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DeLong
There are in general two ways that you can match private incentives with social outcomes. The first is to take individuals' preferences over material goods as given, and use taxes and subsidies to raise the prices of goods that have negative and lower the prices of goods that have positive "externalities," as economists call them. The second is to try to shift individuals' preferences: appeal to altruism, or to the moral sense, or to the mirror neurons to get people to feel good about doing deeds that have positive externalities, and rearrange social markers of status and approval to shift people's preferences over goods without changing their material characteristics or prices. Economists generally prefer to work on the tax-and-subsidy side rather than on the preferences side, out of a disciplinary commitment to the idea that cash-on-the-barrelhead is strong and pats-on-the-back are weak. But we do what we can: if we cannot pass a BTU tax, telling people who fund carbon offsets or drive fuel-efficient cars that they are good, responsible, moral people is a perfectly orthodox and constructive thing to do.