Re:Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
by Nursie on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @12:07PM
(#27196648)
> How about we just make people pay for their negative externalities, and let them do whatever they want.
Well, for one, because that tends to mean "rich folks and large companies can act with impunity, everyone else not so much".
For two, we actually do discriminate quite happily between different uses of things. Maybe it's OK to keep energy prices low for households, as a compromise, but not for crypto mining?
Re:Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
by GhostVII on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @12:27PM
(#27197073)
Whats the problem with rich fold acting with impunity, so long as they pay for what they use? If someone burns enough electricity to power 1000 homes, but they pay for the environmental impact, and are charged enough for the electricity to fund building more generation capacity, that's a net win. Giving each household some amount of free or subsidized power makes sense. If they want to burn that power crypto mining that's their decision.
Re:Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
by Nursie on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @12:34PM
(#27197175)
> If someone burns enough electricity to power 1000 homes, but they pay for the environmental impact ...
Well, firstly, are we even sure that's really possible?
> Giving each household some amount of free or subsidized power makes sense
Which is basically exactly what I was talking about - we can and do decide that some uses are better than others, and use regulation (some of which may be tax or credit) to achieve that.
We already do this. I'm not sure why people are so aghast that we might do it some more for PoW cryptocurrencies.
If you want to encourage other uses of electricity, subsidize them, don't just ban arbitrary forms of consumption.