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It’s an unconventional way to use “subsidy,” but I think it fits. Imagine a garbage company. The government pays them so they can buy land where they dump thei

It’s an unconventional way to use “subsidy,” but I think it fits. Imagine a garbage company. The government pays them so they can buy land where they dump their garbage. Obviously a subsidy. Now, let’s say the government buys the land themselves then gives it to the company for dumping. No money changes hands but this is still pretty clearly a subsidy. Instead of giving the company land, the government retains ownership, but lets the company dump there for free. Still a pretty clear subsidy. Instead of buying the land, the government just takes it. Now no money is involved at all, but it’s still a subsidy. Instead of taking the land, the government just declares that it’s legal for the garbage company to dump trash on other people’s land, and the owners just have to deal with it. This is quite different in the details from the original subsidy, but the overall effect is essentially the same. Polluters are in a situation that’s exactly like this last scenario. They get to dump their trash on everyone’s property and don’t have to pay for the privilege. They’re being subsidized in an amount equal to whatever payment it would take to get everyone to willingly accept this trash.

kortilla 7y ago
What a tortured analogy. It’s just an externality. We have a word for a it already, no need to try to change another word. The only reason the paper authors called it a subsidy is because people sadly don’t care about externalities nearly as much as subsidies.
- mikeash 7y ago
  It’s not an analogy at all, let alone a tortured one. Polluters are allowed to dump their trash on my (and everyone else’s) property without paying for it. Now, if you object to it being called a subsidy, fine. (Although I’d like to know which step in my story stops qualifying as one.) But “a tortured analogy”? No way.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    But it is tortured because the numbers are made up. Yes, there is very strong scientific consensus global warming is bad, and getting worse, but pinpointing an exact number and calling it a "subsidy" implies they know a lot more about the future than they actually do. It's untruthful and plays into the hands of those screaming "fake news!" who try to deny climate change.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      "Your logic is right, but I doubt the exact number you used." is very far from saying an analogy is "tortured". It's an agreement that the analogy is correct.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      I didn’t use any numbers at all. Perhaps you meant to reply to a different comment.
  - crumpets 7y ago
    >It’s not an analogy at all Then why are you talking about a garbage company? Your whole comment is building an analogy. >Although I’d like to know which step in my story stops qualifying as one. This is where it stops qualifying: >Instead of taking the land, the government just declares that it’s legal for the garbage company to dump trash on other people’s land, and the owners just have to deal with it. This is quite different in the details from the original subsidy, but the overall effect is essentially the same. The government saying "it's legal to do X" and all companies in any industry and any individual (what we're talking about is CO2 emissions) are allowed to do it, it's not a subsidy. It's just behavior with an externality that the government doesn't tax.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      I’m talking about a garbage company because they’re an example of a polluter that can’t just dump their pollution wherever they feel like, and their pollution is much more visible. It’s not an analogy, it’s an example. Polluters aren’t analogous to companies dumping trash on your property, they are companies dumping trash on your property.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Do they really think being dishonest and manipulative won't backfire? It's one thing to argue that we should consider unpriced externalities subsidies -- I'd even agree -- but it's quite another to use this alternative proposed definition/classifcation in order to intentionally cultivate a misrepresentation of the underlying facts. People notice shit like this and don't take kindly to being misled.
  - Excel_Wizard 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure that you and kortilla are in agreement.
    - jjoonathan 7y ago
