The Anti-Gunners Never Give Up
The orginal story is about a way to reduce gun deaths in the US. If the number they quote is accurate (12,000) then there has been a significant reduction in gun deaths over the last decade. The original story can be found at
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-sugarman29-2008jun29,0,1307373.story. It's simply suggesting another big government power grab similar to the tobacco settlement. For fun, I thought I'd rewrite the story to take on something much more dangerous in our daily lives: the automobile.
This year, about 30,000 Americans will die in a car accident. It's a staggering figure, and even though lawmakers have continued to pass laws to try to bring the number down, they have not significantly reduced the death rate. Indeed, for the last decade, cars have steadily outranked homicide as a cause of death.Car manufacturers insist that these deaths are not their fault, preferring to pin the blame on reckless drivers and irresponsible drinkers. They have fiercely resisted even minimal restrictions on sales and have simultaneously washed their hands of responsibility for this "collateral damage."
What is to be done? The conventional regulatory approaches seem to be failing. A more recent strategy, in which victims or municipalities bring lawsuits against car manufacturers or retailers, seems legally and politically unpromising since, in this issue, people show uncommon amounts of good sense and are not whipped into an emotional frenzy by politicians and the media. People accept 30,000 deaths a year as the cost of owning a car in America.
We propose a new way to prod car makers to reduce deaths, one that would be unlikely to put them out of business or preventing sober drivers from using the road. By using a strategy known as "performance-based regulation," we would deputize private actors -- the car makers -- to deal with the negative effects of their products in ways that promote the public good.
In other words, rather than telling car makers what to do, performance-based regulation would tell them what outcome they must achieve: Reduce deaths by cars. Companies that achieve the target outcomes might receive large financial bonuses; companies that don't would face severe financial penalties. Put simply, car makers -- whose products kill even when used as directed -- would have to take responsibility for curbing the consequent public health toll.
Under our plan, Congress might require car makers in the aggregate to reduce car deaths from 30,000 to, say, 17,000 in 10 years, with appropriate interim targets along the way. Individual firms would each have their own targets to meet, based on the extent their cars are currently used on the road. Or Congress might simply leave it to neutral experts to determine just how much of a numerical reduction should be required -- and how quickly. Either way, the required decline would be substantial.
How would car companies go about reducing car accident related deaths? The main thing to emphasize is that this approach relies on the nimbleness, innovation and experimentation that come from private competition -- rather than on the heavy-handed power of governmental regulation. Car makers might decide to add sobriety sensors to their cars, or to work only with dealers who meet certain standards of responsibility. They might withdraw their high horse powered engines from the consumer market, or even work hand in hand with local officials to close bars and increase youth driver education opportunities. Surely they will think up new strategies once they have a legal obligation and financial incentive to take responsibility for the harm their products cause.
Performance-based regulation leaves it up to them to decide. This is the same outcome-based approach that the No Child Left Behind program takes concerning schools. Through No Child Left Behind, parents and school officials set achievement targets for students, and schools then have to figure out how to meet the targets. Similarly, performance-based regulation is used in a variety of pollution-control schemes and is becoming the preferred global strategy to combat climate change. For example, under pressure from coalitions of environmentalists, scientists and citizens, regulatory bodies are ordering public utilities to sharply cut their carbon emissions. The companies are responsible for designing solutions to best achieve that goal, which could include switching fuels, changing the way they produce electricity, installing scrubbers on smokestacks and so on.
Sen. Michael D. Enzi (R-Wyo.) has put forward a proposal along the same lines to target tobacco. Typically, anti-smoking organizations lobby Congress to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over cigarette companies, and press locally to increase tobacco taxes, run more government anti-tobacco ads and boost enforcement of bans on sales to minors. Under Enzi's performance-based regulation plan, however, the tobacco companies would simply be told by Congress that they have to cut their customer base by about 50% in 12 years. It would then be up to the companies to figure out how to curtail smoking rates.
So how exactly might this work in the case of car makers? For nearly all car deaths, law enforcement officials are able to identify the precise type of vehicle that was used. From that data, reliable statistical projections can be made to determine each company's approximate share of all deaths. Each company's quotas would be based on the data, and tied to an ever-decreasing number of deaths.
A more fine-tuned strategy would set different car-accicent-death-reduction quotas based on the specific car -- with larger reductions mandated for cars that are more commonly involved in road deaths.
The plan might even include a "cap and trade" feature. If some car makers managed to reduce the deaths caused by their product even faster than the rules required, they could sell that excess to other companies.
If car makers fail to reach the performance targets, they would face substantial financial penalties that would hike the cost of the cars they make and drive home the huge negative social consequences they now cause.
Our proposal is not a tax on car sales. As long as car companies met their goals, they would pay nothing extra to the government. Indeed, the plan might reward them with bonuses.
Performance-based regulation is not about the government denying people access to cars. It's not an academic theory about the underlying causes of car accidents, nor is it a restriction on the right of law-abiding citizens to drive. Instead, it is a practical way to align the car companies' interests with the public interest and, ultimately, to save lives.
The sad part about all this is that there are way too many people who will think this is a reasonable idea and should be implemented on January 21, 2009.