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Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

Maybe there's a middle ground -- is the production subsidized? If so, drop the subsidies and let the market decide.

I like your idea better, but perhaps a softer touch might get more traction?

So production isn't really subsidized in the traditional sense. Producers actually pay quite a bit in royalties and taxes, and employ people, who also pay taxes. It's more about these externalities like pollution that aren't factored into the total cost of production. Alberta has oil, and when the price is high, oil producers pay top dollar for people, which sucks all the air out of the marketplace, and makes it really difficult for anyone not in oil to stay in business because their people just quit for more money. Then when the price drops, a bunch of people get laid off, some try to start businesses, and the whole cycle starts again. It's difficult to have a well-rounded economy in this situation.

I agree, there's probably a good reason I'm not dictator of Alberta. Several reasons, actually. Something something dehumanizing people something..

I guess letting the externalities go as a freebie could be considered a subsidy but I hear ya.

With that definition, a completely anarchic state would have subsidies all over the place. Sounds wrong.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Externality is a real concept and so are subsidies, but "failure to take action against some party imposing costs on others" doesn't amount to a subsidy of that activity

Like, if the government fails to crack down on illegal drug distribution and all its associated externalities, is that a subsidy? Where does it end? It's nonsense.

I don't think it makes sense to slice up society into tiny divisions and categorize each one like that. For example the government takes affirmative action to create the concept of land ownership and corporations. Those legal fictions then assist for example this polluter.

My whole point is advocating consistent definitions of words, not subdivision and special pleading.

I concur in principle in consistent word usage, but I'm not aware of one other than externalities for this issue, and that is too vague to convey the fact that public money is spent in support of their profit.

The War on Drugs helps subsidize the cartels and drug dealers by creating a market that only they can fulfill. We pay an obscene amount of money for sustaining that market.

It's semantics: instead of giving money directly to the organization, let them make money and have the public money be spent to clean up the mess they made. Same difference: private profit and public expenditure for it.

Sounds exactly right to me.

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