Two British students had a great idea: Cheatneutral, “a market-based solution to the unhappiness associated to cheating on your partner”. Since you can’t refrain from cheating, pay someone to be faithful for you, so that the overall quantity of infidelity worldwide stays the same.

It’s a joke, of course (though a surprising amount of people took it seriously), but one that stings: no wonder it spread on the media and reached the Houses of Parliament. Because, as the founders state on their website:

Cheatneutral is about offsetting infidelity. We’re the only people doing it, and Cheatneutral is a joke.

Carbon offsetting is about paying for the right to carry on emitting carbon. The Carbon offset industry sold £60 million of offsets last year, and is rapidly growing. Carbon offsetting is also a joke.

I started my career as an environmental economist. In the early 90s tradeable emission rights were already all the rage, supported by academia and the authorities, from the British government’s Blueprint for a Green Economy to the World Bank’s Global Environmental Facility. The logic of these instruments holds water, but at the price of accepting a static and machine-like vision of the economy that I now find undefendable. Time to have a good laugh with the Cheatneutral founders, and move on. (Hat tip: Francesco Silvestri @ Eco&Eco)