3 ms·

One of the criticisms of RoHS was that even the companies that had exemptions were unable to exercise them because factories found it uneconomical to maintain s

One of the criticisms of RoHS was that even the companies that had exemptions were unable to exercise them because factories found it uneconomical to maintain separate production lines. If the EU had simply raised the cost, it would have been added onto the price and nothing significant would have changed.

tuatoru 6y ago
A lesson for proponents of a carbon tax. perhaps?
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Why? If the tax attaches at point of production, the incentive is to use the output that is cheaper including the tax, or the best mix possible, shifting to less consumptive processes over time even if they can't meet demand at the start.
  - tuatoru 6y ago
    It depends on the visibility of the tax to the final consumer, and its long run salience. Take water meters, a current topic in NZ. Some cities don't have them, some do. When I was last in the industry (over a decade ago) research had tended to show that after introduction of meters (usually with price rises) there was a reduction in per-household demand. But over the course of a few years this reduction vanished: households were back on their old water consumption trend. Water wasn't a big enough cost to matter either way. (Commercial consumers have always been metered, so there isn't a lot of evidence there. Those I looked at had good reasons for using as much water as they did.) If producers have to absorb the tax, things will probably work out as you say. If they can pass it along without losing much demand, maybe not.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I disagree that it has anything to do with visibility of the tax. If the government's goal is to reduce water usage, then all they have to do is increase the tax. If the usage doesn't go down, then increase the tax even more. At some point, the people paying for the water be unable to afford consuming the same amount of water, whether or not the tax is explicitly shown is irrelevant. If producers can absorb the tax, then keep raising the tax until the water consumption goes down.
      - zbrozek 6y ago
        Or you'll get more-and-deeper wells and a race to the bottom of the aquifer, as you see in California's central valley. And of course folks will advocate for tiers and caps and exemptions and incentives and all manner of other mess to try and further distort the market to match their notion of fairness. Then everybody buying water will need to be a spreadsheet ninja to figure out how not to go broke while still managing to bathe.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        Water there costs 0.05 cents a gallon. (I've not made a typo, it's ~$150/acre-foot for the expensive irrigation water) So $0.05 to bathe. I think "market" effects aren't causing the problem.
        zbrozek 6y ago
        The grandparent comment is advocating for sufficient levels of taxation to substantially change behavior, and I'm cautioning against unintended consequences of such a policy. I don't follow where the current cost of water is part of that discussion, but I welcome clarification.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        It’s always a possibility that people will try to evade taxes (or any other rules they don’t like), but I don’t see why that’s relevant.
      - tuatoru 6y ago
        > If the government's goal is to reduce water usage, then all they have to do is increase the tax. A better way, that most governments in fact use, is to set performance standards that manufacturers of water-using appliances must meet, and progressively tighten those standards. Low-flow shower heads, aerating mixer taps, garden irrigation controls, low water use washing machines and dishwashers, and so on. (And: tighten standards on local authorities/water utility companies also. Between 10% (in rich first-world cities) and 70% (in cities with colonial-era infrastructure) of water is lost due to leaks in pipes or pipe joints.) If you wanted to go all big brother meters could be adapted to reduce flow rates after a certain daily consumption limit is exceeded. A second possible alternative to taxation is "cap and trade". Every household gets a yearly allocation. Households wanting to use more buy part of the allocation of those that can use less. (Or grandparents donate them to their children while the grandchildren are at home.) Over time the cap reduces. Both of those methods have less impact on poor people than simply increasing the price of an essential good. Edit: all of this is fiddling around the edges when it comes to water, because the big consumer is agriculture. And governments almost without exception subsidize agricultural water consumption in one way or another. If they stopped doing that and imposed performance standards as with domestic usage, then agriculture would use water more efficiently. But the water thing was just an example. For carbon taxes, the price increase has to be noticeable to the end consumer and explained as being due to carbon content, and reasonable alternatives have to be known to exist. (Which they now are, thanks in the USA mainly to Tesla. In Europe, there is public transport, and better urban design e.g. in Hidalgo's Paris.)

