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Plastics is an example when market economy fails. Plastics is to cheap to buy and manufacture so it’s found everywhere. Ie plastics is an example of tradegedy o

by acd 6y ago

Plastics is an example when market economy fails. Plastics is to cheap to buy and manufacture so it’s found everywhere. Ie plastics is an example of tradegedy of the commons where to purchaser of plastics benefits but everyone else sees a loss of the environment. Trying to explain we need to develop an economic model better than market economy or else earth will become a big waste dump. Ie we need to prize the waste. Tragedy of the commons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_common https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_common Environmental economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics

chapium 6y ago
The market seems like any system really. It can be stable, but this is only common with a diverse array of variables. Otherwise it gets into positive or negative feedback loops. Human behavior acts as a dampener or an amplifier.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jaekash 6y ago
No, this is not an example of the tragedy of the commons. It is simply a negative externality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative And I guess it is an example of market failure in the technical sense but I don't think I would phrase that as "when a market economy fails" as it is not clear whether you are talking colloquially or technically. EDIT: Just to clarify why it is critical to be specific, positive externalities are also market failures. Caring about a technical market failures is a bit abstract, I would not lose sleep over it, they happen. Caring about a negative externalities and advocating for them to be internalized is a lot more concrete and actionable and not something I think anybody really disagrees with on paper. You will have more practical disagreements though because it is unlikely that microplastics being used in say Denmark has the same environmental impact as microplastics being used in say Asia or Africa: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti... and applying a tax to people in Denmark won't result in the externality being internalized in Nigeria.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Nigeria can easily make the same argument for Denmark then nothing ever changes.
  - jaekash 6y ago
    Well I mean they could but they would have to provide actual data (similar to what I cited) to back it up. Just because people can make absurd claims is not a good reason to entertain them.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > Caring about a negative externalities and advocating for them to be internalized is a lot more concrete and actionable and not something I think anybody really disagrees with on paper. Nobody would let you write it down on paper. But a lot of corporations put a lot of money and effort into preventing this from happening. I believe almost all of our economic woes could be fixed with an economic approach that treated negative externalities as an expected and common case in a free market and actively pursued policies to mitigate them (as opposed to idolising the free part of "free markets" and treating regulation to fix externalities as a last resort).
  - IanCal 6y ago
    > Nobody would let you write it down on paper. I'm not sure what you mean by this, it's a regularly advocated for position at all levels.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      > it's a regularly advocated for position at all levels. The position that we shouldn't internalise negative externalities? Who is openly advocating for this?
      - IanCal 6y ago
        Oh I see, sorry, I interpreted the exact opposite.
amarte 6y ago
The world's first synthetic plastic was invented in 1907, and the field has since expanded to include a wide range of variant materials that have permeated nearly every aspect of our lives. I think it's hard to understand the net quality of life benefits that plastics in general have brought to humanity because most of us alive today were born into a world where these great technical achievements have already suffused daily life, so it's easy to take them for granted, while we are only now beginning to discover some of their negative consequences. For example, single use plastics: largely unnecessary in most cases, although not all -- think medical applications. Non-renewable sourcing: the production of many of these materials is contributing to a carbon debt that we're only now beginning to understand the magnitude of. Etc etc... But don't "throw the baby out with the bathwater." I don't think the market economy failed with plastics. The scale of their production and myriad applications was and continues to be an incredible success with both positive and negative externalities. The market needs to adjust given society's new understanding that we've gone too far in some areas, and not far enough in others. As people become aware of the environmental persistence of materials like polystyrene (tradename Styrofoam) for example, and are offered biodegradable, price-competitive offsets, they'll stop buying polystyrene. Closed-loop recycling, carbon capture, renewable sourcing etc are all examples of course corrections that will hopefully gain steam in the market and point us in the right direction.
