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It's a somewhat blunt instrument used to internalize some externalities: Making a product and then destroying it is wasteful, and the market will fix all intern

It's a somewhat blunt instrument used to internalize some externalities: Making a product and then destroying it is wasteful, and the market will fix all internalized costs of that waste, but some of those costs are externalized. Having society pay somewhat for producing clothes that are then worn, that's one thing. Having society pay for pointless waste is another. What you've said is: Looking only at the internalized costs, pointless-wasting a percentage of clothes costs X but reduces clothes cost in the store by Y, with Y being larger than X. Okay. Irrelevant - that math doesn't include externalized costs. It may well be that this is a stupid idea, but "market decided destroying some clothes was more efficient" doesn't prove anything unless you can show that the size of the externalized costs to this process are 0 or close enough to 0 to have no meaningful relevance.

SpicyLemonZest 3mo ago
Again, the waste is not pointless, it's part of an inventory management strategy to ensure adequate supply. If your local grocery store established a policy that they'll never buy more meat than they're sure they can sell before the expiration date, they'd routinely run out.
- jyounker 3mo ago
  Do you have proof of that assertion?
  - jandrewrogers 3mo ago
    Happens all the time at my local butcher shop. They make a point of using the whole animal -- no waste -- but that means they are frequently out of the more popular products. For the most popular parts you sometimes have to reserve it a week in advance from a future animal.
- IneffablePigeon 3mo ago
  The result of laws like this is not that the store will never buy too much, it’s that when they do buy too much they will give it away to somewhere it can be used instead of destroying it. It will not cost them much if any more to simply give things to food banks or charity shops.
  - loeg 3mo ago
    It in fact does cost them more to give things than to destroy them.
    - rzwitserloot 3mo ago
      ... and it costs society more to process the destroyed waste, and it costs society more to then deal with the fallout of shelters not having enough clothes. Or not. Who knows. The point is, this 'economically it is more efficient' is not a proven case because the externalities need to be taken into account, and so far the person I've been responding to seems to not understand this part, or is ignoring it.
      - SpicyLemonZest 3mo ago
        I'm not sure everyone in the conversation is understanding each other. Saying the waste is pointless implies to me that it has no value, that companies could eliminate it with small costs and no other tradeoffs and they just don't want to bother. That's not accurate; a system with no oversupply is necessarily a system with fewer choices and more shortages. The tradeoff may be worth it in some contexts, but if you don't understand that there are tradeoffs, you're going end up proposing silly policies like the original commenter's idea that nobody should ever be allowed to destroy any object a consumer could use.
        Dylan16807 3mo ago
        "it would be a small cost" and "there are tradeoffs" can both be true at the same time! If the benefit they get from waste is like 10% of the value they're destroying, then in a broad sense it is pointless. And nobody is arguing against oversupply. Oversupply itself is fine.
      - loeg 3mo ago
        The waste is relatively inexpensive and already being paid for.
  - SpicyLemonZest 3mo ago
loeg 3mo ago
You could internalize the cost of waste more generically by charging appropriately for landfill use and letting producers decide how much it's worth avoiding waste. Instead of just banning a particular waste stream by a particular industry, with distortive consequences.
- rzwitserloot 3mo ago
  Yes, and that sounds like a better plan, but evidently that requires more political capital than is available.
  - altairprime 3mo ago
    There’s a missing component here: “Pray we do not regulate the deal further.” Governments tend to be annoyed at having to regulate and will often ‘somewhat’ regulate the worst excesses and then do the equivalent of a staring contest with those regulated. If business push right up to the wire and fight every tiny loophole then they risk being hit with a second wave of much more severe regulations; if they generally comply and don’t embarrass regulators and politicians, then there isn’t need to spend more capital on better regulation. At some level it’s very costly to micromanage business regulation gestures at California but so there’s definitely some decisions to be made about How Far To Go Each Time that aren’t simply due to a lack of political willpower.

SpicyLemonZest 3mo ago

Again, the waste is not pointless, it's part of an inventory management strategy to ensure adequate supply. If your local grocery store established a policy that they'll never buy more meat than they're sure they can sell before the expiration date, they'd routinely run out.

jyounker 3mo ago
Do you have proof of that assertion?
- jandrewrogers 3mo ago
  Happens all the time at my local butcher shop. They make a point of using the whole animal -- no waste -- but that means they are frequently out of the more popular products. For the most popular parts you sometimes have to reserve it a week in advance from a future animal.
IneffablePigeon 3mo ago
The result of laws like this is not that the store will never buy too much, it’s that when they do buy too much they will give it away to somewhere it can be used instead of destroying it. It will not cost them much if any more to simply give things to food banks or charity shops.
- loeg 3mo ago
  It in fact does cost them more to give things than to destroy them.
  - rzwitserloot 3mo ago
    ... and it costs society more to process the destroyed waste, and it costs society more to then deal with the fallout of shelters not having enough clothes. Or not. Who knows. The point is, this 'economically it is more efficient' is not a proven case because the externalities need to be taken into account, and so far the person I've been responding to seems to not understand this part, or is ignoring it.
    - SpicyLemonZest 3mo ago
      I'm not sure everyone in the conversation is understanding each other. Saying the waste is pointless implies to me that it has no value, that companies could eliminate it with small costs and no other tradeoffs and they just don't want to bother. That's not accurate; a system with no oversupply is necessarily a system with fewer choices and more shortages. The tradeoff may be worth it in some contexts, but if you don't understand that there are tradeoffs, you're going end up proposing silly policies like the original commenter's idea that nobody should ever be allowed to destroy any object a consumer could use.
      - Dylan16807 3mo ago
        "it would be a small cost" and "there are tradeoffs" can both be true at the same time! If the benefit they get from waste is like 10% of the value they're destroying, then in a broad sense it is pointless. And nobody is arguing against oversupply. Oversupply itself is fine.
    - loeg 3mo ago
      The waste is relatively inexpensive and already being paid for.
- SpicyLemonZest 3mo ago

loeg 3mo ago

You could internalize the cost of waste more generically by charging appropriately for landfill use and letting producers decide how much it's worth avoiding waste. Instead of just banning a particular waste stream by a particular industry, with distortive consequences.

rzwitserloot 3mo ago
Yes, and that sounds like a better plan, but evidently that requires more political capital than is available.
- altairprime 3mo ago
  There’s a missing component here: “Pray we do not regulate the deal further.” Governments tend to be annoyed at having to regulate and will often ‘somewhat’ regulate the worst excesses and then do the equivalent of a staring contest with those regulated. If business push right up to the wire and fight every tiny loophole then they risk being hit with a second wave of much more severe regulations; if they generally comply and don’t embarrass regulators and politicians, then there isn’t need to spend more capital on better regulation. At some level it’s very costly to micromanage business regulation gestures at California but so there’s definitely some decisions to be made about How Far To Go Each Time that aren’t simply due to a lack of political willpower.