Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 197 posts

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#161

Post by avmich »

mothballed wrote: post #141
avmich wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how the tragedy of commons problem is solved?

Your premise here is absurd. Let's suppose minimizing government is taken to the extreme and literally everything is privatized. Then there wouldn't even be a commons and everything would be privately owned. In no way shape or form does increasing the commons eliminate the tragedy of the commons.

I don't think your definition of commons is the same as mine.

How would you maintain the road if I, who also uses the road, doesn't pay for maintenance?

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#162

Post by nickpp »

estearum wrote: post #92
mothballed wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow when the county maintains them, the "virtually free" roads somehow become enormously expensive. You can see the government having a monopoly and captive buyer causes them to be horribly inefficient, as they have no competition (and no private competitor will emerge when the price at point of use by their competitor is zero).

Yes it’s an imperfect system, but literally anyone anywhere can do what you’re describing. They don’t, hardly anywhere, because people don’t want to.

They don’t because the government is already confiscating their money to do (supposedly) exactly that.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#163

Post by duxup »

thisisit wrote: post #142

The current admin tries to portray themselves as "strong man" but have the thinnest of skins. It is likely the EPA bosses don't want any studies which oppose their agenda. Be it renewables or coal mining. Don't follow the science, follow the agenda. Case in point - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBllzAb_vAk Kevin Hall's study didn't find ultra processed foods being addictive like cocaine. It seemed to have rubbed th…

>but have the thinnest of skins

Trump and co. are the biggest "snowflakes". Trump can't even take a question from a reporter he doesn't like without threatening them with prosecution... for asking a question.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/maybe-trump-threatens-abc-...

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#164

Post by selimthegrim »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #36
spamizbad wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree minorities are going to feel the brunt of climate change I’m not sure in modern political contexts the motivation is racial. There’s deep, growing resentment towards the entire so-called “Professional Managerial Class” - things like wind and solar power are a byproduct of their accomplishments. To kill these things off is a way to stick their finger in the eyes of undesirables; the fact that the externa…

You have to remember we live in a nation that poured cement into public pools across the country just so they wouldn’t have to share them with black Americans. I don’t think people realize how many private schools exist purely because of reintegration. People decided they would rather build new schools and pay private tuition on top of the taxes they pay for public education. Again, all of this was just so they would…

I hear the Audubon pool was really nice too.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#165

Post by mothballed »

avmich wrote: post #161
mothballed wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your premise here is absurd. Let's suppose minimizing government is taken to the extreme and literally everything is privatized. Then there wouldn't even be a commons and everything would be privately owned. In no way shape or form does increasing the commons eliminate the tragedy of the commons.

I don't think your definition of commons is the same as mine. How would you maintain the road if I, who also uses the road, doesn't pay for maintenance?

There are a few kinds of private roads

-public access private easements (my road)

-public access non easement (grocery store parking lot, cost amortized by customers)

-toll road (some highways, etc)

-completely private road (only owner uses it, i.e. private farm road)

Only the first of those has the potential for the kind of abuse you mention, I think, because it mimics the government kind of road in some ways where the maintenance costs aren't captured at the point of use. If it gets bad enough charging $0 you might need switch to some other kind of private road.

In any case this isn't nearly as bad as the tragedy of the commons situation if it is a government road, I think, at least as implemented. Our county roads have a tragedy of the commons situation where you could use the road and then some totally unrelated grandma gets dragged out of her house for not paying for it, despite the fact she's never even been on the road -- to me that seems strictly worse "tragedy of the commons" than even the public access private easement because at least under the private easement I can't initiated violence on unrelated persons for other people using the road.

It would seem quite hypocritical (and ironic) indeed to me for proponents of public roads to damn private roads under the idea of tragedy of the commons, so I'm not sure it's a valid indictment here that the tragedy of the commons is somehow becoming even more unsolved when roads are privatized.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#166

Post by notahacker »

mothballed wrote: post #151
notahacker wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we just let the pesky poors die, the US healthcare system would still be more expensive on a per use basis than the rest of the world. Now sure, the absolute amount spent would probably be lower if we just assumed that people that couldn't produce paperwork to prove they could fund their ER visit didn't deserve to live. If you prefer zero taxes and zero life expectancy for anyone unfortunate enough to need li…

Wait which is it. We have a "private" system where we save "the pesky" poor and regulate licensing, insurance, provide medicare/medicaid, have a quasi-public system for ER where private payers fund those who won't pay, or we don't? You just switched entirely to some soap box about why we actually do have a bastardized private-public system and then damned me for pointing out the very false basis that you presumed bec…

> Wait which is it. We have a "private" system where we save "the pesky" poor and regulate licensing, insurance, provide medicare/medicaid, have a quasi-public system for ER where private payers fund those who won't pay, or we don't?

You have the fully private provision you insist is more efficient. It costs more for worse outcomes than every other developed country, who also have regulations. If your original claim that the private sector is so efficient it could deliver everything for a third of the tax cost of the current system, it's remarkable that you're actually paying a large multiple the cost of the fully socialised systems for many people to have no care or crippling copays.

