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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: spiral3 who wrote (72674)	6/17/2008 4:53:57 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542171

If you think things like efficiency or emissions targets which are instituted at the level of production, impose a hard govt target for the private actions of individuals, you really need to think again Production is done by individuals. Usually individuals operating in concert as part of an organization, sometimes a quite large organization, but its still individuals doing the production. And its individuals doing the buying of the products. If you limit what can be produced or imported, than you limit what people can buy. If you impose a cost on negative externality than it effects peoples choice but it doesn't limit it as much as if you impose a limit on that externality, which in turn doesn't limit individual choice and freedom as much as if you outright ban the externality. Which is not to say that limits and bans have no role to play, since individual freedom isn't the only concern, and since externalities impose harm on others and to the extent that the harm is sizable people should not generally be assumed to always be free to cause that harm. But the lost freedom from the bans and hard limits should still be a concern IMO. Something that gets added to the balance when you are making decisions. And in addition individual freedom you have the concerns about economic efficiency and growth. If you impose a cost to cover the externality but don't define specific ways to deal with the cost, you will tend to get more efficent responses to the cost than if you impose hard caps, and/or bans, and/or detailed requirements.