A modest proposal. Tax the electricity like fossil fuels.
Let’s take the average consumption of a Muskmobile for 100 km. 20 kWh/100 km.
Let’s take the average consumption of the average sporty car, say 5 l/100km.
Calculate the take taxes in 1 litre of petrol
Put the taxes on electricity at the same value on 0,25 kWh, except for rail vehicles.
This makes a fair game, but makes less interesting to waste energy, and more importantly will give a boost on more eco friendly and less expensive transports like going by feet, or using a pushbike.
Another thing, legalize hemp cultivation, so people will put the plants in greenhouses instead of use powerful lamps and hide these in the basements.
My question is: if the original operators notified the state regulatory agencies that the plant was closing permanently during their bankruptcy proceedings, why wasn’t the pollution allowance immediately revoked?
And other people make money off it not even mining it, they just buy it and hope they got in early enough to see a good rate of return. Disclosure: I put 50 bucks in doge coin for lulz when it was .06 cents, i havent cashed out because i’m waiting for it to hit a dollar. Honestly i think its kind of ridiculous that people can make tons of money off crypto (and stocks) doing literally nothing
If there was some phraseology for this that made it clearer that would be helpful. It doesn’t seem like “bitcoin gambling” works. There is some sense in which mineral mining is a kind of gambling too in that you dig a hole in the grand and you might find a lot of diamonds but you might not.
The peakest of peak late stage capitalism- turning pollution directly into profit, without any of that pesky “manufacturing useful goods” part that at least has some potential to benefit someone somewhere. The only way it could be more of a rich man’s wet dream is if the power plant used poor people for fuel.
The bit about directly sucking up and killing ten thousand fish and crayfish a year, while also disrupting the lake ecosystem more generally, has to be a pretty decent consolation prize though.
It’s worth pointing out you can easily accomplish the same thing by keeping anything of value subject to speculation: Beanie babies, precious metals, etc. So the stock market and crypto are hardly unique in that regard.
I’m no fan of the stock market and I think the energy usage of crypto is beyond insane…however it could be changed to keep the good (its distributed nature) while removing the bad (energy wasted on proof-of-work algorithms).
That’s Libertarianism for you.
Try to come up with a stateless currency.
Instead create another form of fictitious capital that’s far too volatile to actually be used as a medium of exchange for anything but black to gray market items, and hastens our society’s descent into climate apocalypse.
That’s not the same thing – back then the people at least had some nice (albeit very expensive) flowers. Bitcoin, OTOH, is literally worth nothing except what bigger suckers than you are prepared to pay you for it. And it doesn’t even smell good in your garden.
Part of the market bubble involved futures contracts, And given that the most expensive bulbs were infected with a virus, there was no guarantee that a tulip would emerge,
