government should intervene more with alternative fuel

it seems to me that i'm trying to give concrete info and numbers, and you're insisting on more abstractions. At the level of abstractions, anything can make sense. You should post number that are realisitc that show how the poorer spending money in the mean time wouldn't be disadvantageous. contra the simple free market fundamentalist approach... here are some ideas for where this debate really should be headed. ----------------------------- you didn't address the savings that the poor would have as a result of chancing sooner. plus there are role the gov could play as per adam smith. here are some numbers for you to think about. I think this whole car issue is exemplified by alternative energy in general. Look at heating of a home etc. The technology like solar etc is out there to have pay off... but it takes like 20 years for it to pay off. Most people don't want to do that. This is similar to alt fuel for cars, i'd contend, because there's a pay off consumer would get if we switched sooner rather than later. as to the proper role of govn... an agency would be leading this cause, so that fits one of hte prongs. but, either way: But, unlike solar panels and such, there's a reason I'd respect the individual soverignty of the consumer in those cases and not alt fuel as much. With solar panels etc, there's no infrastructural challenges. Sure, to a degree, the prices for the solar panels etc is high, but it's not inherently undoable for a consumer to buy. With cars, it is pretty much inhernetly undoable if there's no ethanol etc stations around. This is how I justify the government's involvement primarily. The economic reasons are second, but not subservient to consumer soveriegty. plus, you have issues such as giving hte poorer in our society a better opportuinty to get ahead, and giving htem something more proportional to their richer counterparts, a basic minimum. if we wait until the richer can feel it, all that money that's being squandered by teh poor and middle class isn't going to the economy at large cause one thing i wasn't very explicit on. if they can make it for a dollar a gallon, and even if they sold it at 2 a gallon, which is what they say they'd be doing, it'd still work out right. consider, that my google search says the average station produces 700000 gallons of fuel a year. if we have a better infrastructure sooner than later, then taken to the extreme that'd be instead of 3*700k it'd be 2*700k, with a 700,000 saving per station. that, in one year, would be more than enough to pay for a machine there. instead, we're waiting till the rich get pinched... we're wasting at most 700000 dollars a year per gas station. i realize dthe numbers are made optimally for me, and there's a trasition period, but. what the free market fundamentalist would say....wait till gas is 12 dollars a gallon... cause that's the only way the rich and the fuel stations are going to start doing anything: they're not going to do it sooner, cause the richer don't want to be inconvenienced by limited stations, and the stations won't do it, cause they have no consumers. and then, if we did it the free mar fun way, we'd have to wait for those new cars to trickle down.