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Why shouldn’t all negative externalities require restitution in proportion to their harm? I couldn’t agree more that it is difficult to measure externalities.
by torpfactory 8y ago
Why shouldn’t all negative externalities require restitution in proportion to their harm?
I couldn’t agree more that it is difficult to measure externalities. A good place to start might be to get a quote for the cost of undoing the harm - e.g. I’ve heard as low as $93 a ton to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Seems like a reasonable starting point for discussion.
By the way I don’t think making a better widget qualifies as a negative externality.
- Eridrus 8y agoFor a more concrete widget example: self-driving cars will have negative externalities on professional drivers. I'm not sure what definition of externalities includes climate change, but not job losses. I also think it's a bit simplistic: what if we find that the carbon energy sector is not capturing all the value of what it provides and has positive externalities that outweigh the negatives at current levels? What do you do about systems with non-linear effects like the climate? I think we shouldn't try and seek a general operating principle from a known hard problem that we are failing to address and is pretty different from others we face. We should have a carbon tax, because it is a useful tool in fighting this battle, not because it is the right tool for every issue.