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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3475 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 11, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/19/politics/led-cfl-light-bulb-rule-biden-climate/index.html

What act of congress gives the Biden administration the power to ban CFL lightbulbs that were made mandatory only a decade ago? Standards for everything keep getting incrementally and arbitrarily worse, and congress hasn't ever lifted a finger.

The same thing is being done with the gas stove ban that's both a ridiculous conspiracy theory and also happening and good.

This thing drives me crazy. LEDs are better than the other alternatives in every way except price.

So why don’t they tax them instead of ban them? Just seems idiotic to not let people who want the worse thing to pay for it. And the whole point is to avoid the tragedy-of-the-commons inherent in climate change, so figure out what the diff is in switching, then set the tax at that rate. Bam, now you’ve properly incentivized everyone to do the right thing.

I just don’t get why the govt refuses to make use of the economic engine we have at our disposal.

If the politics were good I think there would be a move towards carbon taxation as a primary tool to fight emissions among left and centre-left (perhaps also centre-right) legislators but unfortunately they are bad so we're reduced to this kind of ad hoc policy.

I just don’t get why the govt refuses to make use of the economic engine we have at our disposal.

Carlyle called economics "the dismal science" out of disappointment that it wasn't providing a defense of slavery, but instead was "reducing the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone". Modern government would never go so far as to defend slavery, of course, but the repugnance felt at "letting men alone" doesn't seem to have decreased. It's easy to understand the feeling, even if you know the feeling is wrong, isn't it? The idea of being one of the ones who calculate whether a Pigouvian tax on coal power should be 5 cents per kwh or 6 next year is almost emasculating compared to the idea of being one of the ones who dictate "The Time Of Wasteful Light Ends Now. I Have Spoken."

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