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Dec. 11, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
43:59
550 Car Pollution

An exhausting topic...

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Time Text
Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
Steph, 7.53 a.m.
on the 11th of December, 2006.
I hope you had a wonderful weekend.
Thank you so much to everyone who called in on Sunday's show and listened in and the people who chatted who are, as always, providing excellent material to bounce back and forth.
And thank you so much for taking the time out of your Sunday to join us in our chat on philosophy and also to contribute in terms of questions and comments and criticisms.
I hugely appreciate it.
So I got two in a row in Lou Rockwell simply because he'd been backlogged by being on the road.
But I wanted to just sort of point out it's kind of nice.
I had one in on his last email and also on his last sort of day's daily posts and then also on today's daily posts simply because The Gun in the Room Part 2 and Worst Meeting Ever, which you might want to check out on my blog or lourockwell.com.
It just sort of had backed up together.
So that's nice.
We'll see. I only got one comment.
The Lou Rockwell email went out at 4.30 this morning, and I got my first comment at 5, where somebody said, brilliant, with eight exclamation marks.
So that's eight on the hyperbole Geiger meter.
So we're happy with that.
So I wanted to chat, and I'm sorry that I didn't bring the listener's email with me, but a gentleman who had listened to...
The first couple of podcasts, The Stateless Society Fights Back and Caging the Beasts and so on, wrote me this morning and said, Steph-O-Rama, actually something not quite like that, a little more formal, Mr.
Steph-O-Rama, I think it was.
Lord Tangent? Something like that.
He sent me an email this morning, and he said, Okay, dude, I kind of get what you're saying about the stateless society and a polluting factory, but what about car pollution?
He lives in L.A., and of course in L.A. there is...
Horrible car pollution that really ruins everybody's pleasure in the summer.
And although it's better, it's a little bit better, I think, than it was, at least according to the skeptical environmentalist.
But there's more that needs to be done.
And so his question, and of course it's a perfectly reasonable and very intelligent question.
What does the DRO Society do about car pollution?
That's fairly important.
Car pollution is not insignificant.
As we all know from the length of my podcast, I am not somebody who doesn't contribute a tad myself.
The only thing I can say in my sheerly environmental defense is that I didn't even have a car or access to a car in my whole family and my whole life until I was 32 or 33 when I bought my first car.
So, let's just say I have some credits stacked up, right?
I mean, I walked to school and I never had any activities that required a car because we had no car.
So, it was going to be a little tricky.
But... This question, how do you deal with it?
Because, of course, he's quite right.
Every individual, let's just say it costs, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks to get air pollution controls put on your car that would have some sort of effect on the emissions.
And it's not just the money, it's also the time, right?
I mean, it's sort of ridiculous. I've had a headlight out for a week in my car, but finding the time to go and get it replaced or repaired is just time as well as money.
And sometimes, for some people, it's more the time than the money.
So each individual has no incentive, really, to get his car fixed with emissions controls, and yet everybody complains about the pollution or the smog.
Perfectly sensible question, and I will do my best to answer it without making it sound like the DROs are just another fascistic organization.
Now, the basic question that you have in society when you approach these kinds of things, and you can use this for poverty and stuff like that, there's sort of one basic question which you can ask yourself and others, which is, do people care about this or not?
This is a very fundamental question.
Forget about the government, right?
Especially if you're talking about the status.
But if somebody says, oh, the poor and the sick and the old and the people who can't brush their teeth properly and stuff like that, what are we going to do to help them?
Well, the first question to ask is, well, do people care about other people as a whole?
Do people care about health as a whole?
Do people care about poverty as a whole?
And you can say that people care about something like poverty in two ways, right?
The first way is that sort of paranoid, whitey-gated community kind of way where it's like, well, we have to throw some arms to the poor or they'll storm down the barricades and take my wee!
So, that is one aspect.
It's sort of the protective gesture of handing out arms to keep people, handing out money to keep people, sorry, handing out arms, given that it's spoken and not written, might come across a little bit like, arm the poor, which is more like the welfare state.
So they're either going to care about it in a defensive strategy kind of way, or they're going to care about the poor in a sort of more empathetic and caring kind of way.
You know, it's not these kids' fault that they happen to get born into these kinds of poor situations, so let's do what we can to help them, and blah, blah, blah, right?
