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I think we should create a carbon/pollution tax and let the invisible hand of the market figure that out - it's too complex and there are so many side effects t

I think we should create a carbon/pollution tax and let the invisible hand of the market figure that out - it's too complex and there are so many side effects to adjusting things by brute force!

londons_explore 6y ago
A carbon tax implemented by a "world dictator" would work. Any individual country implementing a carbon tax doesn't work because they put themselves at a big disadvantage, and goods and services go across country borders, taking with them almost-impossible to fairly calculate amounts of carbon. The biggest things the world could do towards the "world dictator" approach would be: * Have a consortium of countries implement a carbon tax, while taxing all inbound goods from countries that don't tax carbon. * Adjust WTO rules to allow taxing imports based on estimated carbon content. * Have the WTO decide which countries are "on track to meet carbon reduction targets". Allow taxes on imports from any country that isn't. * Allow countries to "sue" another country for environmental damages. When they don't pay up, have a UN court able to threaten anything up to military action/takeover of the country's leadership to get payment.
- fetbaffe 6y ago
  Problem is free trade & WHO itself, it is easier to go back to tariffs, by making things more expensive people will consume less, you can also increase quality & add requirements that a product must reparable.
- redisman 6y ago
  You really only need the US to implement it as they're the consumer kings of the world. You can't just go sell a million SUV's to the Russians or Europeans or Ethiopians because you didn't want to pay the carbon tax in the US.
anon9001 6y ago
Does that actually work? I would think the invisible hand of the market would re-route all that pollution to areas without the tax and the earth wouldn't see that much difference. It's not like they're going to stop selling oil if the EU and US agree to stop burning so much of it. I agree it's complex, but I think carbon taxes might be part of the complexity. If we're going to start messing about with markets, we should outright ban the offending activity and regulate harshly. If we're going to apply tokenomics to the problem and pretend we fixed it until we're too old to care, that seems worse somehow. Or we can just do nothing and hope technology saves us. That's what the actual bet is whether we like it or not.
- Proziam 6y ago
  You can apply such a tax in various ways. If the company resides in the US, directly tax the company. If they are importing, tax the imported goods. The worst thing that could happen would be some 'world dictator' making universal rules because then large companies could lobby one entity to shift the rules in their favor, and against ours.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    > The worst thing that could happen would be some 'world dictator' making universal rules Surely the worst thing would be to set up a Prisoners Dilemma trap where individual countries have a huge incentive to betray all the other countries by abandoning this tax and attracting all the large companies in the world to come and pollute there.
    - Proziam 6y ago
      I'm not particularly concerned about a prisoner dillemma trap. If one country did that, the immediate response from all other countries could simply be 'stop all trade with that country' or simply 'crank up the import taxes from them' until they shape up. You also don't need anywhere near 100% agreement for this to be effective. A large company losing just a few key markets (US, Germany, UK, blah) could massively outweigh any benefit they could imagine by trying to game such a system.
      - redisman 6y ago
        Just look at how much bs China is making the biggest corporations in the world jump through to be able to do commerce there. And what do the companies do - they adapt and grovel to get to that market. This is just one of those hyper-capitalist talking points that has never been proven true but keeps coming back up. If you do X then all the companies will leave. Like there are infinite other Chinas or Americas out there.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  We do know that when the price of oil goes up people buy smaller and more economical cars and when it goes down they do the opposite. If the market re-routed around that by building electric cars for instance then isn't that exactly what we want? The nice thing about fossil fuels is it's fairly easy to identify and tax extraction. The problem is those industries will fight tooth and nail against any attempt to tax them. On the other hand I do wonder what happens if carbon taxes become a substantial proportion of government revenues. Then there could be a tension between raising revenue and reducing consumption.
johnisgood 6y ago
The invisible hand is severely tied though.
ip26 6y ago
I like the elegance, but am growing to believe voters are simply unwilling to implement it. Mainly because "taxes" are eternally unpopular. It's possible that the best solution is actually the most implementable solution, rather than the most optimal solution.

