“All this talk of using tax policy to ‘assess social costs’…what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.”

— David Brin , book Earth

Part VII (p. 327)
Earth (1990)

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David Brin 123

novelist, short story writer 1950

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“Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn’t really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it and doesn’t just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can’t really afford to eliminate it—not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend. So the answer is to allow only pollution that’s worth what it costs, and not any pollution that isn’t worth what it costs.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

“When the “environmental revolution” arrived in the 1960s, economists were ready and waiting. The economic literature contained an apparently coherent view of the nature of the pollution problem together with a compelling set of implications for public policy. In short, economists saw the problem of environmental degradation as one in which economic agents imposed external costs upon society at large in the form of pollution. With no “prices” to provide the proper incentives for reduction of polluting activities, the inevitable result was excessive demands on the assimilative capacity of the environment. The obvious solution to the problem was to place an appropriate “price,” in this case a tax, on polluting activities so as to internalize the social costs. Marshall and Pigou had suggested such measures many decades earlier. Moreover, pollution and its control through so-called Pigouvian taxes had become a standard textbook case of the application of the principles of microeconomic theory. Economists were thus ready to provide counsel to policy makers on the design of environmental policy.”

William J. Baumol (1922–2017) American economist

Source: The theory of environmental policy, 1988, p. 1

“Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

Pg 295-296.
Against Method (1975)
Context: Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest an not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for granted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens.

“The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Those are the lights on the head of death. Death puts them on like a hat and then shoots off on a gallop, gaining on us, getting closer and closer. Sometimes it turns off its lights. But death never stops.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)

“The time has come to stop telling the American people only what they want them to hear, and start talking frankly about the sacrifices we must all make.”

John B. Anderson (1922–2017) American politician

As quoted in “Anderson Offers Barter: Ideas for Votes” by Bernard Weinraub, in The New York Times (12 March 1980)

“For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the elimination of all payroll taxes — including those for social security and unemployment compensation — and the replacement of that revenue in the form of pollution taxes — principally on CO2.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Law School speech (2006)
Context: For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the elimination of all payroll taxes — including those for social security and unemployment compensation — and the replacement of that revenue in the form of pollution taxes — principally on CO2. The overall level of taxation would remain exactly the same. It would be, in other words, a revenue neutral tax swap. But, instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees, it would discourage business from producing more pollution.
Global warming pollution, indeed all pollution, is now described by economists as an "externality." This absurd label means, in essence: we don't need to keep track of this stuff so let's pretend it doesn't exist.
And sure enough, when it's not recognized in the marketplace, it does make it much easier for government, business, and all the rest of us to pretend that it doesn't exist. But what we're pretending doesn't exist is the stuff that is destroying the habitability of the planet.

“If you were the wall, what would you rather be? Dreary and dull, or alive with paint?"
"Walls can't think!"
"That doesn't stop them from caring.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Emperor's Soul

Source: The Emperor's Soul

“As long as there is a wall, barbed wire and orders to shoot, there can be no talk of normality in Germany.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

As quoted in "East, West Mark Berlin Wall in Conflicting Ways" https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/08/14/east-west-mark-berlin-wall-in-conflicting-ways/0ee15034-ea45-4c31-9490-7f64e7ac159b/ (August 14, 1986), The Washington Post

“Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words abortion or tax cuts pass their lips.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Put the tax cut in a lock box
2002-02-02
Townhall
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2002/02/21/put_the_tax_cut_in_a_lock_box/page/full
2002

“All this talk of using tax policy to ‘assess social costs’…what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.”

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David Brin 123

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