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I oppose carbon taxes (I don't want to get into that here); I also think bitcoin is stupid. But I see this kind of headline as an argument for a carbon tax. Try

• wmf 5y ago
  So carbon tax and dividend.
• AnonMessiah 5y ago
  It sounds like your argument is to make fuel and power more expensive? How does that not disproportionately harm poor communities, and how is that not just a carbon tax with extra steps? EDIT: I'm not trying to be an ass or "Getcha", just trying to see where you're coming from.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • cromka 5y ago
    I suppose this could be solved by having non-linear energy pricing. I.e. if you use up to whatever your total consumption should comfortably be as a person, you pay the regular rate. Once you hit what would be considered unrealistic consumption, you pay twice the rate or so.
    • derekjdanserl 5y ago
      Means testing has never been a positive thing for poor people. I don’t believe you can have capitalism without rampant global warming. We should already understand these dystopian proposals are just asking for failure.
  • spiralx 5y ago
    You pair the tax with a redistributive dividend to ensure that the change is neutral for the least well-off. https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/why-carbon-dividends-are-having-a-moment/ https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/why-carbon-divi... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-dividends-a-win-win-for-people-and-for-the-climate/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-dividends-...
    • derekjdanserl 5y ago
      So, means testing?
      • jdlshore 5y ago
        As implemented in Canada, no; all carbon tax dividends (less an amdminisrration fee?) are distrubuted equally to citizens. At least that’s my understanding. I haven’t studied it deeply. The net result is that the people with the lowest carbon footprint make a profit and the ones with the most take a loss. Seems like a reasonable approach to me.
  • antris 5y ago
    Part of the tax income being directed towards income support for the least wealthy people.
  • marchingtomars 5y ago
    I think we need to take Money from those who have done the polluting, to their private financial gain, at the expensive of the public of our planet, since a certain timeframe-- such as 1950. Those who have made decisions leading to massive pollution expulsion while they profited... those are the ones who should pay first. People such as: - The Koch brothers - The Military and the politicians, bureaucrats, and Weapons company executives associated with bases & machines that have spilled the most pollutants - Executives of Fossil Fuel companies See, it's like we're playing this game where... a window was open and these executives were able to loot the house and escape. And now they are trying to close that window and run off with their loot. Nope, bring them back. Hold them accountable. Take the assets they (their family, their estate) earned while polluting our planet. Do that, before looking at the little guy and saying "Pay your fair share!" Because my question is "What about those evil sociopathic polluting fat cats who not only got away, but lobbied and legislated to allow their escape"
• King-Aaron 5y ago
  What you describe is effectively a tax on carbon emissions
  • desmond373 5y ago
    More a tax on energy use as that seems to be the measure he's using. Carbon tax would measure carbox output which is actually 0 (directly) from Bitcoin miners and more from power plants. I like that it would incentivise reduction of power use, I don't like that it shifts the blame lower on the economic scale.
    • throwawaylinux 5y ago
      No that doesn't work well because it penalizes the consumption of electricity created by wind the same as electricity created by coal. Taxing the point at which the CO2 is created makes the most sense, then you don't have to try back or forward tracking penalties or incentives through the chain to incentivize carbon efficiency. What makes you think polluting power plants would not pass on costs to consumers?
      • Cycl0ps 5y ago
        Tracking where it's created seems like a difficult process, many different sources of emission. I do agree that a penalty across the board would be a net incentive towards cheaper polluting power plants. I'd propose instead a tax at the point of extraction. Our issue lies In the fact that we are adding to the carbon cycle faster than geologic processes can sequester it back into the Earth. Disincentivizing mining and drilling operations, and creating incentives for sequestration, are the only solutions that stick on the scale of a lifetime.
