Asking corporations to track their supply chain for their carbon usage is a complete waste of time. All the information a firm needs is already reflected in the price of its goods/services.
This is why economists are in near universal agreement that a carbon tax is the optimal policy. It’s dead simple to implement
as it only requires tracking the sales of producers.
> How are you going to tax it if you don't track it?
This is a very good point, you should have stopped here instead of devolving into a purity spiral by attacking somebody who's obviously coming from a similar point of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral
It's funny, because I could, with zero incredulity, say that information disclosure allows consumers to accurately price externalities and market-based solutions are the most efficient ways to arrive at realistic price equilibria.
There is a very large body of evidence that demonstrates consumers are unwilling to pay higher prices for environmental benefits.
The entire premise of Pigouvian taxes is that they force consumers to pay the external cost, not let them optionally avoid them. This leads to substitution effects lowering consumption of the pollutant.
All market participants must be subject to that price or you introduce arbitrage opportunity.
Strictly speaking, we already do. We're taxing carbon-based fuel quite a bit.
All it really does is make things more expensive though. You can say that such things are funding social services, but, realistically, all of government is funded by an unfathomable amount of debt, so raising taxes, or creating new taxes, isn't likely to change much of anything outside of increasing how much debt is available.
We tax road fuel as a proxy for road usage; it’s mostly a use tax. Use taxes are nearly optimal policy.
Carbon taxes (Pigouvian taxes) are a solution to the problem of pricing externalities by incentivizing alternatives. The tax creates a wedge where consumers choose alternatives.
Incentives matter and produce better outcomes by changing behavior.
If you’re going to tax gas into oblivion, you better have an affordable alternative fully ready to go or people will lose their minds. And no, “just buy a $50K electric car” isn’t a viable solution for a large segment of the population.
Today it’s not viable. But we don’t have to implement this as a cliff function. Start at 50$/ton and increase it to 500$ over 20 years. This gives industry a major signal to invest for the down the road changes and for technology to develop/business to adapt.
With the right signal, by 2035 BEV will be cheaper than ICE. This of course assumes we don’t let the Sierra Club prevent us from mining lithium to protect some random beetle in the desert.
Is there any reason to expect that these additional costs won't be passed onto California consumers? All the physical industry is moving out of California. Intel's last plant was moved out around what, 2008 (?). What do we think is going to happen? There is no magic. Companies raise prices and/or move out to the more favorable locations, including overseas (e.g. China, Vietnam, Mexico).
Any carbon tax or carbon tax-like policy will be passed on. However, the _absence of a carbon tax_ already causes costs we don't see yet, when in the future, people die as a consequence of climate change.
> the _absence of a carbon tax_ already causes costs we don't see yet
We're talking about CA here. A single, albeit large, US state. As we see from emissions moving from the west to China, if CA imposes a tax then carbon emissions will just move somewhere else. The absence of a carbon tax in one US state likely has little effect on AGW. I would argue that interfering with market based production location may cause even more emissions as shipping costs may increase.
Ok, so all the carbon moves to developing nations that don't care. What will we have achieved beyond lowering the standard of living in developed nations?
A dramatic reduction in pollution resulting in fewer deaths by respiratory hazards? And once carbon pricing for imports comes in you get to price carbon appropriately all around?
People moan about these sorts of costs to the consumer but its such small fish. Oh the gas tax in California makes it tough for people I'm sure, having to pay another whole $7 to fill up the tank. Meanwhile 1 bedroom rent might be around $2k depending on where you live in the state. Carbon tax could literally double the cost of food, sending a single person from maybe a $75 grocery run a week to a $150 run, and it still wouldn't amount to much more than maybe two concert tickets a month, still only a fraction of rent. Goes to show how inflated rent is relative to just about every other aspect of life in this state.
They will be passed on, but Californians expect it. The prices are high, and the salary is high.
It actually helps them: They can import cheap goods from elsewhere and barely notice the cost.
I've noticed this in NYC - things are just so cheap relative to income that people don't care at all about items, they are very wasteful relative to other places I've been, and they kind of have to be, because they don't have much storage space. "Buy it, use it, toss it, buy it again when you need it." In contrast in places with more space (and lower income) people tend to store things for reuse.
Yeah, regulations have costs and economies change over time, not exactly a news flash.
But California is one of the largest and most advanced economies in the world. The same is true of Germany, which has been getting the California treatment recently. And both are currently performing very well given the global context (inflation, energy) and have proven tremendously robust historically, which makes these constant declarations of doom and gloom especially suspicious to me.
