This goes for most (almost all) recycling programs.
Recycling programs are a worse than a waste of money since you are using up some of people’s limited support for environmental causes. This would not matter if we did not have some really huge, long term problems that we need to deal with that we are not doing enough about.
You could just as easily argue that environmental effort is not a zero-sum game, and that recycling gives people a sense of ownership over the environment and increases their appetite for more important efforts.
Personally I place high value on raw material recycling. Even if it's more expensive monetarily, so long as it uses less resources it seems worth it to me.
Aluminum cans are currently recycled more than any other beverage container in the U.S, which is good for business and the environment, says the Aluminum Association, because making a can from recycled aluminum saves not only aluminum but 92 percent of the energy required to make a new can
Costing more money is a measure of how many resources it's using. So more expensive is almost by definition more wasteful. The resource might be more human labor than natural resources but it's still something valuable that could better be used another way if there's a cheaper alternative.
Aluminum (and steel) is one of the very few things that is in any way worthwhile to recycle. Most of the things that we are urged to recycle (glass, plastics, paper, cardboard, etc) are cheaper and easier to make new from the abundant raw materials.
Corrugated cardboard is a net benefit to recycle, I've heard. Otherwise you are correct. It's just feel-good. Most of what you drop off at recycling centers is just trucked to landfills after it's out of your sight.
It depends on how you classify "good for the environment." In terms of biodiversity, if tree farms are replacing old-growth forests, they're terrible for the environment. However, if tree farms are located in places that have long been cleared (such as conventional farm land), they can bring back biodiversity, prevent soil erosion, and most importantly are extremely efficient at carbon capture.
Of course, most of the studies on this are sponsored by the paper industry, and it's really difficult to get unbiased information on the subject.
I read that the alloy used in the tops of aluminum cans is different from the alloy used in the body [1], and as a result when they're melted down they create a third alloy. That seems like it's at odds with the claim that it's infinitely recyclable and "can be recycled and back on the store shelf as a new beverage can in less than 60 days" [2]. Anyone know the answer to that?
> When recycled without other metals being mixed in, the can–lid combination is perfect for producing new stock for the main part of the can—the loss of magnesium during melting is made up for by the high magnesium content of the lid.
If you look at Alcoa's specs, the difference in the alloys isn't just magnesium content. [1] See chromium, for example, which is in the alloy for the top but not the body. Besides, even if you can make the body out of the resulting alloy, you can't make the top.
Battery and fluro tube recycling. These help prevent the contamination of waste dumps with heavy metals although with modern waste dumps that don't leach (as much) this is less of a problem.
The really big environmental issue that is not being tackled is anthropomorphic climate change. Really it is not going to matter how many plastic bottles we recycle if we push CO2 over 1000 ppm and which we are on track to do.
Here we are dutifully separating cans, paper, trash, looking at the little triangle and number on each plastic item. And then I had a vision of these trucks going to the same dump, and dumping it all in one big pile, or putting it on a ship and sending it off to another country to be burried there, away from EPA's reach.
The answer I think is it makes us feel good, it makes us think we are doing this to help mother earth, that is important to many people.
In the meantime maybe there is a coal plant across town that is dumping 1000x worse crap in the air, and putting a plastic bottle in the wrong bin is nothing compared to that.
In a way it reminds me when adults would give kids mindless tasks to keep them busy so they don't get bothered. "Here separate the M&Ms by color, I'll be back to check on your progress" kind of a deal.
Coincidentally, I was watching a fleet of three garbage trucks going though my neighborhood this week, wondering if the impact of running 3x garbage trucks to pick up trash, compost, recycyling was completely offset by the end product. I suspect the answer is no.
Plastic recycling was a platic-industry PR campaign to make consimers more friendly to buying plastic by assuaging their feelings of guilt. Now it's embedded in our culture as a received truth.
Not doubting -- see Annie Leonard's Worldwatch Institute (2013) piece on the fallacy of individual responsibility, particularly in disposable packaging littering. But I'd like to see specifics if you've got them.
There's a counterargument that we have been collectively underpricing nonrenewable resources, to the point that the term itself "nonrenewable resource" points to a price which fails to account for the full-in total economic, natural-capital, time, and impact costs of sustainably sourcing the resource, and potentially by factors of thousands to millions.
That's a concept I'm still working out, and is based on a re-reading of much foundational economic work (Smith, Mill, Jevons, Hotelling, among others). I'm not in the least presenting this as mainstream. But it would call into question the market-price basis of both resources and recycling.
