Opinion

<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   HAVE YOUR SAY Feel strongly about something? Share it with the community by writing a letter to the editor. You’ll need to include your name, address and daytime phone number. (We’ll only publish your name and hometown.) We reserve the right to edit letters, but if you keep yours to 250 words or less, we won’t ask you to shorten it. If your letter is published, please wait 30 days before submitting another. Send it to: E-mail: letters@heraldnet.com Mail: Letters section The Herald P.O. Box 930 Everett, WA 98206 Fax: 425-339-3458 Have a question about letters? Contact Carol MacPherson (cmacpherson@heraldnet.com or 425-339-3472).   Published: Wednesday, June 4, 2008 Market forces get better mileage than bureaucrats By Richard S. Davis Last weekend I did what millions of Americans do daily. I made a skip-a-trip decision influenced by gas prices. We'd completed spring cleaning and I had a pile of still-useful stuff to give away. I filled our 1988 Chevy van and headed to town. When I got to the Goodwill pick-up site, the crew told me the trailer was full but they expected another soon. I ran some errands and went back. Still no trailer. Come back later? Not today. I left, grumbling about $4 gas and my guzzling van. I'd return when I could combine the trip with another town chore. Such is the power of market responses, which operate with remarkable rationality and speed when incentives align. When something gets more expensive, you get less of it. This spring we reached the tipping point. Driving costs more, so we're driving less. The Federal Highway Administration reports that Americans drove 11 billion miles fewer in March 2008 than we did the previous March. That's the largest drop in FWHA history. They also report a 9 million metric ton reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the first quarter of 2008. Last month, The Herald's Eric Fetters reported that Community Transit had 70,000 more riders in March 2008 than a year ago, concluding a first quarter ridership bump of 11 percent. That pattern is being repeated throughout urban Washington, as more folks leave their cars behind to board buses and trains. Employers encourage carpooling and teleconferencing, and let you know it when you submit your travel vouchers. This grim green tribute to the power of pricing confounds politicians. They want us to know they feel our gas pains. They do like our response. They just don't know how to take credit for it. Sen. Hillary Clinton, in this year's populist incarnation, perversely proposed a gas tax holiday. Other U.S. senators self-righteously browbeat oil company executives. Candidates scramble to find a right side of the gas tax debate. Bash big oil and big cars. Hype the hybrids. Tout transit. Promote domestic production. Champion climate change regulations. Decry high gas prices. While they chatter, consumers adapt. Years of high-minded exhortation failed to make a dent in our driving habits. But when the dent in our wallets reached the magic level, we made different choices. That's how markets work. Thousands of individual choices accomplish what attempts at central control could not. One trip into town rather than two. Work from home a few days a week. Walk, cycle, share a ride or take a bus when you can. The shift to transit and at-home vacations will likely be temporary. The more enduring shift will be to vehicles with lower operating costs. Ford and GM curtailed pickup and SUV production due to disappearing demand. Instead they'll make more fuel-efficient models. Meanwhile sales of hybrids jumped 25 percent in the first four months of the year. For folks who want to control emissions, that should be good news. It may not, however, be good enough for those who want to control behavior. Last session, lawmakers passed climate change legislation with the explicit goal of reducing our use of cars and trucks, dictating a strategy rather than an objective. Don't ask why. Markets teach humility. The unintended consequences of misbegotten regulation and incentives sweep across the globe. The global food crisis stems in part from the rush to convert croplands to biofuel production. Congress and many states, including ours, will soon consider something called "cap-and-trade" legislation. When a business approaches its "cap" on emissions, it can buy ("trade") additional pollution room from another firm with excess capacity to sell. Government would take its cut. Some politicians are too fond of such complicated, "bold," and "audacious" attempts to use public policy to create Utopias. Big issues like health care, climate change, and poverty inspire complex policy frameworks, inflexible political scaffolds. But often things don't turn out the way politicians say they will. Consumers and producers respond with extraordinary, often surprising, ingenuity and innovation. The most effective policies will harness that creativity by relying more on market principles and less on central planning and bureaucratic blueprints. It's a more humble approach. Appropriately. Richard S. Davis, vice president-communications of the Association of Washington Business, writes every other Wednesday. His columns do not necessarily reflect the views of AWB. His e-mail address is richardsdavis@gmail.com.

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