Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. Prices, not arbitrary bans, are the correct way to incorporate externalities in the costs of a product. People are far too happy to promote ad-hoc bans of all sorts of arbitrary things without creating any kind of general incentive structure that would automatically optimize the metrics of interest. The result is malinvestment, economic inefficiency, and global poverty. The problem is that the externality is s…
What bothers me most isn't the malinvestment (though that sucks) or a faliure to calculate costs and benefits, but the fact that they're moralizing zealots. A zealot can justify anything in the name of The Common Good (naturally, they are the ones who decide what The Common Good is)
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
A big problem is that the moral busybodies who propose laws banning random things are the same moral busybodies who censor internet discussion.