Common, this argument is like saying that I don't want you to be able to have Christmas lights on your house. Doing that would be sacrificing energy that the entire world needs for a benefit that only you and your neighbors get, and that non-Christian people might idealologically not care about.

You have a point.

However, I indeed don't want Christmas light on my home for somewhat related reasons.gratuitously

But I suspect Christmas lights are not even close to reaching the levels of energy consumed by blockchain mining worldwide. Even Christmas lights are more useful than PoW blockchains.

As human beings we are going to consume energy and produce CO2 for pleasure (we are not talking about strict necessity here). Because in the end, I believe enjoying life is almost an (the?) end-goal of life, if any. But we don't need to burn some so gratuitously neither.

I don't really think the aggregate total is important. You would at least have to then assess if that total is worth the goals of the system or not, which again brings in the subjective judging of whether the thing is important or not. I would rather just tax the externalities and let people decide how to spend inside of that.

For the record though, bitcoin mining uses more than Christmas lights, but far less than clothes dryers, and far less than gold mining (and gold mining is pretty horrible for human rights and land destruction as well).

> which again brings in the subjective judging of whether the thing is important or not

Completely agree.

> far less than clothes dryers, and far less than gold mining (and gold mining is pretty horrible for human rights and land destruction as well).

Agree too.

> I would rather just tax the externalities and let people decide how to spend inside of that.

Mhm, I don't believe in the effectiveness of this and I think we need something stronger than this, but that's a belief. One problem with taxing externalities is that richer people get to waste more with fewer consequences than poorer people a.k.a they have a right to pollute more / more power to pollute and I don't think we should be able to buy "pollution power". Currently, the amount of money one have is actually already roughly equivalent to one's power to pollute. Limiting the amount of CO2 each people can spend (without the ability to transfer, because that's equivalent to being able to buy pollution power", equally, might be fairer, and that would probably eliminate PoW mining because people will probably want to "spend" their limited amount of pollution in other ways.

Of course, I'd even prefer that people reach the conclusion that PoW mining is heresy and decide by themselves not to do that. That's an opinion, of course.

If the externality cost is high enough, consuming more carbon (from being wealthy) should not lead to unfairly contributing to global warming, if we just are able to use the tax revenue to reverse the problem, rather than merely to disincentive adding to the problem.

Your argument seems to be that energy use that doesn't benefit you is wrong. I would be surprised if the idea of telling purchasers of energy what they can do with it, or computers what calculations they are allowed to make, will find much purchase in the United States.

I vouched for your comment.

But...

> Your argument seems to be that energy use that doesn't benefit you is wrong

Not at all. It's not about me. It's about everybody on Earth. A few people are being, in my view, harmful to everybody, including themselves, for no clear benefits to themselves, and for no gain for society.

While, like (increasingly) many people, I'm trying hard to not heat my home too much in winter, avoiding planes, avoiding producing waste too much, some people gratuitously burn energy because why not.

Don't make me look like I'm self-centered or something.

80 % of pollution is made by a 100 companies.

Bitcoin is not one of them.