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Re: just stop using them and companies will stop manufacturing them Why can't we have the government we pay for with taxes help all of us with this? I don't kn

by bagels 3y ago

Re: just stop using them and companies will stop manufacturing them Why can't we have the government we pay for with taxes help all of us with this? I don't know what products have/don't have PFAS in them, as it's disclosed almost nowhere. Why not just have them all banned and fined instead of me having to setup a laboratory to test every product I bring in to my house for lead, pfas, asbestos, radioactive isotopes, etc?

_heimdall 3y ago
Because governments are terrible at actually implementing such rules, and the whole point of free (or somewhat free) markets is for us to have the power to decide for ourselves. With regards to labelling, I 100% agree companies should be making it clear what is in the stuff we buy. Again, though, that can be done by consumers if we actually care enough. Sticking with natural materials is a great start, whole foods instead of processed foods and wool or cotton instead of plastic/petroleum clothing, for example.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  If governments are bad, people are much worse. How often do you test your food for lead? How often have you “done your own research” on whether your toaster will explode if you plug it into the wall? And what happens if your neighbor doesn’t do their own research and burns both of your houses down? Unless consumers have the financial means to test everything, it’s not reasonable to expect the burden of consumer protections to fall on consumers. Consumers shouldn’t have to test all of their food for every possible contaminant. Additionally, this doesn’t address harms which companies know they are creating but consumers don’t. Companies will lie and cover up the damage they cause, and pollute the information ecosystem with propaganda which confuses the issue. People used to think cigarettes were good for them.
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    Yeah we need a government takeover of the Better Business Bureau. Only government bureaucrats are qualified to test things. Credit scores, too. Has to be government. Let's throw in a social credit score too so that consumers know who to trust on an individual basis
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    What you're describing is a fundamental problem of centralization at scale. Consumers shouldn't need to test their food for lead because their food is grown locally and isn't highly processed. Consumers shouldn't be tricked by companies lying about and hiding damages causes by them because consumers should be dealing with companies at a scale they can actually understand. We don't need big governments to save us from cigarette companies because people don't know better. We need consumers saying to hell with cigarettes because they just need to roll a bit of dried tobacco leaves if that's what they're going for. We lost the scale of our lives in favor of convenience, marketing, and greed. Governments can't fix that.
    - janalsncm 3y ago
      That doesn’t solve the problem. Even if you’re dealing with a local farmer, are you testing their food for all of the dozens of contaminants which could be there? No. And more importantly, you can’t deal on a local level for the most part. It’s not possible. You mostly purchase products from national or multinational brands, so good luck getting any consumer protection from them. If poisoning customers lets the CEO buy a longer yacht for his house in Cyprus, he will do that.
      - _heimdall 3y ago
