fatvegan

I've just read a couple of blog posts about unwillingness in the US to increase petrol taxes purely because they're politically unpopular. This is despite the fact that a large number of economists believe they're a good (perhaps best) way to reduce carbon emissions and the fact that a large majority of Americans think more needs to be done to reduce emissions.

I wonder if there is an argument for putting a lot of these decisions into the hands of independent bodies. People might suggest that democracy is damaged this way and these decisions should only be made by elected officials. I don't feel like having an independent Reserve Bank harms democracy in Australia. The government ultimately still has the power to abolish the Reserve Bank. And a huge number of decisions are delegated to people who aren't elected. Government bureaucrats have a huge amount of power. I expect, for many issues where short-term politics doesn't get in the way, decisions are frequently delegated entirely to bureaucrats. That is because our elected officials know that unelected officials (such as people at the Reserve Bank) will do a better job of many decisions, and can mostly be trusted to act in the best interests of society.

I believe that in many cases politicians would prefer to make one choice, but end up making another because the obviously superior is difficult to sell. I wonder if it would be better for the government to write legislation governing a whole swathe of independent bodies, as they have for the ACCC, Reserve Bank and judiciary. If things get crazy, they can write more legislation or take that power back. If Australian judges all went mad overnight, I think people would be happy for the government to take control of the process for a little while. No independent body is sufficiently sacred that voters will permit it to run the country into the ground.

Perhaps there could even be a process for suggesting areas of governance that might be moved into independent control. I would propose petrol taxation and probably a more environmental decisions.