321–330 of 460 posts
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I don't know what distinction you're really drawing. Polluting production reduces the costs for producers.
It should be more expensive to pollute. The problem is that clean-up costs are not factored into production.
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> so they can enrich themselves That's the only thing I take issue with here. Characterizing this as intentional misconduct muddies the waters. The line between cutting costs and benefiting from an increased share price is long and winding. Don't blame people; examine systems. Where most of the money goes is back to keeping costs low for consumers, the same ones that are conscientiously keeping the tap water off.
Just because you can't easily put the blame on individuals doesn't mean they're not responsible. Our "system" is great at "blame laundering" or obfuscating ethical implications of decisions through diffusion of responsibility and removal of context at different boundaries. But the system itself is not a thing you can blame, as it's orchestrated by people who wanted it to work that way. Leaders who don't act to change…
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Capitalism is basically a force of nature, like evolution. Claiming anyone can orchestrate it is analogous to intelligent design.
I do agree that we all, and leaders more than most, bear responsibility to improve the system. But don't overestimate the capacity of any one person. If it were that easy to control complex systems, Obama would have closed Guantanamo.
This is a classic externality problem. We can berate consumers all day long to be more diligent in their recycling, but all that finger wagging is for show meant to distract from the real source of the garbage, the manufacturers. Just like the classic "blame the user" mentality, the users were given an impossibly complex system with barely any incentive to get it right. Nothing about the interface is intuitive or dis…
I.e. put a tax on plastic. I'd favor a tax on styrofoam peanuts, for example. Have you ever spilled a bag of them outside? I did once by accident. Spent hours picking them all up one by one as they blew around.
Give me crumpled paper padding any day over those damnable infernal peanuts.
This is a classic externality problem. We can berate consumers all day long to be more diligent in their recycling, but all that finger wagging is for show meant to distract from the real source of the garbage, the manufacturers. Just like the classic "blame the user" mentality, the users were given an impossibly complex system with barely any incentive to get it right. Nothing about the interface is intuitive or dis…
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Blue Apron's cold packs are ridiculous. The goop leaks onto the food, they're a nightmare to dispose of, and they're heavy; probably 75% of the weight of a BA box is the cold packs. If they used dry ice, the boxes would be much lighter weight -- saving on shipping costs -- and they would simply evaporate rather than needing to be trashed.
It might not be feasible for them. Shippers place pretty strict limits on how much dry ice can go onto one of their planes, on account of not wanting to suffocate the air crew mid flight.
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Im not sure if you correctly understand what the word "sustainable" means. X is sustainable IFF you can keep doing X forever and not have it kill you eventually. "Seems to work" is perhaps a sub-optimal policy objective.
There's absolutely nothing that you can do indefinitely and not have it kill you.
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It might not be feasible for them. Shippers place pretty strict limits on how much dry ice can go onto one of their planes, on account of not wanting to suffocate the air crew mid flight.
Fortunately, people have built-in biological CO2 detectors. If it is just flight crew (no passengers), they all have oxygen masks they can use if the CO2 suffuses the cabin.
I'm all for environmental awareness - but it's a bit like the people saying, oh, why do you not use re-usable containers for everything, or do you really need to dishwash everything?
Things like food safety, and not making your customers sick are enshrined in law - and that's a good thing.
Even at my work, they aren't allowed to re-serve/re-heat things that have been served once, due to cross-contamination.
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There's ambiguous stuff to be sure. But I'm talking about people who throw food scraps, furniture, car tires, ash, bbq coals, construction debris, etc in the recycling. Yes, I've seen all of those things go into the recycling bins and more.
Tricky. The first three should be recyclable: good scraps can be composted, timber and metal in furniture can be recycled, and car tyres can be recycled.
We have a trash bin, yard waste bin, and recycle bin where I live, and I've seen neighbors dump their grass clippings into the recycle bin. I've had family members toss paper plates along with the half eaten hamburger on them into my recycling (NOT compost) bin because the plate is paper.
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Why is that? A tax is slower and exempts the wealthy while inflicting the costs onto the poor. Regulation is cheaper, better, fairer and faster at getting policy implemented than a technical tax, and doesn't have the behavioral issues that abound when telling people they are "taxed" for doing something.
Taxes don't always need to be slower or more weighted to lower income (e.g. property taxes). However, they tend to be gamed more easily and sometimes have unintended consequences. Regulation and taxes go hand in - how are you going to pay for regulatory enforcement unless you dip into some general fund? Answer: a tax. The biggest lie about government is the one that claims all taxes are bad. Without taxes, you get So…