Third, a further reason for distrust is that industry has a well rehearsed lobby that understands regulatory system in place. It knows who to lobby and how. It can, in the economist's language, 'capture' the regulators. Dealing with environmental taxes and traceable permits is more difficult. The source of the measure is invariably the Ministry of Finance, not the Environment Ministry.
Regulatory capture is more complex under market based instruments.
Fourth, there is an extensive lack of knowledge about economic instruments in government and in the civil service. This partly reflects ignorance of environmental economics generally, a result not just of the poor training of civil servants but also of the failure of the economics profession to establish the subject of environmental economics in a number of countries. That, mercifully, is changing, but there is a long way to go. It is no accident that the countries making the greatest progress on economic instruments are those with the best trained civil servants the USA and the Scandinavian countries in particular. This discussion suggests strongly that the goal of sustainable consumption requires an action plan which is far more aggressive than anything seen so far.