Nearly half (44%) of every T-shirt goes to waste before you even buy it • Hacker News Board

Re: Nearly half (44%) of every T-shirt goes to waste before you even buy it

#31

Post by janpot » Wed, May 27, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #30

janpot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what government is for. Tax everybody to provide benefits to everybody. This is infrastructure spending, just like roads. This is not roads, this is waste management. I pay proportional to the amount of waste my household produces to have it disposed correctly, the more waste I produce, the more I pay. That is what government is for, steering behavior through taxation, instead of letting the most morally de…

This isn't roads, it's something much more valuable, it's public domain research. A road can only be used by a small number of people, public domain research can be used an infinite number of times, benefiting all. Letting a single manufacturer get a patent on the process would be harmful.

> Manufacturers may not have the money to do the research themselves, but are highly incentivized to incorporate the improvements if somebody else figures it out for them.

Which incentive is this exactly then if the cost is bore by society? "Polluter pays" creates both that exact incentive and the required funds for public research.

Re: Nearly half (44%) of every T-shirt goes to waste before you even buy it

#32

Post by bryanlarsen » Wed, May 27, 2026, 8:08 PM UTC

janpot wrote: post #31

bryanlarsen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't roads, it's something much more valuable, it's public domain research. A road can only be used by a small number of people, public domain research can be used an infinite number of times, benefiting all. Letting a single manufacturer get a patent on the process would be harmful.

> Manufacturers may not have the money to do the research themselves, but are highly incentivized to incorporate the improvements if somebody else figures it out for them. Which incentive is this exactly then if the cost is bore by society? "Polluter pays" creates both that exact incentive and the required funds for public research.

"Manufacturer" is typically a mom & pop owned facility in Pakistan.

Re: Nearly half (44%) of every T-shirt goes to waste before you even buy it

#33

Post by janpot » Fri, May 29, 2026, 8:30 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #32

janpot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Manufacturers may not have the money to do the research themselves, but are highly incentivized to incorporate the improvements if somebody else figures it out for them. Which incentive is this exactly then if the cost is bore by society? "Polluter pays" creates both that exact incentive and the required funds for public research.

"Manufacturer" is typically a mom & pop owned facility in Pakistan.

"mom & pop owned facility" is a very charitable term for the kind of sweatshops western countries love to hide their modern variant of slave labor in.