jh,

http://petroltax.blog.net.nz/

Regards Kevyn

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“Georgism, named after Henry George (1839-1897), a U.S. political economist, is a philosophy and economic ideology that follows from the belief that everyone owns what they create, but everything supplied by nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity.”

In Aotearoa they would belong to Tangata whenua?

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Pan Party Policy Wiki…. to educate and organise political and economic ideas
Must retain objectivity.

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What’s the link to your blog Kevyn>

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Very interesting paper, Kevyn. Anything to stop motorists parking on bus stops (and footpaths)!

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Sleepy, I just read an interesting paper that proposes using parking meters as a form of Georgian (Henry George) Land Tax that would help reduce inner city congestion and pollution.
http://www.uctc.net/papers/728.pdf

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Another more environmentally friendly way of paying for roads was proposed by Natonal’s Roading Advisory Group. GPS based electronic tolling has several benefits over RUCs and fuel taxes.

1) The cost of road capacity in excess of two lanes can be charged entirely to those road users who travel at the times when the extra capacity is actually needed.

2) Road users will receive a monthly bill instead of srip feeding their payments. This is a huge psychological change. It means the cost of road use can be directly compared with the cost of a monthly bus pass.

3) Many expenses which are currently charged on an annual basis could be converted to a per km basis. For instance registration fees, insurance.

4) Kerbside parking would be viable anywhere with demand sensitive pricing. That would go along way towards getting kids walking or cycling to school. It would also remove the “free” parking used by shop assistants and office workers in residential streets bordering commercial centres.

This method of collecting parking revenue would make it administratively simple to allocate the parking revenue to the streets from which the revenue is derived. This money could be used to replace asphalt with cooler textured concrete and install benches, planters, trees and more pedestians crossings and refuges and traffic calming features.

“Turning Small Change Into Big Changes” explains how this approach to parking meters was key to revitalising Old Pasadena and contrasts Old Pasadena with Westwood Village.
http://www.uctc.net/access/23/Access%2023%20-%2002%20-%20Small%20Change%20into%20Big%20Change.pdf

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Sleepy,

I think we may have dabbled with something along those lines in this country when Seddon was Premier:

http://www.petroltax.org.nz/PDF/MastertonBoroughBettermentAct1902.PDF

Sorry, my laptop wont run the Acrobat text conversion tool so this is a straight scan image, a bit of a big file, but it’s only a short Act at 4 pages.

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I made such a recommendation on Kevyn’s blog on alternative means to fund our transport infrastructure.

The Vice Chairman of Transport for London made such a submission here.
http://sustento.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/transport-urban-sprawl-and-justice.pdf

Even the Chairman of the Reserve Bank is proposing a Georgian (Henry George) Land Tax!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4258411a13.html

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more on Google announcement and useful roundup of green computing and post peak computing
http://www.energybulletin.net/37920.html

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From Wikipaedia:

George formulated a comprehensive set of economic policies. He was highly critical of restrictive patents and copyrights (though he amended his views on the latter when it was explained to him that copyrights do not constrain independent reinvention in the manner of patents). He also advocated the replacement of patents with government supported incentives for invention and scientific investigation and dismantling of monopolies when possible – and taxation or regulation of natural monopolies. Overall, he advocated a combination of unfettered free markets and significant social programs made possible by economically efficient taxes on land rent and monopolies. Modern economists like the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize winner Milton Friedman agree that Henry George’s land tax is potentially beneficial because unlike other taxes, land taxes impose no excess burden on the economy, and thus stimulate more rapid economic growth. Modern-day environmentalists have resonated with the idea of the earth as the common property of humanity – and some have endorsed the idea of ecological tax reform, including substantial taxes or fees on pollution as a replacement for “command and control” regulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George

Too many people are getting rich by asset (land) inflation. The wrong people are reaping rewards.
A person can live in a beautiful place and have it spoilt by developers with no recompense, (in fact the opposite, they get to contribute to the additional infrastructure required etc).
It has bothered me that a citizens (membership) “ticket” means zilch … ”
I recall the TV program Pay off Your Mortgage in Two Years The poms come to paradise build a villa and walk away with $200,000…. Something skrewy there Frog!!
I don’t think the Propi-tay people would like the idea.

