6 ms·

How about we set up some rules and regulations so that the price of goods more accurately reflects their total cost (environmental, moral, material) and then we

How about we set up some rules and regulations so that the price of goods more accurately reflects their total cost (environmental, moral, material) and then we can all just sort of automatically buy the right amount of stuff.

RhysU 5y ago
At what point in time should we price-in the externality that our future selves might price-in more externalities?
paulintrognon 5y ago
That would hurt the poors while the wealthy would still be able to buy loads of stuff. Maybe a tax that would become bigger the more you buy? Like, the more gas or electricity you consume, the more expensive it gets per unit? But it would be very hard to implement I guess..
- lcam84 5y ago
  Also we could redistribute the tax as a sort of UBI. This way not only product that pollute would be more expensive, people would have the ability to say no to crappy jobs.
- edflsafoiewq 5y ago
  >That would hurt the poors while the wealthy would still be able to buy loads of stuff. Yes, that is how wealth works.
- netrus 5y ago
  I think some European countries are on the right path: the tax money is not gone, just distribute it equally (as the externalities of emissions hurt everyone in the same way), and the poor will be fine. If only we could roll out such a scheme globally, it would be the just and definite solution for climate change. Your individual emissions are above the global average? Tough luck. Are they below the global average? Congratulations, your higher purchase price for iphones is more than compensated by the payout everyone worldwide gets every month.
  - jandrewrogers 5y ago
    It isn't that simple. Some geographies have intrinsically higher carbon footprints than others, all other things being equal and with similar levels of effort and investment. The cost of reducing carbon footprint is not remotely uniform, through no fault of the people that live there. Differentially taxing people by virtue of where they live for no local purpose is reliably unpopular in similar contexts, and that would easily be the case here.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Just put all the taxes collected from it into a "emission pool", then distribute it evenly among the people. That way the rich buying a lot of stuff effectively is them paying for the poor's emission quota. Or any of the many other ways to handle this, there are so many solutions to the problem that it is not an issue unless you want it to be.
  - caeril 5y ago
    Brilliant. Yes, we're facing a consumption catastrophe, so let's distribute more funding toward more people so they can consume more. This is almost as fantastic as the HN zeitgeist of: 1. OMG there's a climate apocalypse coming due to the carbon emissions of about a billion people! 2. There's another 6 billion people we need to either import into, or bring up to the living standards (e.g. carbon footprint) of, those first 1 billion. 3. What? Oh lol you heartless rationalist, #2 doesn't conflict with #1 because uhhhh.... Elon Musk exists? (no analysis of the actual energy requirements and fossil fuel mix over time is provided or considered, just an assumption of cornucopian miracles) No, TFA is correct. We need to consume less, end our obsession with "growth", and most importantly, divest ourselves of the bleeding-heart suicidal idea of quadrupling our energy requirements with immigration and/or foreign aid. There will be a time to do that, when our energy mix is largely renewables, but not yet, and not within at least half a century.
- wittycardio 5y ago
  Wealthy people will always be better off by definition, it shouldn't stop us from doing the right thing
  - what_is_orcas 5y ago
    But I think it's a good argument for reconsidering how we do wealth-distribution in America.
- gamegoblin 5y ago
  I think this kind of progressive consumption tax would be amazing for society. In a capitalist society, the theory goes that the individuals who are better at allocating capital will accumulate more capital, allocate it better, thus accumulating more, etc. in a loop. I could be convinced that some people are much, much better at allocating capital than most. It makes sense to let them be our societal capital allocators. Obviously, we want limits so that if 1 person makes a serious misjudgment, it doesn’t completely tank society. But I could see it being the case where, if we were purely optimizing for sum-total societal capital accumulation, it would be optimal 1% of the population to be in charge of 90% of the capital. There are a few obvious problems with this scheme where