3 ms·

Regulation - you can't dig a hole in the ground and call yourself a municipal landfill. https://www.epa.gov/landfills https://www.epa.gov/landfills Modern lan

Regulation - you can't dig a hole in the ground and call yourself a municipal landfill. https://www.epa.gov/landfills https://www.epa.gov/landfills Modern landfills are well-engineered and managed facilities for the disposal of solid waste. They must meet stringent design, operation, and closure requirements established under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. I'm not an environmental expert, if Methane emission causes significant environmental harm, then the EPA should be regulating it. It's hard to tell someone that they're harming the environment through methane emissions from trash while the actual environmental experts at the EPA don't bother to regulate it.

jMyles 3y ago
...this response rings so deeply and reverberating hollow to me. You can't just presume that "regulation" is magically removing the externalities of your consumption, particularly given that the data show so convincingly that regulatory capture is endemic. Of course the state occasionally displays the correct time as a broken clock would, but this is something that requires verification rather than naked presumption.
- Johnny555 3y ago
  >You can't just presume that "regulation" is magically removing the externalities of your consumption, particularly given that the data show so convincingly that regulatory capture is endemic. It doesn't matter what I presume, it matters what the other 330 million people in this country presume. Telling people to be better conservationists is not going to succeed, externalities need to be priced into products so people can make informed decisions at the time of purchase. Make durable, re-usable, and repairable products the more affordable option.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  There isn't time in life to become expert on every last thing, nor is it economically efficient for people to do so. Maybe we would have less regulatory capture if a large chunk of our polity weren't dedicated to the proposition that government is bad and that they should be in charge of it (to show you how bad it is of course, not to line their pockets or anything ha ha why would you even think that). Zero-trust societies are neither desirable nor sustainable. Paranoia is not hte basis of a healthy polity.
  - jMyles 3y ago
    > There isn't time in life to become expert on every last thing, nor is it economically efficient for people to do so. One needn't be an expert to open the Seafood Watch app and check if the fish they're about to buy is contributing to ocean degradation. Or learn about local municipal waste management practices. Or adopt personal habits consistent with antimicrobial stewardship. And so on and so on. ...but to your deeper point: the information age _does_ beckon us to be our best generalist selves. It's now possible to scale up to very significant levels of understanding on topics which underpin social and economic policy in timeframes needed to meaningfully participate in debate. I'm concerned we have over-corrected for dunning kruger effects in some areas, especially if our chief guardrail against release of greenhouse gases is the presumption that the EPA is ensuring form afar that your local dump is up to snuff.
- defrost 3y ago
  You shouldn't just presume that "regulation" is magically <doing whatever>. You should (as the citizen body politic) bake into your system of governance the means by which to independantly third party check the execution of policy carried out by the civil service and sub contractors. You should also have the means to fire elected officials for corruption, failure to follow oaths of office, etc. and to similarly examine the integrity of civil servents and sub contractors. This is all common sense, one hopes, for any G20 Government, ideally all governments. None of which negates the need to regulate landfill to prevent ground water contamination and greenhouse outgassing. Is your issue the regulation or that you are unable to access third party reports that verify regulated work was carried out as intended?
  - jMyles 3y ago
    Exactly - I'm sure it's much more the latter than the former. I think everybody on earth wants regulation, in the literal sense of a mechanism to achieve regularity. It gets tricky when that (sometimes difficult) task is handed to a state which has interests which are diametrically opposed to regularity, and which benefits from irregular human events like war and emergency.
    - defrost 3y ago
      So far we're mostly alright .. cracks are appearing but we're largely keeping on top of what our elected employees are proposing as policy and what our employed civil servants are doing to implement. By 'we', of course, I mean my body politic for a state 3x the size of Texas with a population less than 2.5 million, running a Washminster hybrid system formed by modifying known flaws (at the time 100 years ago) of the US and UK systems. Still, nothing lasts forever and it's on the collective 'us' to stay on top of what we've delegated.

jMyles 3y ago

...this response rings so deeply and reverberating hollow to me. You can't just presume that "regulation" is magically removing the externalities of your consumption, particularly given that the data show so convincingly that regulatory capture is endemic. Of course the state occasionally displays the correct time as a broken clock would, but this is something that requires verification rather than naked presumption.

Johnny555 3y ago
>You can't just presume that "regulation" is magically removing the externalities of your consumption, particularly given that the data show so convincingly that regulatory capture is endemic. It doesn't matter what I presume, it matters what the other 330 million people in this country presume. Telling people to be better conservationists is not going to succeed, externalities need to be priced into products so people can make informed decisions at the time of purchase. Make durable, re-usable, and repairable products the more affordable option.
anigbrowl 3y ago
There isn't time in life to become expert on every last thing, nor is it economically efficient for people to do so. Maybe we would have less regulatory capture if a large chunk of our polity weren't dedicated to the proposition that government is bad and that they should be in charge of it (to show you how bad it is of course, not to line their pockets or anything ha ha why would you even think that). Zero-trust societies are neither desirable nor sustainable. Paranoia is not hte basis of a healthy polity.
- jMyles 3y ago
  > There isn't time in life to become expert on every last thing, nor is it economically efficient for people to do so. One needn't be an expert to open the Seafood Watch app and check if the fish they're about to buy is contributing to ocean degradation. Or learn about local municipal waste management practices. Or adopt personal habits consistent with antimicrobial stewardship. And so on and so on. ...but to your deeper point: the information age _does_ beckon us to be our best generalist selves. It's now possible to scale up to very significant levels of understanding on topics which underpin social and economic policy in timeframes needed to meaningfully participate in debate. I'm concerned we have over-corrected for dunning kruger effects in some areas, especially if our chief guardrail against release of greenhouse gases is the presumption that the EPA is ensuring form afar that your local dump is up to snuff.
defrost 3y ago
You shouldn't just presume that "regulation" is magically <doing whatever>. You should (as the citizen body politic) bake into your system of governance the means by which to independantly third party check the execution of policy carried out by the civil service and sub contractors. You should also have the means to fire elected officials for corruption, failure to follow oaths of office, etc. and to similarly examine the integrity of civil servents and sub contractors. This is all common sense, one hopes, for any G20 Government, ideally all governments. None of which negates the need to regulate landfill to prevent ground water contamination and greenhouse outgassing. Is your issue the regulation or that you are unable to access third party reports that verify regulated work was carried out as intended?
- jMyles 3y ago
  Exactly - I'm sure it's much more the latter than the former. I think everybody on earth wants regulation, in the literal sense of a mechanism to achieve regularity. It gets tricky when that (sometimes difficult) task is handed to a state which has interests which are diametrically opposed to regularity, and which benefits from irregular human events like war and emergency.
  - defrost 3y ago
    So far we're mostly alright .. cracks are appearing but we're largely keeping on top of what our elected employees are proposing as policy and what our employed civil servants are doing to implement. By 'we', of course, I mean my body politic for a state 3x the size of Texas with a population less than 2.5 million, running a Washminster hybrid system formed by modifying known flaws (at the time 100 years ago) of the US and UK systems. Still, nothing lasts forever and it's on the collective 'us' to stay on top of what we've delegated.