Credit for Bad Behaviour

Credit for Bad Behaviour. If buying offsets can excuse excessive [tag]carbon[/tag] use, why not other irresponsible acts?

This is a cool article that appeared in the latest edition of Time magazine (July 9, 2007, pg 17)

For most JC Economics students, you would most likely completed studying about [tag]Market Failure[/tag] and the solutions to counter Market Failure….And one of the solutions to counter environmental problem is to have a tradable carbon permit scheme to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

Based on this tradable permit idea, the writer, Michael Kinsley wrote about a myriad of other applications of this concept in our life. Some sort of new capitalism I would say.

“The genius of carbon credits is that it opens up a whole new inventory of things that people can buy and sell. And there is no reason that the principle should be limited to environmentalism”

What sort of other applications can this be applied in? Already it’s complicated enough for the concept to work in the environment area….

“For example, how about a “[tag]bad parenting surcharge[/tag]”. It would work like this.
Suppose you come home after a hard day of work, and there is your acne-ridden, foul-smelling brat of a son - if, indeed, he is you son, which is hard to believe - playing video games with his friends. Your living room is strewn with Dorito crumbs and other detritus that doesn’t bear close examining. Needless to say, the lawn has not been mowed as promised. How would you like to slug him? You know you shouldn’t. But what if by slugging him, you could actually reduce the total amount of child abuse in the world? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

What’s needed us a market in child abuse credits. Somewhere in the world there is a parent who is slugging his kid every night. For a price, he would refrain for a night, or even two. By paying that parent not to slug his kid twice, you gain the right to slug you kid once.

It’s a win-win-win. You get to slug your id. This other father gets the money. The other guy’s kid is happy - he gets a night off from being slugged.”

Sounds too optimistic to be true…And for me, it’s an idea that is incredibly theoretical in nature and has absolutely no chance of seeing light in reality…

A market in child abuse credit? Laughable….And how will the system work? How will you know that the parents will be honest? There is absolutely no measuring or accountability system in place….

A creative idea, but a real theoretical one indeed…..What do you think?