- stx 6y ago
  I wish we would use less plastic and packaging in general. Its depressing when you buy a product and it has layers and layers of packaging. When I visited a poor part of Mexico in 2000 they still had a system where you purchased a soda in a glass bottle and then returned it for a small refund from the place you purchased it. If a poor city in Mexico does this why cant we do so in the USA? Please do understand that in almost all other ways though this city in Mexico had garbage ever-where.
  - svrtknst 6y ago
    Glass bottles are being removed more and more in Sweden, and it would be interesting to see the microplastic waste created by recycled plastics, and the comparative energy requirements to produce and ship a glass bottle vs. a plastic bottle - Esp. plastic made from plants or sugar cane. All soda/beer bottles and cans sold give you a small refund, and pretty much all waste is recycleable in some way. Slightly dependent on infrastructure in your vicinity, but most municipalities ought to be able to recycle food waste, cardboard, plastic, glass, and metal easily.
peterwwillis 6y ago
Whenever there is a faulty complex system (economic, civic government, other) people insist we need an entirely new system. But if you design a car with faulty brakes, you don't invent a brand new car. You fix the brakes. It doesn't seem immediately obvious how we could change a market economy to resist negative externalities, but I think it's the best solution (especially when the system is well studied).
- edjrage 6y ago
  > if you design a car with faulty brakes, you don't invent a brand new car. You fix the brakes. Funny, this immediately came to mind: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/volkswagen/10523316/Volkswagen-ends-Kombi-production.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/volks... > “The Kombi was designed 60 years ago so it would not be possible now to put an airbag and ABS into the car. That’s why we now have to stop production,” said Jochen Funk, director of sales for VW Brazil. So yeah, maybe we've been driving a (now 70)-year old Kombi and trying to convince ourselves one day we'll be able to just bolt ABS brakes on it.
swsieber 6y ago
If what we have today is a market econmy, then a market economy is perfectly acceptable way to address the issue: taxes of some sort.
- blueline 6y ago
  taxes aren't a silver bullet. if the affected companies were to just pass the extra cost to consumers (why wouldn't they?), then you effectively have implemented a regressive tax that affects the poorest consumers the most. clearly there's more to it than that, but assuming that the market can address any negative externalities just with taxes is pretty naive IMO
  - dwiel 6y ago
    I heard of this first with respect to a carbon tax, but one solution is to evenly redistribute the collected tax among all citizens. This way, the market can internalize the externality while keeping the average person no poorer.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    You set the price of the tax equal to the mitigation cost. In this way consumers pay to mitigate. If mitigation is coat prohibitive, consumers substitute products that are not harmful. Edit: W.r.t. regressive taxation... No one has the right to force their externalities on someone else. Just because you are poor doesn't mean you can dump your garbage on my lawn because it's cheaper than paying to haul it to the dump.
    - LaurieKoudstaal 6y ago
      That isn't how pigouvian taxes work. The point is adjusts the price so that it correctly includes all external costs not already reflected in the costs. It is not about raising revenue to deal with the problem, but changing relative incentives. For this reason, if the tax is regressive, its perfectly OK for the revenue to be redistributed in tax breaks to lower income.
  - 6y ago
anonuser123456 6y ago
Economists solved this problem a long time ago; Pigouvian taxes. No need to dump markets. You just make them pay for their externalities.
lend000 6y ago
This is an externality, and the best role of government in a market economy is to tax externalities such that the tax imposed is enough to "fix" the externality. Fixing it would be extremely expensive, so it would make plastics only viable where they are needed most, and in applications where there is tracking and accountability in recycling and waste management. Also note two major flaws in your reasoning about trying to blame pollution as a "market economy" failure. 1. The US military is the biggest single polluter around [0], outside of perhaps some "non-market-economy" country's militaries like China and Russia. It's hard to know exactly how much damage they do and impossible to hold them accountable for it. The substances they leak into groundwater tend to be worse than plastics. Good luck finding a government model that doesn't have a military. 2. Most of the microplastics in the ocean are coming from third world countries, where there simply isn't enough wealth for there to be political willpower to reduce externalized pollution. The real solution we need is more futuristic waste management technologies that can break down harmful pollutants and turn them into usable material, and I expect they will come from the "market economy." [0] https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than-140-countries-combined/ https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than...