So there's the rich, frightened Republican, and then there's the poor, trickly-hearted Democrat, which is, you know, I think that the person who really helps the poor is the person who starts a business, In just about any place in the world, start a business or take over a department and expand the number of people you're hiring through your competent management and focus on profit, those people are really helping the poor.
But, of course, there are poor who are old who can't work and so on, and they need to be helped.
So there are people who help those as well.
It's just that the people who are really helping the poor in the long run, I mean, the church had 1,800 years of redistribution that did smack to help the poor, in fact, plunged everyone into massive poverty through the Dark Ages.
And we all know what the welfare state is doing to the poor, so charity, as I've talked about in the podcast before, is a pretty complex topic.
It's not really something that just giving stuff alone is going to do much to alleviate, but to create work and, of course, to privatize the schools, right?
That would be the major thing to do.
Cut taxes, privatize the schools.
Best thing you can conceivably do for the poor.
Then the poor would get the kind of quality education that innovative and caring people would bring to poor neighborhoods for little cost.
Children would get paid for being in school.
That would be something that would be...
I mean, this is already done in private schools in ghetto neighborhoods, the few that have made it through the regulations.
So there would be people who...
Let me not get on a tangent about how to help the poor, but there would be people who help the poor and help the sick and help the old.
So the question is, do people care about it?
Now, of course, if nobody cares about it, then there's no such thing as a solution, right?
I mean, this is the important thing to understand, right?
People put the government forward as a solution in the same way that they put God forward as an answer, right?
So it's like, what should we do about the poor?
Let's have a government program.
It's exactly the same as saying, where did we come from?
God made us from dust, right?
I mean, it's the same superstitious, nonsensical answer that's got a fair amount of rage and defensiveness at its root behind it, but this is another reason why I have a go at all these three major institutions.
They're all sort of interwoven, as I will occasionally mention, but...
So when people say, so the question is, do people care about it, right?
And then if people say, no, nobody cares about it, right?
Then there's no solution, right?
I mean, this is the first thing to understand.
There's no solution if nobody cares about it.
Except for the two people having the conversation, right?
That's always the funny thing. What's going to happen to the poor?
It's like, oh, you're really rung up about it, so you'll help them.
So, let's say that the first answer, nobody cares about pollution and they love drinking in lungsfuls of Maserati exhaust soot, then obviously there's no solution.
Now, if they say, well, only the politicians care about it, and the police and the law courts and the judicial and so on.
So, if only the government cares about it, then...
You have to sort of explain why, right?
And you also have to explain why or how these people who care about air pollution got voted in, right?
Let's assume that they had on their platform, I care about air pollution, but if nobody else cared about air pollution, then they just never would have voted these people in.
So the fact that there are people in government who got to...
I mean, this is a platform...
I mean, this is a sort of... It's a minor tangent, but I think it's an important one.
The platform is what politicians get voted on, and so that's what people care about, right?
I mean, they do their research, right?
People care about providing health care.
People care about the poor. People care about education.
So, if you want to look at a politician's platform, you can look at everything that the government doesn't need to do, right?
I mean, it's a basic...
It's like the mirror of reality.
It's the inverse of reality.
If a politician's platform says, I want to raise opportunities for the poor, then we know that he's trying to sell himself to a large group of people who care about the poor, and therefore the government doesn't need to do it, because in the absence of the government, these people would do it or delegate it themselves.
So, whatever's in a politician's platform is the first stuff that you know the government doesn't need to do.
I mean, that's just sort of basic, because that's what he's trying to appeal to with people, and it's what people care about already.
But... If the politician gets in and cares about air pollution in a democracy, I mean, I don't think people are going to advocate dictatorship to deal with air pollution, right?
Because if they've got any knowledge about the environmental field, they would know that dictatorships are by far the worst polluters in the world.
And so they're not going to have, let's return to Stalinist Russia.
As our fine methodology for dealing with pollution, that's not going to be the solution.
But they will come forward and say, it's got to be a democracy and it's got to be the politicians.
So that means that a majority of people care about this issue.
A majority of people care about this issue because the guy gets voted in and he's acting on...
And politicians, I mean, they throw a lot of crap out in their promises, but they work on whatever is going to get them the most traction in a democracy.
They work on whatever is going to make them look the best to the voters.
I mean, they're poll-driven, empty beasts, right?
So... They are going to look at the polls.
Oh, people care about air pollution.
Hey, let's table some legislation on air pollution.
So people do care about it.
People have voted politicians for it.
So if there's a government solution that's considered to be viable, then the government doesn't need to do it.
