[quote]pookie wrote:
The last thing ethanol needs is more government involvement. There’s no ethanol market right now simply because it cannot compete with fossil fuels on performance, availability or especially price. Once it becomes a lot cheaper to fuel with ethanol than with regular gas, demand will appear and market will follow.
The last thing I want is for my taxes to subsidize another dead-end industry. If ethanol cannot make it on its own merits, let it die. There are other alternatives, and I think the free market can make a better decision than any government committee.
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See, when you say stuff like this you really do look like you don’t understand what I’m saying when I talk about the operation of markets and sometimes the need to create markets.
There is a monopoly of sorts in place right now. It’s the same as some utility company trying to run 240v wires in North America. There’s no market for it. However, you’d be foolish to say there is no market for electricity.
There is the ability, and it is both cheap and readily available, to make cars able to operate on another source of fuel. At that point, there would be a market, and the factors you discuss could be taken into account by that market.
What we have right now is the defence of a situation which is, arguably, fueling world enmity as well as a host of environmental factors. That is costly!
All too often people suggest something new can’t be done, and they have all kinds of reasons to stand behind, but they end up proven wrong by people that simply go and figure out how to do it.
Create the market. Let the chips fly. There is nothing to lose and the potential to gain by reducing the reliance on foreign sources of energy. How you go from this to arguing about mandating use of ethanol is a confusing leap.
Personally, I think we are close. I think there is marginal land that could be retasked. I suspect that, much like the article link to above, we will find that we can use less costly sources of plant growth.
However, I doubt that something sensible will happen, such as simply enabling a market by allowing demand flexibility with respect to fuel. I suspect that if not now, some other price crisis will lead to a huge knee-jerk reaction by government, which will end up costing lots of money and being inefficient.
In general, as a philosophy, when a government can act without much cost or risk to enable public options, without anything like costly subsidization, then it makes sense to help enable or create a new competitive market. Precisely because of how efficient free markets are able to operate.
There is no better way to enable alternative fuels than to break down some of the barriers to entry with respect to the fuel market… and then let the markets do their job.