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L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

latimes.com

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Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#61

Post by unishark »

charlesu wrote: post #20
sokoloff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?

This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!

You can't really make an estate tax work higher than the income or gift tax, since people can just sidestep it by giving the inheritance early.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#62

Post by jimktrains2 »

happy_path wrote: post #30

Wouldn't be possible to make controlled explosions to consume submerged hazardous materials, like DDT? I know it is a drastic solution, but would it make sense?

Only if the thing is chemically consumed, otherwise you just spread it around unchanged.

I don't believe DDT would be consumed in any normal explosion.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#63

Post by macspoofing »

Hokusai wrote: post #57
macspoofing wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your approach, besides the immorality of arbitrary post-hoc rationalization for punishment, is that it is not pragmatic. What's done is done, and you need people to get behind making it better. If you come out and push a policy that in part entails rooting and punishing those responsible (or even descendent of those responsible), you'll have people come out against it just for that reason and the env…

> post-hoc punishment post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. The alternative it to punish people before they commit a crime, and that seems immoral at best. > push a policy My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment. They just got caught now. > those responsible with something like reconciliation committees ... symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment. Cor…

>post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment.

Maybe a little charitable interpretation is warranted?

I clearly meant, post hoc rationalization for the punishment. Typically you punish when AN EXISTING law is broken. In this case, OP is arguing for new punishment based on new laws that were broken in the past.

>My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment

No. The devil is in the definition of 'poison the environment'. We have coal plants that 'poison the environment'. We have solar panels, that through manufacturing, maintenance and decommissioning, 'poison the environment'.

>Corporations are not people. You can punish a corporation without any of that considerations.

Who owns corporations? This "corporations are not people" is such a cliché. All the rights that corporations have stem from the rights of the owners. Corporations have rights, because the owners have rights.

And who says the corporations are solely responsible? An unincorporated contractor may be responsible as well.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#64

Post by bsenftner »

dusted wrote: post #2

It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at t…

> Common sense should be the first law.

That won't work, we have an entire political party in the United States hell bent on making sure people have no common sense. The GOP are a selfish cancer on civilization.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#65

Post by rightbyte »

Hokusai wrote: post #57
macspoofing wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your approach, besides the immorality of arbitrary post-hoc rationalization for punishment, is that it is not pragmatic. What's done is done, and you need people to get behind making it better. If you come out and push a policy that in part entails rooting and punishing those responsible (or even descendent of those responsible), you'll have people come out against it just for that reason and the env…

> post-hoc punishment post-hoc punishment is the only reasonable punishment. The alternative it to punish people before they commit a crime, and that seems immoral at best. > push a policy My guess, it was already illegal to poison the environment. They just got caught now. > those responsible with something like reconciliation committees ... symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment. Cor…

"The alternative it to punish people before they commit a crime, and that seems immoral at best."

Isn't a "attempted X" quite common crime? I.e. attempted murder. I would say it is quite common and moral to punnish people before they commit the crime.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#66

Post by pessimizer »

sokoloff wrote: post #45
antonvs wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your inheritance was the result of a bank robbery, do you still think it should be untouchable? You're being very emotional about what seems like a pretty clear case of recovering ill-gotten gains.

Ideally proceeds from a bank robbery would be removed from the estate. From a purely practical standpoint, once the estate is settled, it should stay settled and no one should be forced to answer for the actions of another adult.

This is just a declaration, not an argument. Under what argument (that also doesn't apply to this) would those proceeds be removed from the estate, and when should an estate be "settled."

If somebody sells me a television they burgled from your house, I'd consider the transaction settled once the exchange was made and we'd parted ways. You would probably disagree.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#67

Post by billyhoffman »

dusted wrote: post #2

It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at t…

> I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time"

The idea that a government can make something illegal and retroactively punish previous offenders is so colossally bad that in the United States the Founding Fathers wrote a prohibition against it into the Constitution.

It's not an amendment, such as the right to free speech. They wrote it into Article 1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#68

Post by pessimizer »

macspoofing wrote: post #41
CJefferson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-one is talking about putting people in jail, but also (in my opinion), someone shouldn't get to inherit millions of dollars just because their grandfather committed some terrible crime -- inheritance should not be a right, when the original money was acquired illegally.

>No-one is talking about putting people in jail, but also (in my opinion) Every law, no matter how small and well-meaning, has implicit threat of prison behind it. You can't be so naïve as to believe that this enforcement action won't result in prison for some, destroyed lives for others, and because laws and enforcement are man-made, there's also a guarantee that your dragnet will punish some innocents, and let some…

> Every law, no matter how small and well-meaning, has implicit threat of prison behind it.

If someone doesn't comply with the court, but that would be a crime committed by the child, not the parent.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#70

Post by spodek »

This community is so quick to embrace new technologies and so dismissive of unintended side effects. We cringe at DDT dumps but loved it at the time. Do we not expect similar unintended side effects from other things this community endorses like fusion or seeding the atmosphere with reflecting materials?

We do this to Earth and we think we'll do better on Mars?

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