4 ms·

Yeah... but there are

• tshaddox 6y ago
  Indeed, and those particular externalities are the same for each unit of electricity used (given some generation method), regardless of what the electricity is being used for. To me it makes a lot more sense for government policy to address these externalities directly, instead of trying to determine for each specific use case if it's okay to impose externalities or not.
  • sesuximo 6y ago
    I don’t think it’s necessary to think about all use cases... just those that use lots and lots of energy.
    • tshaddox 6y ago
      I’m not sure how that would work in practice. Does every use case get hit with a permanent ban the instant the combined electricity usage of that use case exceeds some limit? Was it okay for me to play around with the Bitcoin client on my laptop in 2011, but as soon as all Bitcoin clients combined to exceeded the limit, I can no longer run the client on my laptop? That strikes me as exceedingly odd and impractical.
      • sesuximo 6y ago
        I was envisioning if you use x% of the grid’s power, you get a visit from the epa Edit: you’re right that this would not catch really decentralized mining. Which is definitely a hole. In those cases, it would be hard to regulate I agree