tuatoru 6y ago

A lesson for proponents of a carbon tax. perhaps?

maxerickson 6y ago
Why? If the tax attaches at point of production, the incentive is to use the output that is cheaper including the tax, or the best mix possible, shifting to less consumptive processes over time even if they can't meet demand at the start.
- tuatoru 6y ago
  It depends on the visibility of the tax to the final consumer, and its long run salience. Take water meters, a current topic in NZ. Some cities don't have them, some do. When I was last in the industry (over a decade ago) research had tended to show that after introduction of meters (usually with price rises) there was a reduction in per-household demand. But over the course of a few years this reduction vanished: households were back on their old water consumption trend. Water wasn't a big enough cost to matter either way. (Commercial consumers have always been metered, so there isn't a lot of evidence there. Those I looked at had good reasons for using as much water as they did.) If producers have to absorb the tax, things will probably work out as you say. If they can pass it along without losing much demand, maybe not.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I disagree that it has anything to do with visibility of the tax. If the government's goal is to reduce water usage, then all they have to do is increase the tax. If the usage doesn't go down, then increase the tax even more. At some point, the people paying for the water be unable to afford consuming the same amount of water, whether or not the tax is explicitly shown is irrelevant. If producers can absorb the tax, then keep raising the tax until the water consumption goes down.
    - zbrozek 6y ago
      Or you'll get more-and-deeper wells and a race to the bottom of the aquifer, as you see in California's central valley. And of course folks will advocate for tiers and caps and exemptions and incentives and all manner of other mess to try and further distort the market to match their notion of fairness. Then everybody buying water will need to be a spreadsheet ninja to figure out how not to go broke while still managing to bathe.
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        Water there costs 0.05 cents a gallon. (I've not made a typo, it's ~$150/acre-foot for the expensive irrigation water) So $0.05 to bathe. I think "market" effects aren't causing the problem.
        zbrozek 6y ago
        The grandparent comment is advocating for sufficient levels of taxation to substantially change behavior, and I'm cautioning against unintended consequences of such a policy. I don't follow where the current cost of water is part of that discussion, but I welcome clarification.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        It’s always a possibility that people will try to evade taxes (or any other rules they don’t like), but I don’t see why that’s relevant.
    - tuatoru 6y ago
      > If the government's goal is to reduce water usage, then all they have to do is increase the tax. A better way, that most governments in fact use, is to set performance standards that manufacturers of water-using appliances must meet, and progressively tighten those standards. Low-flow shower heads, aerating mixer taps, garden irrigation controls, low water use washing machines and dishwashers, and so on. (And: tighten standards on local authorities/water utility companies also. Between 10% (in rich first-world cities) and 70% (in cities with colonial-era infrastructure) of water is lost due to leaks in pipes or pipe joints.) If you wanted to go all big brother meters could be adapted to reduce flow rates after a certain daily consumption limit is exceeded. A second possible alternative to taxation is "cap and trade". Every household gets a yearly allocation. Households wanting to use more buy part of the allocation of those that can use less. (Or grandparents donate them to their children while the grandchildren are at home.) Over time the cap reduces. Both of those methods have less impact on poor people than simply increasing the price of an essential good. Edit: all of this is fiddling around the edges when it comes to water, because the big consumer is agriculture. And governments almost without exception subsidize agricultural water consumption in one way or another. If they stopped doing that and imposed performance standards as with domestic usage, then agriculture would use water more efficiently. But the water thing was just an example. For carbon taxes, the price increase has to be noticeable to the end consumer and explained as being due to carbon content, and reasonable alternatives have to be known to exist. (Which they now are, thanks in the USA mainly to Tesla. In Europe, there is public transport, and better urban design e.g. in Hidalgo's Paris.)