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Comment by vasco | Hacker News Reader

Taxing carbon is fine, that isn't the problem, the problem is giving that money to the current generation in the form of payouts.

Why should a random citizen get paid more just because in their country there's heavily polluting industries? It makes no sense.

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> Why should a random citizen get paid more just because in their country there's heavily polluting industries?

Because everyone - including that random citizen - experiences harm from said heavy pollution. That's my air being contaminated, my water being poisoned, my planet being wrecked; by what rationale would I somehow not be justified in demanding compensation for that harm?

Ah I see, so is your concern that we aren’t putting that revenue to work on explicitly decarbonizing projects to invest in the future? Or is it more that you think there is a perverse incentive where residents might prefer e.g. a cement factory to move to their country because it will result in more CO2 rebate?

Giving everyone a single vote in democracy makes no sense, we should just air drop paper pamphlets all across the country and let anyone who collects them vote once for each pamphlet. If they fall on privately owned land, the owner of the land gets all of the pamphlets.

> Why should a random citizen get paid more just because in their country there's heavily polluting industries? It makes no sense.

I'm not following. Random citizen also pays more in tax.

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