Comment by keybored

They’re blaming entities with power. E.g. 90% of the US have no impact on policy evidenced by there being no correlation between their policy preferences and real policy (2011 Princeton study).

> Can any legislature get away with dramatically increasing taxes on meat, fish, gas, and plane tickets, just at a level high enough to account for environmental externalities? Even dictatorships couldn't get away with it because it would cause too much unrest.

Is the idea to increase the VAT or something? The taxes on consumption?

Okay, so how would this work? You increase these taxes so that the bad consumers don’t travel for pleasure (just companies for business). Eventually people just buy what they need, like food which is presumably decently locally sourced, enough clothes to not freeze or be indecent. You’re still left with gas for commuting to job because people live an hour from work not out of choice but because of real estate prices. And what are in the stores are Made in China or Vietnam because that’s how the global market works; cheap shipping from cheap countries.

But these taxes would organically change all of that?

The usual narrative conveniently focuses on how Joe Beergut is causing problems by driving to work. And that this is how taxation should work; individual income, individual consumption, individual taxes. The more and more “libertarian”, the more the narrative slide towards taxes on income, taxes on consumption, and eventually just a flat tax because that is “fair”. But that seems to leave the big blindspot of corporations and individuals that might own fleets of trucks that of course tax the road infrastructure—no taxes for them?

But what headway could be made if the externalities were all caused by Joe Beergut. Libertarians and the environmental narrative might agree.