I think we should create a carbon/pollution tax and let the invisible hand of the market figure that out - it's too complex and there are so many side effects to adjusting things by brute force!

londons_explore 6y ago

A carbon tax implemented by a "world dictator" would work. Any individual country implementing a carbon tax doesn't work because they put themselves at a big disadvantage, and goods and services go across country borders, taking with them almost-impossible to fairly calculate amounts of carbon. The biggest things the world could do towards the "world dictator" approach would be: * Have a consortium of countries implement a carbon tax, while taxing all inbound goods from countries that don't tax carbon. * Adjust WTO rules to allow taxing imports based on estimated carbon content. * Have the WTO decide which countries are "on track to meet carbon reduction targets". Allow taxes on imports from any country that isn't. * Allow countries to "sue" another country for environmental damages. When they don't pay up, have a UN court able to threaten anything up to military action/takeover of the country's leadership to get payment.

fetbaffe 6y ago
Problem is free trade & WHO itself, it is easier to go back to tariffs, by making things more expensive people will consume less, you can also increase quality & add requirements that a product must reparable.
redisman 6y ago
You really only need the US to implement it as they're the consumer kings of the world. You can't just go sell a million SUV's to the Russians or Europeans or Ethiopians because you didn't want to pay the carbon tax in the US.

anon9001 6y ago

Does that actually work? I would think the invisible hand of the market would re-route all that pollution to areas without the tax and the earth wouldn't see that much difference. It's not like they're going to stop selling oil if the EU and US agree to stop burning so much of it. I agree it's complex, but I think carbon taxes might be part of the complexity. If we're going to start messing about with markets, we should outright ban the offending activity and regulate harshly. If we're going to apply tokenomics to the problem and pretend we fixed it until we're too old to care, that seems worse somehow. Or we can just do nothing and hope technology saves us. That's what the actual bet is whether we like it or not.

Proziam 6y ago
You can apply such a tax in various ways. If the company resides in the US, directly tax the company. If they are importing, tax the imported goods. The worst thing that could happen would be some 'world dictator' making universal rules because then large companies could lobby one entity to shift the rules in their favor, and against ours.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > The worst thing that could happen would be some 'world dictator' making universal rules Surely the worst thing would be to set up a Prisoners Dilemma trap where individual countries have a huge incentive to betray all the other countries by abandoning this tax and attracting all the large companies in the world to come and pollute there.
  - Proziam 6y ago
    I'm not particularly concerned about a prisoner dillemma trap. If one country did that, the immediate response from all other countries could simply be 'stop all trade with that country' or simply 'crank up the import taxes from them' until they shape up. You also don't need anywhere near 100% agreement for this to be effective. A large company losing just a few key markets (US, Germany, UK, blah) could massively outweigh any benefit they could imagine by trying to game such a system.
    - redisman 6y ago
      Just look at how much bs China is making the biggest corporations in the world jump through to be able to do commerce there. And what do the companies do - they adapt and grovel to get to that market. This is just one of those hyper-capitalist talking points that has never been proven true but keeps coming back up. If you do X then all the companies will leave. Like there are infinite other Chinas or Americas out there.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
We do know that when the price of oil goes up people buy smaller and more economical cars and when it goes down they do the opposite. If the market re-routed around that by building electric cars for instance then isn't that exactly what we want? The nice thing about fossil fuels is it's fairly easy to identify and tax extraction. The problem is those industries will fight tooth and nail against any attempt to tax them. On the other hand I do wonder what happens if carbon taxes become a substantial proportion of government revenues. Then there could be a tension between raising revenue and reducing consumption.

johnisgood 6y ago

The invisible hand is severely tied though.

ip26 6y ago

I like the elegance, but am growing to believe voters are simply unwilling to implement it. Mainly because "taxes" are eternally unpopular. It's possible that the best solution is actually the most implementable solution, rather than the most optimal solution.