Normally, when we talk about prohibiting government from arbitrary and capricious behavior, and its precursor in republican democracy, the proposal of minor initiatives and special legislation while larger issues go unaddressed, the correct alignment/avoidance of non-arbitrary behavior is obvious. In total war, you allocate all people to their most effective position to carry out the strategy. In typical criminal law enforcement, you investigate and prosecute the most damaging offenders, in order of their damage to society.
As a different type of situation with regards to arbitrary policy: in land use/zoning, and the associated environmental protections, although the optimal policy (or policies) clearly could be expressed, the particular implementation heavily depends on what sites already exist, damage already has occurred, natural factors like availability of ores, etc. That is, you are always making tradeoffs of siting facilities and mitigating industrial damage, and because the best approach is heavily dependent on the particulars, the complexity and local focus makes it hard to say that you are taking arbitrary actions.
Due to the military interests in assured energy supply, the question about energy efficiency, particularly proper use of limited petrochemicals, can’t constructively be avoided. Because the location of energy storage and consumption is partially fungible, a large portion of the energy allocation considers the entire territory. Moreover, this ability to transfer or save energy, means that conservation measures practically cover the entire territory. Because sources of energy (e.g. oil vs. natural gas vs. nuclear) also have some level of interchangeability (at a certain efficiency cost), the question of conservation and efficiency involves choices across energy sources.
Clearly to understand, what arbitrary behavior means in the context of energy policy, we have to remind ourselves of the full spectrum of “waste” and “benefit”. From a functional perspective, someone who drives their car around the neighborhood for fun, clearly is wasting gasoline. From an aesthetic perspective, that joyriding may be the most fun thing for that person, particularly if that person is cooped up inside most of the day, and especially if that person has e.g. knee problems that prevent long stretches of walking or biking.
However, we also recognize that committing humans only to pursue functional objectives, qualifies as slavery. Consider some of the actions that clearly would be banned under a purely functional requirement:
- Almost every visit to national, state, or even many local parks, that aren’t on the way to some functional objective
- Any change of city, other than for a specifically identified marriage opportunity, job, education facility, etc.
- Any choice of suburban or rural lifestyle; military implications aside, towns and cities where walkability works, are grossly more efficient than spreading people out. (Note, this does not mean you have to put the factories in the city or ban a variety of farming enterprises; it is to note that under these requirements, you are forced to live extremely close to your job unless there is some functional reason why that can’t happen)
- Any energy-inefficient cooking or heating technique. Practically speaking, this means you eat out of a cafeteria in your Soviet-style apartment complex, or something nearby.
- Any choice of goods production, such as home furnishing or building materials, certain kinds of food like high-sugar and novelty consumer products, and certain kinds of clothing, that are contrary to or unnecessary for efficient building, basic sustenance, etc.
So we are reminded that requiring functional efficiency in order to use energy, essentially turns your country into the Soviet Union. Recall that amongst the many problems of the Soviet Union, that the bulk of the population’s complete lack of economic incentives caused them to not work much or efficiently, which contributed to the implosion of the Soviet economy that reached its terminal state even as early as the 1970s, when, despite fighting only limited wars and after the Green Revolution had begun, the Soviets still had to import grain from their arch-enemy, the American Empire. In order to avoid this counterproductive outcome, some aesthetic energy consumption must be available.
However, the resources still are scarce, which implicates the classic economic questions of choice and allocation. For the point about the hierarchy of uses, the exact allocation in terms of e.g. income is not important; however, we must consider that the aesthetic energy usage must broadly be distributed.
What is important is that the energy efficiently is used to create aesthetic value, in a way that cannot be otherwise substantially substituted; energy spent neither to have functional value, and which also delivers poor or duplicative aesthetic value, still is wasted. Essentially the opposite of efficient usage in either a functional or aesthetic sense (ignoring that its actual function is the facilitation of organized crime), is cryptocurrency with proof of work, like bitcoin. You can’t have sex with bitcoin, eat it, ride in it, or do any other thing with it; indeed, the actual piles of encrypted numbers are not comprehensible in any sensible allocation of an individual’s time.
Hence, we must refer to the aesthetic hierarchies and individual value systems, to determine whether a use of energy is aesthetically wasteful. We recognize that individuals’ value systems differ greatly; however, with respect to a particular value system, we can identify which expenditures of energy are most pleasing and/or most efficient. As such, we can consider that for an individual, we can deny the aesthetically less-pleasant choices that consume more energy than the aesthetically more-pleasant choices. That is, there only is a conflict if individuals’ most aesthetically pleasant choices, are the more energy-intensive.
Therefore, the optimization problem/assessment, of what combination of conservation measures provides for the maximized aesthetic value, at a first approximation, involves collecting all of the most aesthetically pleasing activities, that consume significant energy (e.g. not playing soccer), and banning/limiting every other type of activity.
