[stale2002]

OK then, let's say that for every plastic bag someone uses they are charged 1 million dollars.

Do you believe that this would "price in" the cost of a plastic bag? Do you believe that, given a million dollars for every bag used, the government could clean up this supposedly irreversible damage?

I believe it could. Not only that, I believe the price would be much less than 1 million dollars.

Or how about this. Let's say they instead used that money to fix a completely different problem that is also causing permanent damage, and is equal or worse than the damage caused by plastic bags.

There is always a price. There are always trade-offs and opportunity costs.

[nmrm2]

> Do you believe that, given a million dollars for every bag used, the government could clean up this supposedly irreversible damage?

You're missing the point.

If you charged a million dollars for every bag used then basically no one would use plastic bags. Or at least few enough people that the aggregate environmental impact would be negligable. As it turns out $5 or $10 would probably work as well as $1M.

The whole point is that it's totally impossible to come up with realistic estimates for something like plastic bag waste. So you set the prices high enough to disincentivize their use.

The purpose is the disincentive, not actually putting accurate prices on externalities. Confusing these two things is the source of the confusion in SilasX's original post.

[pdonis]

> it's totally impossible to come up with realistic estimates for something like plastic bag waste.

If it is, then it's also totally impossible to show that plastic bags are harming the environment enough to make draconian regulation a net gain.

In other words, the real purpose of the regulation is an arbitrary exercise of power: some people just can't help telling other people what to do, and when those people get to write laws and regulations, this is what you get. "Saving the environment" is just the latest ad hoc justification.

[nmrm2]

Yeah right there is not a single genuine environmentalist in the whe world. They're all just control freaks hell bent on messing with your life /s