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When it has reached the cost of renewing the resource. Taxing externalities isn't about "guaranteeing everyone can have access to the resource": that's circula

When it has reached the cost of renewing the resource. Taxing externalities isn't about "guaranteeing everyone can have access to the resource": that's circular. Taxing externalities is about ensuring that those who profit from a public good, also pay the public for the value of that good. Hypothetical: If tomorrow it turns out that eating beef is somehow the ultimate cause of environmental destruction, and every cow fart requires $1MM in cleanup fees or humanity goes extinct, then we should tax cows at $1MM per fart, full stop. "But not everyone will be able to eat beef!" is not an argument, unless you want to say "We would rather all eat beef than survive as a species." Of course: in reality it's not so clear cut. But the principle remains. Of course: once you've determined a price for the good and levied taxes, you can then either use that price to clean up / renew the resource, or just distribute the money directly to citizens (see canada's "carbon price") to effectively pay people not to consume the resource. Same difference.

Larrikin 1y ago
The solution to fossil fuels was not make gas cost 20 dollars a gallon (or an imagined unbounded amount) so only people who really need to drive can afford it. It was serious research into many different forms of energy. There are many old people who have their lively hoods tied to the fact that we ignore the science, but we do have solutions. Propose some kind of research into lab grown meat, extremely cheap feed, or some unthought of billion dollar idea solution. Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously.
- Nursie 1y ago
  Actually in a lot of places the attempted solution was to put steadily escalating taxes on 'gas', to try to make people drive less. That plus put restrictions on vehicle efficiency to drive down fuel use, which can also be argued to push up car prices. And look where that rather gentle approach got us - we've had decades of people knowing there's a climate crisis coming and here we are still burning fossil fuels for power. > Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously. So in your mind it is better to drive the seas to complete destruction than to limit catches and thereby push up the price? You know this is self-limiting, right? In that if we kill everything in the seas, those people still won't get cheap fish, and the 'rich' will eat the last few at great expense?
- energy123 1y ago
  I take a lifecycle view. Early on, public subsidy of research is necessary. US President Carter and the Germans did a good job with that for solar. When you have a mature product 50 years later, that's when tax policy and/or industrial policy becomes more impactful. Industry itself is doing most of the innovating at this late stage, so you want policy to nudge existing consumers towards the preferred substitute. None of these policies are competing with one another, they are complementary. You can even use the tax revenue to fund the early-stage research of other moonshot technologies.
- nothrabannosir 1y ago
  A pigovian tax is not mutually exclusive with those options— in fact it incentivizes them. No need to do market planning for “lab grown meat” or whatever is the central planner’s fancy du jour: set a price and let the market figure it out. Why have governments pick and choose “winning energy strategies” when you can let the market do it? Literally how it works in practice with carbon credits today, your assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Larrikin 1y ago

The solution to fossil fuels was not make gas cost 20 dollars a gallon (or an imagined unbounded amount) so only people who really need to drive can afford it. It was serious research into many different forms of energy. There are many old people who have their lively hoods tied to the fact that we ignore the science, but we do have solutions. Propose some kind of research into lab grown meat, extremely cheap feed, or some unthought of billion dollar idea solution. Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously.

Nursie 1y ago
Actually in a lot of places the attempted solution was to put steadily escalating taxes on 'gas', to try to make people drive less. That plus put restrictions on vehicle efficiency to drive down fuel use, which can also be argued to push up car prices. And look where that rather gentle approach got us - we've had decades of people knowing there's a climate crisis coming and here we are still burning fossil fuels for power. > Rich get to enjoy something that all of humanity has enjoyed for the entirety of human existence will never be a solution people take seriously. So in your mind it is better to drive the seas to complete destruction than to limit catches and thereby push up the price? You know this is self-limiting, right? In that if we kill everything in the seas, those people still won't get cheap fish, and the 'rich' will eat the last few at great expense?
energy123 1y ago
I take a lifecycle view. Early on, public subsidy of research is necessary. US President Carter and the Germans did a good job with that for solar. When you have a mature product 50 years later, that's when tax policy and/or industrial policy becomes more impactful. Industry itself is doing most of the innovating at this late stage, so you want policy to nudge existing consumers towards the preferred substitute. None of these policies are competing with one another, they are complementary. You can even use the tax revenue to fund the early-stage research of other moonshot technologies.
nothrabannosir 1y ago
A pigovian tax is not mutually exclusive with those options— in fact it incentivizes them. No need to do market planning for “lab grown meat” or whatever is the central planner’s fancy du jour: set a price and let the market figure it out. Why have governments pick and choose “winning energy strategies” when you can let the market do it? Literally how it works in practice with carbon credits today, your assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.