10 ms·

Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY c

Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference. So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely. But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

danesparza 8mo ago
The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts. Also: I suggest rethinking your opening line. It's not very endearing.
- lazide 8mo ago
  In my experience, it’s the conflict of the ‘in theory’ vs ‘In practice’. Practically, ‘in theory’ might actually be doable - if there was a single, overarching regulatory environment. That was enforced. Chances are, that would defacto make a bunch of people starve in poorer countries, and blow a lot of stuff up, so would also likely be worse than ‘the disease’. At least right now. But maybe I’m just being a cynical bastard.
- grosswait 8mo ago
  One persons experience with a river 30 years ago doesn’t invalidate a theory about how things could be done differently.
- palmotea 8mo ago
  > The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts. The meat of their comment wasn't the personal anecdote, it was actually on government policy: >>> You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive. >>> This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing. This is 100% about globalization: if some countries let their rivers catch on fire, the externality lets them out-compete anyone who tries to do the process cleanly. So if you let their externality-fueled products into your country, you just can't build similar things, because they wouldn't be price-competitive. If labor and environmental standards were strong and global, or countries with high standards refused to trade with countries with low standards, we wouldn't have this situation. There would be an economic motivation to develop and implement cleaner processes.
  - kelvinjps10 8mo ago
    Another thing is that the us and European countries build their wealth where they had los standards now other countries want to do the same but would be limited by us and European countries. It's very tricky
    - palmotea 8mo ago
      > Another thing is that the us and European countries build their wealth where they had los standards now other countries want to do the same but would be limited by us and European countries. It's very tricky No, why would you say that? When America and Europe built their wealth, they were mainly (though not exclusively) producing and selling manufactured goods for themselves. This whole idea of a poor country developing by building polluting factories to make items for rich countries is a more recent and different thing. Europe and America insisting on certain labor and environmental standards as a condition of trade wouldn't mean poor countries can't build factories for themselves. At worst, you just split the current one big market into two smaller markets: an expensive and clean one, and a dirty and cheap one.
    - IcyWindows 8mo ago
      Is it actually tricky? Do we let other countries wage war, pillage, etc. because others gathered wealth that way previously?
  - Fischgericht 8mo ago
    Of course it would be great if a level field would be created by making sure other competing regions follow the same environmental standards. But what will be the result? The product now has equal cost to be produced, but the market is gone. People consume cheap stuff because it is cheap. If it is no longer cheap, they will not consume. US americans just need to make up their minds. Do they want keep getting more and more and more cheap stuff? Fine. Then go on exploiting other regions of the planet. Or do you have enough cheap stuff now? Ok, then nobody needs another factory. Many on HN are living in a society where it is normal to use a TELEPHONE for only two years before throwing it away. What would happen if you instead used it for 5 years? No more factories needed. Problem solved. You don't have to compete, as there is no competition. The result of charging the true cost of T-Shirt to the consumer is not that everybody now has 100 Fair-Traded-Ecofriendly T-Shirts at home that they don't wear. They will notice that 10 T-Shirts are more than enough if you wash your clothes once per week. What I am trying to say is: The demand is only there due to the option of exploitation. Take away the part of ruining other peoples lives to get cheap stuff, then it's no longer interesting and will just stop. So of course you can take the detour, try to re-industrialize, and then find out that your people do not actually like this kind of work, and that they for sure also aren't willing to buy your stuff at the price you are asking. There is a reason nobody would be so stupid to produce "Make America Great Again" merch in America. Your target audience would not buy it if it was made in America. It is pragmatic to simply skip this step and end up with the same result: You'll just consume less.
temp8830 8mo ago
USA is already effectively priced out of manufacturing due to high labor costs. Doing things with the "correct choices" simply makes the impossible even more so.
- kardianos 8mo ago