If you're going to say that the government's going to do it in a democracy, then the government doesn't need to do it.
And then, of course, if you're arguing with the status, the status will say, well, why not, right?
I mean, the government can just pass a law and everyone has to obey and so on and so on and so on.
Well, um... That's true, of course, but it's kind of counterbalanced by the fact that the roads are free, right?
So it's fine to say we want pollution controls, but high occupancy vehicle lanes combined with free driving at any other time, subsidized by those who don't have cars, by the way, right?
I mean, roads are a large subsidy as from the poor to the rich, but of course so is public transit from middle class to the poor.
So anyway, this cross-pollination of ghastly subsidies is more than I can unravel without.
You know, 17 stacks of filing cabinets and some Advil.
So people do care about the issue, right?
That's sort of the way you can take this argument.
Obviously, if you think that politicians are going to care about it and they're voted in by a majority and they are going to actually work on the legislation that means the most to people, then people do care.
They just don't care to do it themselves when, you know, they act locally, think globally, or whatever it is.
They don't care to do it themselves because they're concerned about the problem of the commons, right?
So the problem with the government is not only is the government subsidizing car makers and subsidizing inefficient use of resources through those subsidies, through big corporate subsidies, not only is the government causing an enormous amount of pollution and wasted resources with a massive defense budget, Not only is the government creating hellishly negative health environments with the war on drugs and public housing and all this other kind of nonsense and rent control, right?
Things don't get repaired.
So it's sort of hard to say that I'm just going to carve away one little chunk of the government called air pollution control and say, see, look how the government is very keen on health.
Of course, one of the major ways that the government destroys health...
It's by granting and extending and maintaining the monopoly to the doctors' unions, right?
I mean, why does going to an accountant cost you like a hundred bucks an hour?
And why does going to a doctor cost you the equivalent of four or five hundred dollars an hour?
Because the doctors have restricted supply.
I mean, that's all pretty key, right?
And they can't restrict supply without the government.
And the two major ways they restrict supply is in the granting of medical degrees and in the granting of prescription rights.
So, anyway, we don't have to get into that.
But if the government was so keen on helping everybody's health as a whole, then they wouldn't grant a monopoly to the AMA or the CMA or whatever is going on.
So, there's lots of evidence in the ways in which government does not care to wits about...
About people's health. So, even if they put through some legislation, because that's the fad of the day, there's no guarantee that the next guy is not going to be bribed by the car companies to provide so many exceptions.
Oh wait, that probably happens to the first guy too.
Bribed by the car companies to provide so many exceptions, and of course, the Department of Defense is never included in these kinds of environmental regulations, which is why they regulate so badly and so on.
So, It's not really going to do a whole lot of good.
In fact, because people have the illusion that it's going to do some good, it actually does a lot more harm.
What you want to do, and if you want to solve problems, pointing guns at people and relying on the benevolence of government and the integrity of the crowd is not going to solve a damn thing.
It's just going to make it worse.
But what you do want to do, of course, as I've argued many times, is put together incentives that make it in people's self-interest to act in a benevolent and positive way.
We sure know that people respond to incentives.
It's a basic principle of economics.
And there's no need for massive amounts of regulation and there's no need for massive amounts of force and violence and throwing people in jail and levying fines and all the corruption that goes along with that and all the exceptions that people want and buy or the groups that it's never considered to be placed upon.
I mean, I've seen the city buses.
They belch out crap like you wouldn't believe, right?
So... What it's going to get done, it's going to get aimed at a couple of stragglers in the cars.
That's what happens up here in Canada.
Now, every two years, you have to go for an emissions test because they're trying to get the most polluting cars off the road.
But still, the roads are free, and this doesn't apply to the armed services and so on.
And the governments have six different ways of getting out of this stuff.
So, and of course, getting people to buy new cars doesn't exactly help air pollution, right?
I mean, if you just say, well, you can't drive this car.
Oh, okay, so I've got to go buy a new car.
Well, how much air pollution does it create to...
To get a car going. It's like recycling, right?
Like you spend a liter of water to wash out a tin, right?
Which you're then going to recycle.
Well, how much energy did it create to retrieve that water, to filter it, to ship it to you, and so on?
Well, I bet you a whole lot more than you're recovering from the recycling tin.
But anyway. The question sort of then becomes, okay, well, if people in general want to solve it, and if the government isn't a good way to solve it, then how could a free market solve the problem of minuscule individual contributions to pollution through things like cars and so on?
