Robert
’1. Placing a tax on something we want to discourage is not “central planning” unless you want to redefine the term so broadly that it become essentially meaningless. If carbon taxes or alcohol taxes or cigarette taxes are “central planning,” then jaywalking laws are totalitarian.’
Laws are intended to protect people from other more brutal or ruthless people. Thus pollution, child labour, occupational health and safety – as well as the usual laws on murder, robbery, etc and many other such laws – can be justified as protection of the populace.
Laws on alcohol and cigarettes aim to protect the populace against themselves – and are very much more difficult to justify where there is a component of the tax that is meant to reduce demand rather than just to recover costs.
All laws are by definition central planning – they limit freedom by consent in a democratic society. We are not free to murder someone without risking state organised retribution.
Carbon taxes impose ‘substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future — benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.’
We are quite entitled to withhold consent to carbon taxes- as I most emphatically do.
’2. It’s a good example of a non-falsifiable argument to claim “all of which have ended dismally, though some take longer than others to disintegrate.” I might propose that all candidates for public office cut off one leg. I will advocate for this by arguing that “we have had extensive experience with representation by two-leggeds on a national scale, all of which have ended dismally, though some take longer than others to disintegrate.’
This of course is a logical fallacy. But the essence of our enlightenment heritage is individual freedom, private property, representative democracy and the rule of law. All other systems have ended very badly indeed with hundreds of millions of people dying in the bloodbath that was the 20th century. If this is your battleground – be prepared for irrelevance.
’3. If something as simple and decentralized as a carbon tax puts us on the road to “disintegration,” then presumably the United States was doomed long ago, when it built a vast system of interlocking highways under federal direction, for example, or when it created a federal agency empowered to deliver mail and parcels.’
There are certain services that a government might reasonably supply. Defence, education, health, water, sanitation, roads, etc. We may equally, in a democracy, not give consent to any or all of these. But carbon taxes are not even a service of any sort. They impose substantial costs on production – and this is the road to ruin for many people. You have to convince them that there is a benefit here. I think carbon taxes are fundamentally flawed technically – so you have lost one vote already. Your self imposed task is impossible – carbon taxes are dead politically. You may disagree – but hey that’s democracy.
I suggest you read Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty and the Road to Serfdom – for a fuller understanding of the role of law and government in a free society.