  I live in Texas, which is still part of the USA, and we manufacture a great deal. I have a friend who works as an environmental engineer at a chem plant. They work hard to keep things safe and clean, and rigorously monitor their output. I'm sure we could do even more if we weren't competing in meany areas against legal jurisdictions which DON'T care about such things. We aren't "priced out". We are regulated out and out competed by jurisdiction which have many fewer labor laws and much more lax environmental monitoring. If we are out-competed on product, then we deserve to loose, which is where libertarians and free-trade have a point. But if we are out-competed on keeping people and the environment reasonably safe? That's when we enact trade barriers. That is how you actually keep the environment and people safe.
  - bilbo0s 8mo ago
    This is what I don't understand? We do manufacture things. Just not in California. So why does it even matter if California bans manufacturing dangerous things? Who cares? Just manufacture it in some other state. As a bonus, you don't have to pay those high California taxes. In what world is this a problem?
    - carefulfungi 8mo ago
      California produces ~$350B in manufacturing GDP. It is the #1 state in manufacturing jobs in the US.
      - SoftTalker 8mo ago
        By its sheer size and population it is probably #1 in almost anything you care to rank.
kspacewalk2 8mo ago
The trade-off to safety and caring about people and the environment is very often cost. Caring about the environment is not a binary concept, it is a matter of where your break-even point is between caring about the environment and absorbing higher costs.
- PaulHoule 8mo ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
Teever 8mo ago
I’m sure it’s possible to do both in theory but I find it hard to believe that it’s possible in practice. If it was California wouldn’t be covered in superfund sites that originated from industrial activities that took place decades ago.
lokar 8mo ago
FWIW, California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. CA can't tell other states to ban various manufacturing techniques.
- 5upplied_demand 8mo ago
  > California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. I'm not sure about that, maybe it is based on the definition of "safe". There are tortilla chips made in Chicago that explicitly say they cannot be sold in California on the packaging. This is due to chemicals banned in Prop 65. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1220zn9/these_tortilla_chips_cant_be_sold_in_california/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1220zn9/...
  - lokar 8mo ago
    Right, because the "bad" chemical will be in CA, harming CA residents. CA can't say "the factory that made these chips emitted chemical X into the air during manufacturing, but none of it is in the final product", so you can't import it. The Federal Government can, but not an individual state.
    - 5upplied_demand 8mo ago
      Thanks for clarifying. I believe I misunderstood your initial comment.
Empact 8mo ago
You can also use pigouvian taxation to make polluting expensive. Cost savings is generally the motivation for allowing negative externalities like pollution, so a natural way to reverse it in many cases while allowing flexibility when there is no practical alternative.
- bombcar 8mo ago
  The problem is you can't enforce your taxation outside your borders without things like tariffs or subsidies.
  - Empact 8mo ago
    This website is about what is banned in California, ostensibly for environmental reasons. So pigouvian taxes would enable them to unban those practices while mitigating their harms. If you’re worried about people evading the tax, you can make a border adjustment for imports across national borders. Note California is simply forcing things to be done elsewhere.
  - toss1 8mo ago
    >>without things like tariffs Right, and if the US congress[0] properly cared about the environment, the regulation would require both A) requirements to keep the manufacturing clean if done here, and B) tariffs for goods produced with polluting processes over there, scaled so the costs are somewhat higher if produced dirty. They can produce cleanly here or there without extra tariffs and without losing market share because some other competitor externalizes the pollution costs. [0] Tariffs are proper the domain of Congress, not any other branch. OFC, because of this, it isn't really an option for California, since states cannot levy tariffs externally or vs other states.
jayd16 8mo ago
You keep saying reduce regulation and then bring up things like adding permitting and taxing certain processes which is regulation. The other thing you're not understanding is how the state can enforce regulations and how the federal government has to. States cannot levy tariffs.
Aardwolf 8mo ago
> But people don't actually care about the environment. They probably do if it's near their backyard
- PaulDavisThe1st 8mo ago
  Corporations don't have a backyard, based on their historical behavior. The resource extraction and manufacturing sectors simply move on after they screw up or deplete one area.
- datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
  Also I have significantly more influence in my local elections than elections on the other side of the world.
dragonwriter 8mo ago
> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. If you don't have regulation, for profit industry won't do it right “through process”, because that would be throwig away money. Regulation is how you do it right through process. > So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely. Standardization and final safety measurements are literally regulations (and permitting is just a means of enforcing standardization.) So, basically, you “cut regulations” plan is actually to pair regulations doing exactly what the regulations you claim to cut do, call them a different thing, and add tariffs on top. Which, is a long winded way of just saying “add tariffs”, which of course, a US state can’t do.
SoftTalker 8mo ago
> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer We cannot. We are richer because we don't do it. We export it to areas so poor they view the environmental impact as a fair trade-off for being able to eat.
- bloomingeek 8mo ago
  Correct. We are also richer because we won't do it. The EPA has saved countless lives, at least did, it's been basically dismantled.
- morganw 8mo ago
  >> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer > We cannot. Apple can afford to do test fabrication while abiding by the rules, but chooses not to. https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-fine-over-bay-area-facility-21143797.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-fine-over-bay-area...
- harvey9 8mo ago
  Glad you said areas rather than countries. It is quite common to degrade the environment within rich countries as long as it isn't near where powerful people live.
- omgwtfbyobbq 8mo ago
  You're both likely correct. We can afford to do it right. It will cost more and we'll have to make more prudent, effective, efficient, etc... decisions about producing and allocating goods and services and would need to give up many of the net negative/zero economic activities we like. We've also likely enriched ourselves by externalizing the negative externalities of some of our goods and services to other countries. That's our choice, and I don't think it's a great one.
culi 8mo ago
> You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. Yes exactly. And most of the complaints in this post is not stuff that's outright banned but stuff that's "hard to do". These companies are complaining about how much more it costs to do this AND keep the environment clean. In an ideal world we would just have environmental protections all over the world so these companies don't simply find some small town with a local gov't they can buy off and do whatever they want
expedition32 8mo ago
A lot of people are poor. The cheap Chinese shit keeps them alive and relatively happy. In your proposal you'd also cede the global market to China- because nobody in Angola cares about how those solar panels were made.
overfeed 8mo ago
> I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing America barely cares about the domestic poor[1] - do you think its captains of industry will care about the poor abroad? Charity begins at home. 1. See locations of Superfund sites. Or for a modern example, where they are choosing to build AI datacenters powered by on-site diesel generators or gas turbines.
- mrguyorama 8mo ago
  A note about Superfund sites: It used to be funded by a small tax on chemical production companies. 70% of cleanup was paid for by the companies who caused it. Then in 1995, congress "chose not to renew" that provision. Now you and I literally and directly pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste. Companies don't really. Yet somehow they "Can't make factories" here
nitwit005 8mo ago
> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference. The idea that people setting pollution rules secretly don't care is silly. California can't fix the whole world's problems.
verteu 8mo ago
> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products No, California can't do that. States cannot impose tariffs per the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1/ALDE_00013364/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1... They could push for more regulations at the federal level (and indeed, Californians do this quite often!)
Fischgericht 8mo ago
"So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment?" - I don't need a car, I'll use public transport. - I will only buy and eat the amount of calories I actually burn. - This 10 year old phone actually works pretty well. I don't need a new one. etc You need new factories because you want more stuff. If you stop wanting more stuff, you don't need more factories, and therefore nobody needs to cry about his industry being "banned". I have visited the US a hell lot of times. I swear, I never ever in all these visits in any part of the US had the following thought in my head: "Boy, these people really need more car factories!".
deaux 8mo ago
> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference. This is about as true as saying "But people don't care about child sexual abuse". Sure, those partying with Epstein don't. Plenty of people do care and indeed are today making sacrifices that align with this. Including lowering living standards. If you don't then that's on you, but speak for yourself.
- markemer 8mo ago
  Also Environmental regulations are like vaccines. They're victims of their own success. In the late 1960s early 1970s, before the EPA, the air and water in the US was a disaster. The EPA documented it: https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-before-epa-regulated-pollution-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-b... https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493