Sure, you can move the goalposts by claiming that true private provision requires there to be no medical regulations. But in order for that claim to be remotely credible you'd have to be able to point to all the countries that have great outcomes from having no medical regulations or public healthcare at all (the Philippines where the government is the main provider of healthcare but it doesn't have the time or inclination to enforce regulations on OTC antibiotics doesn't count, even if its health outcomes were excellent, which they're unsurprisingly not). Not gonna lie, if I'm suffering from the symptoms of a heart attack, I don't think antibiotics for half a day's pay are going to help, and literally the only efficiency argument for restrictions on ER rooms being allowed to employ extra admin staff to check insurance paperwork before deciding to administer treatment being an efficiency loss is that it's more efficient to let me die if I can't pay. As I've said, common argument but the complete opposite of your original setup where everyone gets the same outcomes for a third of the cost.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#167

Post by froggy »

goku12 wrote: post #18
fabian2k wrote: post #8

I mean it's entirely obvious from everything that this administration does that it fundamentally opposes the entire purpose of the EPA. They want people to think climate change is a hoax, and environmental regulations are in the way of earning money. Wind power is bad, and "clean coal" is good.

> Wind power is bad, and "clean coal" is good. Can somebody explain the psychology behind these beliefs? I'm pretty sure they know how coal is mined. They must surely have heard about the black lung disease and COPD. Where does this 'clean coal' concept come from? And if that's about the products of coal burning, is it too hard to imagine breathing in hot air containing soot, fly ash, some obnoxious oxides, some unbu…

My theory is consistent repetition of messaging (Cialdini principles). The people aren’t stupid, they’ve been gradually brainwashed over years by propaganda like Fox News and “conservative” talk shows, or they have family/friends that repeat that messaging. It is at the point of groupthink where they all now openly celebrate bigots and extremists.

They probably don’t understand or care why tuna and others parts of our food chain are contaminated by mercury.

Maybe they just want to join a team and beat up on the other team. The fossil-funded GOP tells them each liberal position is evil, so the MAGAs reflexively go against it all, even if it means mutual destruction.

When I was a kid, it was common knowledge (IIRC) that you couldn’t trust lawyers or politicians. It’s crazy to me how people nowadays are putting so much trust in politicians.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#168

Post by mothballed »

notahacker wrote: post #166
mothballed wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait which is it. We have a "private" system where we save "the pesky" poor and regulate licensing, insurance, provide medicare/medicaid, have a quasi-public system for ER where private payers fund those who won't pay, or we don't? You just switched entirely to some soap box about why we actually do have a bastardized private-public system and then damned me for pointing out the very false basis that you presumed bec…

> Wait which is it. We have a "private" system where we save "the pesky" poor and regulate licensing, insurance, provide medicare/medicaid, have a quasi-public system for ER where private payers fund those who won't pay, or we don't? You have the fully private provision you insist is more efficient. It costs more for worse outcomes than every other developed country, who also have regulations. If your original claim…

It's an extremely strong indication you've no experience with the US ER system that you think the efficiency issues are checking insurance at the door of a MI patient vs the fact they're required to at least entertain the hordes of people coming in with self reported "STD" or "doctor note for flu" when that kind of stuff shouldn't be appearing at the ER unless a lower acuity clinic has suspicion it might actually require emergent care. But of course why go to a clinic that is much cheaper when you can just show up at the ER and claim the pseudonym Pedro Sanchez with no ID and let the clinic bill it to all the other patients (which you insanely claim makes our system 'private' despite the fact all this happens at the behest of government), whom of course won't show up unless they're about dead because they not only will have to pay for these abuses but actually having something to lose. [Oh and how would I know this, only working ~1 yr in an inner city ER and seeing all the cases]

And you can argue that it would be better if those patients could get free urgent care instead of free ER to do the same thing at way higher cost, and I would agree that would be better than what we have now. But either way we're at an entirely different starting point.

What you can't argue is we actually have a private system in the US (and somehow miss the elephant in the room that over 1/3 of healthcare spending in the US is public Medicare/Medicaid, then add VA on top that) and then allude it's no true Scotsman or a moved goalpost if I point this out. In fact every time I do point it out, you just go back to morally proselytizing about dead poor people because it's a great way to distract from the fact you've lied and knowingly lied.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#169

Post by GenerocUsername »

Maken wrote: post #73
GenerocUsername wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way it is? Let me explain. The USA is big, but China bigger. If the USA over optimizes on reducing greenhouse gas today, at the expense of our long term economic and world power, China, who cares for less about preserving the world will continue to destroy the world and claim the most power simultaneously. So while we can reduce OUR footprint by taking ourselves out of the game, the world still loses. So now try…

But China is deploying more wind and solar energy than the USA. If anything the refusal to diversity energy sources is leaving USA even more behind the competition in the long term.

I see your point of view, but the fact is they are growing and so deploying new assets. The US is not growing and for us it is mostly about replacing assets. They have different payoff schedules. We have pre built infrastructure we are still paying off. You cannot just rebuild it mid lifecycle without taking massive losses.

Re: EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies

#170

Post by wqaatwt »

rectang wrote: post #125
wqaatwt wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still not that massive in relative terms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colonial_and_pre-Fed... Virginia would had still been the most populous or at least second most populous state if only white people were counted. Also there were plenty of small states in the Northeast with very small populations.

Adding up the 1780 numbers on that page, the numbers appear to be almost identical. But there's a catch: those numbers include enslaved people . who numbered at least 500,000 (see [1]). * Free states: 1,390,067 * Slave states: 1,390,302 - 500,000 = 890,302 > Still not that massive in relative terms I don't know why you persist in saying this. [1] https://userpages.umbc.edu/~bouton/History407/SlaveStats.htm

Persist in what? My original was that population sizes between states were relatively more even back then than now.

1780 is probably not the best year, though. e.g. New York was still a slave state. Of course the gap only grew bigger over time

Post reply on HN