But I feel confident in predicting that it won't address the other side of the coin, that revenue would be used to actually keep the old appliances out of landfills, and to recycle their components. I'm hard pressed to think of examples of putatively earmarked taxes where the entirety of the revenue still goes to what it was originally promised for.

I didn't say anything that even implied that. Clearly there are public goods that are best handled by a government.

My reply was directed specifically at a comment that proposed a tax to address environment problems caused by planned obsolescence. I was showing that the proposal doesn't actually do anything to eliminate the environmental externality.

If you can show me a more complete proposal that (a) really does address the environmental impact as part of the program; and also (b) addresses Public Choice economics (meaning that it accounts for regulatory capture, capriciously re-purposing the funds by politicians, etc.), then we can talk about it.