[CWuestefeld]

It should be the place of Government to ensure that these externalities are re-addressed (e.g. by taxing companies on every item of theirs which goes into landfill), and for us the citizens to lobby them to do so.

That won't eliminate the externality. All appliances will now cost $X more. In the meantime, the government will have collected $X*N more revenue, but it won't have gone toward recycling the decommissioned appliances; instead, they'll have gifted it to their favorite special interests. Net outcome is a happy special interest, a re-elected politician, but a sad consumer and a sad mother earth. I don't see it being worth it.

[PeterisP]

It would make a difference - an appliance that would last 15 years would be $X more expensive, but buying 5 appliances that each last 3 years would cost 5*$X. If $X is meaningfully large, it becomes a strong motivation to prefer things that last longer.

[CWuestefeld]

It would make some difference, but it's only doing half the job. The tax would remove the manufacturer's incentive to sell additional units through planned obsolescence (or at least, to the degree that the government has the ability to calculate this).

But I feel confident in predicting that it won't address the other side of the coin, that revenue would be used to actually keep the old appliances out of landfills, and to recycle their components. I'm hard pressed to think of examples of putatively earmarked taxes where the entirety of the revenue still goes to what it was originally promised for.

[woah]

So is your argument that there should never be any taxes of any kind (anarcho-primitivism)?

If that's not your argument, then what is unique about landfill taxes that make them more likely to be "gifted to special interests"?

[CWuestefeld]

So is your argument that there should never be any taxes of any kind (anarcho-primitivism)?

I didn't say anything that even implied that. Clearly there are public goods that are best handled by a government.

My reply was directed specifically at a comment that proposed a tax to address environment problems caused by planned obsolescence. I was showing that the proposal doesn't actually do anything to eliminate the environmental externality.

If you can show me a more complete proposal that (a) really does address the environmental impact as part of the program; and also (b) addresses Public Choice economics (meaning that it accounts for regulatory capture, capriciously re-purposing the funds by politicians, etc.), then we can talk about it.