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America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

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Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#61

Post by dpkirchner »

therealpygon wrote: post #25
somewhatgoated wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by we you mean the US this would require a dramatic change in the culture. Just look how USAmericans view the regulations and rules that are imposed on businesses in the EU - what you propose would require a much harsher regulation than in the EU currently and even the current regulations seem extreme to Americans and proposing regulations like that would probably be political suicide

You mean that because people take issue with the fact that the EU implements everything in almost the worst and most intrusive way possible? Sorry, you forgot to accept my view conversation cookie and I don’t want to be personally liable because you didn’t, so this response will be cut off in order to

Those cookie banners aren't required for conversations -- a persistent session cookie would be enough (if you don't want to make the user sign in every time). The cookie banner implementation is a burden companies choose to place on themselves (and then to burden their users).

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#62

Post by [deleted] »

Avicebron wrote: post #27
somewhatgoated wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by we you mean the US this would require a dramatic change in the culture. Just look how USAmericans view the regulations and rules that are imposed on businesses in the EU - what you propose would require a much harsher regulation than in the EU currently and even the current regulations seem extreme to Americans and proposing regulations like that would probably be political suicide

I think it's a chicken and egg problem around politics not necessarily a "cultural issue", which rings like victim blaming, it's politically suicidal only because the way that lobbying works and how we structure campaign financing. We only really have pro-business-does-no-wrong+blue bits or business-does-no-wrong+red bits, we don't have any effective other voices. Again, harsher regulation is only "harsher" if it's p…

[deleted]

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#63

Post by mystraline »

akudha wrote: post #49
b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #14

It's so convenient that all these people waited until retirement to speak out, but they also said they weren't doing anything wrong? Zero morals by anyone in this story.

It is easy to be ethically and morally responsible, after one becomes rich, after one is retired. Until then, it is enough to follow the law just enough to not get fined. Actually, even that is a tall ask these days - fines are just cost of doing business. It sucks that it is this way, but society seems to have largely accepted it

Fine are the cost of doing business... FOR COMPANIES.

For individuals: arrest, jail, prison, and horrifically crippling fines are normal.

An individual kills 1 person, and its 15y to life. But if youre an 'insurance company' and make policies in abeyance of insurance and arbitrarily deny 30% of claims getting many killed (Luigi says hi), thats perfectly fine. Youre a business leader making lots of money.

You steal $100 from the till at $shitretailjob and company calls cops and has you arrested. BUT if they fraudulently change timesheets and steal $100 from you, wellllll thats a civil matter.

Or, a company made 1B dollars but spent $990M, they only owe taxes on 10M$. But if I make $100k and spent $90k, I still pay taxes on 100k, not 10K.

This country should be called the Corporate States of America. That fiction has more rights than I or any other non-billionaire average human will ever have.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#64

Post by shimman »

p_j_w wrote: post #39
echelon wrote: post #15

I drive through Dalton anytime I visit Chattanooga (a cool hipster city on the border of Georgia and Tennessee). The scale of manufacturing there is wild. There are so many factories. Dalton makes something like 70-80% of the carpet in the world. They've had carpet factories there since I was a kid, but they're starting to expand into lots of other industries. They've begun massively ramping up on solar panel product…

> This little city is doing $10B in GDP. It's impressive if you've ever driven through there. And all they had to do to accomplish this, apparently, was make their environment toxic. What a bargain.

Ain't American capitalism grand? Truly a way to organize a species.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#65

Post by xp84 »

I had a question which most of the article just barely touched on: a lot of attention goes to how much PFAS is detected in people’s blood, but I wanted to know (A) what the harms are, and (B) how strong the evidence is for each one, since afaik they aren’t and probably can’t do randomized trials where they just spray a bunch of Scotchgard in the mouths of half the test subjects.

