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> Besides contributing to climate change, pollution from coal kills half a million people globally each year. That is an externality. My company gets there pro

> Besides contributing to climate change, pollution from coal kills half a million people globally each year. That is an externality. My company gets there profit, other people die, but I do not need to pay for it. How is this legal?

gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
Because people make money. How many of us own Apple products? We know they have near slave labor and high suicide rates in Foxconn. The US doesn’t even attach tariffs to them.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > high suicide rates in Foxconn Didn't that turn out to be considerably lower than the average suicide rate in China?
  - fooker 4y ago
    Yes, after they put nets on the walls to catch would-be-suiciders and threatened families employees who would consider that option.
    - gruez 4y ago
      Source for foxconn suicide rates being higher than normal before they installed the nets?
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  > We know they have near slave labor and high suicide rates in Foxconn. It’s actually nothing like slavery at all. The workers can leave at any time, and demand for those jobs is extremely high.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Given that property and finance underlie a market-capitalist system, digging to the foundations of the law of each can be ... quite illuminating. "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith also defines wealth as "the annual labour and produce of the nation". Market transactions don't generat wealth, a social good, but profit, an accounting fiction, maximised by internalising revenues and externalising costs.
- pasttense01 4y ago
  It's well known that the communist USSR had much worse environmental problems than capitalist Western Europe and U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Russia
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    These are not irreconcileable concepts. The externalising of costs and internalisation of benefits (within Party operations, to specific high-power entities within the Party) can explain much of this. The specific political dynamics of pollution and environmental degredation within Western countries (the UK, US, India, Western Europpe, etc.) is often quite similar. The politically powerful impose environmental costs on the disempowered, racial outsiders, minorities, immigrants, colonies, etc. I see far more similarity in these systems than differences. It wasn't the captains of industry and political power who embraced Leopold, Carson, Meadows, and Commoner. And a surprising amount of early environmentalism had a strong tinge of racism about it (c.f., Muir). Power differenctial informs far more than any specific ideology does.

gadflyinyoureye 4y ago

Because people make money. How many of us own Apple products? We know they have near slave labor and high suicide rates in Foxconn. The US doesn’t even attach tariffs to them.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
> high suicide rates in Foxconn Didn't that turn out to be considerably lower than the average suicide rate in China?
- fooker 4y ago
  Yes, after they put nets on the walls to catch would-be-suiciders and threatened families employees who would consider that option.
  - gruez 4y ago
    Source for foxconn suicide rates being higher than normal before they installed the nets?
School-Cotton 4y ago
> We know they have near slave labor and high suicide rates in Foxconn. It’s actually nothing like slavery at all. The workers can leave at any time, and demand for those jobs is extremely high.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Given that property and finance underlie a market-capitalist system, digging to the foundations of the law of each can be ... quite illuminating. "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith also defines wealth as "the annual labour and produce of the nation". Market transactions don't generat wealth, a social good, but profit, an accounting fiction, maximised by internalising revenues and externalising costs.

pasttense01 4y ago
It's well known that the communist USSR had much worse environmental problems than capitalist Western Europe and U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Russia
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  These are not irreconcileable concepts. The externalising of costs and internalisation of benefits (within Party operations, to specific high-power entities within the Party) can explain much of this. The specific political dynamics of pollution and environmental degredation within Western countries (the UK, US, India, Western Europpe, etc.) is often quite similar. The politically powerful impose environmental costs on the disempowered, racial outsiders, minorities, immigrants, colonies, etc. I see far more similarity in these systems than differences. It wasn't the captains of industry and political power who embraced Leopold, Carson, Meadows, and Commoner. And a surprising amount of early environmentalism had a strong tinge of racism about it (c.f., Muir). Power differenctial informs far more than any specific ideology does.