      We mostly are. The difference is that I don't object to the terminology, just it's intentionally deceptive application.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Surely the tortured is creating externality, a reasonable sounding technical term, as a shorthand for "pft, someone else's problem" in economics. The WTO are happy to include money not spent, or tax not received as valid when deciding if a subsidy is in place.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  > What a tortured analogy. Reminded me of this exchange: Bart: Uh, say, are you guys crooks? Fat Tony: Bart, um, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family? Bart: No. Tony: Well, suppose you got a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them? Bart: Uh uh. Tony: And, what if your family don't like bread? They like... cigarettes? Bart: I guess that's okay. Tony: Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price that was practically giving them away. Would that be a crime, Bart? Bart: Hell, no!
  - mikeash 7y ago
    There’s a clear point where Fat Tony goes off the rails: depending on your view, it’s either right at the start (if you believe it’s not right to steal bread to feed your starving family) or at the point where he spontaneously switches from bread to cigarettes. I’m curious which part of my comment you think plays that role.
    - kgwgk 7y ago
      It was just a joke, but note that an analogy can die by a thousand cuts. Fat Tony's argument is extremely weak at every step (family => "large family", bread => cigarettes, give => sell).
- epistasis 7y ago
  Could you find one economist that would say that an unpriced externality is not a subsidy? This isn't a tortured analogy, it isn't an unconventional use of the term, these things are economically equivalent. Most people don't know the word "externality," so using a less precise term that they do know is not in any way deceptive.
  - astine 7y ago
    In my experience, economists don't usually conflate subsidies with negative externalities any more than the conflate positive externalities with taxation. "Most people don't know the word "externality," so using a less precise term that they do know is not in any way deceptive." People do know the word 'subsidy' and most know that it means a direct gift or tax benefit by the government which is not the same thing as an externality. What's more, they do know the word 'cost' as well, which is much clearer in this case than 'subsidy'.
    - imrelaxed 7y ago
      Thanks for the fantastic contributions to this topic, respect.
  - CPLX 7y ago
    I have a degree in economics. So you've found one. A subsidy is a direct monetary transfer. A diffuse externalized cost does not qualify.
  - crumpets 7y ago
    > Could you find one economist that would say that an unpriced externality is not a subsidy? All of them? >This isn't a tortured analogy, it isn't an unconventional use of the term, these things are economically equivalent. No they are not. This isn't the equivalent of a tax break that other companies are being taxed for. It's a think for which no taxes exist for anyone. No industries are being taxed for these externalities. It doesn't fit any of the dictionary definitions: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subsidy https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subsidy >Most people don't know the word "externality," so using a less precise term that they do know is not in any way deceptive. It's not a less precise term. It's the wrong term. Might as well call it a bailout if you're going for political outrage.
- manfredo 7y ago
  But turning around and trying to frame externalities as subsidies is intellectually dishonest - or outright dishonest. A lot like how people said that New York "subsidized" Amazon's NYC offices with $3 billion dollars. Many people thought that their tax dollars were being taken and given to Amazon, when in reality this was the government agreeing to give Amazon a favorable tax rate for a set amount of time. When you're right, there's no need to stretch the truth. Reply to your comment below, HN is not letting me respond: > Amazon would have used city services without paying for them. Who pays for these services? The people, with their tax dollars.. No, Amazon still would have paid taxes - an estimated $25 billion in taxes over the next 5 years. This is the same erroneous thinking as people who think that they're gaming the system by buying stuff on Steam summer sales. You're not actually getting any money, the company is generating greater sales by offering customers a better deal. > A partial truth is often the best lie. But not when people are smart enough to see that your truth is incomplete. And while some people may fall for the conflation of externalities with subsidies, people with power and influence are less likely to do so and when they spot this ruse they're going to be even more adverse to whatever point you were trying to make because you've demonstrated as willingness to tell mistruths.