I think this is a weird American political myth, like evolution not being real, or global warming being a Chinese conspiracy, or electric cars being worse than gas due to coal.
You go online and you find the same talking point, the same urban myths (they just dump it in a landfill!), the same links to professional political pundit's think pieces rather than to actual expert opinion.
So is recycling in your area expensive enough that recovering some of the recycling costs results in a larger loss than losing 100% of the costs of landfill operations? BTW, what area is this?
The recycling is funded by the county landfill. If they stopped accepting recycling from municipalities, they would get more fees at the landfill. They could also put in a tax to fund the recycling, or start charging for recycling drop offs.
Normally, the reduction in landfill fees is counted as a saving in favor of recycling, interesting that in your case it's the opposite and seen as an income stream for the people deciding whether to recycle or not. Sounds like a political problem, though I accept that in theory there could be places where it makes neither economic, nor ecological sense to try to recycle. I'd only really trust a proper expert analysis on that though, as it's quite complex (e.g. if you profit from recycling A, but it costs you to recycle B, does it still make sense to recycle both if some of the cost are shared by both materials)
The same entity runs the landfill and the recycling program. It's done to lessen the rate at which waste goes into the landfill, so landfill tipping fees are used to fund the recycling. They don't particularly see the increased fees as an income stream, but they would be a consequence of not accepting recycling anymore. I guess the motivation is that as long as the costs are low, the recycling program reduces capital expenditure on the landfill.
I think I read somewhere that it used to be standard practice to go to the eye doctor (or glasses-monger?) and just try on pairs until you found one that worked, rather than getting a laser-precise eye exam. At the time I thought it was a terrible, backwards idea, but it makes sense in this context. Getting an affordable, almost-fit pair of glasses is probably a lot better than no glasses at all.
That's pretty much what I did. I bought a super cheap pair (0.5 SPH) at $5, split the lenses and placed them over each other until what I saw at a distance was clear enough to read. I added up the SPH (they were 0.5 lenses, I ended up overlaying 4 pieces - so 2.0 total) and bought the resulting glasses. That was about 2 or 3 years ago and those glasses are still perfect for me.
I think these programs are a legacy of a past era where the costs of manufacturing glasses was relatively high.
But the suggestion that cheap glasses should be just put in racks is simplistic. Getting people sort of okay glasses isn't acceptable. My vision is asymmetrical, and using the same power lenses would leave me with a debilitating headache.
There should be a few standard cheap lens patterns so you can mix and match.
Questions unfortunately not answered by the article:
a) Who profits from this recycling program? How many people get a western salary to coordinate all this?
b) Following from (a), how many optometrists and lens makers could make a living in Cambodia if people just put $1 in a collection box each time they'd dump their used glasses in a box?
This suspiciously sounds like the "2nd hand clothes for Africa" scam that only profits the collectors of those in western countries and destroys local tailors' businesses in the target market.
> I'm glad someone makes money off of my old clothes rather than they go in the trash.
I don't have a problem with that per se, only that it happens under the pretense of charity and that the model exploits economic inequality in a globalized world on the expense of those the "charity" claims to help.
> That's a variation on the broken window fallacy.
I fail to see the connection because the broken window fallacy is about a coherent economic system, not about a global economy where one can make a profit by exploiting inequalities. The proverb says: Give a man a fish and you feed him for the day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Following that idea, I am much more for transfer of knowledge than for transfer of goods. And in extension also for sourcing urgently required products locally (and if required donating to build the required industry) than just sending products.
One does not have to see that in any ideological way: Just publish all numbers, show me that it's more cost-effective to send assembled products to a place and I won't object. But the article just showed that we again failed to run the numbers, thereby wasting money and potentially harming the local economy in the target country.
By sheltering tailors, everyone else in the economy pays a higher price and is thereby worse off. It's a net loss. Might as well go around smashing windows so the local glaziers can make money.
I see your point, but there is a good deal of hypocrisy in the way this kind international "trade" is viewed.
Giving away second hand clothes to developing countries is indistinguishable from "dumping", a trade practice which more developed countries (including the U.S) frequently take trade action against.
Dumping is a losing game for the dumper. It's nearly as bad as paying someone to buy your products. It only "works" as long as you keep paying, things revert to normal when you stop paying. Meanwhile, the dumpees are better off at your expense.