it meets reality, though. The most over-arching is that our current system allows the controllers of capital to more or less arbitrarily convert between capital and consumption. That is, some billionaire can burn some of their capital and buy a $500MM mega-yacht. At the end of the day, this is essentially wasting the labor of 10,000 people for a year (at 50k average salary). Even if we accept the premise that Jeff Bezos is a better capital allocator than 99.99% of people, I think we could argue that his having a $500MM mega yacht is not going to increase his capital allocation ability. This is where the progressive consumption tax comes in. Imagine a tax that was quadratic with consumption. For example, you’d pay $1K in tax on $10K of consumption, $100K of tax on $100K of consumption, and $10MM in tax on $1MM in consumption (obviously these are example numbers, any upwardly curved function will do, though). It very quickly becomes prohibitively expensive to consume much more than some societal average. This would significantly decrease consumption inequality. There are a lot of second-order things affected by this tax: - becomes much harder for 1 billionaire to burn capital in order to consume marketing and influence elections - one could use some proceeds of this tax as simple transfer payments, so not only is it quadratically more expensive to consume more, but the revenue from doing so gets send to people lower on the consumption distribution. This enhances the consumption flattening effect. - reduces conspicuous consumption which is good for climate change - improves labor productivity by increasing the societal savings rate (driving investment and increasing capital allocation per unit of labor), which further enhances this whole flywheel - more things that are too long for this comment There are obvious implementation problems though. On the face of it, it seems more difficult for me to hide consumption than it is to hide wealth, but I’m sure there are schemes to do so. The basic form of this tax would be to demonstrate to the tax agency some accounting of your wealth (savings, investments, etc) at two points in time, and then your consumption is computed based on the net inflows and outflows.
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
You'll be hitting the poorer folk very hard. I said that a few times already, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the cheapest iPhone in my country costs around 3 median monthly salaries. (I am not arguing that everybody should be using iPhones, I don't use and don't want them, it's only to give you an estimate.) If prices get even higher, we won't be able to buy anything at all. And if you raise the prices only in the US, then Americans will be buying all their stuff from other countries over mail, like we do now.
- b0rsuk 5y ago
  If you're not arguing everyone should use IPhones, why bring up poorer folk? Or why bring up a luxury brand?
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  This regularly comes up on any kind of tax proposal. You just reimburse some fraction of it to the poor. One super easy way to do that is to replace an existing regressive tax, but there's a thousand different ways. If any kind of market efficiency pricing change actually hurts the poor, it's because the people passing the law wanted it to, but many wouldn't even if done super simply, because rich people buy more stuff, use more carbon etc.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I thought customs are already solved problem? EU even managed to force sellers in other countries to automate the whole thing... So I see no reason why individuals wouldn't be charged tariffs when importing things.
hellisothers 5y ago
That would unfortunately be a “regressive” pricing, it would disproportionately impact the poor. Just cars and energy I would expect to become unattainable unless alternative sources of sustainable transportation and energy are embraced by society in never before seen levels.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Being poor is a separate problem that is solved by giving someone money to not be poor. Assuming one wants to solve the problem of poorer people. It has nothing to do with accurately pricing externalities. Of course, wealth transfers are extremely politically unpopular. In the ideal world there would be marginal sales taxes, but that seems infeasible in the near future. Although, not inconceivable if everyone’s purchases were being tracked.
- mantas 5y ago
  Any taxation aside from super progressive tax schemes that top out at 90% and more would disproportionally impact the poor. But is our goal to destroy the rich (so poor can consume more) or is it to lower overall consumption? That'd push to fix suburbanisation and make mass transit cool again. Or enforce remote work.
