Re: [Pen-l] Waxman-Markey giveaways pit consumer protection against climate protection. Poor design creates zero sum game

[Gar Lipow <gar.lipow@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/27/09, Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> is it right to conclude that these days "cap and trade," in contrast
> to a carbon emission tax, is a Trojan Horse to give big subsidies to
> polluters?

Yeah, that always has been the case.   In theory you can construct a
cap-and-trade system that does not do this - see for example Peter
Barne's SkyTrust (now framed as cap-and-dividend).  But such systems
are as marginalized any other alternative.  The only advantage to
cap-and-trade over  other approaches is the ability to make large
subsidies to corporations and to undermine compliance requirements
without appearing to do so. (It is not that other approaches are not
equally vulnerable in the abstract to these things. But cap-and-trade
is the most effective way to carry such things out while hiding what
is being done.) When people talk about all the flaws and imperfections
in cap-and-trade, these are not really flaws or imperfections, but the
point of choosing this approach. "Its not a bug. Its a feature."

Capitalist ideological hegemony is occasionally a discussion subject
on Pen-L - how all these problematic assumption become "common sense".
 Cap-and-trade is example of where this has been happening right in
front of us in a very short time. I think back when Robin Hahnel was
posting on Pen-L, he discussed a very early stage in this process.
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