{"id":1712,"date":"2026-07-23T23:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T23:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2026-07-23T23:19:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T23:19:21","slug":"selling-murder-indulgences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/?p=1712","title":{"rendered":"Selling murder indulgences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Doctorow has a spiel (<a href=\"https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/2026\/07\/23\/drop-a-dime\/\">https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/2026\/07\/23\/drop-a-dime\/<\/a>) in the middle of a discussion where he talks about carbon credits, and points to a website that compares them to theoretical murder credits:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The answer to too many carbon emissions is to democratically decide to ban certain kinds of carbon emissions. But that would require states to <em>do<\/em> things, rather than simply &quot;nudging&quot; a process that is guided by &quot;the market.&quot; So we end up with these junk &quot;credits&quot; that companies manufacture by promising not to log forests, many of which are already wildlife preserves and\/or subsequently burn down:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/2023\/10\/31\/carbon-upsets\/#big-tradeoff\">https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/2023\/10\/31\/carbon-upsets\/#big-tradeoff<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The best critique of this whole thing came in 2021 from the Climate Ad Project, who produced a short video in which people were allowed to kill one another provided they purchased &quot;murder offsets&quot;:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/2021\/04\/14\/for-sale-green-indulgences\/#killer-analogy\">https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/2021\/04\/14\/for-sale-green-indulgences\/#killer-analogy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In a state of nature, murder exists. We, as a society, have decided this is bad. Rather than creating &quot;incentives&quot; not to murder, we just <em>banned murder<\/em>. Admittedly, we still get <em>some<\/em> murders, but when these happen, we don&#39;t treat it as &quot;a mispricing of the anti-murder incentive&quot; \u2013 we treat it as a crime.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Except, for many, crime and punishment == appropriate pricing of actions. So unless the cost is high enough, the action is do-able (gangland murders, for example, or corporate pollution).  \u201cCrime\u201d =&gt; morally sanctioned by the society you\u2019re in, and unless the ethical and moral aspect is part of the analysis crime devolves into market incentives, no?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doctorow has a spiel (https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/2026\/07\/23\/drop-a-dime\/) in the middle of a discussion where he talks about carbon credits, and points to a website that compares them to theoretical murder credits: The answer to too many carbon emissions is to democratically decide to ban certain kinds of carbon emissions. But that would require states to do things, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1714,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/1714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}