Hacker News Reader

This will probably be more than outweighed by the savings in public health due to less pollution. Air pollution kills and harms so many people every year.

View on HN

Sure, but I have zero confidence that policymakers will look at it this way. We all know that budgets are largely non-transferable between departments, so just because we are spending less money on health issues I can guarantee no one will transfer this money over road maintenance. That's not how it works.

Nor should it work that way automatically, IMO. We need a certain amount to spend on X and an amount to spend on Y.

If X becomes cheaper, the right thing to do (IMO) is to return the savings to the people, not to spend the surplus on Y or find a new Z to spend it on. If the people want to choose to spend more on Y or Z now that they've seen the savings on X returned to them, that's perfectly rational possibility, but shouldn't be automatic.

If policy makers cared about health issues due to pollution, smoking would have been outright banned 10 years ago.

There is a difference between polluting your longs, or the entire city. (Although health-care is still costly to others.)

> health-care is still costly to others

That's exactly the point I was making.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com