  - what_is_orcas 5y ago
    > But is our goal to destroy the rich (so poor can consume more) or is it to lower overall consumption? Both?
    - mantas 5y ago
      No.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Who do you think is going to be hardest hit when the climate crisis hits in force? Anyway, there are a variety of wealth redistribution schemes that can target the problem of poverty, including giving the proceeds from a carbon/whatever tax to lower income Americans.
ren_engineer 5y ago
I'd be fine with this if it was actually an organic movement where Americans realized consumerism didn't bring happiness My problem is the last few weeks have been an outright propaganda campaign against Americans to accept lower living standards which are a direct result of inflation caused by government policies and allowing companies to outsource everything. These types of headlines are almost a parody, Soviet Union tier stuff trying to normalize what is happening.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  How long would the world let Americans get paid more while other people around the world are willing to sell at lower prices? We expect market participants to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities in every other circumstance and buy low and sell high, why would it be different for the billions of people coming online around the world?
  - testposttttt 5y ago
    The problem with this viewpoint is it is based on being a zero-sum game. A rising tide will raise all ships, crabs in a bucket hurts all involved. Also pharmaceutical prices directly contradict this. Americans are essentially subsidizing worldwide pharmaceutical costs.
- taylodl 5y ago
  There's a bit to unpack here. > "inflation caused by government policies" Inflation at present is primarily the result of the global pandemic and government's failure to coordinate their response with regards to shipping, hence the crises in global shipping at the moment. Governments spent the better part of 2020 and the first half of 2021 trying to keep their population safe. They took their eye off the eight ball in understanding how these events would impact global shipping. You could argue the policies affecting inflation were therefore the Covid-19 policies, but that really isn't constructive in resolving the situation we now find ourselves in. We can use it to model a better response the next time. Global pandemics have negative impacts to global supply chains. > "allowing companies to outsource everything" You mean allowing companies freedom? Funny how "free societies" do that! Meanwhile, economists of all political persuasions have been arguing for decades that this has been the key factor to America's success and her high standard of living. It has also encouraged investment in America's financial markets from all over the world. We're currently experiencing constrained supply due to the global shipping crises and constant demand. Econ 101 informs us this will result in price increases. I think the central banks have been pretty transparent about it. They still see inflation as a non-issue because they believe once the supply constraints are resolved prices will go back to normal. Meanwhile...what do you propose we do? With a constrained supply we're going to have to make do with less. This isn't propaganda, it's simple, basic economics.
Railsify 5y ago
Like have the government tell people the maximum they can charge for a good?
- cryptoquick 5y ago
  If the unit cost is higher than the maximum a manufacturer or retailer can charge, it won't be produced at all. This results in a market failure, similar to the one China's experiencing with their energy market, where the price of coal is 4x what it was earlier this year.
  - what_is_orcas 5y ago
    I'm not an economist, but I'm curious about this topic. If, say, an iPhone cost $20k (because of emissions and slave/inhumane labor), obviously us normal folks (or poor folks) wouldn't own one, but would they still be produced for the grotesquely wealthy among us or would they just be scrapped or would the supply chain optimize for the new cost-structure and stop using slave labor to bring it down to a more reasonable price?
tthun 5y ago
A rather simplistic implementation of this could be to create regulations to require trash/refuse processing centers and incinerators in every zip code. Consumerism generates so much trash that well off folks are able to ship to poor areas - out of sight/out of mind. Making the effects from waste processing more “equitable” should change behaviors.

