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There are three main ways governments can change behaviours: - Tax the behaviour they want to discourage. - Subsidise a behaviour they want to encourage. - Out

There are three main ways governments can change behaviours: - Tax the behaviour they want to discourage. - Subsidise a behaviour they want to encourage. - Outlaw a behaviour they want to discourage. It looks like all three were attempted based on the article. > A proposal to outlaw artificial pesticides, and another to improve drinking water by giving subsidies only to farmers who eschew chemicals were both voted down by 61%. > There are a lot of politicians presenting the false choice of wealth redistribution or climate change apathy. Someone is going to suffer with any climate change measure, or else the measure would not be necessary. The only question is how that burden should be spread out, so it's not really a false dichotomy... And yes, this can be a problem attributed to direct democracy: a majority of people in Switzerland can agree that some measure should be introduced, without being able to obtain a majority for any specific measure. With direct democracy that means that no measure will be introduced.

samatman 5y ago
Artificial pesticides is the naturalistic fallacy rearing its ugly head. Some of the pesticides which are allowed in organic farming are quite pernicious. It stands to reason that the opposite is true, and some of the pesticides used by conventional farming are less of an insult to ecosystems and human health than the 'natural' ones. Banning 'artificial' pesticides, in other words, is a blunt instrument, one which stands a good chance of not accomplishing the actual goal toward which the legislation is intended.
- tsherr 5y ago
  The idea that some of "a"is bad means that some of "b" must be good is illogical.
dogma1138 5y ago
Taxing behavior that you want to discourage is an oxymoron or at least it creates a perversive incentive in which the government taxes something but doesn’t invest and even sometimes hampers alternatives because it values the tax income. Subsidies aren’t much better either in many cases… We see this with EVs now where countries and jurisdictions are looking for ways to make up for the lost tax revenue due to ever and ever increasing EV sales.

samatman 5y ago

Artificial pesticides is the naturalistic fallacy rearing its ugly head. Some of the pesticides which are allowed in organic farming are quite pernicious. It stands to reason that the opposite is true, and some of the pesticides used by conventional farming are less of an insult to ecosystems and human health than the 'natural' ones. Banning 'artificial' pesticides, in other words, is a blunt instrument, one which stands a good chance of not accomplishing the actual goal toward which the legislation is intended.

tsherr 5y ago
The idea that some of "a"is bad means that some of "b" must be good is illogical.

dogma1138 5y ago

Taxing behavior that you want to discourage is an oxymoron or at least it creates a perversive incentive in which the government taxes something but doesn’t invest and even sometimes hampers alternatives because it values the tax income. Subsidies aren’t much better either in many cases… We see this with EVs now where countries and jurisdictions are looking for ways to make up for the lost tax revenue due to ever and ever increasing EV sales.