I think it is probably good to tax for Co2 production as a way of addressing global warming. I just don't think we should equate bitcoin production with other CO2 producers. I.e. I personally think that the CPU-cycles used for science on HPCs are much more valuable than the bitcoin mining (that's just my opinion though).
As you noted, this is just your opinion - are we going to have a person or group that decides what forms of Co2 usage are most "worthy", and adjust taxes accordingly? And let's say we do go down that path - one could certainly make the argument that Bitcoin usage from folks fleeing oppressive regimes are much more worthy than Co2 used to search for aliens or participating in far out HPC research.
Incentivizing stupid things (like taking on mortgage debt or over-coverage by employer health plan) is already the status quo of the tax code.
> Bitcoin usage from folks fleeing oppressive regimes
Have bitcoin people (I don't know what else to call the people who want to talk about it all the time) actually convinced themselves that this is a substantial share of bitcoin usage?
>Have bitcoin people (I don't know what else to call the people who want to talk about it all the time) actually convinced themselves that this is a substantial share of bitcoin usage?
It's not because this is literally Monero's value proposition. Why would anyone who wants to flee an oppressive regime publicly announce to their government that they bought Bitcoin in the oppressed country and sold it in a less oppressive country?
This is a terrible argument because the transaction fees on Bitcoin are high enough that anyone who wants to flee an oppressive regime would just buy any other cryptocurrency that isn't suffering from power consumption problems.
I think, yes, somebody should adjust taxes accordingly. The status quo with existing costs and taxes already effectively establishes some preferences for industries/goals, just implicitely. I think trying to explicitely express those preferences is better. (and it will never be 100% optimal that's for sure)
