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Leaded gasoline. Using it allows you to increase the compression of your engine, which improves fuel economy. The total cost of lead in the environment by far

by cecilpl 13y ago

Leaded gasoline. Using it allows you to increase the compression of your engine, which improves fuel economy. The total cost of lead in the environment by far outweighs the economic benefits, which is why it's banned, yet for each individual person it makes economic sense to use leaded gasoline if you can.

mikeash 13y ago
Nice one! This is a much better example than my more generalized one of car emissions in general.
thisosound 13y ago
> The total cost of lead in the environment by far outweighs the economic benefits Evidence?
- oakwhiz 13y ago
  Putting extra lead in the environment increases the risk of people coming into contact with larger amounts of lead. Lead has been shown to cause health problems and birth defects.
- shrikant 13y ago
  Literally 3 seconds on Google for "lead cost benefit analysis" yields this 1985 study by the EPA: http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eerm.nsf/vwAN/EE-0034-1.pdf/$file/EE-0034-1.pdf http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eerm.nsf/vwAN/EE-0034-1.pdf/$...
  - tzs 13y ago
    It's even worse than that, I think. I may have missed it since I just skimmed that document, but I don't think it covered violent crime. It has been shown rather conclusively that overexposure to lead in childhood leads to an increase in violent crime in adulthood. Banning leaded gasoline was the single most significant cause of the large decrease in violent crime in the US in the latter part of the 20th century. Here's one story on this [1]. Cites to peer reviewed journals are available from Wikipedia [2]. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/ban-on-leaded-petrol-has-cut-crime-rates-around-the-world-398151.html http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/ban-on... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Toxicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Toxicity
ak217 13y ago
Regulation must exist for valid reasons (clear evidence of environmental harm exists for lead emissions) and be applied equally. Neither of those is true here.
- mikeash 13y ago
  We aren't actually discussing taxi regulations in this subthread, just regulations in general, and why you can't judge their merit by letting them compete in a free market.
rdl 13y ago
The libertarian argument here would be "burning leaded gas is a tort against everyone else breathing the air", right? You clearly have to special case it because the harm is so diffuse; you could presumably either have a government ban it, or have some objective standard where non-compliance is itself taken as a tort, and then something like class-action. There's the California option -- Prop 65 has this weird way for private people to find violations and be paid for them, although the enforcement action is taken by the state. I can't see "someone with a $0.0001 harm files suit against the aggressor" x 7b being a scalable solution without some kind of optimization. Maybe you could imagine some kind of little automated lawyer-agent which sues behind on your behalf, with everything happening at a micro-transaction level, but that seems kind of silly.

by cecilpl 13y ago

mikeash 13y ago

Nice one! This is a much better example than my more generalized one of car emissions in general.

thisosound 13y ago

> The total cost of lead in the environment by far outweighs the economic benefits Evidence?

oakwhiz 13y ago
Putting extra lead in the environment increases the risk of people coming into contact with larger amounts of lead. Lead has been shown to cause health problems and birth defects.
shrikant 13y ago
Literally 3 seconds on Google for "lead cost benefit analysis" yields this 1985 study by the EPA: http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eerm.nsf/vwAN/EE-0034-1.pdf/$file/EE-0034-1.pdf http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eerm.nsf/vwAN/EE-0034-1.pdf/$...
- tzs 13y ago
  It's even worse than that, I think. I may have missed it since I just skimmed that document, but I don't think it covered violent crime. It has been shown rather conclusively that overexposure to lead in childhood leads to an increase in violent crime in adulthood. Banning leaded gasoline was the single most significant cause of the large decrease in violent crime in the US in the latter part of the 20th century. Here's one story on this [1]. Cites to peer reviewed journals are available from Wikipedia [2]. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/ban-on-leaded-petrol-has-cut-crime-rates-around-the-world-398151.html http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/ban-on... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Toxicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Toxicity

ak217 13y ago

Regulation must exist for valid reasons (clear evidence of environmental harm exists for lead emissions) and be applied equally. Neither of those is true here.

mikeash 13y ago
We aren't actually discussing taxi regulations in this subthread, just regulations in general, and why you can't judge their merit by letting them compete in a free market.

rdl 13y ago

The libertarian argument here would be "burning leaded gas is a tort against everyone else breathing the air", right? You clearly have to special case it because the harm is so diffuse; you could presumably either have a government ban it, or have some objective standard where non-compliance is itself taken as a tort, and then something like class-action. There's the California option -- Prop 65 has this weird way for private people to find violations and be paid for them, although the enforcement action is taken by the state. I can't see "someone with a $0.0001 harm files suit against the aggressor" x 7b being a scalable solution without some kind of optimization. Maybe you could imagine some kind of little automated lawyer-agent which sues behind on your behalf, with everything happening at a micro-transaction level, but that seems kind of silly.