        • throwawaylinux 5y ago
          > Tracking where it's created seems like a difficult process It isn't easy. > I'd propose instead a tax at the point of extraction. Is this based on anything serious? The problem is greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere, not extraction of chemicals containing carbon from the ground. Where does biological methane emission from farming or GHG release from clearing forests figure in the "extraction"? Why should natural gas that's used to manufacture "blue hydrogen" incur as much tax as that which is burnt directly? > Our issue lies In the fact that we are adding to the carbon cycle faster than geologic processes can sequester it back into the Earth. Disincentivizing mining and drilling operations, and creating incentives for sequestration, are the only solutions that stick on the scale of a lifetime. The issue is entirely atmospheric GHG, so taxing at the point of emission is the most efficient way to reduce that, all else being equal. If there are specific cases that are much easier to account at downstream consumption or upstream production then at some point it would be more efficient to account those and pass costs along, but you wouldn't go all the way back to extraction if you could avoid it (e.g., gasoline or domestic natural gas producers or distributors may incur the tax rather than individual people burning it, but probably not the wells).
• perl4ever 5y ago
  I once looked for a reputable source (meaning, not people with an interest in denying climate change, etc) on what global warming would cost in a few decades and tried to equate it to dollars per gallon of gasoline. The implication was that, yes, the price of gas in the US is too low. But it also suggested the price of gas in Europe is already roughly including the estimated cost of fossil fuels. Plus or minus a couple dollars per gallon. What I don't see people grappling with, is if you talk about externalities, that inherently means there is an objective number, even if it's uncertain and imprecise, that captures the value of avoiding climate change (and other environmental damage) to society. And there is a completely independent number stemming from peoples' supply and demand curves, which captures the additional cost of fuel that will meaningfully slow or prevent climate change. If [externalities] <<< [price that will stop people from using fossil fuels], then we've painted ourselves into a corner. I think some people may be implicitly aware and not admitting it, which is a logical reason for micromanaging the economy rather than going for carbon taxes. I'm not sure everyone is aware though. Understand, I'm not saying I know the numbers, or that I would accept economic dogma that would say we should do nothing about climate change. I'm saying that using the language of "externalities", is potentially a trap, given the agreed-on goal. It's such a popular word, but that's when it's not tied to an actual number. Specific numbers can be inconvenient.
  • wmf 5y ago
    If [externalities] <<< [price that will stop people from using fossil fuels], then we've painted ourselves into a corner. Are you trying to say that it might be cheaper to simply let climate change happen than to prevent it?
    • perl4ever 5y ago
      I'm trying to say that if it is cheaper to let climate change happen, because externalities are determined to be $X and taxed away, but people value energy more, then climate change will happen. Which is bad if one doesn't want it to happen. My conclusion, then, is it may be bad to talk about externalities. At least as economics jargon, and it's confusing to use it otherwise. It's a tool that isn't bound to doing what people want it to do.
• cormacrelf 5y ago
  > have the price reflect the externalities > just make sure the cost they pay to do it properly reflects the all-in cost of the activity The "just" here is hilarious, this is the problem that the minds of three generations have not yet been able to solve. Bringing in carbon taxes is excellent, but they are extremely difficult to do right, because any mismatch between price and externality is relentlessly exploited and arbitraged. The most successful schemes have been those that limit their scope to a particular kind of activity within a particular area, not "let people mine or idle their care or whatever other thing they want". You are asking us to levy a carbon tax on literally all human activity... this is truly bonkers. Best of luck administering the scheme. Until someone manages to do it, we can still do whack-a-mole and ban things outright, in particular when an activity by its very nature so flagrantly backpedals every inch of our hard-fought progress, that any real carbon tax would inflate its prices so much as to immediately spell its demise. COP26 was centered around the "phasing down" (what a shame it could not be "phasing out") of coal-fired power plants. It is literally our best strategy right now, because all the enemies of the planet are still massive beasts of industries that should have to feel their legs crumbling beneath them and be spared no shelter in their collapse. One day, when all this fails and the beasts collapse too late, Earth's enemies will finally be the minor inefficiencies and minor choices, and you can assign them your little weights and measures then.
  • wmf 5y ago
    any mismatch between price and externality is relentlessly exploited and arbitraged If the carbon tax is more expensive than it needs to be, how would you exploit or arbitrage that?
