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A comment on The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money. Parent comment

Re:The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money by winstonewert on Sunday July 17, 2016 @03:26PM (#12111383)
"The cost of administering a cap and trade system to the minor producers would be incredibly expensive - the legislation would instead focus on gouging the five major producers"

Why is that different from the tax approach? Wouldn't taxing the 50,000 minor producers appropriate to their levels of pollution be equally as expensive?

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Re:The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money by icambron on Sunday July 17, 2016 @05:25PM (#12111914)
The key part of that is administering part. Cap and trade requires the producer participate in a market for cap allowances. It's that overhead that makes it more expensive.
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Re:The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money by winstonewert on Monday July 18, 2016 @10:38AM (#12115265)
Ok, yes, I see that there will be some extra expenses in tracking and trading the allowances. I would expect that to be neglible next to the cost of tracking the pollution by all those producers.
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Re:The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money by aoeuasdf1 on Monday July 18, 2016 @03:53AM (#12113732)
No, if they're producing by buying oil or coal. Just tax the source.
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Re:The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money by winstonewert on Monday July 18, 2016 @10:36AM (#12115255)
I assumed in this scenario that the the producers being taxed are already the ones who extract the oil or coal. If there are 50,000 minor oil producers then taxing all of them will be a bit of a headache.
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