Well, the question is, are there two negatives that occur to pollution?
The first, of course, is health, and that's the most important one.
And the second, of course, is aesthetic.
Right, so if something happened to the water that turned it all yellow coming out of your tap, but it was perfectly safe, people would still want it fixed, even though it was not going to be affecting their health in any kind of negative way.
Maybe just some, I don't know, a little bit of yellow food dye got into the sewage system or something and it does no harm and you eat it in your food every day.
People would still want it fixed because it would be an aesthetically unpleasing thing to feel like you're drinking urine coming out of a tap, right?
That's not anybody's idea of a refreshing thirst quencher.
So, there's the aesthetic side, and that can also occur when people look at pollution.
You know, they look at the buildings hazing onto a foggy distance not too far away, and they go, that's just got to be bad.
Or they look at a really vibrant sunset, and they go, well, that's all just air particulates hanging, and, you know, that's got to be bad.
But... That kind of aesthetic pollution drive does motivate people, right?
They don't want to look and see dirty buildings, and they don't want to look and see air that looks bad, even if it's not particularly bad for you.
So there's the aesthetic side and the health side.
And I'm going to just bundle those two together, although we'll just deal with the health one.
I'm sure you can deal with the aesthetics one as yourself, right?
And so the question then becomes, well, what are the costs of To pollution.
Because it's all a balance of cost.
If you're going to ask people to spend money, I mean, this is a basic function of sales.
If you're going to ask people to spend money, you're going to have to either give them an aesthetic or a monetary reward.
You could say a moral reward as well, but we'll just deal with it.
I mean, these two things work pretty well over a whole field of economics, right?
If I'm going to sell makeup, then of course I have to provide an aesthetic with an implied or an implicit material reward of getting a rich husband or keeping a husband you already have.
But there's a feeling pretty kind of thing and looking good and all that zip and zazz that comes from looking good.
There is that aspect that you're selling, and that's not specifically economic, but it's an aesthetic benefit that people like.
I mean, you don't invest in music to make money off it.
If you buy a CD collection, every now and then you will stare at it and go, man, did I spend a lot of money on music.
But that's an aesthetic reward that people want, things in terms of beauty.
And this is also true of dating models, I can imagine.
But... The aesthetic versus the, you know, people will invest in a gym membership, partly for the aesthetic and partly for the health, right?
So it can be both, right? I mean, if being really overweight and unattractive was healthy, it would still be a hard thing for me to do, as for others, but...
Gyms have that sort of combination.
And then there's other things that are purely around financial rewards, like investing in the stock market.
You may do it for looking cool.
And I remember being young and shallow and sitting in a coffee shop and checking out my stocks when I was 25 or whatever, checking out my stocks, thinking that this made me look like some sort of arch-capitalist.
Oh, the vanity of youth.
And hopefully I won't look back in 10 years and say, oh, the vanity of middle age.
But anyway. So there's other stuff that you'll do for purely financial reasons.
There's no aesthetics in buying a bond or a stock or something like that.
So, these things are both important, right?
Don't imagine that economics has nothing to do with looking good, right?
Economics has everything to do with the aesthetic values that people have.
The music business is huge, right?
And so, the people's drive to appreciate what they perceive as beauty or something that's emotionally moving is enormously powerful.
There's another reason why I try not to cut off the passion in these podcasts, where appropriate and where it's not Monday morning, too darn early, but...
Don't underestimate this.
Vast, vast, vast amounts of the economy are around aesthetics and pleasure.
And that's a good thing.
It's a wonderful thing. If you've ever seen the films produced by Stalin's censor department, they're not terribly good.
I guess Eisenstein somewhat accepted.
But... So people want to deal with the issues and they have two major concerns, the aesthetics and the health.
And of course, there are those, we'll just deal with the health side, there are those who want to sell them health, right?
And these will be the health DROs, right?
The HMOs, DROs, or whatever you want to call them.
Not looking anything like existing HMOs, but this will be the people who will insure you.
So the people who insure you are going to check to see whether the pollution that is in the environment is damaging to your health.
If it shaves six months off your lifespan, or it causes additional expenses in terms of medicine, then of course the health companies Are going to be taking a hit from the car companies, right? Because the car companies will be saving money and gaining customers by not putting air pollution controls in, which is going to cause the health companies to have to pay more in healthcare costs because of the resulting pollution.
