3 ms·

Externality taxes would solve many of today's pressing problems, implemented such that the externality tax is equal to the cost to "undo" whatever externality i

Externality taxes would solve many of today's pressing problems, implemented such that the externality tax is equal to the cost to "undo" whatever externality is imposed (and assuming the government actually spends the money to do so). I.e. we should recognize that we shouldn't outlaw useful and fundamentally positive things that emit CO2 like driving a car, but rather tax the pollution according to the cost to recapture that carbon from the shared environment.

TheDong 3y ago
It is fundamentally impossible to completely undo things, trivially so from the second law of thermodynamics. A company which produces nuclear waste can pay the cost to store it, but cannot undo its existence. A company that burns oil can offset the carbon capture, but cannot put new oil in the ground. A company that cuts a forest of 500 year old trees can't wait 500 years to verify they estimated the cost of raising such a forest again correctly (and also, the company will be gone by then anyway). Right now, we care about CO2, but there's a lot more to natural resources than simple CO2 math will give us. > we shouldn't outlaw useful and fundamentally positive things that emit CO2 like driving a car, but rather tax the pollution according to the cost to recapture that carbon from the shared environment Focusing on incrementally taxing things like that is basically what the parent article complains about. That misses the old-growth forest for the CO2 in one tree.
- lend000 3y ago
  Originally all forests were all growth forests, so should we have never violated the land and stayed in the stone age? At some point we need to compromise. > It is fundamentally impossible to completely undo things, trivially so from the second law of thermodynamics. As in, undo things as a reasonable person would define them. Undoing burning gasoline could indeed involve taxing such that we produce more hydrocarbons (which is possible to do), but what good does burying oil do? I don't agree with much of the article; I think we should benefit from the bounty of the universe and I believe in property rights and the ability to own land. However, more reasonable externalities are still relevant (such as putting pollution into a shared atmosphere or body of water) or potentially even some economic or social externalities. And as the article hints at, addressing the externality of who gets access to the free bounty of the universe. But its premise: "none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated" is flawed, because the prices would just rise and consumption would decrease if externalities were incorporated.
imtringued 3y ago
It is kind of ironic how market economies and planned economies both succumb to the economic calculation problem. The people who used it to antagonize planned economies only had price discovery and supply and demand in mind. They didn't consider that money and prices will never capture all real economic variables like pollution. There is no "objective" level of pollution tax, it is purely subjective and since we don't have two earths between which people can migrate to choose the planet with the optimal carbon tax, you are going to have to rely on governments to just guess the right amount of tax and there is no way around it.
- lend000 3y ago
  My point is actually that it can be done more or less objectively in the most relevant cases, especially where the atmosphere is concerned. Tax the polluting activity and use the taxes to exactly offset the pollution. If it can't be undone, or there wasn't any of that type of pollution in the atmosphere to start with, then it shouldn't be taxed--it should be banned. Sure, there's subjectivity in how we define which things are considered harmful enough to address as an externality or outlaw in the first place, but greenhouse gases, for example, are pretty cut and dry, and either way, it's a huge improvement over the current system (don't address externalities directly, create new big political programs that sort of address symptoms once they become big problems).

TheDong 3y ago

It is fundamentally impossible to completely undo things, trivially so from the second law of thermodynamics. A company which produces nuclear waste can pay the cost to store it, but cannot undo its existence. A company that burns oil can offset the carbon capture, but cannot put new oil in the ground. A company that cuts a forest of 500 year old trees can't wait 500 years to verify they estimated the cost of raising such a forest again correctly (and also, the company will be gone by then anyway). Right now, we care about CO2, but there's a lot more to natural resources than simple CO2 math will give us. > we shouldn't outlaw useful and fundamentally positive things that emit CO2 like driving a car, but rather tax the pollution according to the cost to recapture that carbon from the shared environment Focusing on incrementally taxing things like that is basically what the parent article complains about. That misses the old-growth forest for the CO2 in one tree.

lend000 3y ago
Originally all forests were all growth forests, so should we have never violated the land and stayed in the stone age? At some point we need to compromise. > It is fundamentally impossible to completely undo things, trivially so from the second law of thermodynamics. As in, undo things as a reasonable person would define them. Undoing burning gasoline could indeed involve taxing such that we produce more hydrocarbons (which is possible to do), but what good does burying oil do? I don't agree with much of the article; I think we should benefit from the bounty of the universe and I believe in property rights and the ability to own land. However, more reasonable externalities are still relevant (such as putting pollution into a shared atmosphere or body of water) or potentially even some economic or social externalities. And as the article hints at, addressing the externality of who gets access to the free bounty of the universe. But its premise: "none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated" is flawed, because the prices would just rise and consumption would decrease if externalities were incorporated.

imtringued 3y ago

It is kind of ironic how market economies and planned economies both succumb to the economic calculation problem. The people who used it to antagonize planned economies only had price discovery and supply and demand in mind. They didn't consider that money and prices will never capture all real economic variables like pollution. There is no "objective" level of pollution tax, it is purely subjective and since we don't have two earths between which people can migrate to choose the planet with the optimal carbon tax, you are going to have to rely on governments to just guess the right amount of tax and there is no way around it.

lend000 3y ago
My point is actually that it can be done more or less objectively in the most relevant cases, especially where the atmosphere is concerned. Tax the polluting activity and use the taxes to exactly offset the pollution. If it can't be undone, or there wasn't any of that type of pollution in the atmosphere to start with, then it shouldn't be taxed--it should be banned. Sure, there's subjectivity in how we define which things are considered harmful enough to address as an externality or outlaw in the first place, but greenhouse gases, for example, are pretty cut and dry, and either way, it's a huge improvement over the current system (don't address externalities directly, create new big political programs that sort of address symptoms once they become big problems).