Re:US to ban soaps and other products containing microbeads
by WalterBright on Friday December 11, 2015 @08:34PM
(#10721365)
Taxing is also better than banning, because:
1. there are always uses of something that makes sense, and may contribute only insignificant downsides. Getting a regulatory exception is slow and expensive.
2. they produce revenue for the government, whereas banning is a cost sink
In economics, this is called "internalizing the externalities". There is a good mechanism that works very well, it's taxation. Instead of taxing productive things people do, tax the polluting things.
Also, the most polluted countries in the world tend to be the ones with centrally planned economies. There's nothing inherently environmentally conscious about central planning.