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Comment by ElevenLathe | Hacker News Reader

They would have huge losses in the years that they invested in things, and huge profits in the years the investments paid off. This might result in more or less tax revenue depending on exactly how the rest of the tax code is structured (or restructured).

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Which would mean that only people/companies who can afford to weather huge losses (potentially for several consecutive years) are able to enter capital-intensive sectors, providing massive moats to incumbents in those sectors and even more advantages to people who are already wealthy.

Right, but isn't this good when we are talking about fossil fuel companies? Fair competition drives down the price of fossil energy, while our goal as a civilization should be to raise the price as much as we can stand (to infinity if possible!) so that we don't cook ourselves.

You can therefore make the argument (though I don't agree with it myself) that subsidies to big oil that reduce competition from upstarts is, in a twisted way, a climate-positive policy.

This of course fails because subsidizing big, publicly-traded oil companies reduces their cost of capital. This causes rational capital allocators to rationally invest in fossil fuel exploration, resulting in more carbon being dug out of the ground and added to the atmosphere.

Or companies with venture capital? Something that seems easy if you’re literally pumping oil.

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