A carbon tax is specifically imposed to force markets to consider externalities. That is a free market solution. The opposite would be quotas and bans.
I actually favor quotas and bans to deal with carbon dioxide emissions.
I actually favor quotas and bans to deal with carbon dioxide emissions.
One asks to what degree do we not know the costs? And these costs aren't ketchup economic prices but actual primary environmental effects. You can't buy your way out of those by having the central bank provide more liquidity.
> A market solution would be based upon true supply and demand and agreement on price in buy / sell transactions.
This is worse because the market not only has no way to price these cost but it is _blind_ to them. That you don't realize this means you think 'free markets' are 'magical'
> A tax representing the "externality" is just a politically made-up number. So it's sort of free market but not really.
FTI: Your free markets don't exist without politics.
Not the guy you're replying to, but you're wrong. This isn't a debate about effectiveness, it's about whether the tax is a free market solution or not. No one is arguing that the market isn't blind to it; this very well could be a case of a market failure and a tax may very well be the correct solution, it is not however a free market solution. A tax is government interference in the market and is by definition not a free market solution.
No, it isn't. Taxes are not free market solutions. End of story. Taxes are government interference in the market; this isn't debatable, it's just a fact.