by acd 6y ago

chapium 6y ago

The market seems like any system really. It can be stable, but this is only common with a diverse array of variables. Otherwise it gets into positive or negative feedback loops. Human behavior acts as a dampener or an amplifier.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jaekash 6y ago

No, this is not an example of the tragedy of the commons. It is simply a negative externality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative And I guess it is an example of market failure in the technical sense but I don't think I would phrase that as "when a market economy fails" as it is not clear whether you are talking colloquially or technically. EDIT: Just to clarify why it is critical to be specific, positive externalities are also market failures. Caring about a technical market failures is a bit abstract, I would not lose sleep over it, they happen. Caring about a negative externalities and advocating for them to be internalized is a lot more concrete and actionable and not something I think anybody really disagrees with on paper. You will have more practical disagreements though because it is unlikely that microplastics being used in say Denmark has the same environmental impact as microplastics being used in say Asia or Africa: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti... and applying a tax to people in Denmark won't result in the externality being internalized in Nigeria.

throwaway2048 6y ago
Nigeria can easily make the same argument for Denmark then nothing ever changes.
- jaekash 6y ago
  Well I mean they could but they would have to provide actual data (similar to what I cited) to back it up. Just because people can make absurd claims is not a good reason to entertain them.
nicoburns 6y ago
> Caring about a negative externalities and advocating for them to be internalized is a lot more concrete and actionable and not something I think anybody really disagrees with on paper. Nobody would let you write it down on paper. But a lot of corporations put a lot of money and effort into preventing this from happening. I believe almost all of our economic woes could be fixed with an economic approach that treated negative externalities as an expected and common case in a free market and actively pursued policies to mitigate them (as opposed to idolising the free part of "free markets" and treating regulation to fix externalities as a last resort).
- IanCal 6y ago
  > Nobody would let you write it down on paper. I'm not sure what you mean by this, it's a regularly advocated for position at all levels.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    > it's a regularly advocated for position at all levels. The position that we shouldn't internalise negative externalities? Who is openly advocating for this?
    - IanCal 6y ago
      Oh I see, sorry, I interpreted the exact opposite.

amarte 6y ago

The world's first synthetic plastic was invented in 1907, and the field has since expanded to include a wide range of variant materials that have permeated nearly every aspect of our lives. I think it's hard to understand the net quality of life benefits that plastics in general have brought to humanity because most of us alive today were born into a world where these great technical achievements have already suffused daily life, so it's easy to take them for granted, while we are only now beginning to discover some of their negative consequences. For example, single use plastics: largely unnecessary in most cases, although not all -- think medical applications. Non-renewable sourcing: the production of many of these materials is contributing to a carbon debt that we're only now beginning to understand the magnitude of. Etc etc... But don't "throw the baby out with the bathwater." I don't think the market economy failed with plastics. The scale of their production and myriad applications was and continues to be an incredible success with both positive and negative externalities. The market needs to adjust given society's new understanding that we've gone too far in some areas, and not far enough in others. As people become aware of the environmental persistence of materials like polystyrene (tradename Styrofoam) for example, and are offered biodegradable, price-competitive offsets, they'll stop buying polystyrene. Closed-loop recycling, carbon capture, renewable sourcing etc are all examples of course corrections that will hopefully gain steam in the market and point us in the right direction.