Using an AI answer as a jumping off point, it looks like the possible harms are:

• Higher cholesterol — (Strong)

• Reduced vaccine antibody response — (Strong)

• Pregnancy‑induced hypertension / preeclampsia — (Strong)

• Lower birth weight / impaired fetal growth — (Strong)

• Kidney cancer (PFOA) — (Contested)

• Testicular cancer (PFOA) — (Limited)

• Thyroid disease — (Limited)

• Liver enzyme changes / fatty liver risk — (Limited)

• Immune issues beyond vaccines (asthma, infections) — (Emerging)

• Diabetes / metabolic effects — (Emerging)

• Neurodevelopmental / behavioral effects — (Emerging)

• Other cancers (breast, prostate, etc.) — (Inconclusive)

Obviously, this isn’t verified research, but I wanted to know what the concrete risks actually were since at this moment, it seems like most of us are probably stuck with the PFAS already in our environment and bodies.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#66

Post by miltonlost »

nkrisc wrote: post #8
expedition32 wrote: post #3

When people talk about how they want manufacturing back they conveniently forget the pollution.

Many things could be manufactured more cleanly, but then we’d have to pay what they really cost instead of the subsidized prices we pay now.

Many things could be manufactured more cleanly, but then the capitalist class will have slightly less obscene wealth by their stealing of profits and pushing of the cost onto society.

The problem is with the manufacturers being evil, selfish environmental nightmares.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#67

Post by boondongle »

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #14

It's so convenient that all these people waited until retirement to speak out, but they also said they weren't doing anything wrong? Zero morals by anyone in this story.

It's actually not convenient at all. Consider this: animal study to human study fail all the time.

In another world, there could have been NO impact at all to human beings and PFAS could be just another random chemical the body doesn't clear but doesn't actually do anything and sits there inert.

I know everyone's pissed about this but the thyroid/other connections stuff happens 10 years later as a result and these are idiot business people playing in waters they don't understand (and neither did medicine at that time). You could say, "you can't take the risk." For me these questions are maybe we need to take a deeper/closer look at what are permissible risks and at what point.

But you could use the same logic to not make any advancement ever. No antibiotics because it will cause resistence. No chemo because it will cause damage and death. People want there to be a Dr. Eggman or Hitler in this story because it's turned out to be so impactful. Like Aesbestos which solved for fire, just poorly - carpet was solving for comfort, sound deadening, and emotional well being. We just can't necessarily quantify that as easily.

It's fantastic that science continually grows in understanding and can attribute once thought "inert" chemicals to problems. "How evil children playing with matches" are though, is asking the wrong question. These people were stupid enough to say - "there's cancer in rats, lets just keep going".

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#68

Post by mystraline »

therealpygon wrote: post #25
somewhatgoated wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by we you mean the US this would require a dramatic change in the culture. Just look how USAmericans view the regulations and rules that are imposed on businesses in the EU - what you propose would require a much harsher regulation than in the EU currently and even the current regulations seem extreme to Americans and proposing regulations like that would probably be political suicide

You mean that because people take issue with the fact that the EU implements everything in almost the worst and most intrusive way possible? Sorry, you forgot to accept my view conversation cookie and I don’t want to be personally liable because you didn’t, so this response will be cut off in order to

The banners were NEVER required.

The banners were devised by the adtech conoanies as a way they though could bypass the GDPR, in the most anti-user way possible. But "allow all" was easy.

Its also likely those banners arent even legal to begin with.

This whole cookie banner law is an example of horrible co panies will act in order to subvert the letter and spirit of laws.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#69

Post by gchamonlive »

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #14

It's so convenient that all these people waited until retirement to speak out, but they also said they weren't doing anything wrong? Zero morals by anyone in this story.

Better to not be a hypocrite and continue abusing your hard exploited capital?

It's the banality of evil over and over again. Can't really blame the individual, with some extreme exceptions, otherwise by calling people out as you are doing you are participating in perpetuating the problem without contributing with anything new.

Re: America's carpet capital: an empire and its toxic legacy

#70

Post by mystraline »

Zigurd wrote: post #12
derriz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people extol the virtues of manufacturing, I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing. This isn’t an American thing btw - I’ve had arguments with brits and others who argue passionately that the country has been destroyed by the relative decline in manufacturing but whe…

America is pretty good at creating an underclass they can force into less desirable jobs using the prison industrial complex.

The word for that is "slavery".

The Civil war never banned slavery. It only banned private citizens from owning people. The government (state and federal) kept sole right to still own people.

The only gate is found guilty of a crime. Technically, that can even be for a speeding ticket. And when they can keep prosecuting for a laundry list, they effectively guarantee a win against whomever they want.

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