And the aesthetic ones, the tourism board and so on, we can deal with those another time, but generally if you clear up pollution to the point where the health is not going to be negatively affected or is going to be negatively affected in an economically optimal manner, which I'll talk about in a sec, then you've probably dealt with the aesthetic issues as well, right? So, the healthcare companies don't want their people getting sick from air pollution.
So, the healthcare companies are going to, let's just say there's $10 billion a year in a particular location that, actually, let's not be so grandiose.
Let's just say in a town, the healthcare companies are spending $10 million additional because of air pollution causing emphysema, causing lung cancer or whatever, right?
Then, clearly, the healthcare companies are going to be able to spend up to one penny shy of $10 million a year, let's say it's per year, in trying to get people to put in air pollution controls, to deal with air pollution.
And it could be some other method, I don't know.
Maybe they subsidize a bus line and they give people healthcare discounts.
If you don't own a car, your health care costs go down by 20% or something like that.
And, by the way, we're subsidizing this excellent bus line or whatever, right?
So that's sort of one possibility.
The health care companies have a certain amount of money to subsidize air pollution controls.
And that's sort of one aspect of it.
The other aspect of it, of course, is that the roads may have some interest in reducing air pollution as well.
Not quite the same economic interest, but there's more leverage there that can be applied.
So, the healthcare company can say, if...
Well, first of all, the healthcare company is going to research the best conceivable ways to reduce air pollution that is dangerous to people's health, right?
And that's the first stuff that we need to deal with.
The aesthetic stuff isn't quite as important.
And it's a little bit more subjective.
Some people don't like the gray skies above at noon.
Other people love the beautiful sunsets of air pollution.
So, if it's not health dangerous, there's a little bit of subjectivity involved.
But... The healthcare company is going to want to get rid of the health stuff, for sure, health problems.
They're going to spend some money to do that.
They're going to research and find the most effective, conceivable ways to reduce the air pollution.
Maybe it's putting pollution controls on each car.
Maybe there's some other method that I can't even imagine that would be more beneficial.
But, of course, even if they start bribing the car companies or paying the car companies to...
To stop putting the air pollution controls on the cars, you still have all the existing cars that are a problem, right?
So that's sort of one issue.
So they may want to say to the roads, the road companies, that maybe there's some way they can check the air pollution through some sort of flash spectrograph analysis or something.
I don't know. I'm just making stuff up here.
To check the pollution of each car and so on.
Or maybe they'll pay people to come in and get their cars tested or anything like that.
They could work with mechanics companies to say, if you take your car to this mechanic, you get a free air pollution test.
And then you will get 20% off air pollution controls and all other repairs that are required on that day, and then maybe they'll kick in 10% back to the companies that do this.
Of course, the healthcare companies themselves may choose if it's a viable and productive thing to do.
Once they do the research to figure out, or pay someone to do the research to figure out what is the best way to solve the problem of air pollution, and I'm guessing that it's because of pollution controls on the cars themselves, but there are other ways of doing it.
They might do something.
This is, again, just totally lateral thinking.
If you can get people to work at home, then you will end up with far less air pollution, obviously, right?
They're not commuting or podcasting.
But if I was sort of running the healthcare company, I would also look at something lateral, like saying, let's start a work experiment with our own employees that say, you now get to work at home four days a week or three days a week or two days a week or whatever, right?
And I would do a study to say, has this raised productivity?
Has this raised output?
And is it economically efficient?
Because you might be able to give people working from home in lieu of a bonus or a raise.
And certainly there will be people with long commutes who will take that for sure.
And so how much money have we saved by offering people work at home?
And has their productivity increased or at least stayed the same?
And of course we've saved some money on maintaining their computer at work at least a couple of days a week and their space can be hoteled and so on.
So I would also do a study internally.
And then publish that in the major business journals and say, you know, we found X percent improvement, assuming that you would.
And I'm sure you can calibrate it so that this would be the case.
So you can set it up. Not sort of in a bad way, but you can design it so that you get maximum benefits.
That's what people do with these kinds of things all the time.
Not jigging the numbers, but designing it with the intent of getting the best numbers.
And then you'd publish this and say, look, here's a huge economic advantage.
Let people work at home. And this is a way of giving companies an incentive, right?
Of course, there will be an incentive.
One of the things that also occurs with air pollution is that it's really maximized during rush hour, right?
And, of course, one of the major problems with roads in a government-run society, where the roads are public, as they almost all are, It's that there's no penalty for traveling in rush hour, right?
Because the real penalty is the one that will be borne by the employer.
