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Just because they have other options doesn't mean the fight is lost before it's begun. We can make this more and more work for them, and keep sending the messag

Just because they have other options doesn't mean the fight is lost before it's begun. We can make this more and more work for them, and keep sending the message. And yes, we can also work to place sanctions on investment from nations that ignore human rights. If we make better and best into enemies, there's no end to what we can't accomplish.

3pt14159 8y ago
I usually agree with this line of thinking, and even personally I wouldn't take money from some people like Peter Thiel because of his political actions, but I don't try to get others to do the same. I advocate for systemic or political changes or—if those are hard because of mismatched incentives or low information voters—propaganda, think tank funding, and lobbying to try to fix things. Take plastics use, for example, it's better to focus energy on banning them completely than to check each and every shampoo personally for microbeads. Better and best are only enemies in situations where better is multiple orders of magnitude less effective than "best" which I wouldn't even classify as "best" I would call it "a real solution that might not be optimal but fundamentally sees to address the problem in a meaningful and efficient way" because I don't think of things in terms of better and best. I think the reason I don't is that I studied both software and structural engineering separately. In structural engineering the design goals for non-emergency buildings are 1/10k failure rate over 100 years, with visible signs of failure before collapse. We need steel girders to deal with illiberal states, not popsicle sticks.
- Baeocystin 8y ago
  >Take plastics use, for example, it's better to focus energy on banning them completely than to check each and every shampoo personally for microbeads. The vast majority (>90%) of the plastic waste in the world's oceans comes from a few rivers in asia that run through countries that have minimal to no garbage collection/sanitation services for the cities that border the rivers. Investing in appropriate waste management infrastructure in the countries that need it is the solution to work towards. Plastic bans don't address the fundamental problem. https://cen.acs.org/materials/polymers/Fighting-ocean-plastics-source/96/i16 https://cen.acs.org/materials/polymers/Fighting-ocean-plasti...
  - 3pt14159 8y ago
    That isn't the same issue as microbeads though, because those hit our tributary rivers and lakes where ecosystems are less resilient. But even if you are right (and I'm more than willing to change my mind here) it only speaks to my larger point: Let's focus on the real problems at their source instead of putsing around with micro feel-good-measures.
    - Baeocystin 8y ago
      >Let's focus on the real problems at their source instead of putsing around with micro feel-good-measures. On that, you and I are on 100% agreement! It is just that in my experience, the real problems are staggeringly prosaic, and thus hard to drum up real support for. Not many people (although I am willing to bet quite a few here on HN!) get excited about proper waste management/sanitation. But it is one of those comparatively cheap things that reaps vast societal and environmental benefit. And plastics provide a lot of benefits for very little cost- it's why they are used so heavily. Switching over to paper packaging would require vastly more energy and resource inputs, for example, and it is not immediately clear that this would, or would not, be a net benefit. A truly biodegradable plastic that still had the required physical properties of what we currently use would be a big step forward, too. As a slight aside, I am leery of banning as a first-choice tool for dealing with these kinds of problems. Look at what happened in California when anticoagulant rat and mouse poisons were banned from use. What was an excellent idea (reduce poison loads in the environment, stop additional kill of non-target wildlife) has instead become objectively worse, and the neurotoxin introduced as a replacement has no treatment, unlike the Vitamin K shots that could previously help stricken pets and animals, and is a far more agonizing way to die to boot.
wpietri 8y ago
Agreed. There's no effort against bad actors that bad actors haven't tried to work around. Waiting for perfection means waiting forever. The right thing to do is to take the first obvious action, see if things get better, and then iterate.

3pt14159 8y ago

I usually agree with this line of thinking, and even personally I wouldn't take money from some people like Peter Thiel because of his political actions, but I don't try to get others to do the same. I advocate for systemic or political changes or—if those are hard because of mismatched incentives or low information voters—propaganda, think tank funding, and lobbying to try to fix things. Take plastics use, for example, it's better to focus energy on banning them completely than to check each and every shampoo personally for microbeads. Better and best are only enemies in situations where better is multiple orders of magnitude less effective than "best" which I wouldn't even classify as "best" I would call it "a real solution that might not be optimal but fundamentally sees to address the problem in a meaningful and efficient way" because I don't think of things in terms of better and best. I think the reason I don't is that I studied both software and structural engineering separately. In structural engineering the design goals for non-emergency buildings are 1/10k failure rate over 100 years, with visible signs of failure before collapse. We need steel girders to deal with illiberal states, not popsicle sticks.

Baeocystin 8y ago
>Take plastics use, for example, it's better to focus energy on banning them completely than to check each and every shampoo personally for microbeads. The vast majority (>90%) of the plastic waste in the world's oceans comes from a few rivers in asia that run through countries that have minimal to no garbage collection/sanitation services for the cities that border the rivers. Investing in appropriate waste management infrastructure in the countries that need it is the solution to work towards. Plastic bans don't address the fundamental problem. https://cen.acs.org/materials/polymers/Fighting-ocean-plastics-source/96/i16 https://cen.acs.org/materials/polymers/Fighting-ocean-plasti...
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  That isn't the same issue as microbeads though, because those hit our tributary rivers and lakes where ecosystems are less resilient. But even if you are right (and I'm more than willing to change my mind here) it only speaks to my larger point: Let's focus on the real problems at their source instead of putsing around with micro feel-good-measures.
  - Baeocystin 8y ago
    >Let's focus on the real problems at their source instead of putsing around with micro feel-good-measures. On that, you and I are on 100% agreement! It is just that in my experience, the real problems are staggeringly prosaic, and thus hard to drum up real support for. Not many people (although I am willing to bet quite a few here on HN!) get excited about proper waste management/sanitation. But it is one of those comparatively cheap things that reaps vast societal and environmental benefit. And plastics provide a lot of benefits for very little cost- it's why they are used so heavily. Switching over to paper packaging would require vastly more energy and resource inputs, for example, and it is not immediately clear that this would, or would not, be a net benefit. A truly biodegradable plastic that still had the required physical properties of what we currently use would be a big step forward, too. As a slight aside, I am leery of banning as a first-choice tool for dealing with these kinds of problems. Look at what happened in California when anticoagulant rat and mouse poisons were banned from use. What was an excellent idea (reduce poison loads in the environment, stop additional kill of non-target wildlife) has instead become objectively worse, and the neurotoxin introduced as a replacement has no treatment, unlike the Vitamin K shots that could previously help stricken pets and animals, and is a far more agonizing way to die to boot.

wpietri 8y ago

Agreed. There's no effort against bad actors that bad actors haven't tried to work around. Waiting for perfection means waiting forever. The right thing to do is to take the first obvious action, see if things get better, and then iterate.