Then rationally no one would do it, right? And U.S border protection wouldn't need to enforce anti-dumping tariffs.
I think you're accounting only for first-order effects and ignoring costs to reboot industries that have been shut down.
EDIT: To clarify, I think your position is logically consistent and my guess is that you'd explain WTO actions / anti dumping enforcement as regulatory capture and protectionism.
If your goal is to destroy an industry in another country, you can stop dumping after that industry has been destroyed. Then, the people of that country will have no choice but to buy from you, because there is nobody left in that country that produces the goods you produce.
None of the cases I could read about discussed monopoly profits (so I guess, no - although it was not my argument). Rather they focused on the destruction of what were otherwise perfectly good industrial bases.
So I suppose the point I'd like to refute is that "dumping is always a losing game for the dumper".
Discusses the case of the British steel industry between about 1880 to 1914. It's not 100% clear that dumping was the proximate cause of their industrial decline (these things are very hard to be sure about!), but a strong case is made that it was a major factor. It's actually a pretty interesting read.
Britain had a free market for steel, while the U.S. and German industries enjoyed substantial protection in their home markets. It's better to run a steel plant at 100% capacity, so it actually makes sense to sell extra production overseas even at a loss. Quote:
"The U.S. Consul General in Berlin reported in 1916 that "the Steel Verband believes in dumping. They justify their position as follows: Large steel plants must work at a certain maximum capacity without interruption if they are to remain efficient and produce at a minimum cost. It is impossible for the home market of any plant in any country to absorb a large output without interruption in the flow of orders due to periods of depression, from economic causes outside the influence of the steel industry. Also, the increased complication of the coal, iron, and steel industries, the increased use of furnace gases for industrial purposes (gas engines), for running lighting plants for neighboring towns, also the concentration of all stages of production in a few large mills, have made it increasingly difficult to reduce production in any one line of all the allied processes, without causing grave losses and disorganization in other lines. The Steel Verband therefore maintains that it is better for the entire economic life of the country in slack years at home to dispose of surplus products abroad at prices which may even cause a loss, inasmuch as the loss incurred by dumping abroad is in no comparison to the losses which would be incurred if production were reduced at home. "
Of course in an ideal world everyone in Britain was now "free to do other things than make steel" but of course that ignores the fact that when the steel industry goes, so does a lot of related industry, manufacturing investment, industrial expertise and research and development. This means that a country which falls behind due to dumping will tend to fall further behind.
Interestingly enough if you look through US anti-dumping / countervailing duties messages here: http://adcvd.cbp.dhs.gov/adcvdweb/ it seems like steel is still pretty relevant today.
If you're selling surplus steel at a discount because it would cost more to not make it, that is not dumping. It's maximizing profits.
I'm aware that many countries have anti-dumping laws and protective tariffs. I suspect the "dumping" charge is just an excuse to insulate oneself from competition. The cost of protecting an industry in this way is higher prices for everyone else in the country.
Economic prosperity comes from exploiting comparative advantage, not blunting it.
There were also certain national-defense aspects. Keeping Krupp open, profitable, and competitive with Armstrong meant that the Kriegsmarine could have top-of-the-line armor and armament, to try to keep up with the Royal Navy.
It is interesting that the forerunner of the EU was the ECSC, the European Coal and Steel Community. It created a free trade zone with a large enough market for big efficient plants, transitioned inefficient mines and plants out of operation without causing social shock, and provided a collective tariff defence against US dumping.
Since you're selling at a loss on the open market, others with capital will see an unexpected price and wonder if you have developed a unique efficiency. After some basic research, some will guess at what you're trying to do.
They then have some great options. Invest in competitors or substitutes for the coming reduced supply. Or, stockpile the goods you sell, buying cheaply from you and even undercutting you in the future. Or, develop ways to reduce fixed costs. Build "fast spin up" sites with on-call labor so you can quickly return to market.
The dumping strategy works pretty well in a game with only two players. It does not work against the entire global system of capital and investment.
> Invest in competitors or substitutes for the coming reduced supply
Which will be at a loss, so you need just as much money. This is especially hard in developing countries. The market will still be destroyed, and you'll end up with a oligopoly.
> Or, stockpile the goods you sell,
Many things can't be stockpiled, and stockpiling also costs money (see the above)
One example where private dumping is tried, is uber with the taxi business. Uber regularly subsidizes fares (e.g. [1]). Local independent taxi drivers don't have the economic backing of investors and can't fight against dumping.
