FAQ
What could Bhutan's fuel subsidy buy instead?
Bhutan spends on the order of Nu 5 billion a year subsidising fuel — money that is burned in engines and leaves nothing behind. The book reframes that as a choice rather than a fixed cost: the same annual sum could instead fund a national public-transport build-out — a fleet of buses, bus-rapid-transit corridors, road upgrades, transport hubs, and tens of thousands of electric-vehicle incentives. Same money; one option consumes it, the other turns it into a permanent asset.
The point is not that fuel subsidies are wrong, but that they are invisible and asset-free. Roughly Nu 5 billion a year cushions the per-litre cost for every motorist, with no receipt, no budget line, and nothing left over once the fuel is combusted.
Spent once on infrastructure, the same money compounds for decades; spent every year on fuel, it disappears every year. That is the trade the book puts on the table in Paradox #74, alongside the hidden per-tank subsidy in Paradox #72.