@SteveRoth holding preferences, the range of goods, and prices constant, egalitarian redistribution yields lots more spending on CO2 generating goods and services, compared to spending power just plowed into portfolio assets. 1/

@SteveRoth obviously, though, global warming (the fact itself) plus regulatory responses to it will shift prices dramatically. we'll see new scarcities as places become uninhabitable or uninhabitable w/o HVAC transmogrified into robust life support systems. we'll see resource prices rise. we'll see alternative energy sources become cheap, or else a regulatory crackdown on fossil fuels, or else a positive reinforcement cycle as we burn more carbon in response to climate change, worsening it. 2/

@SteveRoth but my conjecture in the piece is that complementary to shifts in prices, or more accurately, supply curves, related to resource scarcity, preferences will shift very dramatically in a world with the kind of well-thought out and sane VR/AR that Apple may be pioneering. the opportunity cost of NOT participating carbon-intensive consumption will fall very dramatically when you can be effectively everywhere while staying physically in your own neighborhood. 3/

@SteveRoth the piece isn't about the effects of redistribution *per se*, but an implication is that we can afford, in an environmental sense, more redistribution of wealth at present levels and colorably "stable prices" (because increased purchasing power and resources scarcity get offset by less-resource intensive patterns of consumption) than we might ave otherwise, ceteris paribus. 4/

@SteveRoth of course, without the speculative technology, we could use tools like a refunded carbon tax to promote less-resource intensive patterns of consumption as well. i don't think we should encourage inequality because ceteris paribus it's less carbon intensive than a more equal income or wealth pattern, any more than the fact inequality is disinflationary should recommend it to us in general. /fin