danesparza 8mo ago

The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts. Also: I suggest rethinking your opening line. It's not very endearing.

lazide 8mo ago
In my experience, it’s the conflict of the ‘in theory’ vs ‘In practice’. Practically, ‘in theory’ might actually be doable - if there was a single, overarching regulatory environment. That was enforced. Chances are, that would defacto make a bunch of people starve in poorer countries, and blow a lot of stuff up, so would also likely be worse than ‘the disease’. At least right now. But maybe I’m just being a cynical bastard.
grosswait 8mo ago
One persons experience with a river 30 years ago doesn’t invalidate a theory about how things could be done differently.
palmotea 8mo ago
> The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts. The meat of their comment wasn't the personal anecdote, it was actually on government policy: >>> You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive. >>> This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing. This is 100% about globalization: if some countries let their rivers catch on fire, the externality lets them out-compete anyone who tries to do the process cleanly. So if you let their externality-fueled products into your country, you just can't build similar things, because they wouldn't be price-competitive. If labor and environmental standards were strong and global, or countries with high standards refused to trade with countries with low standards, we wouldn't have this situation. There would be an economic motivation to develop and implement cleaner processes.
- kelvinjps10 8mo ago
  Another thing is that the us and European countries build their wealth where they had los standards now other countries want to do the same but would be limited by us and European countries. It's very tricky
  - palmotea 8mo ago
    > Another thing is that the us and European countries build their wealth where they had los standards now other countries want to do the same but would be limited by us and European countries. It's very tricky No, why would you say that? When America and Europe built their wealth, they were mainly (though not exclusively) producing and selling manufactured goods for themselves. This whole idea of a poor country developing by building polluting factories to make items for rich countries is a more recent and different thing. Europe and America insisting on certain labor and environmental standards as a condition of trade wouldn't mean poor countries can't build factories for themselves. At worst, you just split the current one big market into two smaller markets: an expensive and clean one, and a dirty and cheap one.
  - IcyWindows 8mo ago
    Is it actually tricky? Do we let other countries wage war, pillage, etc. because others gathered wealth that way previously?
- Fischgericht 8mo ago
  Of course it would be great if a level field would be created by making sure other competing regions follow the same environmental standards. But what will be the result? The product now has equal cost to be produced, but the market is gone. People consume cheap stuff because it is cheap. If it is no longer cheap, they will not consume. US americans just need to make up their minds. Do they want keep getting more and more and more cheap stuff? Fine. Then go on exploiting other regions of the planet. Or do you have enough cheap stuff now? Ok, then nobody needs another factory. Many on HN are living in a society where it is normal to use a TELEPHONE for only two years before throwing it away. What would happen if you instead used it for 5 years? No more factories needed. Problem solved. You don't have to compete, as there is no competition. The result of charging the true cost of T-Shirt to the consumer is not that everybody now has 100 Fair-Traded-Ecofriendly T-Shirts at home that they don't wear. They will notice that 10 T-Shirts are more than enough if you wash your clothes once per week. What I am trying to say is: The demand is only there due to the option of exploitation. Take away the part of ruining other peoples lives to get cheap stuff, then it's no longer interesting and will just stop. So of course you can take the detour, try to re-industrialize, and then find out that your people do not actually like this kind of work, and that they for sure also aren't willing to buy your stuff at the price you are asking. There is a reason nobody would be so stupid to produce "Make America Great Again" merch in America. Your target audience would not buy it if it was made in America. It is pragmatic to simply skip this step and end up with the same result: You'll just consume less.

temp8830 8mo ago

USA is already effectively priced out of manufacturing due to high labor costs. Doing things with the "correct choices" simply makes the impossible even more so.