Dude, they are having a mild recession because of an energy shock and inflation. It's like being the slowest guy at the olympics. But for just one race.
Of course they'll just pass the costs onto consumers. California is highly competitive, and competition always means slimmer margins, and slimmer margins mean a business can't eat additional costs and remain viable.
This will help all the of the corporate tools like concur. You will have to have software to track all of this. To track supply chain emissions you are going to have to have a chain of logging that is trusted.
Why not just tax the inputs? You dug some carbon out of the ground? You moved some carbon in through the border? You get taxed heavily for each tonne. Feel free to pass along the cost to the people who burn the stuff or dump it into the landfills. Use the tax to subsidize purchase of renewables for customers.
Well that's kind of the point, get the companies that pollute with impunity out of our communities. Things like oil fields and refineries take up so much acreage for the amount of people they employ, and many are still situated adjacent to homes.
Why? Neither oil nor agriculture are large sectors as other parts of the californian economy, both contribute like 7% combined to the state GDP (1,2). Oil can be bought from elsewhere, it doesn't need to be extracted from the middle of residential neighborhoods in LA county like its the 1890s still.
Sure, but it's not like fossil fuels are the only way to power transport, although they're certainly the easiest way at present thanks to all the existing plant & infrastructure.
I have no issue with domestic production, just when its done in places that inevitably lead to the children getting significantly elevated rates of disease due to proximity and poor land use decisions.
If they're full, it's a good thing. If we could get just 50,000 people to leave CA and go to a few swing states like PA and OH, it would be the end of the Republican party as we know it.
What is wrong with the Republican Party? Texas produces more renewable energy than California. The redneck attitude of do whatever you want on your land, and anti-regulation attitudes are far more important than political grandstanding.
Texas also produces more non-renewable energy than California.
Texas gets 8.5% of its energy from renewables. California gets 16.5%. (The state with the most from renewables is Washington with 50%, followed by South Dakota at 43%, and Maine at 38%).
For electricity the US average is 39% from renewables. Texas is a little below average at 33%. California is at 49%. (Highest is Vermont at 99+%, South Dakota at 83%, and Washington at 82%).
In terms of CO2 Mt/TWh the US average is 402. Texas is 428. California is 229. (The best are Vermont at 5, Washington at 100, Oregon at 143, and South Dakota at 145).
One thing that is wrong with them is that they don't believe they lost in 2020. They need to be beaten decisively the way that the Democrats got beat in 1984 to be cured of that.
The first question itself has a lot of answers, but sticking to the topic of climate/renewables it would be silly to pretend that the republican party actually cares about the environment (especially if it isn't financially beneficial to them in the short term).
If anyone’s interested, I have a model developed that shows exactly which counties people would have to populate, which ones to ignore completely, while maintaining balance in the democrat areas
for me, this is a non-partisan observation
population wise, the republican party simply does not have the numbers to do the same. there are very few deeply red or blue counties, but uniquely the deeply red ones are sparsely populated. so most red counties can be swung with a tiny population change to push over 50%, or can be swung by a tiny population moving there.
I made the model because I was surprised some super pac or some other well funded interest group didn't already do a relocation program like this
I’ll contract it out to super pacs and campaigns, and those interested. I did it in 2022 and it was too late for the midterms but its time now for the national elections
There is actually a great Youtube channel on this very topic! Colorado used to be a very nice place. When I visited in 2008 it was idyllic. Then it flipped blue and with it came all the blue problems. Homelessness, Drug addiction, depression, high cost of living, and a general sense of malaise. When I visited Colorado again in 2021 it was unrecognizable.
I think it is very interesting to wonder how effective this would be
there are many circumstances where it becomes more apparent that a party isnt representing interests relevant to that area once someone is there, especially since some places would require residency for 7-8 months before being eligible
to vote there
I don't care about the outcome, I navigate a lot of countries, but I’ll sell things to partisans, they’re very emotional and deeply invested in the outcome
Don't people tend to change party when they move from cities to rural, and vice versa? So we could also end the Democratic party as we know it by convincing more people to move out of cities.
Which comes first? People start to have ideas that the city living isn't working out for them because they don't like X, Y, and Z and once they move, they realize that means they are now more red than a decade ago?
Or blue-no-matter-who Democrats move to a rural area and then change their beliefs?
I suspect it's more the former than the latter (you move after your beliefs change more than before).
As someone who grew up rural and has spent most of his adult life in cities, IME people change when going rural → urban, but don’t going the other way. Those who “change” after going rural tend to be those who previously straddled the fence in the city.
