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khafra • today at 8:51 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

That reminds me of one of my idiosyncratic policy wishes: An enormous pigouvian tax on any advertising beyond a spreadsheet listing quantitative technical data about the product. Companies don't lose anything, since the relative spend and impact remains the same; consumers gain a lot of information and public funding, and lose daily aggravation.


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cousin_it • today at 10:44 AM

Pigovian taxes were invented to compensate for externalities. Where's the externality here? You go to a website. The website owner says "watch this ad to access my content". It's a free agreement (or disagreement) between you and the website owner, nobody else is harmed.

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