I don't know about the UK, but in the US the FAA required that each drone be operated by a licensed pilot, which changed the economics.

There's some talk of autonomous software being granted a pilot's license, so that might shift things again.

I think the hope was that the money would be used to support local cultural content/events since people in those enterprises have been hard hit by the COVID crisis.

Where are they buying the books? (sorry if the article mentions this, it's paywalled)

If it's independent stores, then I think that qualifies as a local enterprise hit hard by COVID, and fits in the spirit of the scheme, maybe even national bookstores can be considered thusly, too.

If they can give the money to Amazon, though, then maybe there's an issue.

Yes, this has been a common experience:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28264/w282...

20% of kids were disadvantaged (-0.4 standard deviation on tests), 20% were advantaged, 60% mostly unaffected. Strongly correlated with household income.

Somehow I don't think the app developer is experiencing the same sense of sublime transience as the Buddhist monks.

Maybe we just haven't ascended to their plane. Then again, I think their plane may be on fire and in a terminal nosedive.

You shouldn’t be downvoted. Web only vs. conventional phone surveys is a significant change. Cheaper, but definitely excludes poorer demographic sections. You can’t ignore this for a survey about ‘life ratings’.

See also http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

The actual reason for the exemption is that they cannot impose the tax on non-EU operators, giving the non-EU operators a competitive advantage.

They can’t impose a tax on jets that use their airspace?

AFAIK that would require changes to the customs area, which might have consequences for other aspects like transiting goods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_control#Customs_area

Eurocontrol already has fees for ATC usage. This fuel tax is presumably in addition to that.

> They can’t impose a tax on jets that use their airspace?

Presumably they already signed aviation treaties that do not allow for this.

Yes, there is a tangle of 5000+ Air Services Agreements which, as international treaties, supersede national laws. Almost all agreements include mutual tax exemptions on anything not unloaded at a destination, including fuel.

The UK does (including back in the good old days when we were still in the EU).

This doesn't appear to be the case (as of Oct 2019) ...

> members of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), including the United Kingdom, are prevented from taxing international aviation fuel, or any proxies for fuel, under the Chicago Convention.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00...

I think it might be time for an ~80 year old convention to be revamped if it kills the environment...

It's not on the fuel, rather the flights:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-allowances-for-air-pas...

Rationally that's what matters, but the response of the courts and regulators could make autopilot uneconomic.

> But I also don't see what's wrong with attempting to distribute (some of) the revenue in such a way to compensate for harms.

It becomes a big political fight over how much of the revenue should be directed to social programs, so the tax policy changes every 4 years. A straight rebate gets wide support and taking it away becomes more and more unpopular as people get used to receiving it.