Use prices to regulate things, not clipboard wielding

That Socialist Calculation Problem ever confounds the bureaucrats. That we know that it’s impossible to do - efficiently - the things we want done by employing a blizzard of paperwork doesn’t stop those who love form filling from trying. It’s simply not possible to track the entirety of something through the economy. That’s why the manufacture, supply, handling, of something cannot be done by planning in detail. The world’s just too large and complex for that. So, we have to use prices to provide the incentives to get the thing done:

Retailers have expressed concerns over proposed changes to the extended producer responsibility scheme due to start in April next year. It is estimated they will add an overall £1.7 billion cost to businesses.

Under the plans from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, businesses that supply goods with packaging, from giant cardboard boxes to coffee cups, will be fully responsible for the full net cost of dealing with the waste, shifting the cost away from people paying council tax.

Companies that supply branded packaged goods to the British market or import products in packaging must track that packaging through its life cycle and collect an official note from a reprocessor to confirm the waste has been recycled. The costs will include a waste management fee based on the weight of packaging and a charge payable to the environmental regulator.

This is simply abject nonsense. It is assuming, at the start, that it’s even possible to track a bit of packaging wrap through the system. It isn’t - it’s not something that can be done. Therefore we’re going to have that blizzard of paperwork, those armies of clipboard wielders, achieving nothing at vast cost.

Now, we’re really very certain that packaging isn’t a problem that has to be dealt with. But imagine, for a moment, that it is. The way to do it is to have a price attached to packaging. Add, if we wish, a deposit to the packaging at the point of production (or import). Then that deposit is paid back to whoever brings it into the recycling or other disposal centre. We have now created the financial incentive for people to get the packaging back to that recycling or disposal point - job done.

Most businesses will return for the cash. Those that don’t will find that the Bob A Job week (although that’s now probably the Ton A Task week these days) or the impecunious looking for an income will collect up the remainder and deliver it. As happens in countries with a bottle deposit return scheme.

The abject nonsense here is that we already know how to achieve this task - add a price to it. Instead we’ve got people trying the Soviet answer circa 1955 to it.

Remind us - did we import our bureaucracy after 1989 from East of the Berlin Wall or is the education system really so terrible that civil servants think such a scheme will work?