  - jascii 7y ago
    Amazon would have used city services without paying for them. Who pays for these services? The people, with their tax dollars.. A partial truth is often the best lie.
newvoiceoldphne 7y ago
Stop! Stop! You're breathing my air! That kind of thinking leads to a Logan's Run scenario. Instead, why not think of it as a part of life and work to find a solution that doesn't require the wholesale curtailment of liberties all in the name of the environment?
- CalRobert 7y ago
  The liberty to dump your garbage in a community asset? I mean, how is it considered rude to fart in someone's face but not rude to idle in front of their house?
- flmontpetit 7y ago
  Silly reactionary hyperbole. Our peaceful and sustainable coexistence with the rest of the world (natural or otherwise) has always required the curtailment of some liberties. You cannot sell tubercular beef and poison the population. For the same reason, you cannot submerge island nations and cause droughts that make other regions of the world inhabitable. Deal with it.
  - bazzert 7y ago
    >> For the same reason, you cannot submerge island nations out of curiosity, what island nations have been submerged ?
    - flmontpetit 7y ago
      Tuvalu is a WIP https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-and-history-of-tuvalu-1435673 https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-and-history-of-tuvalu-14... That's just off the top of my head
      - bazzert 7y ago
        from Nature, " Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5 ha (2.9%), despite sea-level rise, and land area increase in eight of nine atolls." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02954-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02954-1
cortesoft 7y ago
Makes sense, but are they also counting the externalities of solar and wind as subsidies? Sure, they aren't as much as for fossil fuels, but there ARE externalities for solar cell manufacturing.
- mbostleman 7y ago
  I see this missing all the time. I don't know if it matters if the real costs of green power are counted - maybe it doesn't change the bottom line. But it seems like the general approach is that green power has no negative effects. The evil one is fossil fuels and it is all evil and the good one is green energy and it is all good. I think it makes it easier to swallow for the mainstream.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Definition of subsidy, from Merriam-Webster: a grant or gift of money: such as a : a sum of money formerly granted by the British Parliament to the crown and raised by special taxation b : money granted by one state to another c : a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public
astine 7y ago
This is wrong because subsidies aren't just externalized costs. They are defined as monetary gifts. You're extending the definition by analogy and arguing that a company externalizing its costs is the same thing as a subsidy, but a subsidy implies direct and deliberate support. This is important for a couple of reasons: The main one is that it's confusing to redefine subsidy when you can just say "cost" and have people understand you. People reading this survey might see the $5.2T number and assume that that cost is in addition to whatever the cost of climate change is and will have to read the paper to understand otherwise. This is unnecessarily confusing even if one were to grant the logic of it. In addition, when people discuss subsidies, they are often most interested in government policy. The purpose of a subsidy often is to increase a certain kind of business, so we might worry about unnecessarily funding the fossil fuels and thus encouraging climate change in a manner above and beyond simply allowing them to be used the way we've always done, but that's not quite what's going on here. One thing to keep in mind is that it's a lot easier to measure a genuine government subsidy than an externality. So the distinction matters in that regard as well. Any measure of the cost of climate change is to at least some degree speculation, whereas any attempt to measure the direct amount of money given to fossil fuel companies can probably be much more exact.
- mikeash 7y ago
  Gifts in kind aren’t subsidies? If the government gives equipment or resources or labor, rather than money, it’s no longer a subsidy? That sure doesn’t fit how I understand the term. What would you call those?
