Absolutely, I don't mind at all.

I welcome these ideas with two caveats. One - Taxes to change behaviour" should be well trailed and brought in incrementally to allow people to make long-term lifestyle changes. Otherwise, they just appear money-grabbing. Two - If the tax works you can not necessarily offer a correpsonding cut elsewhere as is the new tax is effective in changing behaviour revenues accruing from it will decline over time."

Those are two commonly heard assumptions. I'm not necessarily sure they're true though.

For example, if the required change is urgent enough, as some would argue of things that are affecting global climate, one could take a big bang approach and compensate the biggest losers in cash terms. The expenditure might, for example, be worth it to ensure we have another century on the planet!

I have this discussion a fair bit with LVT. Many people would like to see some LVT, introduced slowly and with no particular end point" - sort of suck it and see.

I often argue that the case for a Georgist single tax is so strong, the potential benefits so great, that you could instantly go to the full whack and simply hand cash over to people left in negative equity. The long term sustainability of an economy not propped up with perpetual debt might make that worth it.

As to whether they are self-cancelling, that depends what the resource is again. Some things people absolutely need to survive - land, clean air, clean water and so on. If we all decide to minimise our use of all of them, even though we cannot eliminate their use altogether, the relative (market) value of using more than your share will increase anyway.

But I take your point. It's one reason why I would not necessarily tax fuel, but tax pollution (the latter being a land value tax, while the former is a consumption tax)

Does that make sense? I'm not sure it does, but I'm tired!"