Quote:Demand is what consumers want. So if demand for ecological damageing products decreases by 90%, production has to decrease too. There is no 'elasticity' here, because the responsible consumers we are talking about don't come back for cheap prices.And the consumers who are relatively poor, they're joining you in this boycott? Along with all the countries in the world? Because you'd need to make sure those products that are no longer being bought by you aren't being bought by anyone else, either, not even for export. This is not just a handful of noxious brands, but gigantic swathes of the productive capacity of the economy, things that are elementary to everyday life, everywhere: energy, metal, wood, water. Are you seriously going to keep track of *everything* that uses these products somewhere in their production stream, and where they're coming from? I know I sure don't have that much information, nor will I ever. But that's what you'd need, to enforce this kind of boycott.
This is especially for energy, which is totally fungible. It all gets put onto a grid, and it all gets taken off of a grid. How do you boycott coal power? How do you purchase wind power? You can't, not really. And you certainly aren't going to know whether the steel in your car was produced with coal power.
Quote:Even if that's true, so what? I was doing it for myself, remember? If we keep rejecting every solution that might benefit others more then ourselves, nothing will happen.Yes, that's precisely correct. You would be doing it for *yourself*. It would not improve the overall situation in particular - but it would make you feel better.
I'm the opposite. I don't care what the solution makes me feel like, I only care whether it succeeds at the goal: reducing pollution.
Quote:Why? If end-consumers stay away, it doesn't matter what producers in the middle do.But for many of the most polluting products (Energy, mining, metals, lumber, etc...) the middle producers are consuming the exact same product as many of the end consumers. If I switch off my lights at night, that energy is now free to be used at a steel plant. And if the steel plant doesn't use it, then some other industry will. The same is true for oil, and for all the big fungible products. Unless you had a boycott so large it constituted a consumer monopsony, with detailed information about the production streams of all products, you'd just be wasting your time.
A pigovian tax, by contrast, includes these things right in the cost of producing them, which is then reflected in the cost of consuming them. Prices go up, people consume less. As they pollute less, their cost goes down, people consume more - problem solved. No need for massive consumer solidarity, no defection problem, no informational barrier.
-Jester