        You're still imposing industrial agriculture problems on smaller scale local ag. The contaminants used in industrial farming generally come down to two main areas, poisons and fertilizers for the growing period and preservatives for the shipping/warehousing process. Local farmers wouldn't be at the same scale and may very well not need to spray their fields with the same chemicals during the growing cycle. At a minimum, they're local and anyone buying their food that cares can come right out and see how the farm operates, meet the farmer, etc. All of the preservatives and packaging could be skipped entirely if you as buying local. When the food doesn't need to handle weeks or months of storage and shipping you simply don't need all of that. > You mostly purchase products from national or multinational brands My while point is they if consumers cared we could just story doing this. Sure, it'd be less convenient and we wouldn't have products like iPhones or modern cars, but in the context of getting rid of the use of plastics and PFAS those kinds of products go away anyway. It boils down to the fact that we care about the idea of PFAS but we aren't actually willing to give up the novelty and convenience of all the products those chemicals allow for.
- Lutger 3y ago
  Its ridiculous to have a free market decide whether we want to have PFAS or not. Free markets are premised on rational agents making decisions for themselves. But I can't decide to live in a PFAS-free world by myself. I can't de-risk my son from autism, cancer and whatnot by just not buying PFAS products even if I would have a reasonable choice to do so. PFAS is everywhere, its in the rain, in our food, in the soil, in the air we breathe, and it will be there for thousands of years. From next to 3M's factories to Antarctica, there is no spot on earth that isn't polluted by PFAS. I'd say lets have a vote. Do you want to risk autism, cancer, infertility and whatnot for nonstick pans and all the other wonders of PFAS? If the majority doesn't, it will get a global ban.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    You absolutely can chose to not add any if those chemicals into your life. Of course you can't control the rain, though you can control your food to a great extent. If people care enough to decide not to use products that contain PFAS, the environmental exposures would disappear pretty quickly. More importantly, if its even possible for governments to effectively coordinate a cleanup process that job would be much easier if consumers pitched in by first using their individual power to drastically reduce the contaminants being added into the system. > I'd say lets have a vote. Do you want to risk autism, cancer, infertility and whatnot for nonstick pans and all the other wonders of PFAS? If the majority doesn't, it will get a global ban. That doesn't require a vote at all. Bans are only useful when we have to leverage the power of the state to force people to do something they don't want to do. If consumers agree that nonstick pans have all those risks and they aren't worth it, they stop buying nonstick pans and companies stop making them. Even if we wanted the ban route, who enforces it? The UN? Some new global government? Or a unanimous agreement by every government in the world, including those who's economies are partly supported by producing the nonstick pans?
onthecanposting 3y ago
You are being helped. Given these requirements, it's pretty likely that your water utility will hike your rates to pay for the required upgrades. I feel badly for the rural utilities. This is likely to push the trend of regionalization.
- bagels 3y ago
  Yes, I know. The GP comment was arguing for every person for themselves on this stuff.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    I wasn't arguing for every person for themselves with regards to PFAS in city water. It seems totally reasonable for water utilities to be required to provide clean water, either through government or internal rules. I was arguing that more consumers could step up to make similar decisions, in this case avoiding PFAS products. We don't have direct control over what's in our water, especially in areas where collecting rain water or using a well isn't even allowed if you wanted to do it yourself. We do have control over what we buy though, we just rarely see consumers making decisions that match the values we often argue for (like we need to massively reduce oil/plastic use and chemical exposures).