So if you have private roads, there's going to be a penalty for traveling at 8 o'clock in the morning, and then it's going to get really cheap around 9 or 9.30.
And so the question is, do employers, like everybody says, be here by 9, of course, because there's a certain kind of convenience if you're not paying anything for it.
But for employers, if you suddenly have to bear the cost of the increased road, charges for saying to people, be here by nine...
If it costs people another $500 a year to be there by 9 and additional time, but let's just talk about the cost, then of course what's going to happen is that people are going to say, look, if you're going to ask me to be here by 9, I'm very happy to do it, but you have to increase my pay because you're asking me to travel when I have to pay more on the private roads, so I'm not going to subsidize that for you because you want me here by 9.
And, you know, it's like when companies say, take your car and go and drive a thousand kilometers to visit this client, you charge your car back to your company.
That's just natural. So then the question becomes, if I have, you know, a hundred employees and I have to pay $500 a year, is it worth the money, right, the $500?
$50,000 a year, is it?
$50,000 a year? $500,000 a year?
Sorry. 500 people, $500 a month.
You know what? Forget it. Sorry about that.
It's some additional 1,000 people, $1,000 a year.
Is it worth the extra million dollars plus more in terms of salary to get the people to come there?
Well, that becomes an economic calculation, right?
It's the advantage of having people there at 9 all at the same time, especially if they're working on their own or their managers or their coders or whatever.
Is the advantage a good thing relative to the extra salary you have to pay them to be there by nine so they can cover their additional road costs?
That's a question, right? The other thing, too, of course, with private roads is that when people work at home, they will save the money that they otherwise would have spent on road charges, which means that you can pay people less, right?
So, again, you're starting to make all these calculations, which at the moment you just don't make because roads are free.
So, this would be another way that you could do it.
And there are obvious ways to do it, right?
Which is giving people deductions if they go and get their cars fixed.
Or, you know, if you were a healthcare company and you did the study, which the government doesn't do this stuff, right?
Because they don't need to optimize. But if you're a healthcare company, you would do a study also that would say, well, let's find out why people aren't putting the pollution controls on their cars.
And of course, if people say, well, the reason I don't do it is I don't get a benefit out of it other than a vague, I feel like a slightly better person, but I'm concerned that nobody else is doing it, so why would I bother?
And I just don't have two kids under the age of eight.
I just don't have the time.
Well, that's not a big deal, right?
That's simple enough to solve, right?
All you do as a healthcare company is you say, well, you know, we will come and do it at your house.
I mean, that's easy enough.
Or you'll be making dinner and we'll be out there putting the air pollution controls in your car.
And we'll also give you 20% reduction on your lung insurance, lung health insurance or whatever, right?
So there's all this kind of stuff.
And we'll give you a nice sticker that makes you look like a good person and so on, right?
So, I mean, there's tons of different ways you can do it.
I haven't even talked about, which is not insignificant and which can, you know, is always underestimated by people who don't recognize the human side of economics.
The other thing that you've got to recognize is that there's an enormous amount of social pressure that can be brought to bear on people.
That's why people joined the army in World War II and World War I, because they weren't conscripted, at least not in the States.
They did it because they felt like they were cowards if they didn't.
That's not the most complicated thing in the world.
And so what happens is, you know, there's going to be some really great, and you might even have grades of it, right?
You might even have gradations of this stuff.
But there's going to be some way to get people to get stickers or to get some sort of flag in something or other that's public and obvious and available that is going to...
Show other people that they've got gold, silver, and bronze in terms of air pollution and so on.
And there's going to be some competition for looking like a good person.
And you could also do some fairly nefarious stuff like you could include in your...
It sounds a little manipulative, and maybe it is, but this is certainly something that could be done.
In your kids' shows, you would simply put in shows about how bad air pollution is and how the little rabbits cough up their little rabbit lungs and fall over and croak and so on, and that's all very bad.
And this can all be saved by fixing your car.
And getting a sticker, of course, then the kids are going to feel like, oh my god, the bunny's going to die if dad doesn't get the sticker, and they're going to ask their parents.
And are their parents really then going to say, no, I don't want to spend the, you know, the hundred bucks or the five hundred bucks on whatever.
I'm just going to, you know, and the kids, oh, my dad wants to kill the bunny.
I mean, these are just ways that it could be done.
These are just ways that it could be done.
And all of these are non-violent ways, right?
Non-violent ways.