  - astine 7y ago
    "Gifts in kind aren’t subsidies?" They can be but that's less common. The key difference is that a subsidy is direct and an active policy. For example, when people talk about subsidies for renewables, they aren't talking about any externalized costs of manufacture, which do exist, they are talking about direct government gifts and tax breaks deliberately put in place to encourage investment in renewables. When people talk about subsidies given to fossil fuels the same is true, especially when they are being compared to renewables as is the case in this discussion. Edit: removed word "decision" to clarify my meaning
privateSFacct 7y ago
This is not a subsidy - in particular no entity can exchange this subsidy for a different one in current period when calculating an economic decision. There are certain tax breaks for gas in us, govt could take those same $ and subsidize something else. That’s a subsidy. Is this the kind of thinking climate science overall is built on? Very worrying if so
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
CPLX 7y ago
The fact that similar things are analogous or have similar effects doesn't mean they are the same thing. The purpose of that massive collection of words in the unabridged dictionary is to draw fine distinctions. For an example, trade tariffs and quotas are similar in almost the exact same way you describe here and have very similar effects. However the distinction is in how the financing for the costs works. Who pays? How directly do they pay? The answers explain why tariff isn't a quota. In your example as well, you change a payment from a direct monetary one to a diffuse externalized cost, thus creating a distinction. The language has evolved to capture that distinction, your desire to conflate the two notwithstanding. A subsidy is a direct monetary grant.
program_whiz 7y ago
So by this logic, allowing people to breathe and use the bathroom is a government subsidy, since its a passive policy that doesn't charge you what you would have to pay everyone in the world to let you do it? And where did the "owners" who would have to be compensated get the land and materials that they now own? Wouldn't that also count as a subsidy (every material item was at some point pulled from the ground, even though I don't feel I've been compensated for these externalities).
- munk-a 7y ago
  I mean, being able to use bathrooms in government buildings as a non-employee is definitely a service that is being optionally provided to you by the government - and that service is being supported by funding to have those bathrooms serviced and cleaned more often then they otherwise would need to be.
- mikeash 7y ago
  If the government allowed your neighbors to use your property as their sewer without paying for the privilege, that would definitely be a subsidy for them. We make people clean up their sewage before dumping it. Breathing isn’t an issue only because it’s a negligible quantity. If it was more significant, we’d have to have rules around it just like we do for other human waste.
sagebird 7y ago
If I annoy 3 of my neighbors so much that they would pay 1000 dollars per year to have me disappear, but the government allows me to exist, or he government isn’t giving me a 3000 dollar subsidy, are they?
- mikeash 7y ago
  If it’s part of a money making business that you own, why not?
kerkeslager 7y ago
> It’s an unconventional way to use “subsidy,” but I think it fits. I'm just gonna stop you right here. If your goal is to communicate effectively and honestly, using unconventional usages of words is not the way to do it. Language is a convention for transferring ideas from one person's brain to another person's brain. If you have an idea in your head and you say something that puts a different (and in this case, incorrect) idea in someone else's head, you're miscommunicating. If you do that intentionally, that's lying. When people read the phrase "The US government subsidizes fossil fuel companies", people think that the US government is giving money or other resources to fossil fuel companies. So if that's not what you mean, when you say it, you're not saying the truth. The rest of your post is just trying to justify why the not-truth you're saying is kinda-sorta the same as the truth, but that's really not an argument I'm interested in entertaining. Let's just say the truth, please. It is completely adequate to say, "Solar currently needs subsidies to compete with fossil fuels, but when you figure in the cost of damages caused by fossil fuels, solar is cheaper." We don't need to lie about this.