What do you think will happen when the Socialists will take over? Do you think they will look kindly on your various "freedoms" to be "different"? Check out Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea or even China. Don't think for a second that the San Francisco will stay the same under the totalitarian Socialist rule. The "intellectuals" and "different" people will be the first to go. Always happens, according to history, because "think different" people tend to question the authority and it's a big no-no under the Socialism. Oh, and you will get a free (somewhat crappy) healthcare.
Ok, I'll nibble here -- I would describe myself as a Socialist, and I'm happy to have an open conversation about the question you've asked. (Unless your question was rhetorical and not intended to be a discussion.)
Can I start by asking you what type of Socialism you are most concerned with?
Socialism is a very broad term with different meanings to different people.
For example, I am a Socialist who is against autocratic rule. I believe the Soviet style communists (the countries you mentioned) weren't much better than other contemporary autocrats and in many cases were far worse. There are other Socialists who believe that any hierarchy is bad and should be removed. It's a very diverse community of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and a wide variety of beliefs, only a small minority of which believe in totalitarian or single party rule.
I support, for example, democratic workers councils, federation of guilds, and other such elective methods of leadership. I just happen to also believe that labor entitles you to a share of the profit of that labor, rather than investment wealth. I'd love to live in a world where every company was a workers-coop, and we reduced our profit motive and increased our work comfort motive.
I don't doubt that you are against the autocratic rule. The point is that you won't have a choice. There will be another gentleman (they always appear), who will decide that he should be in charge and will take power, by force. You will complain, he will put you in jail or worse. At that point, you will remember that you had to dismantle democratic checks & balances (how else will you convince people to part with their property!), but it will be too late for you and everybody else.
> how else will you convince people to part with their property!
This is a great question, and a common misunderstanding! First, in case there's some confusion by other readers, I'm against private property controlling and directing labor, but not personal property -- that is to say that no one is going to take your xbox or Ford truck away from you. Those things are personal property, they are yours and should stay yours.
I do think, however, that private property -- the money used to exert control over others ("I'm the chief investor in X, so you must do what I say") -- should be replaced with cooperative ownership. Either through labor ownership, labor-customer ownership, or the state, as appropriate.
But, how do we achieve that? Yes, you could seize all the assets via force. But that's bad. Instead, you structure your incentives so it happens over time. Decrease the costs of running a co-op, reducing taxes or fees for businesses that are collectively owned. Increase taxes and fees proportional to the differences between the compensation of the highest paid individual and the lowest. Increase estate taxes, so no one immediately loses their money, but less capital passes down (obviously with gradients so as not to hurt most people). Expand property taxes to include other property at some nominal rate.
The other thing you could do is make it as easy to do the co-operative thing as it is to do the solo thing. Finding a lender to talk about cohousing is MUCH more difficult than finding one to talk about a mortgage. Finding a lawyer who can incorporate a co-op is much harder than finding out how to start an LLC. We would move significantly towards my ideals over time if the education and resources allocated were even close to parity.
It doesn't have to be a revolution and it doesn't have to be without the rule of law or anti-democratic.
While I appreciate the sentiment behind this new account, it’s also feeding a troll. Anyone equating SF to Soviet Russia is not looking for reasoned argument.
There's a part of me that hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be someone who listens and discusses and introspects a little. It's happened to me before, "Oh, all anarchists are kiddies" types who have never sat down and had a real conversation with an anarchist to understand what that term means. Every once in a blue moon someone listens and learns and says, "Well, I don't agree with you, but at least I understand you".
I'll keep extending that olive branch, quietly but assertively offering to discuss, answering questions. If it fails 99 times but succeeds once, that's one more person in the world who stops thinking in such rigid black and white about in-group vs out-group.
The problem with Socialism is the requirement for others to forcibly partake in it, otherwise it doesn't work. It's not just about forcing everyone to pay higher taxes, at its core it's about rewarding everyone equally, despite the fact some people choose to work more. The only way to stop this is to force everyone to work the same amount, which cannot be done in a humane way. This means inevitably, some people will always work harder than others, and if they're not rewarded by the market, they'll be rewarded by circumventing the state and being corrupt. This is what happens every single time it is tried. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
> at its core it's about rewarding everyone equally, despite the fact some people choose to work more
I hear this frequently, but I do not believe it is axiomatic. I believe we should provide a sense of equal minimum reward, a baseline level of food, shelter, amenities that everyone gets access to. Even if they cannot work or choose to work the minimum amount.
Again, it's important to recall that "Socialism" includes everything from Soviets to Anarchists to Democratic Socialists and many (many) flavors in between.
