re: #49 Obdicut

I am immediately incredibly suspicious towards people like DeMint and other conservatives who say “low taxes”. “Low” is a comparative. It’s meaningless on its own. At it’s worse, it’s a constant refrain that taxes should always go lower and lower.

I want taxes to be at a level that’s sustainable, that damages neither our economy or our society, and sufficient to fund the necessary operation of our government.

That may be higher than what we have now. Climate change is going to cost a shitload to fix. However, I have faith that by effective spending and by effective administration of taxes, we can cause minimal suffering while achieving great results.

Or we could, if the GOP weren’t currently engaged in a race to see who can be the stupidest on science and economy at the same time, and if the Democrats didn’t run away from all their accomplishments and have so few people willing to stand up for common sense.

I’m reminded of the tale in which three brothers are in the running to succeed the dead King. The King provided in his will that the brothers should ride to the capital city, with the one whose horse was last through the gate succeeding.

This led to a bad case of the slows, until a wit suggested a remedy. Swap horses around, and the brothers would each have an incentive to ride through the gates quickly. This was done, and the dilemma in which the incentive structure of the rules led to stasis was resolved.

Here, what we need is not necessarily that government shall levy taxes and build wind farms, solar farms, and nuclear power plants. It might be better to just switch around the rules to where there’s money to be made in building those things, and then stand back and watch the hooves pound and the turf fly as everybody gets down to business building them.

A simple tax on CO2 emissions might be one place to start. A subsidy for electricity from non-fossil sources would be another. Blanket authority to build power transmission lines, right through national monuments, state parks, and national parks if necessary, or to take private property for that public use if that was the best path, would be another. Blanket authorization to build nuclear power plants according to a pre-approved design, and government immunity from frivolous lawsuits, would be another.

The threat that current law will be deployed against any new energy technology is a real one. Current law is a swamp. Nobody knows what can be punished, and lawsuits can go forward on any grounds or really none at all. Witness the NIMBY nonsense at Nantuckett. All this has to be swept aside. Endangered species act included; ALL species are endangered if this effort fails, after all. So, for purposes of green energy, the endangered species act ought to be amended to include a waiver.

Greed has its downside, but hope of gain energizes most of humanity and human zeal and energy will be needed in quantities compulsion and penalties cannot mobilize.

Tinker with the rules so that green energy is a winning strategy, fund R&D so that green energy gets more efficient over the years, and you’ll get green energy on the scale needed to run an industrial civilization. You won’t, en passant, get a purely liberal society. There will still be private corporations, and big ones making lots of money, and stocks, and rich people and others who are not anywhere near rich.

But it’s a mistake to insist that green energy must be the vehicle for social reform, and shun any path to a green future that is merely green, rather than socially green. Get us to merely green, and we can worry about the rest later.