[edanm]

> People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets determine what we make.

Then people are wrong. Almost no economy is purely one of the other - even the most "free market" economies have lots of government regulation, government spending makes up huge parts of their economy, etc.

> We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to make and sell more stuff.

Totally doable in a completely free market way. You tax externalities.

This is basic stuff - economists generally agree that if you set up a carbon tax, people will use less carbon.

[philbarr]

The OP implied there was a third way. I didn't mean only one way or another.

[AtlasBarfed]

Taxing externalities reduces to a blame avoidance game in the political arena.

If you think America has "free markets" you haven't been watching the steady march of monopolies and cartels in virtually all sectors.

Corporations own the political process in America to avoid these well past the point of usefulness to reducing emissions/concentrations.

The toothless and ineffective Paris accords show this is roughly the same for even "progressive" economies like Europe.

The privileged will risk complete destruction over the surrender of advantage. That cute quote is frightening accurate when applied to modern partisan republican politics, think tanks, and especially the billionaire donor class, and has been for 40-50 years now with respect to environmental policy.

The only hope right now is the near-miraculous development of solar/wind/EV tech that can challenge and hopefully fundamentally undercut the viability of fossil fuels.

The article's suggestion for mass investment in sequestration technologies is warranted.

But if externality taxing was actually something politically doable as opposed to some policy dream by an economist, then we would have had a carbon tax on gasoline two decades ago, which any look at the cost of sequestration of carbon generally leads to a 3-10$/gallon tax.

And we are probably a decade from it now.

I do agree that it is basic stuff from an economic theory, which is tragically hilarious given the fundamental arrogance of Republican policy towards progressive reforms such as carbon taxation always invokes laissez faire principles.

The fact that basically applicable economic theory is politically untenable means that the people in economics as discipline have utterly failed humanity, sitting on their hands as this happened for some, or actively contributing to its exacerbation from the free market/laissez faire/libertarian wing of the University of Chicago.