Following the American imperial Energy Information Administration’s breakdown, in the 50 states, transportation is the largest consumer of energy, and the vast majority of its energy input is petroleum. However, only a minority of individuals truly value e.g. car transport, as a regular mode of entertainment, vs. e.g. the independence having a car gives. Therefore, obvious first steps (ignoring the obstacles) would include:
- Increasing density and providing per-capita less energy-intensive transit options
- Directly banning consumer use of vehicles for ordinary use (i.e. you are not a construction contractor) that aren’t energy efficient (e.g. hybrids). However, for any functional use such as moving, actually aesthetically pleasing or energy-sensible uses such as road trips, off-roading, or track driving, you provide the best-suited/most aesthetically pleasing vehicles, at a cost which is equal to or less than what they cost to operate today. The savings comes from the fact that they only will be used in situations where they really help, and aren’t e.g. being trailered to and from such locations.
- Changing the way that leisure travel is performed, so that the best leisure travel spots have improved capacity/faster to get to e.g. by high-speed rail/full flights, which reduces the need for arbitrary transportation, which drives up e.g. airline and automobile petroleum usage.
- Likewise, instead of individuals trailering boats and other large recreational equipment, you stow said equipment and rent it out at favorable rates. (As an aside, this also has ecological benefits, particularly, reducing invasive species spread)
- Changing/evolving factory locations and transit routes to increase more energy-efficient rail and sea usages.
The industrial space is much more difficult to alter, since many of its outputs are in some way functional, and optimization for the cost of energy already is a primary business consideration. The primary means of improving the industrial usage is:
- Evolving particularly energy-intensive industry, towards new nuclear reactors and similar infrastructure, to minimize input transportation costs.
The residential sector offers some limited opportunities, primarily:
- The increase of density (previously mentioned) to share heating and cooling needs in a more energy-efficient building.
- Having people move (or seasonally migrate) to climates where the need for year-round heating and cooling is reduced.
- Expanded implementation of energy-efficient housing and appliances.
The commercial sector offers some more beneficial options, namely:
- The increase of density (previously mentioned), which does have similar benefits as residential, but a major additional benefit is the capability to pool warehousing and reduce the size of stores, so goods can flow through to the end user in a more efficient way.
- Reduction of brands and SKUs, particularly as regards quantities.
- Improvement of shipping and fulfillment, so that delivery drivers make shorter runs to deliver more items. Moreover, additional shipping lockers or other protected storage within walking distance are beneficial to reduce the number of trips that previously would have required individual automobiles, etc.
- The mandate of remote work when productivity impact is none to minimal.
- Additional standardization and registration of minimally-visible physical installations like plumbing, so that contractor repairs and supply chains can be optimized.
Of course, other grossly wasteful items, like cryptocurrency, that should be eliminated.
Properly implemented, these types of improvements have minimal overall impact on the aesthetic value of the population, and accommodate the vast majority of the individual value systems; in many cases individuals will get more value out of the future system than previously.
Seeing the matter from this viewpoint, we can recognize that major improvements such as those outlined above, are far larger in impact, and far less painful to the people, than the typical renewable energy mandate or consumer electric-vehicle subsidy. For example, the typical government forces consumers to buy EVs, but maintains (and in many cases subsidizes) the grossly wasteful suburban dynamics that cause long trips, which make the EVs expensive and not energy-efficient ways of addressing the ongoing need. (Moreover, the EV mandates sometimes do not pay attention to the size of the EV, which amplifies the overall energy consumption – but that is just bad policy regardless of typical value systems.)
Consequently, when considering whether a targeted energy efficiency improvement is arbitrary, the comparison should be made against considerations such as the above, to determine whether the improvement is in line with/addressing the above improvements, or whether it is deviating or bypassing these in an area that is not grossly wasteful (where you would be fine with a one-off ban anyway, because outright waste always is the most egregious use of energy).
A special point of focus: several of the items discussed the point about increased density, as an enabler to various optimizations. That prompts, why can’t we do density? The answer in the 48 states (e.g. Nigeria, Japan are different), is because the politicians in major American cities have put together decades-long track records (one could argue more than decades in some of the older cities like Chicago or New York City) of high taxes, high crime, and poor public schools (for which the taxpayers are forced to pay, whether or not they have kids, or send their kids there). There are other drawbacks, but those are the biggest problems encountered on a daily basis. In order to implement the density policies under these conditions, you would have to force large numbers of people to go live in these slums, which could not be sustained by any democratic government.
Consequently, although some items on these lists are not arbitrary to implement as they are top-level or orthogonal (or even disproportionately effective e.g. remote work in lower density), a large number of the available improvements flow right through making cities as good or better than the suburbs and rural areas.