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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

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).

jraph 4y ago
> 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.
- datadata 4y ago
  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.

jraph 4y ago

> 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.

datadata 4y ago
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.