Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Well, so much for Gary Johnson

He wants a carbon tax to "fight global warming":
Libertarian Party presidential nominee and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson said he’s no skeptic of man-made global warming and endorsed a “fee” on carbon dioxide emissions.
So why a tax?  I mean, these are libertarians (excuse me: Libertarians).  You'd think that they'd want a market.  The problem there is that we've seen a market tried, and it collapsed from all the fraud:
The alternative to a carbon tax is a carbon market, but as the European experience demonstrates, carbon markets lead to massive corruption and inevitable collapse.
The reason is very simple – with a carbon market, unlike a real market, fraud benefits all the market participants.
Fraud benefits the issuers of fake carbon credits – they get to make money for nothing.
Fraud benefits the purchasers of carbon credits – a flood of fake carbon credits keeps prices down.
Fraud benefits market regulators – they get rich turning a blind eye to the fraud.
The only people carbon fraud doesn’t benefit is anyone silly enough to think that market based carbon pricing can make a long term difference to CO2 emissions.
And so, the tax.  That will never collapse from rent seekers gaming the system (*cough* E.P.A. *cough*).  You'd think that the problem here would be blindingly obvious for a Libertarian.

Bah.  I even voted for him last time around.  But if this is what Libertarian looks like, then no thanks. But then, I'm not a libertarian.

8 comments:

Steve said...

The libertarian ticket seems to be the moderate (RINO) republican ticket.

Old NFO said...

WTFO??? Really?

Just People said...

Damn. I had hope.

Anonymous said...

I'm all for a Carbon Tax, as long as it comes with a constitutional prohibition on Income Tax (or any other kind of productivity tax).

libertyman said...

Another phony.

lee n. field said...

I'm wondering if R. pod people have taken over the L. party, to make a home for when the R. party disintegrates.

Anonymous said...

And a free market was never tried. There is nothing "free" about the government forcing you to buy stuff you don't want or need, other than the government telling you you must buy them, and where the product is something that the third party can manufacture for free as much as they want (credits) and hand out to their friends without limits to force their enemies to buy in the "free market".

Mike said...

So far Gary Johnson seems to hold positions essentially identical to Hillary Clinton, with the exception of legalizing drugs. How is he a libertarian again? Add to that the fact that despite his claims, both the size and cost of government increased in NM while he was governor, and I can't see how anyone sees him as a viable candidate.