kardianos 8mo ago
I live in Texas, which is still part of the USA, and we manufacture a great deal. I have a friend who works as an environmental engineer at a chem plant. They work hard to keep things safe and clean, and rigorously monitor their output. I'm sure we could do even more if we weren't competing in meany areas against legal jurisdictions which DON'T care about such things. We aren't "priced out". We are regulated out and out competed by jurisdiction which have many fewer labor laws and much more lax environmental monitoring. If we are out-competed on product, then we deserve to loose, which is where libertarians and free-trade have a point. But if we are out-competed on keeping people and the environment reasonably safe? That's when we enact trade barriers. That is how you actually keep the environment and people safe.
- bilbo0s 8mo ago
  This is what I don't understand? We do manufacture things. Just not in California. So why does it even matter if California bans manufacturing dangerous things? Who cares? Just manufacture it in some other state. As a bonus, you don't have to pay those high California taxes. In what world is this a problem?
  - carefulfungi 8mo ago
    California produces ~$350B in manufacturing GDP. It is the #1 state in manufacturing jobs in the US.
    - SoftTalker 8mo ago
      By its sheer size and population it is probably #1 in almost anything you care to rank.

kspacewalk2 8mo ago

The trade-off to safety and caring about people and the environment is very often cost. Caring about the environment is not a binary concept, it is a matter of where your break-even point is between caring about the environment and absorbing higher costs.

PaulHoule 8mo ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

Teever 8mo ago

I’m sure it’s possible to do both in theory but I find it hard to believe that it’s possible in practice. If it was California wouldn’t be covered in superfund sites that originated from industrial activities that took place decades ago.

lokar 8mo ago

FWIW, California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. CA can't tell other states to ban various manufacturing techniques.

5upplied_demand 8mo ago
> California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. I'm not sure about that, maybe it is based on the definition of "safe". There are tortilla chips made in Chicago that explicitly say they cannot be sold in California on the packaging. This is due to chemicals banned in Prop 65. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1220zn9/these_tortilla_chips_cant_be_sold_in_california/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1220zn9/...
- lokar 8mo ago
  Right, because the "bad" chemical will be in CA, harming CA residents. CA can't say "the factory that made these chips emitted chemical X into the air during manufacturing, but none of it is in the final product", so you can't import it. The Federal Government can, but not an individual state.
  - 5upplied_demand 8mo ago
    Thanks for clarifying. I believe I misunderstood your initial comment.

Empact 8mo ago

You can also use pigouvian taxation to make polluting expensive. Cost savings is generally the motivation for allowing negative externalities like pollution, so a natural way to reverse it in many cases while allowing flexibility when there is no practical alternative.

bombcar 8mo ago
The problem is you can't enforce your taxation outside your borders without things like tariffs or subsidies.
- Empact 8mo ago
  This website is about what is banned in California, ostensibly for environmental reasons. So pigouvian taxes would enable them to unban those practices while mitigating their harms. If you’re worried about people evading the tax, you can make a border adjustment for imports across national borders. Note California is simply forcing things to be done elsewhere.
- toss1 8mo ago
  >>without things like tariffs Right, and if the US congress[0] properly cared about the environment, the regulation would require both A) requirements to keep the manufacturing clean if done here, and B) tariffs for goods produced with polluting processes over there, scaled so the costs are somewhat higher if produced dirty. They can produce cleanly here or there without extra tariffs and without losing market share because some other competitor externalizes the pollution costs. [0] Tariffs are proper the domain of Congress, not any other branch. OFC, because of this, it isn't really an option for California, since states cannot levy tariffs externally or vs other states.

jayd16 8mo ago

You keep saying reduce regulation and then bring up things like adding permitting and taxing certain processes which is regulation. The other thing you're not understanding is how the state can enforce regulations and how the federal government has to. States cannot levy tariffs.

