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Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

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Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#31

Post by lostlogin »

aresant wrote: post #21

A fun sci-fi read would be about a futuristic government that "subsidizes" an Industry for much-debated, but ultimately politically driven reasons. Rather than simply making cash-handouts, however, the Government & the Industry conspire to hide these handouts by creating new by-products for sale to consumers. The Industry grows and rejoices, extending its products into as far ranging lines as sweeteners, fuels, and p…

Am i missing the joke? Whats sci-fi about this? And how many industries are like this? Meat, diary, cars, arms, power, oil, medical, prisons. And these are just the ones that come to read from stories I have read recently.

Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#32

Post by Steko »

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/stories/solved-...

The companies maintain that this practice was legal. Another company, Northern Biodiesel, appears to have been put out of business by the practice.

The EPA has investigated several other cases of RIN fraud, including one against Jeffrey David Gunselman, the CEO of Absolute Fuels who was arrested in July, accused of selling more than $50 million in fake RIN credits.

So yeah, keep telling yourself that this is another case of the dum dum gubmint who needs to stay out of our way and how no one ever goes bankrupt after defrauding the gubmint because I mean, it all sounded great when Rush said it right?

Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#33

Post by Androsynth »

lostlogin wrote: post #31
aresant wrote: post #21

A fun sci-fi read would be about a futuristic government that "subsidizes" an Industry for much-debated, but ultimately politically driven reasons. Rather than simply making cash-handouts, however, the Government & the Industry conspire to hide these handouts by creating new by-products for sale to consumers. The Industry grows and rejoices, extending its products into as far ranging lines as sweeteners, fuels, and p…

Am i missing the joke? Whats sci-fi about this? And how many industries are like this? Meat, diary, cars, arms, power, oil, medical, prisons. And these are just the ones that come to read from stories I have read recently.

The joke is that there is nothing sci-fi about this :)

Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#34

Post by lostlogin »

recursive wrote: post #29
rgbrenner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I went back and read the article more carefully. The EPA was issuing credits for importing biofuel. So the company decided to ship fuel out of the country and back in to make it look like they were importing fuel, and therefore earn the credits. Sorry, but that's fraud. There's nothing here that is wrong about the EPAs program or behavior. They want renewal energy to be imported, and are offering a credi…

In order to be fraud, doesn't there need to be some form of misrepresentation or deceit?

Does knowing your exploiting the system count? There is no way this wasn't intentional.

Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#35

Post by uvdiv »

lostlogin wrote: post #31
aresant wrote: post #21

A fun sci-fi read would be about a futuristic government that "subsidizes" an Industry for much-debated, but ultimately politically driven reasons. Rather than simply making cash-handouts, however, the Government & the Industry conspire to hide these handouts by creating new by-products for sale to consumers. The Industry grows and rejoices, extending its products into as far ranging lines as sweeteners, fuels, and p…

Am i missing the joke? Whats sci-fi about this? And how many industries are like this? Meat, diary, cars, arms, power, oil, medical, prisons. And these are just the ones that come to read from stories I have read recently.

He's bitter about corn subsidies in the US.

"sweeteners, fuels, and plastics" -- high fructose corn syrup, corn ethanol, corn ethanol-derived polyethylene

"price manipulation and straight forward mandate from their "Environmental" agency." -- corn ethanol subsidies, corn ethanol mandates

etc.

Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#36

Post by mmanfrin »

lostlogin wrote: post #31
aresant wrote: post #21

A fun sci-fi read would be about a futuristic government that "subsidizes" an Industry for much-debated, but ultimately politically driven reasons. Rather than simply making cash-handouts, however, the Government & the Industry conspire to hide these handouts by creating new by-products for sale to consumers. The Industry grows and rejoices, extending its products into as far ranging lines as sweeteners, fuels, and p…

Am i missing the joke? Whats sci-fi about this? And how many industries are like this? Meat, diary, cars, arms, power, oil, medical, prisons. And these are just the ones that come to read from stories I have read recently.

  Am i missing the joke?
Yep.

Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#37

Post by rndmize »

coopdog wrote: post #25

As much as I dislike the idea of new government departments, it sounds like they do need some kind of 'evil' department who's only job is to think up ways to abuse proposed new laws and regulations before they go into effect. Similar to how generals have the intelligence section of their staff put on only the enemy hat and poke holes in their plans.

I don't think you need a new department for that. Take the tax code. Who knows how to exploit the tax code the best? The accountants at the IRS. Have the IRS give an employee a bonus each time they find an exploit and write a report on how it works and recommendations on fixing it. It shouldn't be that different from the way major software vendors pay rewards for reported bugs/exploits.

You could provide similar incentives for reports on efficiency improvements (and to prevent exploitation of a system like this, you could have the bonus provided only if the improvement/fix is actually implemented, or based on how significant it is, or something.) Prize and crowd-sourcing systems have worked pretty well when it comes to a lot of things, so why not apply them to improving government bureaucracy?

As it stands, our system does the opposite - it rewards people for finding and abusing exploits in the system instead of fixing them (see - every corporate scandal and stock market crash ever.)

Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#39

Post by SoftwareMaven »

Steko wrote: post #32

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/stories/solved-... The companies maintain that this practice was legal. Another company, Northern Biodiesel, appears to have been put out of business by the practice. The EPA has investigated several other cases of RIN fraud, including one against Jeffrey David Gunselman, the CEO of Absolute Fuels who was arrested in July, accused of selling more than $50 million in fake R…

I don't understand what you are saying (aside from trolling, which is heavily frowned upon). It reads to me like the government is either creating perverse incentives, failing to implement correctly or failing to monitor. If it is the first, we'd be better off without the interference. If it is the second, what is wrong with the government that it can't implement it's policies correctly (perhaps too complex)? If it is the last, then why is the government not policing the policies better?

And finally, do RIN credits provide better incentives than no credits? That is the real question that should be asked with regard to the government being involved. The government's track-record isn't great.

Re: Why did a Train Carrying Biofuel Cross the Border 24 Times and Never Unload?

#40

Post by rgbrenner »

polyfractal wrote: post #11
rgbrenner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem did the EPA create exactly? They created a rule that the company disagreed with? That does not give them a right to break it. That's not how the law works.

Err...the EPA didn't create a law that the company disagreed with. They created a regulation that was designed to incentivise the importation of renewable fuels. Someone at Bioversal Trading was clever enough to realize that they could make more money gaming this regulation then actually selling their cargo. Therefore, they ran the train back and forth a dozen times and wracked up money from the Government. Dirty? Ye…

>If anything, it speaks to the danger of hidden incentives in otherwise innocent-looking regulations.

That's like saying, there should be no lower tax brackets than 39% because I can lie and say I made less money than I actually did... speaks to the danger of hidden incentives in the tax code.

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