Polly sees the light

I'm breaking the first rule of blogging here, but I reckon Polly's said something true:

Miliband's electric radicalism comes in his plan for personal carbon allowances. Here is where social justice meets green politics for the first time. Give every citizen the same quota of energy and let them buy and sell it on the open market. The half of the population who don't fly will make money from selling their quota to the half who do. Drive a gas-guzzling 4x4 and you will have to buy a quota from the third of the population with no access to a car. Who could complain about such transparent fairness?

What Polly's saying here is that markets can be a way of achieving equality and empowering the poor, as long as they are based upon an initial equality of property rights.
Welcome, Polly, to the wonderful world of asset redistribution and left libertarianism (pdf). Here's some reading suggestions to help you along the path to enlightenment.

Comments

[Alex]

It's still a shitty idea driven by jelly-bellied flag flapper nostalgia for the second world war/tribal Labour nostalgia for 1945, though.

[GeoffH]

Rationing is rationing, no matter how you frame it. And what was so wonderful about that? Or the coupons? As Alex says, just nostalgia for 1945 and the wholesale control of the citizenry that Labour yearns for.

[james higham]

Not perhaps a rivetting comment but Geoff has a point. Also, this:

...markets can be a way of achieving equality and empowering the poor...

Without the rest of the words is a step in the right direction.

[ChrisA]

Only a person who conflates equality with financial assets can believe that Milbrand/Polly proposal will reduce inequality. For instance assume that each person is granted a CO2 allowance for a holiday, and the market deems this is worth 1000 pounds. If a person can sell their CO2 effectively the cost of taking the holiday has gone up by 1000 pounds. So poorer people will sell their allowance and take less holidays than richer people - how can that be reducing inequality?

As other posters have said, this proposal is pure nostalgia for 1940's statism. It really brings into the open what drives the hysteria around anthropegenic global warming, it is not really a sober discussion about technical risks, it is the old debate about statism (or managerialism) versus libertarianism in new clothes.