4 ms·

>Whether it benefits the masses or the elite is irrelevant Why is that irrelevant? Must we permit everything that might be of benefit to someone, even if it co

>Whether it benefits the masses or the elite is irrelevant Why is that irrelevant? Must we permit everything that might be of benefit to someone, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else?

Nextgrid 4y ago
> Must we permit everything that might be of benefit to someone, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else? If we can offset "the expense of everyone else" (in this case via a carbon tax), why not?
- thfuran 4y ago
  Assessing a tax doesn't actually clean the air. All it does is ensure that only the rich have the right to fuck everyone else over. If the government committed to funding carbon capture at a rate of at least as much as they would've in the counterfactual where there was instead a ban plus the additional amount funded by the carbon tax revenue, taxing the externality would probably be adequate redress, but that isn't ever going to happen.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    > Assessing a tax doesn't actually clean the air Unless you use that tax to pay someone to clean the air?
    - thfuran 4y ago
      You have to both put the entirety of the tax towards it and ensure that the fact that you're funding it through the tax doesn't decrease the amount of additional funding you put towards it or else that decrease effectively decreases the tax rate (at least as far as carbon capture is concerned). The second part is harder than the first.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        There's basically zero funding toward it right now, so the second part becomes pretty easy. If we wanted to massively fund air cleaning, which I'm in favor of doing, we should use a tax as funding from day one.
      - greedo 4y ago
        This is what happened when lotteries started spreading across the US. The proceeds were earmarked for schools, so naturally, the property tax rates (which pays for most school funding) was held in check, resulting in no actual increase in school spending.
snapplebobapple 4y ago
Because the problem with carbon is that the cost of emitting it is not reflected in the market price of the things emitting it. This is called an externality in economics. You fix the externality by taxing the carbon emission at a level that covers the externality. After that you let the much more efficient market sort out what emits and what doesn't because it does a far better job than than any grouping of hacker news commenters expressing what ever combination of the seven deadly sins you think makes them hate the most productive people in society. Markets work and envious, wrathful authoritarians don't. You just end up with another episode of great moments in unintended consequences going down that road.
- thfuran 4y ago
  >Markets work and envious, wrathful authoritarians don't. So EPA, FDA, etc regulations should be replaced with fees for poisoning everyone rather than outright bans, because to desire freedom from such concerns is to be a jealous tyrant?
  - avereveard 4y ago
    How are fines from fda and epa different than fees?
    - thfuran 4y ago
      You're asking how taxes and fees are different from criminal penalties? I guess the simplest way to put it would be that you go to prison for not paying enough of the one, whereas you'd go to prison for paying too much of the other.
    - nitwit005 4y ago
      We ended up with food safety laws because people did things like knowingly sell unsafe adulterated milk, causing thousands of infants to die (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal). If you do that these days, you will simply go to jail. Or get executed, as happened with China's 2008 milk adulteration scandal.

>Whether it benefits the masses or the elite is irrelevant Why is that irrelevant? Must we permit everything that might be of benefit to someone, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else?

Nextgrid 4y ago

> Must we permit everything that might be of benefit to someone, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else? If we can offset "the expense of everyone else" (in this case via a carbon tax), why not?

thfuran 4y ago
Assessing a tax doesn't actually clean the air. All it does is ensure that only the rich have the right to fuck everyone else over. If the government committed to funding carbon capture at a rate of at least as much as they would've in the counterfactual where there was instead a ban plus the additional amount funded by the carbon tax revenue, taxing the externality would probably be adequate redress, but that isn't ever going to happen.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > Assessing a tax doesn't actually clean the air Unless you use that tax to pay someone to clean the air?
  - thfuran 4y ago
    You have to both put the entirety of the tax towards it and ensure that the fact that you're funding it through the tax doesn't decrease the amount of additional funding you put towards it or else that decrease effectively decreases the tax rate (at least as far as carbon capture is concerned). The second part is harder than the first.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      There's basically zero funding toward it right now, so the second part becomes pretty easy. If we wanted to massively fund air cleaning, which I'm in favor of doing, we should use a tax as funding from day one.
    - greedo 4y ago
      This is what happened when lotteries started spreading across the US. The proceeds were earmarked for schools, so naturally, the property tax rates (which pays for most school funding) was held in check, resulting in no actual increase in school spending.

snapplebobapple 4y ago

Because the problem with carbon is that the cost of emitting it is not reflected in the market price of the things emitting it. This is called an externality in economics. You fix the externality by taxing the carbon emission at a level that covers the externality. After that you let the much more efficient market sort out what emits and what doesn't because it does a far better job than than any grouping of hacker news commenters expressing what ever combination of the seven deadly sins you think makes them hate the most productive people in society. Markets work and envious, wrathful authoritarians don't. You just end up with another episode of great moments in unintended consequences going down that road.

thfuran 4y ago
>Markets work and envious, wrathful authoritarians don't. So EPA, FDA, etc regulations should be replaced with fees for poisoning everyone rather than outright bans, because to desire freedom from such concerns is to be a jealous tyrant?
- avereveard 4y ago
  How are fines from fda and epa different than fees?
  - thfuran 4y ago
    You're asking how taxes and fees are different from criminal penalties? I guess the simplest way to put it would be that you go to prison for not paying enough of the one, whereas you'd go to prison for paying too much of the other.
  - nitwit005 4y ago
    We ended up with food safety laws because people did things like knowingly sell unsafe adulterated milk, causing thousands of infants to die (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal). If you do that these days, you will simply go to jail. Or get executed, as happened with China's 2008 milk adulteration scandal.