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Here's a crazy idea: the environmental fact sheet should be the price tag. Price the environmental impact of a product into the product.
by TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Here's a crazy idea: the environmental fact sheet should be the price tag. Price the environmental impact of a product into the product.
- jpttsn 8y agoThe money raised should go to you, right?
- sp332 8y agoThat seems backwards. If the externalities of manufacturing the product are going to hurt me, the manufacturer should be paying me a discount.
- Armisael16 8y agoIt doesn’t matter where a tax is actually applied - it’ll be split between the seller and purchaser regardless (the exact split depends on the elasticity of the market).
- ip26 8y agoOk, how about where the externalities of manufacturing the product hurts someone in Florida, and you in California are the one buying the product?
- vivism 8y agoThey wouldn't be manufacturing it if there were no demand for it.
- sp332 8y agoYeah but supply might dry up if manufacturers had to pay for damages out of their own pockets.
- jchrisa 8y agoYou mean economic growth is a mirage?
- sp332 8y agoWell if it's going to take several trillion dollars to deal with effects of climate change, then however much money we thought we had saved by going with fossil fuels over cleaner but more expensive energy sources was actually overstated by several trillion dollars. I don't think that covers all economic growth though. And if a manufacturer pollutes the crap out of a river and gets people sick, I would deduct the costs borne by the people downstream from the profits of the company, at least when counting "economic growth". I suspect in terms of GDP it's a positive, because of the business created for doctors and lawyers.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoYou get the benefit of the product, otherwise you wouldn't be paying for it. You should pay the rest of the world for the damage that was done to it for your benefit.