RhysU 5y ago

At what point in time should we price-in the externality that our future selves might price-in more externalities?

paulintrognon 5y ago

That would hurt the poors while the wealthy would still be able to buy loads of stuff. Maybe a tax that would become bigger the more you buy? Like, the more gas or electricity you consume, the more expensive it gets per unit? But it would be very hard to implement I guess..

lcam84 5y ago
Also we could redistribute the tax as a sort of UBI. This way not only product that pollute would be more expensive, people would have the ability to say no to crappy jobs.
edflsafoiewq 5y ago
>That would hurt the poors while the wealthy would still be able to buy loads of stuff. Yes, that is how wealth works.
netrus 5y ago
I think some European countries are on the right path: the tax money is not gone, just distribute it equally (as the externalities of emissions hurt everyone in the same way), and the poor will be fine. If only we could roll out such a scheme globally, it would be the just and definite solution for climate change. Your individual emissions are above the global average? Tough luck. Are they below the global average? Congratulations, your higher purchase price for iphones is more than compensated by the payout everyone worldwide gets every month.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  It isn't that simple. Some geographies have intrinsically higher carbon footprints than others, all other things being equal and with similar levels of effort and investment. The cost of reducing carbon footprint is not remotely uniform, through no fault of the people that live there. Differentially taxing people by virtue of where they live for no local purpose is reliably unpopular in similar contexts, and that would easily be the case here.
Jensson 5y ago
Just put all the taxes collected from it into a "emission pool", then distribute it evenly among the people. That way the rich buying a lot of stuff effectively is them paying for the poor's emission quota. Or any of the many other ways to handle this, there are so many solutions to the problem that it is not an issue unless you want it to be.
- caeril 5y ago
  Brilliant. Yes, we're facing a consumption catastrophe, so let's distribute more funding toward more people so they can consume more. This is almost as fantastic as the HN zeitgeist of: 1. OMG there's a climate apocalypse coming due to the carbon emissions of about a billion people! 2. There's another 6 billion people we need to either import into, or bring up to the living standards (e.g. carbon footprint) of, those first 1 billion. 3. What? Oh lol you heartless rationalist, #2 doesn't conflict with #1 because uhhhh.... Elon Musk exists? (no analysis of the actual energy requirements and fossil fuel mix over time is provided or considered, just an assumption of cornucopian miracles) No, TFA is correct. We need to consume less, end our obsession with "growth", and most importantly, divest ourselves of the bleeding-heart suicidal idea of quadrupling our energy requirements with immigration and/or foreign aid. There will be a time to do that, when our energy mix is largely renewables, but not yet, and not within at least half a century.
wittycardio 5y ago
Wealthy people will always be better off by definition, it shouldn't stop us from doing the right thing
- what_is_orcas 5y ago
  But I think it's a good argument for reconsidering how we do wealth-distribution in America.
gamegoblin 5y ago
I think this kind of progressive consumption tax would be amazing for society. In a capitalist society, the theory goes that the individuals who are better at allocating capital will accumulate more capital, allocate it better, thus accumulating more, etc. in a loop. I could be convinced that some people are much, much better at allocating capital than most. It makes sense to let them be our societal capital allocators. Obviously, we want limits so that if 1 person makes a serious misjudgment, it doesn’t completely tank society. But I could see it being the case where, if we were purely optimizing for sum-total societal capital accumulation, it would be optimal 1% of the population to be in charge of 90% of the capital. There are a few obvious problems with this scheme where it meets reality, though. The most over-arching is that our current system allows the controllers of capital to more or less arbitrarily convert between capital and consumption. That is, some billionaire can burn some of their capital and buy a $500MM mega-yacht. At the end of the day, this is essentially wasting the labor of 10,000 people for a year (at 50k average salary). Even if we accept the premise that Jeff Bezos is a better capital allocator than 99.99% of people, I think we could argue that his having a $500MM mega yacht is not going to increase his capital allocation ability. This is where the progressive consumption tax comes in. Imagine a tax that was quadratic with consumption. For example, you’d pay $1K in tax on $10K of consumption, $100K of tax on $100K of consumption, and $10MM in tax on $1MM in consumption (obviously these are example numbers, any upwardly curved function will do, though). It very quickly becomes prohibitively expensive to consume much more than some societal average. This would significantly decrease consumption inequality. There are a lot of second-order things affected by this tax: - becomes much harder for 1 billionaire to burn capital in order to consume marketing and influence elections - one could use some proceeds of this tax as simple transfer payments, so not only is it quadratically more expensive to consume more, but the revenue from doing so gets send to people lower on the consumption distribution. This enhances the consumption flattening effect. - reduces conspicuous consumption which is good for climate change - improves labor productivity by increasing the societal savings rate (driving investment and increasing capital allocation per unit of labor), which further enhances this whole flywheel - more things that are too long for this comment There are obvious implementation problems though. On the face of it, it seems more difficult for me to hide consumption than it is to hide wealth, but I’m sure there are schemes to do so. The basic form of this tax would be to demonstrate to the tax agency some accounting of your wealth (savings, investments, etc) at two points in time, and then your consumption is computed based on the net inflows and outflows.

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago

You'll be hitting the poorer folk very hard. I said that a few times already, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the cheapest iPhone in my country costs around 3 median monthly salaries. (I am not arguing that everybody should be using iPhones, I don't use and don't want them, it's only to give you an estimate.) If prices get even higher, we won't be able to buy anything at all. And if you raise the prices only in the US, then Americans will be buying all their stuff from other countries over mail, like we do now.

b0rsuk 5y ago
If you're not arguing everyone should use IPhones, why bring up poorer folk? Or why bring up a luxury brand?
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
This regularly comes up on any kind of tax proposal. You just reimburse some fraction of it to the poor. One super easy way to do that is to replace an existing regressive tax, but there's a thousand different ways. If any kind of market efficiency pricing change actually hurts the poor, it's because the people passing the law wanted it to, but many wouldn't even if done super simply, because rich people buy more stuff, use more carbon etc.
Ekaros 5y ago
I thought customs are already solved problem? EU even managed to force sellers in other countries to automate the whole thing... So I see no reason why individuals wouldn't be charged tariffs when importing things.

