HIV vaccine a reality!

[Zenda]

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.

So you keep saying, yes. I still don't see what good that would do, if I'm not buying. Are others going to buy more just because I don't, perhaps?

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.

No enforcing is needed for voluntary boycotts. A decreasing market for harmful products is the only goal. The more, the better, but every tiny bit would help. That's also why information doesn't need to be complete.

You would be doing it for *yourself*. It would not improve the overall situation in particular - but it would make you feel better.

So, if I voluntarily use 50% less energy, it still needs to be produced? If I drive a bicycle instead of a car, I still pollute as much? If I eat less meat, we still need the same amount of cows?

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.

And? Is whatever *you* do, working better?

Prices go up, people consume less. As they pollute less, their cost goes down, people consume more - problem solved.

That's a strange reasoning. Wouldn't the problem be back with the increasing consumption? What makes the pollution stay away the second time?

Anyway, Pigovian taxes are even more subject to broad cooperation as voluntary boycotts are. Imagine the benefits for a nation like the USA or China, if the rest of the world payed 'real' costs for everything, and they didn't. You think that will work? And if you do, will it happen in time? Private boycotts don't need top-level meetings that produce only concessions, you know.

Also, since you brought up the lack of information as argument against boycotting, who can tell how high the taxes on a gallon of fuel ought to be? The company that makes profit by pumping it from the ground, the government that desperately needs to keep the nation's economy going, or the mother who just lost her child to cancer?