kortilla 7y ago

What a tortured analogy. It’s just an externality. We have a word for a it already, no need to try to change another word. The only reason the paper authors called it a subsidy is because people sadly don’t care about externalities nearly as much as subsidies.

mikeash 7y ago
It’s not an analogy at all, let alone a tortured one. Polluters are allowed to dump their trash on my (and everyone else’s) property without paying for it. Now, if you object to it being called a subsidy, fine. (Although I’d like to know which step in my story stops qualifying as one.) But “a tortured analogy”? No way.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  But it is tortured because the numbers are made up. Yes, there is very strong scientific consensus global warming is bad, and getting worse, but pinpointing an exact number and calling it a "subsidy" implies they know a lot more about the future than they actually do. It's untruthful and plays into the hands of those screaming "fake news!" who try to deny climate change.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    "Your logic is right, but I doubt the exact number you used." is very far from saying an analogy is "tortured". It's an agreement that the analogy is correct.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    I didn’t use any numbers at all. Perhaps you meant to reply to a different comment.
- crumpets 7y ago
  >It’s not an analogy at all Then why are you talking about a garbage company? Your whole comment is building an analogy. >Although I’d like to know which step in my story stops qualifying as one. This is where it stops qualifying: >Instead of taking the land, the government just declares that it’s legal for the garbage company to dump trash on other people’s land, and the owners just have to deal with it. This is quite different in the details from the original subsidy, but the overall effect is essentially the same. The government saying "it's legal to do X" and all companies in any industry and any individual (what we're talking about is CO2 emissions) are allowed to do it, it's not a subsidy. It's just behavior with an externality that the government doesn't tax.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    I’m talking about a garbage company because they’re an example of a polluter that can’t just dump their pollution wherever they feel like, and their pollution is much more visible. It’s not an analogy, it’s an example. Polluters aren’t analogous to companies dumping trash on your property, they are companies dumping trash on your property.
jjoonathan 7y ago
Do they really think being dishonest and manipulative won't backfire? It's one thing to argue that we should consider unpriced externalities subsidies -- I'd even agree -- but it's quite another to use this alternative proposed definition/classifcation in order to intentionally cultivate a misrepresentation of the underlying facts. People notice shit like this and don't take kindly to being misled.
- Excel_Wizard 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure that you and kortilla are in agreement.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    We mostly are. The difference is that I don't object to the terminology, just it's intentionally deceptive application.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Surely the tortured is creating externality, a reasonable sounding technical term, as a shorthand for "pft, someone else's problem" in economics. The WTO are happy to include money not spent, or tax not received as valid when deciding if a subsidy is in place.
kgwgk 7y ago
> What a tortured analogy. Reminded me of this exchange: Bart: Uh, say, are you guys crooks? Fat Tony: Bart, um, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family? Bart: No. Tony: Well, suppose you got a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them? Bart: Uh uh. Tony: And, what if your family don't like bread? They like... cigarettes? Bart: I guess that's okay. Tony: Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price that was practically giving them away. Would that be a crime, Bart? Bart: Hell, no!
- mikeash 7y ago
  There’s a clear point where Fat Tony goes off the rails: depending on your view, it’s either right at the start (if you believe it’s not right to steal bread to feed your starving family) or at the point where he spontaneously switches from bread to cigarettes. I’m curious which part of my comment you think plays that role.
  - kgwgk 7y ago
    It was just a joke, but note that an analogy can die by a thousand cuts. Fat Tony's argument is extremely weak at every step (family => "large family", bread => cigarettes, give => sell).
epistasis 7y ago
Could you find one economist that would say that an unpriced externality is not a subsidy? This isn't a tortured analogy, it isn't an unconventional use of the term, these things are economically equivalent. Most people don't know the word "externality," so using a less precise term that they do know is not in any way deceptive.
- astine 7y ago
  In my experience, economists don't usually conflate subsidies with negative externalities any more than the conflate positive externalities with taxation. "Most people don't know the word "externality," so using a less precise term that they do know is not in any way deceptive." People do know the word 'subsidy' and most know that it means a direct gift or tax benefit by the government which is not the same thing as an externality. What's more, they do know the word 'cost' as well, which is much clearer in this case than 'subsidy'.
  - imrelaxed 7y ago
    Thanks for the fantastic contributions to this topic, respect.
- CPLX 7y ago
  I have a degree in economics. So you've found one. A subsidy is a direct monetary transfer. A diffuse externalized cost does not qualify.
- crumpets 7y ago
  > Could you find one economist that would say that an unpriced externality is not a subsidy? All of them? >This isn't a tortured analogy, it isn't an unconventional use of the term, these things are economically equivalent. No they are not. This isn't the equivalent of a tax break that other companies are being taxed for. It's a think for which no taxes exist for anyone. No industries are being taxed for these externalities. It doesn't fit any of the dictionary definitions: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subsidy https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subsidy >Most people don't know the word "externality," so using a less precise term that they do know is not in any way deceptive. It's not a less precise term. It's the wrong term. Might as well call it a bailout if you're going for political outrage.
manfredo 7y ago
But turning around and trying to frame externalities as subsidies is intellectually dishonest - or outright dishonest. A lot like how people said that New York "subsidized" Amazon's NYC offices with $3 billion dollars. Many people thought that their tax dollars were being taken and given to Amazon, when in reality this was the government agreeing to give Amazon a favorable tax rate for a set amount of time. When you're right, there's no need to stretch the truth. Reply to your comment below, HN is not letting me respond: > Amazon would have used city services without paying for them. Who pays for these services? The people, with their tax dollars.. No, Amazon still would have paid taxes - an estimated $25 billion in taxes over the next 5 years. This is the same erroneous thinking as people who think that they're gaming the system by buying stuff on Steam summer sales. You're not actually getting any money, the company is generating greater sales by offering customers a better deal. > A partial truth is often the best lie. But not when people are smart enough to see that your truth is incomplete. And while some people may fall for the conflation of externalities with subsidies, people with power and influence are less likely to do so and when they spot this ruse they're going to be even more adverse to whatever point you were trying to make because you've demonstrated as willingness to tell mistruths.
- jascii 7y ago
  Amazon would have used city services without paying for them. Who pays for these services? The people, with their tax dollars.. A partial truth is often the best lie.

