3 ms·
Whoever can do so at the systemic level instead of expecting individual corporations to not be evil. I'm not really in the mood to discuss whether or not gover
by vanderZwan 6y ago
Whoever can do so at the systemic level instead of expecting individual corporations to not be evil.
I'm not really in the mood to discuss whether or not government regulation has any hope of doing so here, since there's a much-too-common inability to look beyond the dysfunctional US political system that is just too tiresome to discuss around on a Monday morning.
But I will say on a meta-level that one way or another this must involve some form of politics, because fundamentally it's about humans trying to bring out desired human behavior.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoHeck, it's too tiresome to discuss on Tuesday-Sunday, as well.
- Gravityloss 6y agoGlobal climate accords, putting a price on carbon and thus making steel and burning fuel more expensive. The market can optimize well as long as the cost function is good.
- vanderZwan 6y agoSure, but it's the determining of the cost function where the irrational debating starts. Similarly, suggesting that there are situations where the cost function is both necessary and has such a high constant overhead that you're better off with a non-market system is a non-starter half of the time.
- Gravityloss 6y agoI don't think discussing about the shape of the cost function is necessarily irrational. Let's say you've inherited a small fortune that includes a mansion. The mansion's upkeep is slowly eating away the fortune. What do you do? You can rationally make some scenarios how to deal with it. Maybe you sell it. Maybe you rent it out. Maybe you invest in it and start a hotel.
- vanderZwan 6y agoWe're not talking about markets and cost functions as a general abstraction here, we're talking about the specific context of adjusting company behavior.
- Gravityloss 6y agoI'm not sure I understand your point. It doesn't really matter which industry sector does the improvements as long as the total improves. Doing it with free market ensures that they happen where they are cheapest.
- mumblemumble 6y agoI wonder if all it would take is a change to how consumption taxes work. Sales tax and value added tax don't really discriminate between resource consumption and value added from workmanship. But one could at least imagine a taxation scheme that instead focuses on material inputs (including fuel). And that would hypothetically economically favor higher-quality, more durable goods over things like planned obsolescence and fast fashion. Might be technically tricky to accomplish in a world where most manufacturing happens overseas, though.
- ashtonkem 6y agoMy favorite proposal is to require that all companies take back their products at EOL and recycle them to an extremely high standard. This pushes the externalities of low lifespan products directly back onto the manufacturer, encouraging them to design for both lifespan and easy repair/recycling. Unfortunately we’ll also have to deal with IKEA style tactics of converting a single company into a complex web of disposable sub companies in order to dodge their tax or regulatory obligations.
- vanderZwan 6y agoThat could help with the externalized costs issue, yeah. Regarding your second point, don't we already have to do the latter anyway?