Aardwolf 8mo ago

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They probably do if it's near their backyard

PaulDavisThe1st 8mo ago
Corporations don't have a backyard, based on their historical behavior. The resource extraction and manufacturing sectors simply move on after they screw up or deplete one area.
datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
Also I have significantly more influence in my local elections than elections on the other side of the world.

dragonwriter 8mo ago

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. If you don't have regulation, for profit industry won't do it right “through process”, because that would be throwig away money. Regulation is how you do it right through process. > So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely. Standardization and final safety measurements are literally regulations (and permitting is just a means of enforcing standardization.) So, basically, you “cut regulations” plan is actually to pair regulations doing exactly what the regulations you claim to cut do, call them a different thing, and add tariffs on top. Which, is a long winded way of just saying “add tariffs”, which of course, a US state can’t do.

SoftTalker 8mo ago

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer We cannot. We are richer because we don't do it. We export it to areas so poor they view the environmental impact as a fair trade-off for being able to eat.

bloomingeek 8mo ago
Correct. We are also richer because we won't do it. The EPA has saved countless lives, at least did, it's been basically dismantled.
morganw 8mo ago
>> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer > We cannot. Apple can afford to do test fabrication while abiding by the rules, but chooses not to. https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-fine-over-bay-area-facility-21143797.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-fine-over-bay-area...
harvey9 8mo ago
Glad you said areas rather than countries. It is quite common to degrade the environment within rich countries as long as it isn't near where powerful people live.
omgwtfbyobbq 8mo ago
You're both likely correct. We can afford to do it right. It will cost more and we'll have to make more prudent, effective, efficient, etc... decisions about producing and allocating goods and services and would need to give up many of the net negative/zero economic activities we like. We've also likely enriched ourselves by externalizing the negative externalities of some of our goods and services to other countries. That's our choice, and I don't think it's a great one.

culi 8mo ago

> You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. Yes exactly. And most of the complaints in this post is not stuff that's outright banned but stuff that's "hard to do". These companies are complaining about how much more it costs to do this AND keep the environment clean. In an ideal world we would just have environmental protections all over the world so these companies don't simply find some small town with a local gov't they can buy off and do whatever they want

expedition32 8mo ago

A lot of people are poor. The cheap Chinese shit keeps them alive and relatively happy. In your proposal you'd also cede the global market to China- because nobody in Angola cares about how those solar panels were made.

overfeed 8mo ago

> I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing America barely cares about the domestic poor[1] - do you think its captains of industry will care about the poor abroad? Charity begins at home. 1. See locations of Superfund sites. Or for a modern example, where they are choosing to build AI datacenters powered by on-site diesel generators or gas turbines.

mrguyorama 8mo ago
A note about Superfund sites: It used to be funded by a small tax on chemical production companies. 70% of cleanup was paid for by the companies who caused it. Then in 1995, congress "chose not to renew" that provision. Now you and I literally and directly pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste. Companies don't really. Yet somehow they "Can't make factories" here

nitwit005 8mo ago

verteu 8mo ago

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products No, California can't do that. States cannot impose tariffs per the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1/ALDE_00013364/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1... They could push for more regulations at the federal level (and indeed, Californians do this quite often!)

Fischgericht 8mo ago

"So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment?" - I don't need a car, I'll use public transport. - I will only buy and eat the amount of calories I actually burn. - This 10 year old phone actually works pretty well. I don't need a new one. etc You need new factories because you want more stuff. If you stop wanting more stuff, you don't need more factories, and therefore nobody needs to cry about his industry being "banned". I have visited the US a hell lot of times. I swear, I never ever in all these visits in any part of the US had the following thought in my head: "Boy, these people really need more car factories!".

deaux 8mo ago

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference. This is about as true as saying "But people don't care about child sexual abuse". Sure, those partying with Epstein don't. Plenty of people do care and indeed are today making sacrifices that align with this. Including lowering living standards. If you don't then that's on you, but speak for yourself.

markemer 8mo ago
Also Environmental regulations are like vaccines. They're victims of their own success. In the late 1960s early 1970s, before the EPA, the air and water in the US was a disaster. The EPA documented it: https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-before-epa-regulated-pollution-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-b... https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493