newvoiceoldphne 7y ago

Stop! Stop! You're breathing my air! That kind of thinking leads to a Logan's Run scenario. Instead, why not think of it as a part of life and work to find a solution that doesn't require the wholesale curtailment of liberties all in the name of the environment?

CalRobert 7y ago
The liberty to dump your garbage in a community asset? I mean, how is it considered rude to fart in someone's face but not rude to idle in front of their house?
flmontpetit 7y ago
Silly reactionary hyperbole. Our peaceful and sustainable coexistence with the rest of the world (natural or otherwise) has always required the curtailment of some liberties. You cannot sell tubercular beef and poison the population. For the same reason, you cannot submerge island nations and cause droughts that make other regions of the world inhabitable. Deal with it.
- bazzert 7y ago
  >> For the same reason, you cannot submerge island nations out of curiosity, what island nations have been submerged ?
  - flmontpetit 7y ago
    Tuvalu is a WIP https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-and-history-of-tuvalu-1435673 https://www.thoughtco.com/geography-and-history-of-tuvalu-14... That's just off the top of my head
    - bazzert 7y ago
      from Nature, " Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5 ha (2.9%), despite sea-level rise, and land area increase in eight of nine atolls." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02954-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02954-1

cortesoft 7y ago

Makes sense, but are they also counting the externalities of solar and wind as subsidies? Sure, they aren't as much as for fossil fuels, but there ARE externalities for solar cell manufacturing.

mbostleman 7y ago
I see this missing all the time. I don't know if it matters if the real costs of green power are counted - maybe it doesn't change the bottom line. But it seems like the general approach is that green power has no negative effects. The evil one is fossil fuels and it is all evil and the good one is green energy and it is all good. I think it makes it easier to swallow for the mainstream.

BurningFrog 7y ago

Definition of subsidy, from Merriam-Webster: a grant or gift of money: such as a : a sum of money formerly granted by the British Parliament to the crown and raised by special taxation b : money granted by one state to another c : a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public

astine 7y ago

This is wrong because subsidies aren't just externalized costs. They are defined as monetary gifts. You're extending the definition by analogy and arguing that a company externalizing its costs is the same thing as a subsidy, but a subsidy implies direct and deliberate support. This is important for a couple of reasons: The main one is that it's confusing to redefine subsidy when you can just say "cost" and have people understand you. People reading this survey might see the $5.2T number and assume that that cost is in addition to whatever the cost of climate change is and will have to read the paper to understand otherwise. This is unnecessarily confusing even if one were to grant the logic of it. In addition, when people discuss subsidies, they are often most interested in government policy. The purpose of a subsidy often is to increase a certain kind of business, so we might worry about unnecessarily funding the fossil fuels and thus encouraging climate change in a manner above and beyond simply allowing them to be used the way we've always done, but that's not quite what's going on here. One thing to keep in mind is that it's a lot easier to measure a genuine government subsidy than an externality. So the distinction matters in that regard as well. Any measure of the cost of climate change is to at least some degree speculation, whereas any attempt to measure the direct amount of money given to fossil fuel companies can probably be much more exact.

