[ceejayoz]

> Every economic inefficiency --- every forced deviation from what people would prefer to produce --- has a cost.

It's not always that clear.

Replacing coal with solar was an economic inefficiency, until enough investment into solar happened. It's now cheaper to produce a MW/h via solar than via coal.

And that's before you factor in the pollution externalities.

We're all better off now because we did the temporarily inefficient thing via (in part) government intervention.