamps and various programs in other countries.

This 'affordable' food is causing obesity, a combination of diesel subsidies, agricultural subsidies. Cheap food causes metabolic syndrome, and a range of chronic diseases, which we pay as healthcare, 20% of GDP and the fastest growing sector.

If its cheap food we want, stop ethanol subsidies. All that land (hundreds of millions of acres) can grow very very affordable food.

This foolishness is being repeated everywhere. India started E20 (Ethanol) mandate and price of eggs went up.

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impossiblefork 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, but if you don't tax it correctly you will misallocate resources.

Diesel will get used excessively and you will get more road wear, as the user proposed. If you tax it, you will pay more directly for goods, but as costs rise people will be incentivized to find more efficient transport solutions.

It might still be worth it if road wear is cheap or the predictable misuse is predictable and that saves money somehow, but in all likelihood little harm would come from a fair treatment of diesel vs. gasoline etc. taking into account road wear of each vehicle class. It would be more natural to tax vehicle weight, hours driven etc. directly based on a sound model of societal cost though.

	▲	andrew_lettuce 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You are not wrong in theory, but this reads like an econ 100 short answer. It ignores all the political and social aspects of a very complex system.

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merpkz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> only way we are able to eat affordable food is because some diesel truck is transporting it.

I would also add to that affordable food is being first produced by agricultural machinery running on diesel, which is then transported by trucks running on diesel on roads build by machinery running on diesel. There is a good youtube video about this from channel driving 4 answers.

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lotsofpulp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why should food being transported further be subsidized more than locally sourced food?

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bryanlarsen 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Local food often has higher transportation costs than food from further away. Long distance food transportation is done by highly efficient ship & rail. The last mile transportation costs typically dominate. And semi-trailer from warehouse to grocery store is far more efficient than half-ton truck from farmer to farmer's market.

And then both are dominated by the drive from the grocery store to your house. If you care about food carbon emissions, walk/bike to your grocery store. That'll have far more impact than food choice.

	▲	ZeroGravitas 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Type of food still has sizeable impact even if the food miles issue has been misleading. Cutting red meat and dairy likely beats cycling for errands for example. The switch from an ICE car to an EV (and assuming a standard US amount of driving) probably beats possible diet changes. You can of course do all of these things.