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Banned in California

bannedincalifornia.org

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Re: Banned in California

#571

Post by epistasis »

dmix wrote: post #567
epistasis wrote: post #488

There's an important distinction here, between "banned" and "has far cheaper alternatives". Things can appear banned even when they aren't merely because there is a new technology that's better and cheaper and it's a big investment so people go with the cheaper option. Nobody is building new coal in the US because it's so expensive, not because there's an outright ban. Now, part of the reason it's more expensive than…

You can just look at examples in the article. For example "Lithium-Ion Cell Manufacturing" > Cell manufacturing uses NMP solvent for electrode coating, handles flammable electrolytes, and requires formation cycling that generates heat and gases. Tesla chose Reno for the Gigafactory specifically because of California's permitting environment. EPA tried to heavily restrict these outright in 2024 [1] and California has…

That's a good story to consider.

Given the labor challenges in California due to high housing costs, which selectively pushes out those willing to work for lower wages, I am always surprised when manufacturers choose the state at all. Throwing additional challenges doesn't make it any easier.

Re: Banned in California

#572

Post by vablings »

psychoslave wrote: post #510
vablings wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false, patently incorrect. With a good manufacturing line workers are not priced out by "cheap labor" they are priced out by almost zero cost labor, Robots are basically a rounding error compared to human's wages.

Robots bring very different tradeoffs on the table. But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale. Plus scaling industrial production is one thing, but if proletarians are unable to afford them because wealth distribution is exponentially concentrated, what is the point?

>But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale.

No but they are significantly cheaper than an employee, A robot can pick up something and move it from A to B for upwards of 10 years. The programming and setup are a fraction of the time a robot can operate reliably

I cannot stress to you how reliable and little maintenance is required for a $60,000 fanuc robot.

Re: Banned in California

#574

Post by Animats »

Plating operations are a huge headache. They have corrosive plating baths. They have to do some chemical processing on site to neutralize the corrosive chemicals and get them down to a neutral pH.

Some years ago, a plating company in San Jose dumped a plating bath into the sewer system. This was so toxic that it killed the bacteria that reduce organic sludge at the sewerage plant. This knocked the whole plant offline, releasing untreated sewerage into the bay. The lower bay was toxic for a week. It's normally swimmable. San Jose was fined by the EPA. The plating company was heavily fined by San Jose.

It's a good sewerage plant. The output is drinkable, and if you take the tour, you're offered some to drink. Some of the output is used for irrigation. In a severe drought emergency, water could be fed back into the water system. They've never had to do that, but in a big drought a few years ago, things got close to that point.

San Jose, which is more of an industrial city than most people realize, still has plating companies. Here's an inspection report for one of them.[1] This one was releasing too much chromium.

[1] https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/region9/water/pre...

Re: Banned in California

#575

Post by archagon »

rswail wrote: post #248

This is whining from someone that doesn't want to be responsible for the externality of pollution that these manufacturing facilities generate. The regulations are to stop the pollution, if you can manufacture without polluting, then you'll comply and be able to manufacture. The problem is that there are other regulatory environments where the people aren't protected from pollution. What would fix that is enforcing t…

And starts out with a Musk quote, to boot. (Assuming it's not made up wholesale; could not verify.)

We need to push these people out of California.

Re: Banned in California

#576

Post by mistrial9 »

terminalshort wrote: post #468
rswail wrote: post #248

This is whining from someone that doesn't want to be responsible for the externality of pollution that these manufacturing facilities generate. The regulations are to stop the pollution, if you can manufacture without polluting, then you'll comply and be able to manufacture. The problem is that there are other regulatory environments where the people aren't protected from pollution. What would fix that is enforcing t…

China has reduced its pollution massively since the 90s while aggressively expanding its industrial output. And they have done it without excessive bureaucracy and delays in construction. In the US environmental laws are not about the environment at all. They are there to enrich lawyers who profit from multi year permitting processes and lawsuits.

> In the US environmental laws are not about the environment at all.

that is literally nonsense .. lazy nonsense, ill-willed nonsense.. Ignorant nonsense.

literally four seconds to search " history of us environmental law"

Re: Banned in California

#577

Post by verteu »

kardianos wrote: post #265
Fischgericht wrote: post #243

There is a reason these kind of things are no longer possible in much of the western world and especially Europe-like US states like California: After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water. As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively. I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forb…

Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference. So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared ab…

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products

No, California can't do that. States cannot impose tariffs per the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1...

They could push for more regulations at the federal level (and indeed, Californians do this quite often!)

Re: Banned in California

#578

Post by overfeed »

eldavido wrote: post #565
WhatsTheBigIdea wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The regulatory bureaucracy is a real hurdle. Even if you want to comply with the regulations, navigating the regulatory bureaucracy is a killer. Super slow, super expensive, quite opaque, somewhat arbitrary, and highly punitive. Even if the bureaucracy didn't exist and everyone voluntarily followed the regulations, you could not run a globally cost competitive business without some sort of subsidy when competing with…

Yeah I think there are two problems First: we may have gone too far toward anti-pollution. China has more naval vessels than the US. Everything changes when peace isn't a foregone conclusion, as it has been for the past 30? 50? years. Second: it's not the regulations per se, but the difficulty of dealing with the bureaucracy, particularly (a) long delays and (b) uncertainty. I run an electrical contractor, so this is…

> It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.

I keep hearing this, but it never happens. Despite attempts to get jurisdictions to race to the bottom, businesses simply follow the money/markets: I can bet you a hefty sum that Alameda will never go without electrical contractors.

Re: Banned in California

#579

Post by WhatsTheBigIdea »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #559
WhatsTheBigIdea wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The regulatory bureaucracy is a real hurdle. Even if you want to comply with the regulations, navigating the regulatory bureaucracy is a killer. Super slow, super expensive, quite opaque, somewhat arbitrary, and highly punitive. Even if the bureaucracy didn't exist and everyone voluntarily followed the regulations, you could not run a globally cost competitive business without some sort of subsidy when competing with…

Yeah, everyone wants faster bureaucracy until they see the cost estimate for proper staffing, then just pretending there wasn't any harm to regulate in the first place becomes the preferred option.

Agreed that staffing the bureaucracy with good people costs a lot.

There is a large opportunity to simplify and rationalize the regulations. This would dramatically reduce the cost of both bureaucracy and compliance. In addition to massively reduced cost, it would enable people in CA to do more cool stuff faster!

But simplification, rationalization, and acceleration is not in the interest of the bureaucracy or the incumbents... so we are very unlikely to see change until there is an existential crisis.

Re: Banned in California

#580

Post by gamblor956 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #436
chaboud wrote: post #412

When I was a kid growing up in Texas, our ocean visits were to the Gulf of Mexico, off the Texas coast, and you would grab little alcohol wipes for when you got out of the ocean, to wipe the oil off. Years later, swimming in Hawaii, I found myself looking for wipes. I mentioned it to a snorkel-outfit operator, and she looked at me like I was insane. They didn't even put damaging sunscreen in the water, and there was…

Crude oil floating in the ocean used to be a big nuisance in parts of California. It is a natural phenomenon, created by oil deposits on the ocean floor leaking into the environment. Santa Barbara was particularly famous for it. Extraction of that oil via commercial wells greatly reduced the natural seepage, which is why there is so little crude oil floating in that ocean water today. Oil drilling actually made the w…

Natural seepage is still just as big of an issue now as it was back then in those areas, including Santa Barbara.
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