Richard Thaler

So there are two different issues here.

Putting a tax on a bad like pollution isn't interfering with markets and

It's making the market efficient in the sense that the price people are paying reflects the cost they impose on others.

And it's not picking winners and losers.

It's picking—there will be losers.

People who like to drive gas-guzzling cars will lose.

But we're not aiming it at them.

It's a free choice.

So that the tax itself is... No, but look, let's think of what we did.

What did we do?

We subsidized EVs.

And who was the beneficiary of that?

That's true, but...

The choice to have subsidies and regulations, it benefited some companies versus others.

Take me back.

In a world where we don't know...

any of the people in any of the companies.

So we're back in the world of inside an economist's head.

We just have, there are firms and there are people and there's something people are doing that causes harm to others.

The solution to that, that all economists agree to is put a price on that bad and then let the market clear