Craig, What you want is travel to occur when the private benefits (whatever they are based on) of making a trip exceed all of the social costs created (including such things as congestion, road damages and traffic accident costs). Then society derives a benefit from the journey.
The user charges approach is to try to capture all these costs and to make the traveller aware of them. Then if an individual is rational – they only make a journey if the benefits from doing so exceed the private costs they face – individuals acting in their own self-interesrt should increase society’s benefit.

According to this clown getting in your car and driving somehow has to be “beneficial to society” (read beneficial to harry).

He was shown to be wrong in his thought methodology over at the ALS blog when he presented an example of the reason he wants to charge a congestion tax on top of all the other taxes we get hit with.

This is the fart whispers example he sued to justify is nonsense:

suppose I enter a crowded road and work out that the time and petrol cost of getting to my destination is $15 (that’s the personal marginal cost of me entering traffic) but that by doing this I get a benefit of $25 so off I go.
I head off to this particular destination (’The Honey Motel’) along with 1000 other motorists who go to about the same place. I increase their travel times by 1 second per car so I cost them 1000 seconds or by about 17 minutes. If the value of their time is $50/hour I have increased their travel costs by about $14-20. That’s the larger social marginal cost of me entering traffic. It’s bigger than my personal marginal cost.

I was ruder but someone else nicer explained to him that his reasoning in fundamentally flawed.

The 1000 motorists lost 1 second each because of you.
And you lost 1 second because of each of the 1000 motorists.
So the cost to you of the congestion was 1000 seconds (or $14 assuming $50/hr). And the cost by your contribution to the congestion was 1000 seconds (also $14).
The problem with your example is that you shouldn’t have started with a cost to you which included the congestion cost. Start with your personal non-congestion costs… then add in the congestion cost to find the optimal decision. To work it out for society you should add $14 to the cost. To work it out for yourself you should also add $14 to the cost. So the incentives are already correct. Good news for your adoring fan.
The principle to remember is this… not only are you creating a negative externality, but you’re also facing the negative externality from other people.

Of course he never came back and apologised.

He’s now proudly saying his write up has gone off to some government office and may be used in consideration of future planning.

If it wasn’t so pathetic it would crack me up.

Harry, I have left it for a few days to give you time to think where you have made the error in your mathematical logic, however since you haven’t come back it may mean that your still confused.

Let’s take your example of one driver costing all the other drivers combined 1,000 seconds (1 second each). That ‘s fair enough, however you simply can’t account the cost of one driver to the rest without accruing I second from each of the other drivers to single driver.

So here’s your math equation (999/1000 seconds)+ 1 second =1. In other words each person costs the other drivers equally.

Harry, if you were sincere about this issue in that you’re serious about pricing traffic rather than green extremism, I would expect you to at least acknowledge this very fundamental mistake in your studies. Failing to do so simply means you’re not and that you actually are trying to deceive.

It’s up to you to show if you’re sincere or not.

The 1 second you imposed was non rival in consumption. 1 second is practically negligible.

Harry’s argument also reminds me of John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged when he was railing against the ruin bad ideas had achieved.

It was about the spurious moral virtue of sacrificing for the so-called greater good of others. Galt basically showed it was a form of philosophical Shylockery.

Harry of course can choose to live under this curious moral code, however he shouldn’t expect others to and certainly he shouldn’t be advocating taxed etc. that would create that same result.

Funny how fiction turns into real life performance.

(I’m not mocking you by the way, but you do remind me of the people Galt was fighting against)