    • cormacrelf 5y ago
      The problem always originates with the other kind of mismatch, but arbitrage works on two markets, if you have one market A where production of some good is taxed at 20% and another market B where production is taxed at 10%, all production soon shifts to market B. (Market here = market for production, you "buy" precursors + labour, you get goods.) Market A has set its taxes so high that nobody ever pays them, simply by moving it all elsewhere. If you have a local industry for that good, you kill it. So yeah, technically it is not due to a price/externality mismatch because there is no Market C where the gods trade carbon credits with perfect foresight. But from Market B's perspective, let's say the true externality cost is around 20% (and Market A is approximately correct, and so wouldn't go any higher), Market B has priced it beneath the externality cost, and this difference is exploited and arbitraged on Market A, whose leaders were honestly trying to do the right thing. So NOBODY wants to tax this stuff unless everybody taxes the same stuff at the same rate and there's a closed system. It's really hard to find a closed system, but you can find them in e.g. electricity generation in one closed area without any electricity imported from elsewhere. Technically if you did this but didn't perfectly match the price to the externality (which would be very normal), it couldn't be exploited. But most markets cannot be that enclosed. The problem can be seen a bit more easily by looking at carbon credits, where the price is supposed to reflect the value of a unit or emissions reduction. If you are Market A, and you value emissions reduction highly, then what tends to happen is: (1) Market B says it agrees with you, and develops a scheme for trading its credits with yours, (2) Market B allows for people to tell the government "hey, we were going to chop down this forest, and we decided not to!" and gives them credits (3) those people go and chop down a different forest, but not before they repeat the procedure ten more times (4) those people sell their credits to airlines and transport companies and anyone who wants to advertise themselves as carbon neutral (5) millions of clueless consumers tick the "carbon neutral" box when they book their flights, and money flows all the way to people who are now cutting down more forests than ever before, because the operation now finances itself with zero effort, and no difference is made to CO2e whatsoever. This is a description of the REDD+ credit scheme. It's a perfect example of the price being set too high compared to the actual CO2e changes, not on a tax, but on a credit scheme. With taxes, some of those numbers flip their sign, but it is ultimately the same problem. Finally, think about what it would take for Market A to stop B's goods at the border and go... "Hang on, you produced X amount of CO2e to make these, I'm going to tax you on that!" Say Market A and B are sovereign States. B has deliberately set its taxes too low, so as to improve the profits its local companies can achieve in foreign markets like A's. Basically, B's companies can lie, and B will back them up. A can't really do anything about it. A would then think about incentivising industrial espionage, in order to impose taxes correctly, but if it accuses B of lying, it turns into a diplomatic dispute with B. So one malicious actor, especially an entire sovereign State, can really ruin the whole thing. (Bringing this back to banning things outright, one big advantage of a ban over a tax is that it is much more difficult for a State to lie about the use of a banned thing, than it is for them to fudge some numbers in a spreadsheet.)
• ewrgweurgtnio 5y ago
  What is wrong with playing whac-a-mole? The fact that we can't whack every mole doesn't mean we can't whack some of them. A targeted ban can eliminate Bitcoin mining entirely rather than just reduce it and can do so without much effect on uninvolved people. I can think of no market-based approach that can do that. If the markets were rational, no money would have been invested in Bitcoin mining in the first place.
• vegai_ 5y ago
  >I also think bitcoin is stupid. Yeah, perhaps. Is it more or less stupid than almost every country having a military, some of which alone cause more CO2 pollution than BTC? Some of which have the capability of destroying all humans in 30 minutes? Some of which are actually trying to improve that capability right now? I mean sure, the waste of mining is pretty dumb, but it's gonna be replaced with less wasteful methods at some point. But when are we gonna replace militaries?
  • klyrs 5y ago
    I agree with you in pure idealistic principle... but it would be stupid for every single major country to disband their military, without an ironclad guarantee that the rest would do the same.
  • ewrgweurgtnio 5y ago
    Please read what you wrote. Does it make sense to you?