The taxi business is easy to get into (absent government regulations trying to prevent that). It's hard to see how dumping could prevent competition from rebounding quickly after the dumper's investors get tired of the losses.
You're just arguing that dumping can be fought with dumping and hence it's not rational for economic agents to engage in dumping. When did a rational argument stop the market from doing something?
I can now reply to your comment here, so I will reply again :)
You say that reality tends to punish irrational practices which means that some escape this punishment. Hence I will conclude that with time irrational business practices accumulate in the free market.
I can't reply to your last comment below so I'll reply here.
To me it seems that you are using some game theory ideas to explain how markets behave. The problem is that you forget to incorporate concepts from the "reality" you speak of in the last reply - more precisely timespace.
If you incorporate timespace, the enounciation becomes "the probability of the market punishing dumpers increases with time and becomes certainty after an infinit milenia have passed"
Right, and there are other responses in those situations, as described above.
But even if you retreat to the position that dumping is really only feasible for goods that can't be stockpiled, then you already agree with me in enough cases for this to be moot.
Almost all public concern about dumping is directed at things like tires or concrete or steel that could be easily stockpiled if it were really a dumping strategy, if prices were returning to monopolistic high levels after reduced competition.
What's usually happening is that the other region simply has lower costs of production or is selling off overproduction at their own loss.
Often there exists a price point where it is more profitable to sell less than 100% at a larger price point instead of lowering the price until you can sell everything.
At this point the question is what to do with the rest supply. Physically dumping it is one option that might not be legal. Selling it to another market[0] may net you a small profit on top of the already good profit of the amount sold at the optimal price point.
[0]: this might be another country or even as white label to local distributors.
> I'm glad someone makes money off of my old clothes rather than they go in the trash.
Nobody makes money off your old clothes. People make money off of the money donated to keep the charity running. That is okay if the charity is actually helping people; but if it isn't that money isn't being used right.
Anecdata. My second home country, Latvia, has so many more second hand than new clothes shops. At the same time, local textile industry seems to be thriving even within the EU single market. Local shops manufacturing high end clothing for Western EU clients...
I read the complete article, and I'm kind of skeptical of the conclusions.
Having travelled in Asia, for example, they have the skill and parts to repair eyeglasses and cut lenses to old frames. (In fact, I get my glasses repaired in Manila since the eyeglass cartel in the USA refuses to do major repairs. I've certainly tried in Silicon Valley multiple times.)
Also, eyeglass cases are considered to be valuable and resold for $1 - $5 each.
And finally, somebody with a suitcase could haul 100 - 200 frames on their next trip at no cost.
I think if they were willing to do minor repairs and record the measurements in a database, donations could be a much more efficient charity.
At a $1.88 to make a pair of glasses, I fail to see how your economics works. Minor repairs, databases, etc all cost more than that for a potentially inferior product.
Wow, hard to believe this was actually linked to. That opinion article article was thoroughly debunked two decades ago, yet somehow it's still doing damage.
Munger makes the same mistake that Tierney does by focusing on something that's easy to attack, and sounds good on the face, but is in fact nearly irrelevant to the discussion.
Tierney's argument that it takes energy to recycle is completely moot; the point isn't energy at all, the point is to recover materials & to slow production and consumption of wasteful single use containers. Combine that with our ability to use abundant and unending solar power, and you can see that Tierney's assumption that energy is part of the economy of recycling is a straw man and doesn't stand up to reason or reality.
Munger's entire argument is that recycling is expensive, there's a cost to recycling. Like Tierney, this is a misdirection. Cost is not the point of recycling. He's right, there's a cost, but he doesn't compare it to anything. What's the alternative to recycling, and how much does that cost? There's a cost to landfills too -- how much does it cost to throw away? Munger ignores the long term costs of not recycling. Running out of resources is going to be a lot more expensive than recycling. The byproducts of plastic production are toxic, and historically there have been some plastic factories that made workers fatally sick. Munger didn't try to factor in the health care costs of people who work in or live near factories. He hasn't attempted to consider the heavy cost of pollution. He doesn't calculate the costs of transporting garbage. He hasn't attempted to calculate the environmental costs of not recycling at all -- and this is the entire point of recycling, the entire basis upon which the economics of recycling is evaluated. The recycling movement is not even remotely concerned about the transaction price of recycling a bottle, it's concerned with slowing our frivolous and wasteful use of this planet's finite and valuable resources on one time deliveries of 12 ounces of Coke.
