I was reading some comments on TH when I came across a post by someone I assume thinks himself a conservative:

What would happen if the average American car got 34mpg instead of 17mpg? We wouldn't need to import one barrel of oil. If you took America's rapacious demand off of the world's oil market, what would you think would happen to the international price for a barrel of oil?

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...I am in favor of the guvment requiring raising the MPG standards.

Oil is a finite (and dwindling) resource. The 1.3 billion Chinese are now fully coming out of the Middle Ages they had known under communism. The rising expectations syndrome is in full bloom... only 1 in 100 families has a car, but that will explode... demand for oil can only get far greater.

We can expect gas prices back at $4 fairly soon. It becomes particularly hard to defend 17 MPG when a vehicle could do so much better with simple refocus of priorities.

Some retort, "but if I can afford the gas, it is my business alone"-- no it isn't, because you are squandering a finite resource perhaps twice as fast.

It reminds me of the smokers' rights crowd-- smokers' simply do NOT have a right to blow their smoke in my face (or ruin my meal out)-- and better not try.

Now, there is much wrong with this comment, but let me not take the normal approach. Rather than explaining what is wrong, let me just apply similar logic to other situations so readers might be able to see the problem for themselves.

Looking at the world, there are a limited number of women that are both attractive and desirable. Now, normally we agree that people have the right to date and marry whoever they want, but not when you are dealing with the limited number of attractive women. If you are dating one you aren't just engaging in a private relationship, you are taking one of those attractive women away from all the other men who might otherwise date or marry her. Clearly we need to develop a system to fairly allocate those attractive women.

There are only a specific number of people who can work as surgeons. Even with all the training in the world, only some people combine the ability and physical skills to be surgeons. So, while we normally allow individuals to both choose their own careers and decide what jobs they will eprform, if we allow potential surgeons to work in other fields, we are killing people! It is not their private choice to become something else, they are taking away from the number of operations we can perform, so if someone qualifies as a surgeon, we must force him to become one.

Is everyone starting to see the problem?

The problem with viewing "limited resources" as some sort of collective possession is the fact that it ignores the simple truth that all that oil doesn't really exist, not as a usable item, until someone brings it out of the earth. There is no oil without labor, nothing. And once someone brings it out of the earth, it is his to do with as he wants. If you think you want more oil, buy a field and drill it. You have no right to tell someone else he must use resources in a specific way because they are "scarce". EVERYTHING is scarce, that is why it is an economic good. If something exists in unlimited quantity, it has no value. Only scarce goods are economic, so of course any good we buy and sell is scarce.

The other alternative is to declare every "scarce good", that means everything with a price, collective property. And we all saw how well that worked out for the USSR.

POSTSCRIPT

Of course, I also disagree with the basic premise that oil is somehow running out. See my earlier posts "A Thought on Oil Reserves", "Why I Doubt Peak Oil Predicitons", "A Brief Comment on Oil" and "Rejecting "Peak Oil"". You can find links to related articles, mainly on environmental scares and the misuse of science and mathematics by following the links in "Misusing Numbers", "Another Example", "The Devil is in the Definitions (And Assumptions)", "Bad Logic", "Yet Another Needless Scare" and "Insufficient Skepticism".

POSTSCRIPT II

By the way, regarding "smokers' rights", I promise not to blow smoke in his face, if he allows me to smoke somewhere, rather than legally forcing every business, including tobacco shops, to ban smoking. We smokers don't want the right to smoke everywhere, just the right of businesses to decide how to handle smoking rather than the state. then the customers can decide whether or not to patronize businesses based on their smoking policies. I say let the market decide rather than a handful of busybodies. In fact, I am not even arguing for "smokers' rights", I am fighting for a concept which some seem to have trouble recognizing, called "property rights". I think there is something about it in the Constitution, though maybe some emanations from penumbras got in the way of those looking for it.

POSTSCRIPT III

By the way, on a topic related to the post I was reading, if not this essay: I will be writing later about the recent agreement with Iran, the pointlessness of it, and what it is likely to bring about. However I want to wait until I can get a bit more certain information about the agreement, so that may have to wait until tomorrow.


UPDATE (10/03/2009):

One final point. Even if cars got 34 mpg instead of 17 mpg (on average) we would still import oil.

You see, cars, as in personal vehicles, are not the sole use of petroleum, so we would not cut our oil consumption in half by doubling mpg. In fact, considering all the commercial vehicles using oil, as well as all the non-transportation uses, such as power generation, production of petrochemicals, and so on, we would probably cut it by less than one third.

Still, let us say we somehow cut our usage in half. As we import more than 50% of our oil that would mean we would still need to import oil.

And that ignores the fact that, with consumers spending half as much on average on fuel, they would have more disposable income, which they would spend on goods needing transportation, some of which would also be made of petroleum-based plastics. So, again, the demand for oil would rise once more.

Obviously it is impossible to accurately determine exactly where the demand for petroleum would end up falling, but that is not necessary. My point is such simplistic "solutions" often ignore the many consequences of an action. Of course these are also the types of "solutions" politicians love, which is why we so often end up in such dire situations.