Is that not fairly summarised as, “if transactions costs are important enough to prevent friends sharing opinions on smoking…”?

I guess it’s just semantics. Telling someone you don’t like it will induce them to take your feelings into account when making their decision. However, they are unlikely to value your opinion as highly as you do. Hence, there are probably further reductions in smoking that the friend would be willing to pay for beyond those induced by sharing their opinions. That’s why I don’t think it’s an entirely accurate summary of what I meant, but that’s probably because I was a bit unclear the first time in what I said.

I haven’t seen any literature on the environmental cost of cigarette butts. Do you know of any which quantify the costs?

I’d also like to see the tax cover the cost of preventing every cigarette butt making it into the stormwater system. They are toxic and not biodegradeable, and they kill a lot of wildlife. If you include the cost of damage to the larger ecosystem the tax is far, far too low.

Existence: sure. I just don’t buy that the range is wide enough to worry about.

I agree with that.

@ben

It is your own welfare that is foregone by the end of your existence.

That’s what I said: “Reduced lifespan has private costs.” So there is a cost to you of a premature death but it’s not the only cost of your death. Following your death there are costs that are borne by those who were close to you.

Well, not really. Reduced lifespan has private costs, but you don’t bear any cost following your death.

Eh? Of course your own death is a cost to you. It is your own welfare that is foregone by the end of your existence. Why else do people so strongly resist it, and demand payment for bearing even a small increases in mortal risk?

I’m not going to pretend that I think these are serious policy issues, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist 😛

I can’t see why you’d presume that your mentioning your preferences is insufficient to generate efficiency: if the friend’s preference for smoking is more intense than your preference that your friend not smoke, then that he doesn’t change behaviour is a signal of an efficient outcome, not an inefficient one. And it’s just hard to believe that an external party values someone’s life more than does the internal party.

@Ben and @ Rauparaha: I don’t think the transactions costs are necessarily all that high if there really is a pent-up demand out there. Imagine a transactions-costs entrepreneur who sets up an anti-smoking charity where donations can be targeted. Donors make pledges to the charity promising $x if they can convince S to stop smoking. The charity adds up all of the donations for each S, sending emails to each S noting the collective sum of pledges and promising to send along the money if S stops smoking for some period of time. Yeah, yeah, lots of rough edges to work out, and of course the charity would take a cut. But it’s not impracticable. If nobody’s established such a charity, it’s because the expected cut isn’t big enough to make it worthwhile: actual willingness to pay doesn’t make it worthwhile. And so it’s only potentially-Pareto relevant, not actually Pareto relevant.