A couple people have brought up what you're saying, and it's a somewhat convincing argument to me, at least at first glance. It's not just that having a new equ

A couple people have brought up what you're saying, and it's a somewhat convincing argument to me, at least at first glance. It's not just that having a new equilibrium is fine -- the existing equilibrium where cardboard offsets the cost of expensive trash is explicitly what we don't want as a society. We want people to throw away more cardboard, because we want it to get recycled. A system where throwing away 'unprofitable' trash costs more than throwing away cardboard seems like a net good. Even at a personal level, if the 'thefts' causes cities to raise prices across the board, but all of the cardboard is getting pulled out my trash by 'thieves', thus decreasing my overall volume and cost, then it seems like it still kind of evens out for me as an individual and rewards me for throwing out recyclable materials. And communities/households that reliably throw out a lot of cardboard will be hit by 'thefts' more often, which will lower their trash bills even more, which is... yet another outcome we actually want -- systemic, community-wide, reliable disposal of recyclable materials.