Why not? We all use it, so obviously it's popular and commercially viable. As it's essential to life, vouchers would be made available to the poor and disadvantaged. Probably the best way to achieve this goal is to poison our existing atmosphere (well on the way to this already!), and then everyone would have to purchase their supplies of breathable air, avoiding any more freeloading and allowing good, honest capitalism to run the show. What do you think? I reckon that if we did this, market forces would result in better, fresher air, of a higher quality than the inferior public air that we've become used to. You know it makes sense!
Actually, I'm having second thoughts about that bit. I mean, to be true to the spirit of market economics, only the fittest should survive. So if you're poor and can't afford oxygen, then it's only right that you should do without. That way, the poor economic performers will be culled from the population, just leaving those who actually contribute something to society.
This idea's pure genius! We could import cheap oxygen from the 3rd world. Then they'd probably not have enough to go around their own population because they'd be exporting it all to rich western countries. So as a result, you'd probably kill off a lot of the 3rd world poor as well, thus reducing the amount of money that we have to spend on aid, as well as making their economies more competitive.
Yeah, but of course it would still be more than the locals could afford, so it would get exported to the west, where it'd be cheaper than our own home-produced oxygen. So the companies setting up oxygen plants in the 3rd workd would get a nice healthy profit, 3rd world governments would solve their population problems, and western residents would get cheaper air. Everyone's a winner!
Funny thing about that cliché is that it's usually uttered by people who possess no sense of humour Oh yeah, and cheese is the lowest form of sig Oh my god!!! I think you've stumbled across another hidden benefit!!! ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION!!!! I mean, we could have 'oxygen reserves'... like the welsh mountains. Places of natural beauty where the countryside would be protected in order to preserve air quality, so it could still be enjoyed by those that could afford it!!! Of course, you wouldn't want to let the peasants in there in case they polluted it by breathing out their own, lower quality air......
In heavily populated areas, like central London, they might consider a daily surcharge of about £5 in order to put people off of breathing when they don't really need to. Of course, people who can find alternative methods of oxygen intake will be exempt from this charge, as will taxi drivers who produce their own variety of hot air.
Excellent idea! This would discourage the poor from undertaking wasteful activities involving a high consumption rate of oxygen, like football and other fun activities! Of course, sex involves a lot of heavy breathing, so that would mean that the poor would'nt be ablt to afford to have as much sex.... which would, in turn, lower the rate of reproduction, thereby lessening the burden on the tax payer. Genius!
Of cource, to discourage the wasteful use of air and the resultant pollution when it is turned into CO2, the government would introduce an air tax. This would lead to protests where people stopped the air delivery lorries leaving the refineries, causing panic buying and meaning many would run out of air. As well as western govenments and big multinational companies, the other people to benefit would be govenments in poor countires, who would sell vast quantities of their peoples air to the west to buy weapons to terrorise their people and neighborours, but as their neighbours didn't have much air to sell, the west wouldn't care. If one of the countries has control of too much of the air market, and starts to threaten neighbouring air supplying countries though, the west would make up stories about them having WMD, critisise the treatment of their people and use if as an excuse to invade them.