But it's not fundamentally antithetical to Socialism to recognize the people who choose to work more. The rewards structure might look different, depending on what flavor of Socialism you prefer, but I would expect that someone who goes above and beyond also tends to attract rewards (whether those are luxuries, time, recognition, or other things).
Even my anarchist/socialist friends would recognize that many luxuries are limited -- we cannot all have infinite bottles of aged whiskey -- but if you put in the extra time to really help out at the distillery, or really devote a lot of time to making their barrels, it stands to reason you'd be recognized for that.
I also genuinely believe that when you remove the necessity of "I need to work an excess to ensure I can afford to support my family's basic needs", the desire to work more comes from a passion for the work or for securing 'nice to haves'. There's nothing saying a worker's co-op couldn't decide to, for instance, nominate 10% of their peers each month for extra rewards or something.
> But it's not fundamentally antithetical to Socialism to recognize the people who choose to work more.
Fair point, and I think there are definitely enough resources to support people with disabilities or incapable of working for other extreme reasons. I guess the main discussion would be around where exactly to draw the line such that we're not forcing people to pay for those that choose to not work.
>I also genuinely believe that when you remove the necessity of "I need to work an excess to ensure I can afford to support my family's basic needs"
It depends on how we define "excess work". Unfortunately some people's excess work is another person's daily morning routine. If the productive person is not fairly rewarded, they will stop trying or even worse try something illegal or immoral. I think there are still a number of creative solutions to try, things like facilitating sponsorships for people of all ages to learn new skills, or investing in a public "linkedin" of sorts that is free and uses AI to match people with jobs. There are many creative and cheap things to try, and artificially imposing a certain "living wage" which constantly changes isn't addressing the root of the problem, which is that many people don't understand how to leverage the job market, their skills, etc.
I really appreciated Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, where he discusses how factories may, if the incentives were different, actually be quite pleasant places to work. If the factory needs to produce product but is open to anyone working at it, some folks will take the time to improve lighting, reduce noise and pollution, step in and take shifts, and generally try to make it nice to be there.
Not everyone will do this, but some folks are just wired to want to help in that way. The thing is that we don't have a financial incentive to do that today -- you must optimize your factory ruthlessly for production efficiency rather than for comfort.
I believe that rewards for excess work are similar -- some of us cannot put the work down, we enjoy doing it. I think those cases will largely fall into one of a few buckets:
1) Some folks will just do extra work and not be bothered that they are doing more. (I tend to fall into this bucket -- my needs are met, I do it because I derive value in the labor)
2) Some folks will divert their excess labor from production to a hobby, art, or other projects (like the factory comfort). It might not mean more widgets, but maybe we have enough widgets. If you make everyone around you happier, rewards will find you.
3) Some folks will want more luxuries, and we'll have to figure out if and how to allocate those things. Not everyone can work excess. If I lost a hand due to a workplace accident, but I'm otherwise eager to work, do I deserve less than someone who is equally eager but able bodied? I believe many Capitalists would say yes, but many Socialists would say no.
4) We'll have to recognize work that isn't considered 'work' today. Parenting, for instance, requires an immense amount of labor. Laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, elder care, etc. Maybe we encourage productive folks to spend their excess time looking for ways to make that work easier.
5) Some folks aren't going to be happy. They are going to feel under-rewarded for their labor. Hopefully this is offset by generally higher wages/standard of living for most. (If we're not paying billions of dollars to CEOs, that's billions in the pockets of individual workers).
6) Some folks work excess today and see no increase in comp -- it's already a problem for salaried workers, even within Capitalism. I can work 40 hours or 60 hours, but my pay is the same either way. I might get a notional bonus of a few grand a year, I might get an earlier promotion. But those things certainly aren't guaranteed.
> we're not forcing people to pay for those that choose to not work.
What is work is a very, very important question. If someone is a stay at home parent, cooking and cleaning, is that work? If someone is a musician, but isn't a particularly great one, is that work? If I sit in the park and tell stories and people enjoy listening to me and I have a regular audience, is that work? If I'm an elder and mostly enjoy spending my remaining years with my loved ones, is that work?
Yes, we must have some level of productivity, obviously, in order to survive. I strongly suspect that if you gave people basic needs, nearly everyone would chip in some labor, but we'd also probably need to decide on some mechanism for "who performs sanitation if we do not get enough volunteers?" Today that mechanism is "you gotta eat, so you gotta work wage labor", but we could absolutely replace that with "least popular labor gets bonus luxuries" or "we all take turns, once a year you gotta collect trash".
