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Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

> combined with billing requirements

There's a certain flavor of US libertarian that complains that they should only be taxed for exactly the road-surfaces they personally use in proportion to how much they use them.

In response, I like to point out to them that their dream of "fair billing" can't occur without a nightmare of surveillance, making it easy for the government (or road-owners, and indirectly the government) to track and remember everybody's movements in excruciating detail.

Is that worth it? Perhaps a "sloppy" billing system (e.g. fuel/mileage taxes for roads) is actually an extraordinarily good deal in terms of the privacy we take for granted.

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There's a potential family of cryptographic methods where people prove that they paid for things without revealing who they are.

https://www.eff.org/files/eff-locational-privacy.pdf (2009)

The technical paper mentioned is now at

https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/blumberg/vpriv.pdf

(I guess Andrew Blumberg moved from Stanford to the University of Texas.)

There might be an inherent tradeoff where you need at least one of {tamper-resistant trusted meters, at least slightly noisy measurements, potential deanonymization}. For example, the short paper mentions that "point tolls" are easy to make anonymous using any form of anonymous digital cash (or blinded tokens issued by the tolling authority!), but the exact usage billing you mention people wanting is much more detailed than a point toll like that. It might indeed be inherently impossible to get all the way there without detailed surveillance.

I though gnu taler sounded pretty interesting:

https://www.taler.net/en/features.html

don't know anyone who uses it though. (is it usable?)

Agreed, I always think that all these taxes should indeed just go through fuel. Want a bigger, heavier, more polluting car? Want to drive like a F1 driver? Fine, you pay more. Want to drive a long distance? You'll pay per distance*car_size. Want to go electric? You'll pay tax on electricity in concordance with it's economic price and influence on the planet.

One problem in the EU is is that this would need to be rolled out across the EU, because we already have large difference in price ranges for fuel leading to weird situations neer the border.

> Want to go electric? You'll pay tax on electricity in concordance with it's economic price and influence on the planet.

The problem is that generic electrical consumption is not (unlike gasoline pumped at a gas-station) a decent proxy for how heavily the purchaser occupies and wears-down roads.

In turn, it makes it harder to connect fair (proportional) amounts to fix the roads.

That is true. Idk how to tax that. Through the tires? Would also stimulate going for durable ones. Although electric cars produce much less breaking dust, contributing to clean air again. Okok, it's complicated. Just tax anything based on it's environmental impact, then add some percentage for the roads?

Given that odometers are already tamper-resistant for other economic reasons, a "mileage this year by vehicle weight class" might work.

> Agreed, I always think that all these taxes should indeed just go through fuel. Want a bigger, heavier, more polluting car? Want to drive like a F1 driver? Fine, you pay more.

That already happens in some states. I have a performance car, and in Washington that came with a "gas guzzler tax" built in to the purchase breakdown, so I paid a lump sum (in addition to the ongoing higher fuel costs).

I don't see the issue?

Get on a toll road, pay for a ticket, done. Drive on a normal road, pay for gas, done.

I guess you could make it extremely specific, but then the problem isn't the surveillance, but the price of the cost analysis of driving 1,7 miles on a road in bumfuck nowhere with a J lbs vehicle, exerting X pressure on the road at a standstill going at [Y] speeds, thus generating Z total pressure over time H. In addition the road was I% wet due to rain the day prior.

> I don't see the issue [...] pay for gas

"Them durn politicians are taxin' mah gasoline to build roads clear on the other end 'o town!"

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