by bagels 3y ago

_heimdall 3y ago

Because governments are terrible at actually implementing such rules, and the whole point of free (or somewhat free) markets is for us to have the power to decide for ourselves. With regards to labelling, I 100% agree companies should be making it clear what is in the stuff we buy. Again, though, that can be done by consumers if we actually care enough. Sticking with natural materials is a great start, whole foods instead of processed foods and wool or cotton instead of plastic/petroleum clothing, for example.

janalsncm 3y ago
If governments are bad, people are much worse. How often do you test your food for lead? How often have you “done your own research” on whether your toaster will explode if you plug it into the wall? And what happens if your neighbor doesn’t do their own research and burns both of your houses down? Unless consumers have the financial means to test everything, it’s not reasonable to expect the burden of consumer protections to fall on consumers. Consumers shouldn’t have to test all of their food for every possible contaminant. Additionally, this doesn’t address harms which companies know they are creating but consumers don’t. Companies will lie and cover up the damage they cause, and pollute the information ecosystem with propaganda which confuses the issue. People used to think cigarettes were good for them.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  Yeah we need a government takeover of the Better Business Bureau. Only government bureaucrats are qualified to test things. Credit scores, too. Has to be government. Let's throw in a social credit score too so that consumers know who to trust on an individual basis
- _heimdall 3y ago
  What you're describing is a fundamental problem of centralization at scale. Consumers shouldn't need to test their food for lead because their food is grown locally and isn't highly processed. Consumers shouldn't be tricked by companies lying about and hiding damages causes by them because consumers should be dealing with companies at a scale they can actually understand. We don't need big governments to save us from cigarette companies because people don't know better. We need consumers saying to hell with cigarettes because they just need to roll a bit of dried tobacco leaves if that's what they're going for. We lost the scale of our lives in favor of convenience, marketing, and greed. Governments can't fix that.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    That doesn’t solve the problem. Even if you’re dealing with a local farmer, are you testing their food for all of the dozens of contaminants which could be there? No. And more importantly, you can’t deal on a local level for the most part. It’s not possible. You mostly purchase products from national or multinational brands, so good luck getting any consumer protection from them. If poisoning customers lets the CEO buy a longer yacht for his house in Cyprus, he will do that.
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      You're still imposing industrial agriculture problems on smaller scale local ag. The contaminants used in industrial farming generally come down to two main areas, poisons and fertilizers for the growing period and preservatives for the shipping/warehousing process. Local farmers wouldn't be at the same scale and may very well not need to spray their fields with the same chemicals during the growing cycle. At a minimum, they're local and anyone buying their food that cares can come right out and see how the farm operates, meet the farmer, etc. All of the preservatives and packaging could be skipped entirely if you as buying local. When the food doesn't need to handle weeks or months of storage and shipping you simply don't need all of that. > You mostly purchase products from national or multinational brands My while point is they if consumers cared we could just story doing this. Sure, it'd be less convenient and we wouldn't have products like iPhones or modern cars, but in the context of getting rid of the use of plastics and PFAS those kinds of products go away anyway. It boils down to the fact that we care about the idea of PFAS but we aren't actually willing to give up the novelty and convenience of all the products those chemicals allow for.
Lutger 3y ago
Its ridiculous to have a free market decide whether we want to have PFAS or not. Free markets are premised on rational agents making decisions for themselves. But I can't decide to live in a PFAS-free world by myself. I can't de-risk my son from autism, cancer and whatnot by just not buying PFAS products even if I would have a reasonable choice to do so. PFAS is everywhere, its in the rain, in our food, in the soil, in the air we breathe, and it will be there for thousands of years. From next to 3M's factories to Antarctica, there is no spot on earth that isn't polluted by PFAS. I'd say lets have a vote. Do you want to risk autism, cancer, infertility and whatnot for nonstick pans and all the other wonders of PFAS? If the majority doesn't, it will get a global ban.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  You absolutely can chose to not add any if those chemicals into your life. Of course you can't control the rain, though you can control your food to a great extent. If people care enough to decide not to use products that contain PFAS, the environmental exposures would disappear pretty quickly. More importantly, if its even possible for governments to effectively coordinate a cleanup process that job would be much easier if consumers pitched in by first using their individual power to drastically reduce the contaminants being added into the system. > I'd say lets have a vote. Do you want to risk autism, cancer, infertility and whatnot for nonstick pans and all the other wonders of PFAS? If the majority doesn't, it will get a global ban. That doesn't require a vote at all. Bans are only useful when we have to leverage the power of the state to force people to do something they don't want to do. If consumers agree that nonstick pans have all those risks and they aren't worth it, they stop buying nonstick pans and companies stop making them. Even if we wanted the ban route, who enforces it? The UN? Some new global government? Or a unanimous agreement by every government in the world, including those who's economies are partly supported by producing the nonstick pans?

onthecanposting 3y ago

You are being helped. Given these requirements, it's pretty likely that your water utility will hike your rates to pay for the required upgrades. I feel badly for the rural utilities. This is likely to push the trend of regionalization.

bagels 3y ago
Yes, I know. The GP comment was arguing for every person for themselves on this stuff.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  I wasn't arguing for every person for themselves with regards to PFAS in city water. It seems totally reasonable for water utilities to be required to provide clean water, either through government or internal rules. I was arguing that more consumers could step up to make similar decisions, in this case avoiding PFAS products. We don't have direct control over what's in our water, especially in areas where collecting rain water or using a well isn't even allowed if you wanted to do it yourself. We do have control over what we buy though, we just rarely see consumers making decisions that match the values we often argue for (like we need to massively reduce oil/plastic use and chemical exposures).