The Pankian Metaphor 3081

lets say you have a heavily loaded highway infrastructure that was built for a specific number of heavy truck axle-loads; i.e. the highway design specifications say that highways are designed and have lifetimes based purely on the number of heavy truck axle-loads. futhermore, consumer vehicle use has no impact on the design, wear and tear, lifetime, etc of the highway. Nominally "use" based pricing involves an buttumption that "use" is proportional to cost-overhead related to the use. The buttumption is not valid if there is strong bi-model distribution of use ... where majority of "use" has nearly zero cost and the other major distribution "use" involves effectively all of the cost.

if longhaul goods appear cheaper than local goods (possibly because of the heavy transportation subsidy), consumers could decide to increase their purchase of distance goods by a factor of 100 (because the heavy subsidy is distorting efficiency of market forces). Increasing the purchase of distance goods by a factor of 100 could increase the number of heavy truck axle-loads by a factor of one hundred. Increasing the number of heavy truck axle-loads by a factor of one hundred can result in the road wearing out 100 times faster (than possibly the original subsidy decision had budgeted for).

in the current subsidy infrastructure, the primary way of increasing the subsidy by 100 times is by encouraging consumer vehicle traffic to increase 100 times (resulting in consumer vehicles using 100 times more fuel and paying 100 times more road use fuel tax). since consumer vehicle use of the highway is stated as having negligable effect on the highway ... nearly all consumer vehicle use and the related road use fule tax for consumer vehicle use is pure revenue (having neglible effect on highway lifetime, maintenance, etc costs at all).

Therefor the total amount of the revenue from consumer vehicle use of the infrastructure (which has no impact on that infrastructure) can be used to offset the cost impact attributed to the number of heavy truck axle-loads (which is the primary factor-thing that affects use-cost for highway design, maintenance, and lifetime).

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