It doesn't involve a state. And so there's those aspects.
So if people do care about it, then obviously they're going to put some money into it, if they feel that it's a value.
And this is not even including the PR campaign that would be aimed at the adults.
You know, the other thing, too, that people want is to make sure that it's going to work, right?
I mean, one of the things that occurs with people when it comes to government stuff is they just don't believe.
The government says, go take your stuff in, go take your pollution controls in, and the government just...
I sort of believe, I don't believe it's going to work, right?
So you could run a PR campaign that says this stuff reduces air pollution by 90%.
We've made it as cheap as humanly possible.
We are going to sell it to you as DRO healthcare company conglomerate number 12.
We are going to sell it to you at cost because we're going to make our profit from the reduced health problems.
So we're going to make it as efficient as humanly possible.
We're going to make it as cheap as humanly possible.
And we're just aiming to save the 10 million a year in this town.
And Lord knows how much it would be overall.
But that is how things work in a civilized society, right?
And people do care about it. So then the question is, why would people change?
Well, people would change because there's a movement, right?
It's one thing to not have anyone knowing whether you've got good or bad pollution on your car and not wanting to do it because you don't know how many other people do.
But once you start to see these stickers all over the place, then you're going to feel like you're not getting ripped off by being the only person who's got air pollution control, which does almost nothing to stop air pollution but costs you a couple of hundred bucks for no reason.
So once you start to publicize how many people are getting air pollution controls and so on, once you start to get this stuff out there, then people are going to feel a whole lot better.
Once you see this sea of drive-clean stickers around on people's cars, then people are going to feel like, okay, well, they're going to come to my house.
It's really cheap. It's proven.
My kids want it.
My neighbors all have it.
I feel, you know, if you deal with clients, right?
I mean, clients are going to say...
If you don't have the sticker, your company can't be doing very well.
There's lots of things that are important to understand from a business standpoint, from a show standpoint.
There's a reason that people really furnish their offices very well to show that they're doing well and also that they're in it for the long haul.
So there's that incentive.
There will be the...
You know, the annoying secretary or admin person who runs the United Way campaign.
She will also be the person who says, you know, I'm going around to get everyone signed up for air pollution.
Are you going to sign up for air pollution?
And you have to say yes or no, right, in front of everyone.
And, of course, the list is going to go up of people who've signed.
There's so many ways to get people to do things that don't involve waving a gun at them that it's ridiculous, right?
We're social animals. We want to get along with people.
And we don't want to be disapproved of.
I mean, that's pretty common, right?
I mean, yes, there are a couple of people that sociopaths don't care, but they don't respond to government programs either.
So it doesn't look like you're... It's not like those are fish that you get in the net with government programs in that sense.
So, and that's not even counting the economic incentives of, you know, well, if you can tie, say, air pollution to asthma, right?
If you can tie air pollution to asthma, which, you know, there are some studies that seem to make this lake, right?
So, if you go to parents and say, you know, if you get air pollution controls on your car, if you work from home or this and that, two days a week, then you are going to end up with much less likelihood that your kid's going to get asthma.
Now, this does two things.
A, it makes parents like it's a no-brainer.
Yes, of course I'm going to get air pollution controls, right?
I mean, parents are savage around the physical health of their children.
I'm not necessarily saying they're savage about the emotional health of their children, but they certainly are savagely positive in terms of keeping their kids healthy and so on, right?
And so they'll take their kids to get their shots and this and that, right?
So, So, as soon as you can make that link, and of course, then, what is the cost for a DRO to pay for a kid's asthma treatment, right?
What is the cost of asthma insurance for your children going to be?
Because, of course, you don't have to wait for people to get old and get emphysema when they're 80, right?
I mean, if there's asthma that's caused, or something, who knows what, right?
Or, you know, again, this is all just off the top of my head.
There's many, many different... It's just like, I have no blank sheet.
I have a blank sheet here. But this is...
You could also say, look, if your air pollution is bad, your kids don't want to go outside and play, which results in obesity and diabetes, right?
I mean, and if you could... Again, objective studies, third parties, verified data, you could find this out and you could make this case.
So that's, again, that's another way of saying there's negative consequences to air pollution that affect you financially directly and affect the health of your children, which of course is of huge significance to people.
So if you can tie it into the health of children, then you obviously hugely motivate the parents.
You hugely motivate the parents to spend the $200 and let the health company come and slap some pollution controls on their car.
But what you also do is, you know, think about mothers against drunk driving, right?
