7 ms·

This is the prisoner's dilemma situation. Everyone would benefit more from a reduction, but if only one company does it, they benefit (in the short term) even m

This is the prisoner's dilemma situation. Everyone would benefit more from a reduction, but if only one company does it, they benefit (in the short term) even more. I think the signalling is also valuable -- humans have a remarkable tendency to adopt attitudes over time, and I think every contribution towards the attitude that we should not harm the environment is a good one. I for one currently support and will continue to support companies with sustainable environmental practises even if the cost is higher, and I encourage everyone to do the same. For, that increased cost is like a payment for that piece (however small) of the environment that I otherwise would not have, and I think that's worth it.

minism 4y ago
Right.. this is a perfect example of why government legislation/intervention in the market is needed to some degree.
- flockonus 4y ago
  Over our globalized economy I don't see how local government legislation can work (unfortunately). Long are gone the days governments around the world coordinated to banish CFCs, for instance.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    You establish agreements over a large enough market that it actually makes a different so that competitors doing the right thing aren’t penalized or aren’t penalized enough that they’re disincentivized. Sometimes that market is the US and you only need a local bill to do that. Sometimes you do a bilateral or multilateral treaty. But these things happen all the time even today. Eg if not for trump there would probably have been a new pacific trade agreement and Biden has managed to rally multilateral cooperation around security issues around Russia (eg see new applications to NATO as one example as well as related economic agreements and sanctions) and climate change. The main challenge is that Trump’s behavior of cancelling deals that were on the finish line as well as backing out of existing agreements (Paris accords + Iran) means that partners are now more wary of entering into agreements in the first place. This has less to do with globalization and more to do with USA’s increasing instability as a reliable partner that can execute on agreed-upon commitments across political transitions. So now countries are less reliant on commitments from the USA. From one perspective, that’s good - local autonomy is a powerful tool. From a different perspective, the USA frequently (not always and maybe not even a majority of the time) lead the way and set a global direction through unilateral action (ie even without treaties). Again, that’s gone less because of globalization I think and more that the world has grown tired of USA’s political weight throwing and realpolitik behavior rather than sticking to common principles (democracy, rule of law, not torturing enemies no matter what they’ve done, human rights, raising up scientists and facts even when politically inconvenient or leaders applying pressure to move their voter base instead of playing tail wag the dog, having principles about who we count as our allies etc). One set of behaviors engenders trust while the other degrades it and leads to whatsboutisim politics. Agreements in low trust environments are rarer and harder to maintain. Agreements in high trust environments are much cheaper. So, while I agree that the “governments around the world coordinating” is harder I disagree that it’s impossible or that it was caused by globalization Val multi-generational realpolitik weight throwing and underhanded behavior that killed a lot of the good will brought about as the “saviors of WWII” propaganda that was wide spread + “golden city” aura post WWII and during the Cold War + technological and economically outpacing Russia. We’ve been leveraging that good will more than our finances because the former is completely invisible and impossible to quantify and measure.
  - safety1st 4y ago
