A Sentinel for Auto Emissions; D. Klein

Yet it may be time to expunge all of these command-and-control measures. Consider Smog Check, which requires that cars have their emissions tested every other year. The vast majority of motorists spend a lot of time and money to find out that their car is clean. It's like making people report for a scheduled checkup to prove that they do not have halitosis. In the past few years, scientists have devel oped a new technology called "remote sens ing," and it promises to be the silver bullet for auto-generated smog. Remote sensors are mobile roadside devices that read tailpipe emissions using infrared and ultraviolet beams. They measure carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons with very good accuracy and nitrous oxides with fair accuracy. Imagine the following system: government randomly scans your car's emission levels using remote sensors and reads your license plate. If your emissions are excessive, you get a postcard. Because the technology is so inexpensive, the government can read your car four or even eight times a year. First you'd Dr. Klein, associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University, is coauthor with Pia Koskenoja of The Smog Reduction Road: Remote Sensing Ver sus the Clean Air Act, recentlypublished by the Cato Institute.

36 get warnings. If you continued to drive in a smogsome fashion,. you'd get fines. If you refused to pay the fines, you'd eventually get pulled over and your car would be im pounded. Sound scary? Maybe the remote sensor isn't very accurate. Maybe the license plate identification is faulty. Maybe the remote sensor caught your car during an uncommon acceleration. Big Brother is sniffing your tailpipe! In fact, there isn't much cause for alarm. The key point is that more than half of the auto-generated carbon monoxide comes from less than 10 percent of the cars. The same is true of hydrocarbon emissions. The problem is a small number of extremely dirty cars. The roadside sensors can use lenient criteria to make almost certain that only the truly pol luting cars receive citations. Furthermore, synchronized radar guns can check your ac celeration and infrared cameras can check whether your car is warmed up.

No one wants to be subject to a new penalty or fine. But the bright side is bright indeed. Remote sensing will intrude on your life only if your tailpipe emissions continue to exceed the limits. More important, a full-scale remote sens ing program is all we really need to police against excessive emissions. We'll have to live with the chance of smog fines, but we can get rid of Smog Check, forced carpooling, forced alternative fuels, electric vehicle mandates, and meddlesome regulations imposed on en gine design in Detroit.

37 All these programs have been notoriously troublesome, bureaucratic, politicized, and inefficient. My research indicates that a re mote sensing program implemented in Los Angeles would prove far more effective than the current Smog Check program-at one fifth the cost. A recent on-road study in Orange County, California, conducted by the Desert Research Institute, found that a program of remote sensing combined with free engine repairs reduces emissions 10 to 20 times more cheaply than does manda tory carpooling. With remote sensing on duty like a passive sentinel, we can be free of meddling and hassles and really clean up the air. Remote sensing challenges the entrenched groups who stand behind all the inefficient programs. Its advancement has been a slow and arduous battle. But no slower than we should expect from the massive and lumber ing system of policymaking. Every year re mote sensing is in greater usage on the road, and is becoming known to the public. It is destined to change the face of air quality management. D Tom Bushnell and son Jordan Tom is the director ofNATHHAN.

NATHHAN is a nonprofit, Christian network of familes encouraging each other in the area of teaching special needs children at home. • Supporting the unsung heros NATHHAN families alone save tax payers over 70 million dollars a year. • Empowering parents NATHBAN has been helping families educate special needs children since 1990. • Enabling better results Special needs home education is the successful private sedor approach. It works. Meeting the needs ofthe disabled without coercion, force or fraud Want to help? NATHHAN is funded by private donations only. Thousands of families need your help. Call or write for information about current projects such as the NATHHAN Family Learning Center and NATHHAN Family Camp. Look at how families are meeting the educational and therapy needs of their disabled children. Subscribe to the NATIDIAN NEWS for SZ5.00\year. 4 issues, 72 pages of letters, inspiring articles and pictures from families homeschooling children with special needs.

NATHHAN - National Challenged Homeschoolers 5383 Alpine Rd S.E. Olalla, WA 98359 (206) 857-4257 E-mail addressNATHANEWS@AOL.COM THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY The Benefitsof Outsourcing by Brian Boland and Walter Block I magine yourself an entrepreneur plan ning a new firm. After extensive market research, you decide to manufacture pencils. You begin selling them for five cents each. Your accountants have determined that it costs you two cents to produce each eraser-40 percent of your selling price. Another firm can produce erasers for you for only one cent each (a 50 percent savings on erasers). Do you continue to make them yourself or do you farm out this operation? Common sense dictates the latter course. This demonstrates the principle of outsourc ing-purchasing parts or hiring labor from an outside source in order to cut manufacturing costs. Traditional economic theory holds that firms are created to keep the cost of transac tions down. By reducing the costs and ineffi ciencies associated with searching for and training the proper' personnel, businesses can better maximize profits. For example, if a CEO had to place an ad in the paper for a secretary every time he needed a report typed, time and money would be wasted. By main taining a staff sufficient to cover the firm's needs, such inconveniences are avoided.