All of those hypotheticals can be true, yet you'll still need to deal with people who consciously choose not to work or do much less work. Under Socialism these behaviors are encouraged because they are rewarded regardless. Under Capitalism these people pay the price themselves, whether that is fair or not, not only is it more unfair to have others pay for it, but at least it discourages people to a great extent.
> 1) Some folks will just do extra work and not be bothered that they are doing more
I doubt this for most people. This is basically saying that right now a lot of people are ok with a pay cut (same work, less pay = free extra work). I can see a lot of people doing #2, which is equivalent to not working. And as mentioned before, these people are not working yet still somehow rewarded for it.
#5 and #6 are true, and is why if everyone gets a living wage regardless of whether they work or not, the people who currently don't enjoy doing what they do would simply stop doing it. Maybe everyone would become some kind of artist, while machines keep the economy running, but that is a utopia that requires many technological breakthroughs, i.e. advanced AI, unlimited renewable energy, better batteries, etc... and we're not getting there without Capitalism, which is somewhat ironic.
> but we'd also probably need to decide on some mechanism for "who performs sanitation if we do not get enough volunteers?" Today that mechanism is "you gotta eat, so you gotta work wage labor", but we could absolutely replace that with "least popular labor gets bonus luxuries" or "we all take turns, once a year you gotta collect trash".
This is something that the market solves as if it where a large, decentralized computer. Without market incentives there needs to be top-down coordination to incentivize people and this becomes unmanageable and does not scale.
I still feel that there is a problem with markets in how success is exponential for an extreme minority, while seemingly impossible to attain for a large portion at the bottom. I'm not sure what the best approach to solve that is, but we cannot take the wealth markets produce and expect the same output for a system without markets. The wealth we have under markets is not attainable without it, even though some people exponentially get rich from it. While inequality between rich and poor is bad, having everyone be poor because nobody can coordinate their productivity is even worse. Personally, I feel once AI becomes powerful enough, we will be able to do this kinds of complicated coordination that may solve the problem, however that path is a minefield of potential dystopias.
Someone could easily say the problem with capitalism is the requirement for others to forcibly partake in it. Like they send the police and army if you don't.
It's not though. You can grab a group of friends, buy some land and start a commune. It is perfectly compatible with local-level socialism. Nobody forces anyone to be a consumer. Now of course you have to work... but choosing not work and expecting food and shelter, is literally making others work for you (and in the case of welfare using the government to force others to pay for you).
1. Those symptoms you describe seem more general to fascist/totalitarian governments than just socialist governments. Are you saying all socialism is equivalent to totalitarian governments?
2. Do you believe those symptoms are unique and in-masse to socialist governments?
3. Why do you add China to that list when it is widely considered by many diverse institutions to be state capitalist?
> Why do you add China to that list when it is widely considered by many diverse institutions to be state capitalist?
This is a very interesting point. The Chinese State itself (and presumably 1.5 billion Chinese people) consider China a Socialist Country. No doubts about it. They call their economy a Socialist Market Economy. You could think of it as capitalist underlying economic structure and total social control of the Socialist State above it. From social perspective it's still totalitarian, which is exactly what socialism is.
It seems to be working for China and, possibly, that's what the majority of the Chinese people want. I am certainly not in business of telling other countries how to live. My only point is that it's not freedom from the liberal democracy perspective.
> 3. Why do you add China to that list when it is widely considered by many diverse institutions to be state capitalist?
You mean China today? China today commits more than their fair share of human rights abuses, but the worst atrocities in the PRC were perpetrated in the past by staunch socialists, not those capitalist reformers who later introduced capitalist elements back into Chinese society. During the Cultural Revolution the Red Guard, a hard-line socialist paramilitary mostly comprised of students, were purging anything that vaguely resembled capitalism or tradition. They murdered millions of people for socialism.
I read the article, and at this point, it's really just a bunch of politicians back-slapping each other and giving sound-bites about how they're taking a "stand for accountability". So when the oil companies report the most carbon emissions in the state, then what? If they do collect billions more in corporate taxes, will the accountability continue regarding the tax money? Sorry, I'm a jaded SOB.
I'm willing to bet that a substantial set of business, due to the nature of their industry, have no viable or available means to determine how much carbon they produce, much less for their suppliers or customers. What is the solution for these sorts of situations? Will they be fined out of existence?
This is going to cost billions to implement and enforce. Companies will have to hire large departments of people, including outside consultants, to manage it all. Expect higher prices to cover the cost.
Moving tax generating business around America like deck chairs while China just blasts pollution without check is meaningless virtue bullying. It's not serious and it ignores real long term consequences in the name of short term fashion.
