Ok, so why does it seem like people all want stuff and don't want to pay for it? I sit at work and have to listen to a bunch of these guys bitch about the transportation bill those spend happy democrats passed by overriding Paw-lenty's veto. They think the money to build roads and oh, I don't know, REPAIR BRIDGES WITHOUT THEM FALLING INTO THE F-ING MISSISSIPPI should come from somewhere besides a gas tax or car registration. WTF? Guess what? Most roads right now are funded by property taxes here in MN. It doesn't matter if you drive, if you own property you are building roads. It comes from other stuff too, but I hear the same people bitch about how property taxes are so high. So where is the money to build infrastructure supposed to come from? Maybe we should just each be responsible for building the roads across our own properties? We pay for everything we do, one way or the other. It's called consequences, good and bad. We should know this by now right?

In my world, if I want someone to do something for me, I have to pay them. People usually don't do stuff just for the joy of doing it for me. When the state wants people to work overtime to get an interstate bridge that fell down because no one wanted to pay to maintain it right (Sensors? they cost money) built twice as fast as usual, guess what? They have to pay double time. Now they are paying more because they were trying to get away with paying less.

So maybe, just maybe, charging the people who use the road, and wear it down, a little bit more to maintain it will get it though their thick skulls that maybe the cost to society for driving giant gas guzzling pickups and SUV's 100 miles a day IS a cost to them personally as well as everyone else. Dare I hope this could be the catalyst for them to make decisions based on the actual costs of driving? We all pay when some people ride around in vehicles that are exactly half the size of an Abrams tank (H2, Sequoia, Redwood, all kinds of other vehicles named after stuff that won't be around anymore if we keep driving them (why don't they just name them brontosaurus and be done with it?)). To me, a gas tax is all about about billing people directly for the goods and services they are getting. Without any abstract middle management that creates deniability. You wear down the road faster based on the GVW of your vehicle and the amount of fuel you burn, you pay more. No more of this money for nothing, chicks for free stuff.

Some nights I drive to work, I live 5 miles away, I drive a smaller vehicle, I walk to the cafe, I bike to appointments and work as much as I can. These are all little things, I'm probably not 100% sustainable yet, but if everyone did these little things there would be enough for everyone and we wouldn't need to beg other countries for their supplies of dead carbon based lifeforms to burn. Why can't we agree that this would be a good thing? Where's Martha Stewart when I need her?