stx 6y ago
I wish we would use less plastic and packaging in general. Its depressing when you buy a product and it has layers and layers of packaging. When I visited a poor part of Mexico in 2000 they still had a system where you purchased a soda in a glass bottle and then returned it for a small refund from the place you purchased it. If a poor city in Mexico does this why cant we do so in the USA? Please do understand that in almost all other ways though this city in Mexico had garbage ever-where.
- svrtknst 6y ago
  Glass bottles are being removed more and more in Sweden, and it would be interesting to see the microplastic waste created by recycled plastics, and the comparative energy requirements to produce and ship a glass bottle vs. a plastic bottle - Esp. plastic made from plants or sugar cane. All soda/beer bottles and cans sold give you a small refund, and pretty much all waste is recycleable in some way. Slightly dependent on infrastructure in your vicinity, but most municipalities ought to be able to recycle food waste, cardboard, plastic, glass, and metal easily.

peterwwillis 6y ago

Whenever there is a faulty complex system (economic, civic government, other) people insist we need an entirely new system. But if you design a car with faulty brakes, you don't invent a brand new car. You fix the brakes. It doesn't seem immediately obvious how we could change a market economy to resist negative externalities, but I think it's the best solution (especially when the system is well studied).

edjrage 6y ago
> if you design a car with faulty brakes, you don't invent a brand new car. You fix the brakes. Funny, this immediately came to mind: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/volkswagen/10523316/Volkswagen-ends-Kombi-production.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/volks... > “The Kombi was designed 60 years ago so it would not be possible now to put an airbag and ABS into the car. That’s why we now have to stop production,” said Jochen Funk, director of sales for VW Brazil. So yeah, maybe we've been driving a (now 70)-year old Kombi and trying to convince ourselves one day we'll be able to just bolt ABS brakes on it.

swsieber 6y ago

If what we have today is a market econmy, then a market economy is perfectly acceptable way to address the issue: taxes of some sort.

blueline 6y ago
taxes aren't a silver bullet. if the affected companies were to just pass the extra cost to consumers (why wouldn't they?), then you effectively have implemented a regressive tax that affects the poorest consumers the most. clearly there's more to it than that, but assuming that the market can address any negative externalities just with taxes is pretty naive IMO
- dwiel 6y ago
  I heard of this first with respect to a carbon tax, but one solution is to evenly redistribute the collected tax among all citizens. This way, the market can internalize the externality while keeping the average person no poorer.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  You set the price of the tax equal to the mitigation cost. In this way consumers pay to mitigate. If mitigation is coat prohibitive, consumers substitute products that are not harmful. Edit: W.r.t. regressive taxation... No one has the right to force their externalities on someone else. Just because you are poor doesn't mean you can dump your garbage on my lawn because it's cheaper than paying to haul it to the dump.
  - LaurieKoudstaal 6y ago
    That isn't how pigouvian taxes work. The point is adjusts the price so that it correctly includes all external costs not already reflected in the costs. It is not about raising revenue to deal with the problem, but changing relative incentives. For this reason, if the tax is regressive, its perfectly OK for the revenue to be redistributed in tax breaks to lower income.
- 6y ago

anonuser123456 6y ago

Economists solved this problem a long time ago; Pigouvian taxes. No need to dump markets. You just make them pay for their externalities.

lend000 6y ago

This is an externality, and the best role of government in a market economy is to tax externalities such that the tax imposed is enough to "fix" the externality. Fixing it would be extremely expensive, so it would make plastics only viable where they are needed most, and in applications where there is tracking and accountability in recycling and waste management. Also note two major flaws in your reasoning about trying to blame pollution as a "market economy" failure. 1. The US military is the biggest single polluter around [0], outside of perhaps some "non-market-economy" country's militaries like China and Russia. It's hard to know exactly how much damage they do and impossible to hold them accountable for it. The substances they leak into groundwater tend to be worse than plastics. Good luck finding a government model that doesn't have a military. 2. Most of the microplastics in the ocean are coming from third world countries, where there simply isn't enough wealth for there to be political willpower to reduce externalized pollution. The real solution we need is more futuristic waste management technologies that can break down harmful pollutants and turn them into usable material, and I expect they will come from the "market economy." [0] https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than-140-countries-combined/ https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than...