Re:Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018)
by eru on Friday December 04, 2020 @04:43AM
(#25300620)
> As a single counterpoint, we've been taxing cigarettes a ton for several decades. Smoking rates have gone down, but only extremely slowly. It took decades. So if you consider partially solving an issue after several decades "efficient", then yeah, taxes are efficient.
Economists usually take into account that people also get utility out of eg using plastic straws or smoking cigarettes. They are by and large not a very judgy lot.
Taxes just make it so that the private cost-benefit decision can take into account (ie 'internalize') the costs to the public.
Your examples of screws is great to illustrate this! We don't ban the discarding of screws, and it would be somewhat silly to do so.
> For the last point, I'd definitely want to see examples where taxes are more efficient than bans. Everything I've seen and read (and I like to read a lot), points the other way around.
What are you reading? I am talking about efficiency in the same sense as it's used in economics. And taxes being more efficient than bans is pretty much Econ 101. But I can dig up some links, if you want to.
Economists usually take into account that people also get utility out of eg using plastic straws or smoking cigarettes. They are by and large not a very judgy lot.
Taxes just make it so that the private cost-benefit decision can take into account (ie 'internalize') the costs to the public.
Your examples of screws is great to illustrate this! We don't ban the discarding of screws, and it would be somewhat silly to do so.
> For the last point, I'd definitely want to see examples where taxes are more efficient than bans. Everything I've seen and read (and I like to read a lot), points the other way around.
What are you reading? I am talking about efficiency in the same sense as it's used in economics. And taxes being more efficient than bans is pretty much Econ 101. But I can dig up some links, if you want to.