If the government is going to mandate something, it should also pay for it.
This isn’t really how government mandates work. The government mandates that you wear seat belts in cars, but it doesn’t pay for seat belts. The government mandates that all companies going public follow the SEC regulations on reporting, but it doesn’t pay for that reporting to happen. The government mandates that restaurants regularly clean up the floor, but it doesn’t pay for janitors. The government mandates that you wear clothes in public, but it doesn’t buy you clothes. Etc, etc.
So I think your intuition is simple, but it largely does not map to reality.
Yep. This definitely not how it’s done in the “real world”.
In the “seat belts” example, this would involve replacing a law mandating seat-belts what a (presumably high) tax on selling vehicles without seatbelts set to equal the economic/social benefits of seat belts.
I think as a matter of pragmatism, there are cases where an outright ban is more/less reasonable than trying to determine the appropriate tax. For example, I don’t think anyone thinks that the “social cost” of dumping nuclear waste into a river is something we actually want to contemplate.
If the government is going to mandate something, it should also pay for it.
This isn’t really how government mandates work. The government mandates that you wear seat belts in cars, but it doesn’t pay for seat belts. The government mandates that all companies going public follow the SEC regulations on reporting, but it doesn’t pay for that reporting to happen. The government mandates that restaurants regularly clean up the floor, but it doesn’t pay for janitors. The government mandates that you wear clothes in public, but it doesn’t buy you clothes. Etc, etc.
So I think your intuition is simple, but it largely does not map to reality.
Yep. This definitely not how it’s done in the “real world”.
In the “seat belts” example, this would involve replacing a law mandating seat-belts what a (presumably high) tax on selling vehicles without seatbelts set to equal the economic/social benefits of seat belts.
I think as a matter of pragmatism, there are cases where an outright ban is more/less reasonable than trying to determine the appropriate tax. For example, I don’t think anyone thinks that the “social cost” of dumping nuclear waste into a river is something we actually want to contemplate.