The Oil Drum

It seems to me that a proper (indeed a central) role for democratic Gov't is to act as an agent for the public (as opposed to private) interests.

For me the following things follow from this:

- If Gov't is to fund research activities then the product of that research should serve public interests i.e. the data should be released to the public domain or, at the least, the intellectual property rights, and the royalty revenues that flow from the commercialization of them by the private sector, should go to the state, not a private company, and used for the benifit of the general population i.e. to offset taxation.

- Likewise with Gov't investments in built infrastructure, the thing that is built should be public, not private, property.

Tax incentives on the production side are, in my opinion, just about the worst way for Gov't to seek to effect behavior change. I say this because:

- The ability of companies to "game" the tax system is huge. The goal of the company will always be to minimise tax paid , not necessarly to engage in the behaviour change the Gov't seeks to effect.

- Democracy is impossible without public oversight, and this in turn requires public access to information. Because tax records are confidential between the Gov't and the tax payer detailed public oversight of this activity becomes impossible. For this and other reasons if Gov't is to directly subsidise it should, in my opinion be done via grants or loans whose paperwork is fully public.

If the collective decision is to encourage bio-fuel consumption (hopefully at the expense of fossil fuels) then I'd suggest that the equitable way to do it is to rebate the consumer i.e. have the Gov't pay a rebate of X$ per gallon to the end user upon proof of purchase.

Let me be clear that I'm not advocating for such a rebate in this particular case, from what little I know about bio-fuels large scale development would, if possible at all, be a nightmare in terms of global heating, soil depletion, etc. as discussed at length here. I'm just saying that IF we DO want to encourage it using gov't fiscal methods this is how to go about it.

I take it as axiomatic that an objective of "business" is, whenever possible, to "externalize" i.e. "commonize" their costs and "privatize" their profits. I don't hold them as "evil" for acting this way, anymore than I hold a Lion as "evil" for eating some cute looking helpless prey species, they are each just "doing what they do", but we should all remember that we are, in fact, members of a prey species (lets not be helpless) when we hear business saying that they think a really good idea is being proposed...