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Frog I was impressed by the article in Te Awa The Invisible Green Hand re the visit by Frank De Jong:

[Quote]
The green party must stay a step ahead by looking deep within the concept of Green Economics. With that comes the acknowledgement that resources and natural wealth they bestow must be shared amongst the community. Aresource rentals system ensures natures gifts are used efficiently. At the same time we can find favour within business circles by reducing taxation on jobs and profits”

………
De Jong used the example of a property originally bought for $100,000 that ten years later was worth $300,000 simply due to the increase in property values- making a profit of $150,000 (minus inflation). De Jong says such a “profit” should not be kept by individuals especially when it was not earned by “brains or brawn” but rather that ‘unearned increment’ should be redistributed into the community and infrastructure.
[End Quote]

Have I missed that topic here?

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My understanding is that white LEDs are actually ultra-violet LEDs with a phosphur coating, much like the coating on a fluorescent light bulb. Other LEDs (red, orange, yellow, green, blue etc are monochromatic which is due to the way a LED works. The two-step process in a white LED adds cost and reduces efficiency. The higher up the spectrum, the more energy is involved which makes the LED technologically more difficult, so the first LEDs were RED then they moved up the spectrum.

I read recently that Taiwan is committed to all-LED traffic signals by 2012. What is the commitment of our local councils?

http://www.digitimes.com/displays/a20071121PB204.html

Trevor.

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Of course I’m in favour of, and applaud, improvements in the energy efficiency of technology.

And I don’t think it is off-topic to discuss it, or that green technology from a particular country should be ignored.

I’m just against people using single examples of green technology from a particular country to justify that that countries political orthodoxy is therefore a good thing, or that that country is therefore good environmentally, or that corporate capitalism is therefore good environmentally.

P.S. that Google announcement is very interesting, thanks for posting that. A link:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20071127_green.html

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I really don’t understand the posting filter. My posts contain no profanity, and follow the rules, yet they often get trapped.

Can you outline exactly what and what isn’t permitted?

[frogmaster: we actually have two filters:

• the Akismet spam filter over which we have no control, this often traps posts for no obvious reason - it was this which trapped your last post.
• the wordpress moderation filter which is a list of words that we do control. the list of words is mainly composed of profanities, misspellings of people's names and few other terms. The intention of the list is certainly not to stop swearing on this blog, we allow the posts as is with swearwords intact. Rather the idea is that all the terms are indicative of bad behaviour, e.g. flaming, which we do not allow. We want to keep the discussion civil and not have fights breaking out, and the only way we can think of identifying abusive or inflammatory posts is to have this list of words that are often found in such posts.

We would certainly like to make the process more transparent and we welcome any suggestions you have.]

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“The technologies favoured by the online ad billionaires are those with few or no visible downsides except cost. The ploy most favoured is solar thermal, in which the sun’s rays are used to produce heat and generate power using conventional turbines, rather than being turned straight to electricity in expensive solar cells.

Solar thermal is not a new idea – substantial plants have been operating in California since the 1980s, though their original developer went bankrupt in 1991 – but there are various solar thermal ideas that haven’t been tried on a large scale. Google also plans to sink cash into Geothermal efforts, taking power ultimately from the Earth’s hot core.

“Usual investment criteria may not deliver the super low-cost, clean, renewable energy soon enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said Dr Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google’s philanthropic arm.”

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Another US big business capitalist helps out with practical solutions:

“Cheap renewable energy is not only critical for the environment but also vital for economic development in many places where there is limited affordable energy of any kind,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said.

Google’s founders believe the firm’s experience in data centres and bot-vs-bot advertising mean this relatively small investment will nonetheless overturn the established energy economy in short order.

“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centres,” said Larry Page, Brin’s partner.

“We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal… Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades.”

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Just because it is allowed, does not make it sensible or logical.

Personally I am very glad to hear that the price of white LEDs is coming down. Yay! Why would any Green Party member mind that? What a peculiar idea!

BTW: I always thought tyhe reason that white LEDs were 5 times the price of red or green ones was because they were under patent.

peace
W

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BluePeter is right. It often gets a bit tangential around here, but as long as a relatively green theme prevails, who cares? This would be a most boring lilly pad without the occasional ideological rant or bizarre tangent.

Insider – If we invent LED miles, do we measure the ‘American’ LEDs from the US or from the factory in China where they’re most likely made? Do we want to shed our imperial shackles and demand LED kilometres?

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Maybe we need to invent the concept of LED miles?

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