Tax What We Want Less Of
The direction of travel: shifting relative tax weight from productive activity toward negative physical outcomes, as an empirical question.
Tax what we want less of
The organising idea for this section of the architecture is simple to state:
Instead of beginning with "how much revenue do we need and where is it easiest to extract", begin with "what behaviours and physical outcomes do we want the economic system to produce" — then examine whether the tax system can progressively shift weight from productive activity (work, enterprise, investment) toward undesirable physical outcomes (virgin extraction, pollution, waste, resource destruction).
This is presented as a direction of travel with an empirical answer, not a fixed target: how far the tax base should shift, how quickly, and which existing taxes (if any) it should displace are treated as open questions for the research programme in Evidence, not settled conclusions. The Candidate Solution's position (see Design Decisions) is a mixed tax base with growing relative weight on negative-outcome signals — not a wholesale, immediate replacement of income, consumption or wealth taxation.