Quote:
Originally Posted by markbot
You're forgetting about the cost and consumption of resources to actually manufacture the book, the contamination of water from paper mills, resources to transport it (energy, packaging waste, time, etc), cost to store it, and annoyance of dealing with the waste when it is tossed.
In conjunction with the tax, I'd propose that the government prevent the prevention of reselling and loaning ebooks. There should be a way to transfer the ebook like a pbook....if we are to get rid of pbooks.
Pollution of electronics is bad....but environmental impact of pbooks is probably worse overall. a lot of people read ebooks on tablets and computers where they already have a device and don't need to purchase a special device.
I also believe they should greatly increase US gasoline taxes to like $4 per gallon instead of having those CAFE standards. They can gradually institute the tax so people have time to change behavior. I can guarantee u that very few people will buy an SUV if there is a $4 gas tax. the UAW would make passing the tax extremely difficult though, if not impossible. the tax monies could go toward creation of solar power plants and such. the other added benefit is that in effect the tax would transfer wealth from OPEC to the home country as it means that the home country would be effectively collecting some of the oil price increase instead of OPEC. OPEC would not be able to raise the underlying price as high since the cost to the consumer has the added tax to stifle demand.
pbooks are laughably antiquated...the sooner they are minimized the better. imagine a world that instead of using telecommunications and email, you'd have to write a LETTER and send it via post, every time! HAHHAA, that is so pathetic. this is how I view pbooks.
but I agree, the 20% tax would create other problems we'd have to deal with.
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Seriously, why are you trying to save the world???? Who are you trying to save the world for??? Putting all these taxes on commodities wont save the world. When I was younger and more optimistic I would have probably thought stuff like this was a good idea, but ya know eventually you grow and learn that the inevitable is going to happen, no matter how many trees we save or how many restrictions we put on how we use and recycle resources.
An asteroid could hit the earth tomorrow, the super volcano could erupt tomorrow, nuclear war could break out tomorrow, a plague could break out tomorrow, a new ice age could start tomorrow, all of this stuff will happen over the course of years. Its not if but when.
Saving trees and gas is dwarfed by all of this stuff. It wont matter in the end. Mother earth will expel us when the time is right and it will renew itself with the few billion years it will have left before the sun goes nova. Humans will no longer be here. So really why all the fuss?