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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

#191

Post by leptons »

gpm wrote: post #82
billyhoffman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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_f…

It seems unlikely that this would be retroactive. It would probably fall under some pre existing statute like vandalism.

"Causing environmental catastrophe" seems like it should be covered by some kind of law in the last 70 or 80 years since DDT started production. They knew how toxic the substance was and how long-lived it was, there is no guessing game as to whether it was a bad idea, even at the time.

It has more to do with tolerance of callousness and stupidity in previous decades than it has to do with there not being a specific law against dumping specifically DDT into the ocean.

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

#192

Post by dahfizz »

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!

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic.

"It can be tough to prosecute some crimes, so let's just punish everyone without due process!"

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

#193

Post by bzbarsky »

ska wrote: post #180
bzbarsky wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very country-dependent. In a number of European countries, the children are in fact entitled to some minimal share of the wealth of their parents (in France this share is between 50 and 75%, depending on the number of children for example), and what Buffet and Gates are doing would be illegal, as I understand it.

This sounds counter-intuitive. Are children really entitled to a fraction of all the wealth generated by their parents, or are they entitled to a fraction of the estate ? These are very different things.

This, again, varies by country and is complicated. As one example, according to https://www.germancivilprocedure.com/disinheritance-lawsuits... (search for "Even lifetime gifts are relevant for the calculation of the Pflichtteil"):

> German succession law orders that all lifetime gifts made by the testator within a period of ten years prior to their death is added to the value of the estate. Such gifts are thus also basis for calculation of the forced share.

and a provision like that seems like a clear necessity to prevent people from working around the compulsory-share legislation by just giving their money away before dying. And yes, my understanding (which could be totally wrong!) is that this means that there's effectively a clawback provision on gifts in Germany.

So it's neither "fraction of the estate" nor "fraction of total wealth generated" but a compromise "fraction of what the estate would have been if not for certain actions on the part of the parents".

According to https://works.bepress.com/aaron_schwabach/3/download/ there are in fact such clawback provisions in various European countries (as of 2011, but I don't think that much has changed since then) with different details: time periods, whether you can claw back non-fungible goods from someone who purchased them in good faith from the gift recipient, whether children can officially sign away their rights to gifts at the time of the gift so they later cannot invoke the clawback provisions, etc, etc.

Yes, from a US-or-UK common-law point of view this all seems fairly counter-intuitive. ;)

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

#194

Post by Google234 »

spodek wrote: post #70

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?

DDT saved 10s if millions of lives. Makes sense that people liked it

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

#195

Post by boringg »

This is pretty insane to me that we were just letting ddt get dumped in the deep (and shallow) ocean. Outside of the environmental impacts - I feel like there’s a parallel to the push in geoengineering and carbon capture and storage in the future in that it’s the ‘let’s just do this now and hope there aren’t bad repercussions in the future’ thought process.

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

#196

Post by orthecreedence »

refurb wrote: post #142
charlesu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Agreed! That Hispanic couple who immigrated to the US, built a small business and want to pass it to their kids, screw them! Tax it all away. Let their kids start over!

Or set a cap? Anything above $5M is taxed at 95% or something. People will still work hard to pass on wealth to their kids, but anything obscene could go back into a social dividend.

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

#197

Post by ska »

bzbarsky wrote: post #193
ska wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds counter-intuitive. Are children really entitled to a fraction of all the wealth generated by their parents, or are they entitled to a fraction of the estate ? These are very different things.

This, again, varies by country and is complicated. As one example, according to https://www.germancivilprocedure.com/disinheritance-lawsuits... (search for "Even lifetime gifts are relevant for the calculation of the Pflichtteil"): > German succession law orders that all lifetime gifts made by the testator within a period of ten years prior to their death is added to the value of the estate. Such gifts are thus also…

Interesting, thanks.

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

#198

Post by xeromal »

TimPC wrote: post #169
chmaynard wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I don't think it's unreasonable that the remaining assets of the Montrose Chemical Company should be used to help pay for the salvage and proper disposal of their DDT wastes.

Normally I'd agree. But if you read the article the government already chose to settle this with Montrose Chemical Company. I think it's a very dangerous precedent to be able to go after corporations for things they've already reached a settlement on. I think it was dumb for the government to settle this and they should have waited for more information.

Agreed, but we should go after our government for a shitty settlement, not Montrose who legally paid their dues.

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

#199

Post by tomjakubowski »

dahfizz wrote: post #190
Supermancho wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP implied that such a law doesn't exist, but there's nothing inherently unconstitutional about a new legislative act to enforce the concept. > That will never stand up in court. What's your point or objection to a hypothetical future?

> What's your point or objection to a hypothetical future? "Equality under the law" is a pretty strong argument. Corporations are legal people, and the law treats all people the same. Setting up classes of people with different laws that apply differently is absolutely not something that would fly.

What do you mean? Even within the category of corporate "people", different types of corporations are regulated differently by the law.

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

#200

Post by xyst »

Speaking generally, can nanotechnology be applied to superfund site cleanups? As it currently stands, our tools for cleaning up these chemicals are extremely crude.

Why can't we develop a nanobot that is able to detect the chemical in the soil or ocean and then break down or decompose that molecule?

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