    It really only takes the EU and US agreeing that something is bad. Together they represent a huge chunk of the imports of nearly every sector of the global economy. In practice that is what globalization largely is - other countries producing stuff that the US and EU buy. If you manufacture a chemical and the US and EU both decide that chemical is banned and can't be imported, your business may very well be toast, and you will have a large incentive to produce stuff that they want instead. This doesn't necessarily even take legislation as the relevant governments have a variety of ways they can apply tariffs, disincentives etc. to stuff they don't like.
    - messe 4y ago
      It doesn’t even take both agreeing necessarily. In many cases just either one of the EU or the US legislating something is sufficient financial incentive to follow the same rule globally.
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    The entire US benefits from rules only California makes for itself. The entire world benefits from rules only the EU makes for itself. That very same globalization sometimes causes influence as a pure byproduct. Regardless, it's not an all or nothing situation. If there are 6000 problems, it's perfectly fine to pick just one of them, and do something that only makes it 1% better. So what there are 5999 other problems? So what most of this one problem didn't even get better because there is some way around it? Tomorrow you just keep doing more of the same and make the current problem 2% better. Or make one of the other 5999 a little better. All progress is plodding. There is no other type.
missedthecue 4y ago
PFAS are used because there isn't a better alternative. A globally coordinated reduction in production only increases the price of products for consumers.
- Centigonal 4y ago
  ...which is a good thing! we should stop taking $20 teflon pans, nonstick fast food containers, and $40 raincoats with negative externalities for granted. We did fine without PFAS, we'll be okay with expensive PFAS (where externalities are internalized and built into the cost) too.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Does paying for the pollution really help fix the problem? Will the government use that money to filter rivers for PFAS? I think a lot of this need also comes from other supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if recycled properly. And raincoats were really really horrible before Gore-Tex.
    - lukas099 4y ago
      If things cost more, people generally buy less of them.
    - geysersam 4y ago
      Paying for pollution makes the customer consider the full cost of the product, reducing demand to cases when the benefits of using the chemical are actually bigger than the external costs. It's not about using the money to solve the problems. It's about making the economy more efficient.
    - Centigonal 4y ago
      Price elasticity is real: if PFAS is more expensive, people will buy (and businesses will produce) fewer PFAS-derived products. Raising the price is especially nice because it causes price-elastic use cases (think PFAS coated paper cups) to drop out, while price-inelastic use cases (think teflon joint implants) are not made illegal, just more expensive. If the government earmarks PFAS tax revenue for remediation, that'd be awesome, but that's just a side benefit - the price increase is the main benefit. I do thing greenwashing and environmental whack-a-mole is a real problem (heck, we see it in the PFAS space with GenX replacing PFOA). I don't see that as a valid reason to do nothing.
themitigating 4y ago
Just to chime in about your use of the word "signaling" and when others use "virtue signaling". I believe the traditional term is "setting a good example" and even if the motivation is selfish there's a positive outcome. "Virtue signaling" was invented to demonize this behavior by focusing on (the assumed) motive as selfish.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- concordDance 4y ago
  The term "virtue signalling" is supposed to only apply to cases where the act being done isn't actually much help.
- vouaobrasil 4y ago
  Good point. Yes, "setting a good example" is a better term, so it's not confused with virtue signalling.
- triceratops 4y ago
  The use of the phrase "virtue signaling" tells me immediately that the rest of the comment has absolutely no value whatsoever and can be safely ignored.