mikeash 7y ago
Gifts in kind aren’t subsidies? If the government gives equipment or resources or labor, rather than money, it’s no longer a subsidy? That sure doesn’t fit how I understand the term. What would you call those?
- astine 7y ago
  "Gifts in kind aren’t subsidies?" They can be but that's less common. The key difference is that a subsidy is direct and an active policy. For example, when people talk about subsidies for renewables, they aren't talking about any externalized costs of manufacture, which do exist, they are talking about direct government gifts and tax breaks deliberately put in place to encourage investment in renewables. When people talk about subsidies given to fossil fuels the same is true, especially when they are being compared to renewables as is the case in this discussion. Edit: removed word "decision" to clarify my meaning

privateSFacct 7y ago

This is not a subsidy - in particular no entity can exchange this subsidy for a different one in current period when calculating an economic decision. There are certain tax breaks for gas in us, govt could take those same $ and subsidize something else. That’s a subsidy. Is this the kind of thinking climate science overall is built on? Very worrying if so

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

CPLX 7y ago

The fact that similar things are analogous or have similar effects doesn't mean they are the same thing. The purpose of that massive collection of words in the unabridged dictionary is to draw fine distinctions. For an example, trade tariffs and quotas are similar in almost the exact same way you describe here and have very similar effects. However the distinction is in how the financing for the costs works. Who pays? How directly do they pay? The answers explain why tariff isn't a quota. In your example as well, you change a payment from a direct monetary one to a diffuse externalized cost, thus creating a distinction. The language has evolved to capture that distinction, your desire to conflate the two notwithstanding. A subsidy is a direct monetary grant.

program_whiz 7y ago

So by this logic, allowing people to breathe and use the bathroom is a government subsidy, since its a passive policy that doesn't charge you what you would have to pay everyone in the world to let you do it? And where did the "owners" who would have to be compensated get the land and materials that they now own? Wouldn't that also count as a subsidy (every material item was at some point pulled from the ground, even though I don't feel I've been compensated for these externalities).

munk-a 7y ago
I mean, being able to use bathrooms in government buildings as a non-employee is definitely a service that is being optionally provided to you by the government - and that service is being supported by funding to have those bathrooms serviced and cleaned more often then they otherwise would need to be.
mikeash 7y ago
If the government allowed your neighbors to use your property as their sewer without paying for the privilege, that would definitely be a subsidy for them. We make people clean up their sewage before dumping it. Breathing isn’t an issue only because it’s a negligible quantity. If it was more significant, we’d have to have rules around it just like we do for other human waste.

sagebird 7y ago

If I annoy 3 of my neighbors so much that they would pay 1000 dollars per year to have me disappear, but the government allows me to exist, or he government isn’t giving me a 3000 dollar subsidy, are they?

mikeash 7y ago
If it’s part of a money making business that you own, why not?

kerkeslager 7y ago

> It’s an unconventional way to use “subsidy,” but I think it fits. I'm just gonna stop you right here. If your goal is to communicate effectively and honestly, using unconventional usages of words is not the way to do it. Language is a convention for transferring ideas from one person's brain to another person's brain. If you have an idea in your head and you say something that puts a different (and in this case, incorrect) idea in someone else's head, you're miscommunicating. If you do that intentionally, that's lying. When people read the phrase "The US government subsidizes fossil fuel companies", people think that the US government is giving money or other resources to fossil fuel companies. So if that's not what you mean, when you say it, you're not saying the truth. The rest of your post is just trying to justify why the not-truth you're saying is kinda-sorta the same as the truth, but that's really not an argument I'm interested in entertaining. Let's just say the truth, please. It is completely adequate to say, "Solar currently needs subsidies to compete with fossil fuels, but when you figure in the cost of damages caused by fossil fuels, solar is cheaper." We don't need to lie about this.