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Comment by elgabogringo | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. It's an argument for indirect subsidies to his company on top of the direct subsidies he already receives.

Elon Musk is hardly a libertarian. He's just another crony capitalist.

Obviously you can question his motives, however this is not an indirect subsidy if you consider the emission of carbon dioxide an externality - which I presume he does. Instead it would represent the levelling of the playing field.

Oil companies do get direct subsidies through tax breaks, so no mater what you think is going on here, energy is not pure market. In practise, how often do you see a pure market anyway?

To be fair, in the US almost zero companies pay the corporate tax rate of 35%, the highest in the industrialized world. Thus anyone can point at any industry and point a finger at it in disgust at its "tax breaks".

Fair point.

Still, means a carbon tax is just more of the same, not some evil infringement of liberties.

Something can be an indirect subsidy and a Pigouvian tax at the same time; they are non-exclusive options. I see the carbon tax as both, and am opposed to both.

There are no 'pure market[s]', and there never have been. The 'pure market' was a straw-man invented by anti-market people.

It seems to me that subsidies and Pigouvian tax are exclusive if they are to mean anything. Perhaps I'm wrong?Can you point me at a discussion of this?

I think you are right that few people explicitly say that pure markets exist. But implicitly many people make arguments based on some kind of some unregulated state of nature, for example on this thread.

In this case it is not about indirect subsidies to his company, but about removing indirect subsidies from the combustion engine industry. Their "freely available externalities" are polluting the place.

Uh huh. Funny how a billionaire has so easily convinced you that adding costs to his competitors (and consumers) is really "removing a subsidy".

When we tell coal plants "Hey, you can't dump unlimited amounts of particulate pollution into the air," would you characterize that as an "indirect subsidy for solar power"?

Or would you call it "not letting coal plants externalize their costs on everyone else"?

Why are carbon emissions any different?

Do you believe in global warming/climate change?

How about the Earth is warming, we don't know by how much, but likely not nearly as much as we previously thought, and we are missing crap tons of data and understanding about how different systems work.

https://home.cern/about/updates/2016/05/cloud-shows-pre-indu...

> How about the Earth is warming, we don't know by how much, but likely not nearly as much as we previously thought

This is a bold claim completely unsupported by your link.

"If ancient cloud cover was closer to today’s levels, the increase in the cloud-cooling effect due to human pollution could also be smaller—which means that Earth was not warming up so much in response to increased greenhouse gases alone. In other words, Earth is less sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought, and it may warm up less in response to future carbon emissions, says Urs Baltensperger of the Paul Scherrer Institute, who was an author on all three papers."

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/earth-s-climate-may-n...

Still not supporting your claim.

> we don't know by how much

This is a measurable (and measured) thing. We know exactly how much the Earth has already warmed. We do not know exactly how much it will warm in the future, but we know how much it has warmed. And the articles are also not nearly as pessimistic about how good our estimates are. You're acting as if we're flying blind just because our models are imperfect.

> but likely not nearly as much as we previously thought

FTA: "He says that the current best estimates of future temperature rises are still feasible, but "the highest values become improbable.""

So no. The current best estimates are still the best estimates. This does not jive at all with your assertion that it's "likely not nearly as much".

I don't think that word "exactly" means what you think it means.

And you're misrepresentating what I said. I didn't say our estimates were getting worse. I made it clear they would simply would be lower than before. And both articles I linked made it clear that the new estimates would be improved.

You're splitting hairs about nothing when you aren't representing what I said. Have a good day.

No, you're downplaying the magnitude of global warming an implying that the future impact has been drastically overstated. It's not splitting hairs. You're presenting a small revision to our understanding of global warming as if it undermines our predictions, and your own sources do not support what you're saying. This is dishonest.

I hope you have a great day, too.

I think you're mistaken. My reading was that he thinks that rather then receiving the subsidies his companies receive, people who emit a lot of greenhouse gases should be taxed. He's not calling for both subsidies and a carbon tax, he's saying a carbon tax makes more sense and is more fair, because the average person already has to pay money for global warming. Fossil fuel companies have an unfair advantage, because they damage other people's property and the people foot the bill.

If Musk only cared about money he wouldn't be spending so much money on aerospace, automotive, and solar industries. None of them are great money makers.

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