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China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

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Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#91
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly if country A can make a product X% cheaper than country B because of having less stringent regulation (be it environmental, quality, labor laws...) it's just logical to me that country B should impose a tariff of X% on that product. I'm not much of a free-market capitalism, but if you have to be, then a free market is not a free market if not everyone is playing by the same rules, right?

I'm a free market capitalist. The response we give is if country A is cheaper we should let them do it and concentrate on what we can do well instead. Even if county A is better in everything, they have limited resources so they are better off buying from us something they could do better just so they can concentrate on what they do well while we get good at something we can do but not as well. In the end the efficie…

That argument assumes that country A's economy does not affect lives of citizens in the purchasing country (B?). Global warming, among other effects, violates this assumption. Carbon pricing + tariffs on carbon make complete sense even in the free market capitalist mental framework.

Re: China Wrestles with the Toxic Aftermath of Rare Earth Mining

#92
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last point: do consumers reward me for not picking the cheapest?

Not really. They reward you for not getting caught using slave labor.

Rewards for not getting caught for cheating is a fundamental problem that no system can solve.

There are systems that get closer than others. We tend to use words like fascist to describe them for good reason: the downsides are often worse than the problems. This isn't to say we shouldn't work on the problem, we just need to be careful that our ends are not worse.

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