The argument is simple.
legislation, or taxation.
Taxation leaves the choice: it merely makes it an expensive one. But otherwise doesn't ruin society.
Legislation,if it is applied, means legislators and enforcers..lots of them.
These are people whose labour is totally non productive. In fact its destructive.
The cost to the taxpayer exceeds the tax that would have been paid on making anti social consumption financially unattractive.
instead of switching off expensive electricity, you are forced to buy the crappy bulb, and you simply use more of them, and leave them on, because electricity is still cheap.
It teh same issue here with cars.
We NEED a 4WD to get across muddy fields sometimes, and to handle the ungritted roads. We also have a very fuel inefficient camper. Now, if fuel were expensive, but car tax cheap, I'd get a third car.. a little teeny engined runabout - to save fuel going to the shops. BUT I either have to but a NEW one with ultra low fuel consumption to escape tax altogether, or stump up for a low tax low insurance secondhand one. total costs are higher.. thann...
..In fact, because the camper at 20mpg is less to tax than the 4WD (being a wurking clarss commercial vehicle) at 35mpg, I now use the camper as a spare car. Madness.
Its not an eco tax at all. Its a tax on the rural population, who never have and never will vote labour. So sod em.
Its the normal communist attack on the intellegentsia and entrepreneurial bourgeoisie. Because they threaten to expose the idiocy of the socialist mantra.
Brown wants the whole country as opposed to the 20% of families it now has, totally dependent on welfare. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and that is the tune. Do what you are told, we know best, and let us do the thinking for you, like God, and the Pope, we are never wrong as long as we have Faith, in something. And, if you happen to have savings, we will take them too, as that proves how antisocial you must have been to accumulate them.
Since we have instituted a policy to ensure you were deeply in debt for ten years. And we need the cash t pay off those debts for the poor deserving people who were greedy and stupid enough to get taken in by our bullshit.