Parents whose children's health is threatened by the bad behavior of other people, other people say, who don't have children.
Those parents are going to be pretty assertive, let's say, in getting those other people to recognize that their behavior is bad, right?
So, there will be family dinners that will be totally ruined by this approach to dealing with air pollution, right?
Because, you know, uncle, single guy, doesn't have air pollution controls, and basically the family will say, you know, you jerk!
You jerk. You know, you're putting the health of your nephews and your nieces at risk.
Just, it doesn't cost you like almost nothing.
Hell, we'll pay for it. I mean, it costs you almost nothing.
Just let them come and put these, you know, pollution controls on because you're in danger.
Don't be so selfish. You're in danger of the health of our children.
And people do this with, you know, you don't go into a baby's crib and light up, a baby's room and light up a cigarette, right?
The parents will say, put that damn thing out.
Are you crazy? These are little lungs here.
If we don't do that.
And it's the same thing.
The parental sort of the kick-in of the biological and the protective instincts will be pretty strong in this way, right?
So if you can tie it to childhood illnesses objectively and verifiably and so on, and of course the...
I don't know, the companies who put in the, assuming that it's not the healthcare companies themselves, right?
There's going to be lots of interested parties, right?
The people who, in action is the great competition in just about every economic decision.
I could do nothing or I could do X. So, not doing something obviously has great benefits, but the companies who are going to stand to profit from making the equipment for air pollution are going to fund these studies, but they're going to fund them with verified third parties and this kind of stuff.
The mechanics who are going to make money from installing these kinds of things are going to be very interested in getting this information out and so on, and it has to be, again, trusted verified third parties, which would be a sort of keystone of the economy and a free society.
But you want to tweak it so that basically, in a sense, the problems that people have with pollution in terms of aesthetics and in terms of health...
Are balanced by similar kinds of responses in terms of motivation.
So there's two kinds of motivations that people have.
I mean, social and economic.
And there's internal and virtuous and so on, but we're just talking about the ones that you can really count on.
So people have economic incentives.
If you pay people a million dollars to get air pollution control put in their car, you will not have any problems getting air pollution controls put in people's cars.
So economics will work very well.
If you can get people to treat those who don't put pollution controls in their cars as social lepers, right?
Like if no girl will date a guy who hasn't put pollution controls in his car, this is another way that you could do it, right?
So young guys with muscle cars, you could run a program that says how he treats the air is how he's going to treat your heart.
So if he's a jerk and doesn't care about air pollution, then you would say to girls that don't go out with this guy because he's a jerk and he doesn't care about children and he doesn't care about the health of seniors and he's not going to care about your heart and so on.
So then the guy who doesn't have the sticker might not have as much fun getting a lady friend into the car with him.
I mean, this is just silly things that I'm sort of making up, but there's just so many ways that this water can find its way down the hill.
That you don't want to necessarily immediately jump to, let's get you a bunch of people to point guns at people and that's going to work.
So I just sort of wanted to point out, just off the top of my head, with no particular preparation, ways in which you can deal with these sorts of problems, assuming that people care.
And of course there's two ways, as I said, that people care, aesthetic and economic.
For sure, if pollution has no negative aesthetic or health effects, then it's not really pollution.
Pollution is sort of defined as negative health or aesthetic effects.
So that's not really going to be a significant issue.
Where there are aesthetic or health effects, there's going to be incentives among people to create situations which are going to gently and positively lead people towards doing the right thing.
That's how the world works in a sustainable and positive way.
You don't need the government to order intel to put out a faster chip every year.
That's just what they do, right?
Because that's their incentive.
Incentive you can always count on.
The government is, at best, inconstant, and at worst, violent.
Well, it's always violent, but counterproductive.
So, this is an approach that I think would be useful, and there's lots of different ways that you can deal with this question.
It does have, of course, it does require that people know a little something about economics, or that people know a little bit something about human motivation and political science.
But these kinds of solutions that we can talk about here in terms of car pollution, they work, right?
They absolutely and completely work.
Human beings are motivated by some very powerful things in terms of health, their own health, the health of their children, social approval, and of course saving money and being looked upon as good people and so on, right?
And all of these basic facts about human nature can be very easily used in terms of positive incentives to get people to do the right thing, right?
So that is the way that I would approach it.
There may be many, many, I'm sure there are, countless other ideas about how we can best approach this topic, but I hope that these have been helpful.
Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to your donations, and I will talk to you soon.
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