Reply To: Cap and Trade

[Rezwan]

dennisp wrote: “Cap-and-trade is dangerous precisely because it gives that lot, and other similar bodies, authority over the valuation of every productive activity on the planet, almost.”

Once we have a fusion-based economy that will no longer be remotely true.

Again with the fusion ex machina. Which is fine, but won’t make the preceding any more or less “true”. “Moot”, perhaps. “Unresolved”.

Cap and Trade isn’t any more dangerous than drilling for oil, I suspect.

As to giving “that lot” authority over the valuation – not quite. That’s what’s left up to markets to determine. “That lot” sets the cap, and then all the trading (market-based valuation exercise) begins. Knowing that only x amount of pollutant can be produced, trades occur to bring about the most beneficial (per the market) use.

So people, in their amazing, flexible, market oriented way, find substitutions and carry on their merry ways.

This is the kind of thing you need for water (so people don’t demand some kind of G*d given right to use up every drop of water, even though it’s more expensive to clean that water later – or to replace groundwater) and so forth.

We only have x amount of water – so let’s work out the most lucrative use for it and find ways to conserve elsewhere. Sounds reasonable.

Of course, this is said in the context of a world where the market is artificially propped up in so many ways with corporate welfare rampant, water rights completely insane and so forth.

To even begin to try and get people to make an honest living or evaluate their true costs – well, that just sets everyone to howling.