What if the externality is not into the price? When the externality of it (pollution, global warming, etc) is not within the price, then yes, we do care, because you aren't paying the true cost and you transfer that cost to me.
If you have a carbon tax? Then sure. But if you dump all your emission on the rest of us and wash your hand because "you paid for it", then yes, we will question the value of a waste of energy because that's really the only thing we can do.
Yeah I don't really understand -- normally people buying things (energy) at a price the supplier is willing to sell is good. If energy is priced appropriately, this shouldn't be a problem.
Are people concerned with the negative externalities of energy usage? If so, it seems like the real issue is that all energy use is "bad", anything that causes people to severely increase their energy usage is especially bad, and bitcoin is one such thing.
But even though it's bitcoin in practice, the real issue seems like not being able to correctly price energy.
> Are people concerned with the negative externalities of energy usage?
YES.
> anything that causes people to severely increase their energy usage is especially bad
YES.
This is not hard. The earth's climate is being affected by the emissions from our energy demands. Most nations are trying to control emissions and one major way of doing that is energy efficiency. Bitcoin comes along and is anti-efficient, incentivises using as much power as is still (just about) profitable in mining, and creates nothing but a speculative financial instrument on the back of it. It looks like the worst kind of insult to anyone that gives a crap about climate change.
Maybe this is too idealistic, but like I said, the root issue feels like energy not being priced correctly (i.e., in a way that captures the true costs of energy consumption to the climate/planet).
Rough analogy to "safer systems over safer processes": if an intern presses a big red button that brings down google, the problem isn't that they pressed that button, it's that there's a button any intern can just press to bring down google.
The fact that the market allows trades that are net negative is a bug. Bitcoin just happens to be the intern that pressed the button.
BUT, if we're in a state where we can't get rid of the big red button, it seems reasonable to get people to stop pressing it in the interim.
Pricing in the 'true' externalities is a hard problem in itself to define. It's a problem that would require some sort of global standard (maybe in 20 years then), and one that would be pushed back upon by a large number of industries and interests.
There are baby steps in some places, and there is massive progress in some countries towards renewables and carbon-zero energy. But in the current state, huge increases in energy consumption are a bad thing.
So I think we're in a state where we could potentially get rid of the big red button but a lot of people don't really want to and the realistic chances of doing so are basically zero. And in that situation, yes, we call out the button pressers.
> If energy is priced appropriately, this shouldn't be a problem.
It's not a problem only in the ethical framework of the free market, where the morality of any kind of consumption is judged only by its cost to society.
So for example, in the free market ethics, it's perfectly acceptable, when the water is generally scarce, for somebody to have a swimming pool in their garden (definitely not a necessity in that situation), as long as he can pay for it.
But many, if not all, societies do not fully accept this ethical framework. Often, we collectively agree to limit frivolous usages of extremely scarce resources.
