/travel/Thou Shalt Not Externalize
[from my recent flight to San Francisco]
If God had been an economic agnostic economist, he would have saved time by having only one commandment: Thou Shalt Not Externalise. Lying, adultering, killing, coveting: all impose costs on others and on society in general. Killing and other crime imposes the direct cost of crime onto the victim, as well as the social costs of policing and enforcement. Lying and adultery reduce trust in general, and contribute to the breakdown of families. Intuitively I think even coveting imposes a social cost, though I'm not sure exactly how.
A few years ago, I was mulling over some debates I had in university about free markets, the role of individual rights, the existence of group rights, and that sort of thing. I was waiting for a flight, which somehow always makes me a bit reflective — probably in anticipation of the period of calm, uninterrupted time that air travel often offers. Two women ahead of me were discussing flight prices, and per-item baggage fees (new in Europe at the time) and how they hated it, and I had a novel (to me!) thought: putting aside the philosophical rigorand the arguments about efficiency and minimal government intervention and maximal freedom and optimal wealth distribution and maximizing happiness and all that, most people simply don't like certain outcomes of market economics: the need to price shop and to be diligent about carefully worded agreements, the frequent power imbalances, and the intrinsic drive to externalize.
Since last time I flew, there are now per-checked bag fees in the US; this returns some of the true cost of baggage to passengers &mdash a properly capitalist move. The response of the passengers is to maximize use of carry-on bags. The plane can't actually support that when it's full, so the bags don't fit in the overhead bins and have to be brought back to the front through the narrow aisles to be checked —presumably for free — slowing down the departure time for everyone.
None of these actions are unreasonable; each is really very capitalist in nature, yet the outcome seems sour because the incentives are wrong.
I'm on an airplane again, reflecting: this is the most intense externalization of costs I knowingly participate in. It's a business flight and my employer buys offsets, but these still do not come close to internalizing the costs*. For many greenheads, this is "the one thing". "I try to be green, but flying is definitely one exception" is something I've heard a lot, as I've commiserated with likeminded people who struggle with the same stuff I do. Lately I've been thinking of that as analogous to "I support emancipation, so I've really cut back on my household slaves, but out in the plantations I just can't do without them." (It's in some ways very different, obviously. I said analogous, not equivalent.) It shows awareness and resistance to the externality, yet practically speaking I'm still emitting more than my own annual sustainable CO2e emissions during this one return flight which is all that really matters.
* Carbon offsets are priced based on the marginal cost of offsets in a world that's offsetting a tiny fraction of its total unsustainable CO 2e emissions. In order to fully internalize the costs you would need to pay based on the average price of offsetting or reducing our total unsustainable emissions. This is, at least, somewhere in the $50-$400/tonne CO2e range, much more than the $10-$20 of retail offsets .
Comments
Josh wrote
1. There are definitely lies with net-positive externalities. There are probably even net-externality-positive killings.
2. Where was the asterisk in the last paragraph supposed to point?
Rob wrote
1. True, I guess god was cleverer than I thought.
2. Added.
Tony wrote
Galatians 5:14 ;-p
Rob Ewaschuk wrote
I've always found a lot of problem with that prescription: no matter how simple or naïve or enlighten or profoundly of an interpretation you have it's problematic.
