On 5/27/09, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > is it right to conclude that these days "cap and trade," in contrast > to a carbon emission tax, is a Trojan Horse to give big subsidies to > polluters?
Yeah, that always has been the case. In theory you can construct a cap-and-trade system that does not do this - see for example Peter Barne's SkyTrust (now framed as cap-and-dividend). But such systems are as marginalized any other alternative. The only advantage to cap-and-trade over other approaches is the ability to make large subsidies to corporations and to undermine compliance requirements without appearing to do so. (It is not that other approaches are not equally vulnerable in the abstract to these things. But cap-and-trade is the most effective way to carry such things out while hiding what is being done.) When people talk about all the flaws and imperfections in cap-and-trade, these are not really flaws or imperfections, but the point of choosing this approach. "Its not a bug. Its a feature." Capitalist ideological hegemony is occasionally a discussion subject on Pen-L - how all these problematic assumption become "common sense". Cap-and-trade is example of where this has been happening right in front of us in a very short time. I think back when Robin Hahnel was posting on Pen-L, he discussed a very early stage in this process. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
