HIV vaccine a reality!

[Jester]

So you keep saying, yes. I still don't see what good that would do, if I'm not buying. Are others going to buy more just because I don't, perhaps?

It depends on the product. If everyone in the first world stopped buying iPods, I'd bet they'd stop producing them. But if the first world stopped buying wood, or sulphur, or steel, you can bet your bottom dollar that people in the third world would eagerly snap up the now-bargain resources. The problem is, most of what creates the pollution problem is not knicknacks and luxury gadgets, but basic infrastructural products.

No enforcing is needed for voluntary boycotts.

... well, sort of. But that's like saying no police would be needed if everyone followed the law. It's utopian - never going to happen.

A decreasing market for harmful products is the only goal. The more, the better, but every tiny bit would help. That's also why information doesn't need to be complete.

This would not decrease the market by much - unless you are talking about an unrealistically large percentage of consumers around the world participating. It would mostly just transfer resources from people who care about the environment, to people who don't. This is the problem that Pigovian taxes avoid.

So, if I voluntarily use 50% less energy, it still needs to be produced? If I drive a bicycle instead of a car, I still pollute as much? If I eat less meat, we still need the same amount of cows?

Yes, no, and more or less.

If you use less energy, that lowers the price for energy by a tiny bit. That changes the marginal values for other consumers of energy, who will pick up the slack in almost exact proportion to what you saved. Even if millions of people saved most of their household electricity bills, it would not be difficult for, say, a steel manufacturer to take advantage of the reduced prices and produce extra steel that year. The world would get more steel, but it wouldn't consume much less energy.

If you use a bike instead of a car, you personally are polluting less. But you're also freeing up some congestion, a parking space, and so on, all of which is an encouragement for everyone else to drive. It's a savings, but it's much smaller than the total pollution of driving.

Meat is much the same as energy, although less fungible. You eat less > price goes down > someone else eats more > price goes back up. You put a tiny dent in the demand, but not enough to really change anything. Even a million tiny dents doesn't amount to much, so long as that meat can be sold to other people, or exported.

And? Is whatever *you* do, working better?

I haven't made any claims about what I'm doing, but rather about what will work to reduce pollution, and what won't. I walk or take public transport everywhere, and I don't consume very much (good), but I fly long distances fairly often, since I'm from Canada, my studies are in the UK, and I'm doing research in Uruguay (bad). But what I do know is that if I consumed less things, that would free everyone else to consume slightly more - whereas if they were taxed for everyone, then everyone would have the same incentive to consume less, and that would not occur.

That's a strange reasoning. Wouldn't the problem be back with the increasing consumption? What makes the pollution stay away the second time?

No. People consume X amount at Y price. If you raise the price to Y+1, people will consume X-(something), depending on the elasticity of demand. If you remove your consumption, you haven't changed the price - supply and demand still predict the same level of consumption - people who don't care about the environment will rush in to take advantage of the temporarily lowered price. But if you add a tax, then everyone will consume less, whether they care about the environment or not, because they have no choice. There's no legal way around a Pigovian tax, whereas a boycott can be broken by anyone, whenever they want, in a moment of weakness, poverty, selfishness, whatever.

Anyway, Pigovian taxes are even more subject to broad cooperation as voluntary boycotts are. Imagine the benefits for a nation like the USA or China, if the rest of the world payed 'real' costs for everything, and they didn't. You think that will work? And if you do, will it happen in time? Private boycotts don't need top-level meetings that produce only concessions, you know.

And your consumer boycott will get around this how, by convincing all consumers of all nations to join the boycott? Does that seem realistic to you? People who are in the developing world, whose incomes are increasing, want more, better, cheaper goods. Are they all going to join you in consuming less? That strikes me as a much larger obstacle than merely convincing the governments of the world to institute Pigovian taxes on pollution - at least that doesn't require global consumer unanimity.

Also, since you brought up the lack of information as argument against boycotting, who can tell how high the taxes on a gallon of fuel ought to be? The company that makes profit by pumping it from the ground, the government that desperately needs to keep the nation's economy going, or the mother who just lost her child to cancer?

You can't, strictly speaking. You set targets for various pollutants based on what you know - the dangers to public safety, the contribution to global climate change, the elimination of biodiversity, and so on, and tax accordingly, until the pollutants are within the range you find acceptable.

But how is your boycott going to manage these things? The informational problem is much worse - not only do you have to know about all the mothers with children with cancers, but you have to disseminate that information to each and every consumer so that they know exactly why or why not to buy each and every product they want. It's barely realistic to expect a government to account to keep track of all this, let alone each consumer.

-Jester