Perhaps the biggest problem with the Pigovian tax is the "knowledge problem" suggested on page 6 of Pigou's essay "Some Aspects of the Welfare State" where he writes,9L0 509 "It must be confessed, however, that we seldom know enough to decide in what fields and to what extent the State, on account of [the gaps between private and public costs]
could interfere with individual choice." In other words, the economist's blackboard "model" assumes knowledge we don't possess — it's a model with assumed "givens" which are in 9L0 402 fact not given to anyone. Indeed, this is knowledge which could not be provided as a "given" by any "method" yet discovered, due to insuperable cognitive limits theorized by economists like Friedrich Hayek and researchers
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