Which freeway express lane has variable tolling, no price ceiling, and still gets congested on a regular basis? I don't think it exists.

A person isn't a car, so fewer cars doesn't necessarily mean fewer people.

The same way eBay prevents too many people from ever winning the same auction, while preventing anyone from ever being overcharged.

Pricing things at market equilibrium has never required a way for people to avoid paying.

He's updating one pump at a time. What are the other pumps doing? Dispensing gasoline... They would not want to just shut everything down and eliminate a half-hour's worth of revenue from 15 pumps just so OP is not inconvenienced.

If you are correct that all the other pumps are in use, then shutting down one pump at a time will result in the same amount of lost revenue (8 pump-hour's worth) as shutting them all down at the same time.

A better solution is to raise the price of gasoline slightly so fewer than 16 pumps are in use at a time. This way, a financial optimum can be achieved between lost pump revenue and the cost of the technician's time.

Another advantage of tolling is that variable express tolling permanently (yes, permanently) eliminates traffic congestion, without overcharging anyone (where "overcharge" means "charge more than the market equilibrium rate").

And another advantage is that it therefore permanently eliminates the need to widen roads to eliminate congestion, which saves taxpayers a lot of money.

So if you don't like paying taxes or if you don't like sitting in traffic, you should welcome variable express tolling with open arms.

There is plenty of money from gas taxes to maintain the roads.

Absolutely false! Drivers currently pay less than half the total cost of roads.

Problems that are difficult but solvable and lucrative are what every entrepreneur hopes to find.

That means road subsidies benefit employers who don't have to pay higher wages just so their employees can afford to get to work.

track circuits...can't tell you which train [is on a section of track], nor distinguish between maintenance vehicles and trains, nor can it tell you how fast or long a train is.

RFID can tell you those things.

Problem is, you'd end up screwing over the poor - that is, all the people who cannot afford a Prius or similar hybrid/electric vehicle.

Don't the poor usually walk, ride bikes, and take mass transit? Did you know that the poor love tolls more than other income classes because tolls displace taxes the poor would otherwise have to pay?

It would also jack up the price of nearly anything that is transported over the roads...

Actually, what jacks up the price is when we don't charge users full price for use of the roads, leading to a distorted, inefficient market for transportation.

(Don't give me any garbage about how everyone should live in cities -- what a drab, sad world that would be.)

Yes, what a drab, sad world it would be if people lived where they weren't an economic burden on others.

And building a website without reliance on JavaScript can be really tricky and limiting.

A website should always be navigable without JavaScript. One that isn't, is a sign of laziness, pure and simple. The use of JavaScript should be limited to eye candy, and in many cases CSS will do what you want.

The Chinese don't really know very much about rice. That's why the purpose of other dishes in Chinese cuisine is to help the rice go down.

The Japanese are the real rice connoisseurs. In Japanese cuisine, rice is a thing of worship, probably as an artifact of the Shinto religion where everything has a soul. A Japanese person will tell you that their domestic rice is the best, followed by California rice. But to the Chinese, rice is rice.