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Comment by mchusma | Hacker News Reader

I think taxation is better than a ban I almost all cases. There are almost always exceptions to rules needed for edge cases, just make them expensive.

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Disagree. Not everything should be for sale to those with money. You'd end up with something similar to class justice.

Also, climate change is something we have to fight together. How will it look if everybody is forced to do X, but the rich people on TV all do Y?

Buying supercars has always been something that only the rich can do

But that’s because there wasn’t widespread acceptance that there was a shared social cost. It was just the wealthy spending their money as they saw fit.

Now that the world (mostly) accepts the tragedy of the commons that is GHG emissions, it’s not so easy to justify.

> Now that the world (mostly) accepts the tragedy of the commons that is GHG emissions, it’s not so easy to justify.

Which circles back to my original comment

> Their existence doesn't really hurt anyone, I do genuinely believe that supercars are not factor in the larger climate change

Everybody is port of a minority in some way. That doesn't mean that everybody can do what they want. Letting rich people ignore rules is sending the wrong message.

You're missing the point: in a tragedy of the commons, the precise market failure is that small, individual actions (i.e. on Lambo) does not materially impact the common goods.

Any single automobile is not a real factor in climate change. But all automobiles (including supercars) are.

> But that’s because there wasn’t widespread acceptance that there was a shared social cost.

If they were taxed high enough to offset that shared cost completly or even more than that it would be fine.

... but that doesn't seem to be the plan here.

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