My dude, people are allowed not to know what phrases mean. It regularly happens to all of us. And it is normally unclear what someone means on HN; usually we're all stirring the tea-leaves from 1-2 paragraphs of text and there are a lot of misunderstandings.
In this case I think he meant that government is taxing people who would avoid using oil and giving money to people who do use oil, distorting the market to use more oil than it would in a counterfactual world where policy was consumption-neutral. But given we're talking about government policy that is far from the only interpretation - in context he might mean a specific area, for example.
In this case I think he meant that government is taxing people who would avoid using oil and giving money to people who do use oil, distorting the market to use more oil than it would in a counterfactual world where policy was consumption-neutral. But given we're talking about government policy that is far from the only interpretation - in context he might mean a specific area, for example.