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Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 16, 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?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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i think usually people cleaning up externalities would otherwise be doing something else to produce GDP in the economy so the issue is usually not so bad in practice. also, in practice how GDP is calculated might not include some cleaning externalities. GDP is based on final goods otherwise you could just increase GDP by infinitely splitting production into smaller steps. some externality cleaning is going to look like an 'input' to a final product.