You know what, upon pondering it further and reading your rather excellent case-in-point from your last post, you have totally convinced me.
Fuck subsidies. I believe solar/Nuclear/fusion(heh) will rule the future with or without them. Subsidies tilt the market to and fro without a care about reality, often supporting the wrong ticket.
That's not the political reality we live in though. You can push for some subsidies and tariffs or push against. There is no mechanism to eliminate all of both, even in one country (let alone all countries).
Which means that if there is a market distorting subsidy to one market that you hate (e.g. coal/fracking at the federal level), often the only way to deal with it is create a subsidy or tariff in another (e.g. solar at the local level) as a counter-distortion.
It's also worth bearing in mind that "fuck all subsidies and tariffs" and "let free markets rule" are ideas pushed by carbon-industry funded think tanks (e.g. CATO) when it serves their agenda, but is swept under the carpet when it doesn't (the only solar panel tariffs CATO complained about was the feed in tariff).
Fuck subsidies. I believe solar/Nuclear/fusion(heh) will rule the future with or without them. Subsidies tilt the market to and fro without a care about reality, often supporting the wrong ticket.