If all we do is regulate prices, then there’s still an incentive to despoil the environment if it lowers your costs.
What you want to do is to mandate prices on externalities – the pollution itself. That way people are still free to buy and sell TVs and to innovate new ways of manufacturing them, but the only way to avoid the cost of externalities is to generate fewer externalities - less pollution per TV – which is what we want.
If all we do is regulate prices, then there’s still an incentive to despoil the environment if it lowers your costs.
What you want to do is to mandate prices on externalities – the pollution itself. That way people are still free to buy and sell TVs and to innovate new ways of manufacturing them, but the only way to avoid the cost of externalities is to generate fewer externalities - less pollution per TV – which is what we want.