minism 4y ago

Right.. this is a perfect example of why government legislation/intervention in the market is needed to some degree.

flockonus 4y ago
Over our globalized economy I don't see how local government legislation can work (unfortunately). Long are gone the days governments around the world coordinated to banish CFCs, for instance.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  You establish agreements over a large enough market that it actually makes a different so that competitors doing the right thing aren’t penalized or aren’t penalized enough that they’re disincentivized. Sometimes that market is the US and you only need a local bill to do that. Sometimes you do a bilateral or multilateral treaty. But these things happen all the time even today. Eg if not for trump there would probably have been a new pacific trade agreement and Biden has managed to rally multilateral cooperation around security issues around Russia (eg see new applications to NATO as one example as well as related economic agreements and sanctions) and climate change. The main challenge is that Trump’s behavior of cancelling deals that were on the finish line as well as backing out of existing agreements (Paris accords + Iran) means that partners are now more wary of entering into agreements in the first place. This has less to do with globalization and more to do with USA’s increasing instability as a reliable partner that can execute on agreed-upon commitments across political transitions. So now countries are less reliant on commitments from the USA. From one perspective, that’s good - local autonomy is a powerful tool. From a different perspective, the USA frequently (not always and maybe not even a majority of the time) lead the way and set a global direction through unilateral action (ie even without treaties). Again, that’s gone less because of globalization I think and more that the world has grown tired of USA’s political weight throwing and realpolitik behavior rather than sticking to common principles (democracy, rule of law, not torturing enemies no matter what they’ve done, human rights, raising up scientists and facts even when politically inconvenient or leaders applying pressure to move their voter base instead of playing tail wag the dog, having principles about who we count as our allies etc). One set of behaviors engenders trust while the other degrades it and leads to whatsboutisim politics. Agreements in low trust environments are rarer and harder to maintain. Agreements in high trust environments are much cheaper. So, while I agree that the “governments around the world coordinating” is harder I disagree that it’s impossible or that it was caused by globalization Val multi-generational realpolitik weight throwing and underhanded behavior that killed a lot of the good will brought about as the “saviors of WWII” propaganda that was wide spread + “golden city” aura post WWII and during the Cold War + technological and economically outpacing Russia. We’ve been leveraging that good will more than our finances because the former is completely invisible and impossible to quantify and measure.
- safety1st 4y ago
  It really only takes the EU and US agreeing that something is bad. Together they represent a huge chunk of the imports of nearly every sector of the global economy. In practice that is what globalization largely is - other countries producing stuff that the US and EU buy. If you manufacture a chemical and the US and EU both decide that chemical is banned and can't be imported, your business may very well be toast, and you will have a large incentive to produce stuff that they want instead. This doesn't necessarily even take legislation as the relevant governments have a variety of ways they can apply tariffs, disincentives etc. to stuff they don't like.
  - messe 4y ago
    It doesn’t even take both agreeing necessarily. In many cases just either one of the EU or the US legislating something is sufficient financial incentive to follow the same rule globally.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  The entire US benefits from rules only California makes for itself. The entire world benefits from rules only the EU makes for itself. That very same globalization sometimes causes influence as a pure byproduct. Regardless, it's not an all or nothing situation. If there are 6000 problems, it's perfectly fine to pick just one of them, and do something that only makes it 1% better. So what there are 5999 other problems? So what most of this one problem didn't even get better because there is some way around it? Tomorrow you just keep doing more of the same and make the current problem 2% better. Or make one of the other 5999 a little better. All progress is plodding. There is no other type.

missedthecue 4y ago

PFAS are used because there isn't a better alternative. A globally coordinated reduction in production only increases the price of products for consumers.

Centigonal 4y ago
...which is a good thing! we should stop taking $20 teflon pans, nonstick fast food containers, and $40 raincoats with negative externalities for granted. We did fine without PFAS, we'll be okay with expensive PFAS (where externalities are internalized and built into the cost) too.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Does paying for the pollution really help fix the problem? Will the government use that money to filter rivers for PFAS? I think a lot of this need also comes from other supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if recycled properly. And raincoats were really really horrible before Gore-Tex.
  - lukas099 4y ago
    If things cost more, people generally buy less of them.
  - geysersam 4y ago
    Paying for pollution makes the customer consider the full cost of the product, reducing demand to cases when the benefits of using the chemical are actually bigger than the external costs. It's not about using the money to solve the problems. It's about making the economy more efficient.
  - Centigonal 4y ago
    Price elasticity is real: if PFAS is more expensive, people will buy (and businesses will produce) fewer PFAS-derived products. Raising the price is especially nice because it causes price-elastic use cases (think PFAS coated paper cups) to drop out, while price-inelastic use cases (think teflon joint implants) are not made illegal, just more expensive. If the government earmarks PFAS tax revenue for remediation, that'd be awesome, but that's just a side benefit - the price increase is the main benefit. I do thing greenwashing and environmental whack-a-mole is a real problem (heck, we see it in the PFAS space with GenX replacing PFOA). I don't see that as a valid reason to do nothing.

themitigating 4y ago

Just to chime in about your use of the word "signaling" and when others use "virtue signaling". I believe the traditional term is "setting a good example" and even if the motivation is selfish there's a positive outcome. "Virtue signaling" was invented to demonize this behavior by focusing on (the assumed) motive as selfish.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
concordDance 4y ago
The term "virtue signalling" is supposed to only apply to cases where the act being done isn't actually much help.
vouaobrasil 4y ago
Good point. Yes, "setting a good example" is a better term, so it's not confused with virtue signalling.
triceratops 4y ago
The use of the phrase "virtue signaling" tells me immediately that the rest of the comment has absolutely no value whatsoever and can be safely ignored.