hellisothers 5y ago

That would unfortunately be a “regressive” pricing, it would disproportionately impact the poor. Just cars and energy I would expect to become unattainable unless alternative sources of sustainable transportation and energy are embraced by society in never before seen levels.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Being poor is a separate problem that is solved by giving someone money to not be poor. Assuming one wants to solve the problem of poorer people. It has nothing to do with accurately pricing externalities. Of course, wealth transfers are extremely politically unpopular. In the ideal world there would be marginal sales taxes, but that seems infeasible in the near future. Although, not inconceivable if everyone’s purchases were being tracked.
mantas 5y ago
Any taxation aside from super progressive tax schemes that top out at 90% and more would disproportionally impact the poor. But is our goal to destroy the rich (so poor can consume more) or is it to lower overall consumption? That'd push to fix suburbanisation and make mass transit cool again. Or enforce remote work.
- what_is_orcas 5y ago
  > But is our goal to destroy the rich (so poor can consume more) or is it to lower overall consumption? Both?
  - mantas 5y ago
    No.
throwaway894345 5y ago
Who do you think is going to be hardest hit when the climate crisis hits in force? Anyway, there are a variety of wealth redistribution schemes that can target the problem of poverty, including giving the proceeds from a carbon/whatever tax to lower income Americans.

ren_engineer 5y ago

I'd be fine with this if it was actually an organic movement where Americans realized consumerism didn't bring happiness My problem is the last few weeks have been an outright propaganda campaign against Americans to accept lower living standards which are a direct result of inflation caused by government policies and allowing companies to outsource everything. These types of headlines are almost a parody, Soviet Union tier stuff trying to normalize what is happening.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
How long would the world let Americans get paid more while other people around the world are willing to sell at lower prices? We expect market participants to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities in every other circumstance and buy low and sell high, why would it be different for the billions of people coming online around the world?
- testposttttt 5y ago
  The problem with this viewpoint is it is based on being a zero-sum game. A rising tide will raise all ships, crabs in a bucket hurts all involved. Also pharmaceutical prices directly contradict this. Americans are essentially subsidizing worldwide pharmaceutical costs.
taylodl 5y ago
There's a bit to unpack here. > "inflation caused by government policies" Inflation at present is primarily the result of the global pandemic and government's failure to coordinate their response with regards to shipping, hence the crises in global shipping at the moment. Governments spent the better part of 2020 and the first half of 2021 trying to keep their population safe. They took their eye off the eight ball in understanding how these events would impact global shipping. You could argue the policies affecting inflation were therefore the Covid-19 policies, but that really isn't constructive in resolving the situation we now find ourselves in. We can use it to model a better response the next time. Global pandemics have negative impacts to global supply chains. > "allowing companies to outsource everything" You mean allowing companies freedom? Funny how "free societies" do that! Meanwhile, economists of all political persuasions have been arguing for decades that this has been the key factor to America's success and her high standard of living. It has also encouraged investment in America's financial markets from all over the world. We're currently experiencing constrained supply due to the global shipping crises and constant demand. Econ 101 informs us this will result in price increases. I think the central banks have been pretty transparent about it. They still see inflation as a non-issue because they believe once the supply constraints are resolved prices will go back to normal. Meanwhile...what do you propose we do? With a constrained supply we're going to have to make do with less. This isn't propaganda, it's simple, basic economics.

Railsify 5y ago

Like have the government tell people the maximum they can charge for a good?

cryptoquick 5y ago
If the unit cost is higher than the maximum a manufacturer or retailer can charge, it won't be produced at all. This results in a market failure, similar to the one China's experiencing with their energy market, where the price of coal is 4x what it was earlier this year.
- what_is_orcas 5y ago
  I'm not an economist, but I'm curious about this topic. If, say, an iPhone cost $20k (because of emissions and slave/inhumane labor), obviously us normal folks (or poor folks) wouldn't own one, but would they still be produced for the grotesquely wealthy among us or would they just be scrapped or would the supply chain optimize for the new cost-structure and stop using slave labor to bring it down to a more reasonable price?

tthun 5y ago

A rather simplistic implementation of this could be to create regulations to require trash/refuse processing centers and incinerators in every zip code. Consumerism generates so much trash that well off folks are able to ship to poor areas - out of sight/out of mind. Making the effects from waste processing more “equitable” should change behaviors.