also yachts while we're at it
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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The problem is: There are nearly no private jets. The rich would be stupid to own their own planes for tax reasons. So the planes are usually officially owned by a charter company. That this very plane is only available for that customer - who coincidentally also pays "service frees" or whatever for all inspections, upgrades and checks - does not invalidate that it is technically "chartered".
Any flight done is a chartered flight, performed by a commercial entity.
carbon tax on private jets?
Agreed.
I feel like the "ban X" trend is extremely lazy. The real problem is that carbon emissions are an externality; the cost of emissions aren't factored into the cost of doing business. It's basic economics. Industry, commerce, and consumers have no reason to account for carbon emissions, and so the overwhelming systemic pressure is to continue business at usual.
Carbon emissions aren't "immoral" in the same sense that theft or murder are, but they absolutely impose an ecological cost. Outlawing carbon emissions is not only unreasonable and politically impossible, but I would also argue unethical. As much as we altruistically fight to find alternatives, it's likely that several industries vital to our economy will have to continue to emit carbon. The least we can do is compensate society for the shared ecological cost.
Meanwhile, neolibs continue to ignore the actual industrial sources of climate change.
“How about you guys just stop being obscenely rich?”
“Oh ok”
Fine businesses for not allowing working from home where possible.
If I have to travel for an hour to get to a desk to do the same shit I can do from my house, that is killing the environment for nothing. For literally no benefit, not even monetary.
£10 a day per employee you make come into the office.
The pandemic proved this shit works. There's no backsies now.
Billionares seething
Don't ban, just tax them appropriately. :)
I've got an instinctive aversion to category-bans with political motivation...
Then I remembered helicopters.
Sure, ban private jets, which burn fuel fast, but not private helicopters, which burn more fuel per minute than you would believe...
Why stop at jets?
Why not ban private piston-planes?
Why not ban private vehicles, all of them?
Surely that'd cut down waaay more than just private jets would?
Shouldn't farmers use the bus to get their produce to the city??
Politically motivated sledgehammer-to-crack-a-walnut stuff just doesn't work right, for me.
Enforcing prison-time for corporate executives who lie in court, on their taxes, in their broadcasts, that would probably do significantly more than banning private jets.
Enforcing objective factuality in corporate communications would, if it had teeth, put a fair number of corporate disinformation-pushers in prison, and would possibly remove much propaganda from our world.
I can definitely see the advantage in being able to get from workplace to workplace quickly, without hassle...
There was a "Yes Minister" episode, where a newly-elected minister was shamed for using a driver & driven-car, so he began driving himself, iirc, and he lost the ability to work while commuting, significantly damaging his productivity...
... as intended.
Keep in mind that different categories of work have categorically-different boundaries:
Welders have to move their gear, have to get to the work, have to do the work, have to get away from the work, but you can't do welding without welding-gear, right?
& not that much changes between jobs, re welding ( that Japanese company who made MIG titanium wire, through a powder-metal process, .. they never made it available, so .. nice news, but it didn't change anything, right? )...
Whereas, if you're ears-deep in specialized knowledge, and the more hours per day you spend studying your domain's specialized stuff, either job-specific, or advances earned by others, you are working.
Therefore, working-while-commuting is nonsensical for welders, pipefitters, masons, etc, but it is normal for knowledge-workers.
Tax the rich: that'd do more good than this, and if you won't tax the rich, but continue taxing the working-poor, then it's just political bullshit/grandstanding.
I realized part of what was unconsciously-bugging-me about it...
A commercial-pilot, who owns their own bushplane,
who serves the North,
who is self-employed,
would be banned, by this kind of law.
It's their private jet ( turboprop ),
therefore it would be banned.
That would gut the communities they serve.
Beware of how the authority-over-others-drug "makes" people create sloppy legislation, how it "makes" people create sloppy interpretations of legislation, & enforce sloppy/abusive renditions of legislation.