Ok, let's imagine that this actually comes to pass, and the government installs GPS devices in all our cars. Think of all the fun you could have:

• Steal your neighbor's car and park it a few blocks away in a supermarket lot. Take out the GPS thingy and stick it to the underside of a long-haul truck.
• Remove the GPS thingy and stick it to your kid's scooter. Think about the government trying to figure out why you drive your car back and forth in front of your house for hours every day.
• Take your GPS thingy and put it on the car of the nice little old lady down the street, who only drives to church and back, once a week. That is, if you can find a place to squeeze it among the other thousand or so GPS thingys on her car.

There are plenty of other possibilities. People are increasingly sick of government intrusion, and this kind of device would be open to a hilarious range of civil disobedience.

Seriously though, even if you accept the premise that we should be taxed on milage (as an addition to or replacement of gasoline taxes), there is a much better way to implement this.  It's called a freaking odometer.  Ya know, that thingy in your car that tells you how far you've driven.

To my knowledge, every state already has yearly car registration requirements, so any additional tax could be collected based on odometer readings at that time.  Don't even try to tell me that it would be harder to scam a government GPS system than an odometer -- it wouldn't.

In other words, this is at best another potential government boondoggle, or at worst a thinly disguised attempt to increase government intrusion into our lives.  Messing with this system would sure be fun, though.

Posted by: Hermit Dave at 09:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 307 words, total size 2 kb.