Thinking about cost alone is a persuasion strategy, it's a way to manipulate the argument and the audience, it's a way to put something seemingly tactile on the perceived downsides of recycling. It's a way to convince you that you're being cheated out of money -- but he's the one trying to trick you -- don't let it work on you so easily!
If nothing else, if I haven't convinced you at all, at least Google all the articles you can on the critiques of Teirney and Munger, read them all and try to rebut them yourself.
> the point is to recover materials & to slow production and consumption of wasteful single use containers
You are simply assuming throwing single use containers in landfill is more wasteful than recycling.
> our ability to use abundant and unending solar power
Yeah, that's why electricity is free, right? Also by this logic you can equally argue that recycling is pointless because in the future we can use robots (which run on free energy 24/7) to go through landfills to recover useful resources.
> Munger's entire argument is that recycling is expensive, there's a cost to recycling
Way to simplify the opponent's position. Munger says recycling things like aluminium would probably make sense.
He's accusing recycling proponents of not calculating the long term cost of recycling (which you demonstrated), which in many cases would be higher than simply throwing garbage away in landfill.
Munger argues that recycling can save resources, of course, but it can also require more resources than production from scratch. Some curbside recycling, for example, makes sense, while other forms (such as green glass) may be akin to a form of religious expression rather than a wise policy that is environmentally productive.
Whew, that essay is its very own brand of crazy. It seems both freightened and mean spirited through and through. I feel really bad for you if recycling and environmentalism scares you as much as it appears to scare Steven Landsburg.
I know why are you are an environmentalist: because you breathe air and drink water, just like I do. I'd guess you are just as interested in those things being non-toxic as I am. I'd guess you're just as interested in your grandchildren and humanity finding abundant clean air and water in the future as I am. I could be wrong about these things since I don't know you, but I'd still be willing to bet money that you enjoy being outdoors sometimes.
> Yeah, that's why electricity is free, right? Also by this logic
What a nice straw man you have there. You're trying to change the subject, just like Tierney and Munger did. I was talking about energy, not about cost. I claim energy is abundant, not free. Tierney argued against recycling by claiming that recycling uses more energy than new production. Tierney is pretending to miss the point of recycling completely. He's fully aware that debating the relative energy consumption of recycling vs new products has nothing to do with why people recycle, and he's fully aware that even if recycling uses lots of energy, even if recycling wastes tons of energy, there are still compelling reasons to recycle.
Petroleum is limited, while neither energy nor money are limited. Arguing over the percentages of waste of energy & cost is arguing over margins of the two things that won't run out. The earth and it's oil, on the other hand, are finite, and we're starting to see their limits. You can choose to ignore that, if you want, and continue to argue over the margins of the unlimited resources.
Just curious, but why are you using the weak political opines and outright rants of non-expert journalists who have agendas to argue economic and scientific issues, when there are actual economists and scientists who are writing about these things? I'm sure there are real scientists who have good arguments against recycling, if what you really want is to oppose recycling.
> that essay is its very own brand of crazy. It seems both freightened and mean spirited through and through.
You don't seem to have any rebuttal to the actual content of the essay. As a professional economist Landsburg is very open to different preferences people have. He's only asking for the same kind of open-mindedness in return by environmentalists (e.g. not calling anyone who doesn't agree with their dogma "crazy" and respecting those who don't participate in their quasi-religious rituals).
> I know why are you are an environmentalist: because you breathe air and drink water, just like I do. I'd guess you are just as interested in those things being non-toxic as I am. [...]
This doesn't make me a kind of naive environmentalists as described in Landsburg's essay.
> [...] even if recycling wastes tons of energy, there are still compelling reasons to recycle.
So far you cited none that's compelling. The issue of pollution from landfill sites is a concern but you don't talk about (a) how big the impact is (probably different in different landfill facilities) and (b) why people's effort to recycle can be an effective solution (my hunch is it's not very effective). Also we are far from running out of fossil fuels anytime soon so that's not a compelling reason either.
I understand that you personally prefer recycling though (for religious/aesthetic reasons). I respect your choice.
> why are you using the weak political opines and outright rants of non-expert journalists who have agendas to argue economic and scientific issues [...]
I cited Steven Landsburg, Mike Munger, and Russ Roberts who are all professional economists. Your 2 links (one from an environmental advocacy group) are virtually identical in their content written by the same 2 authors and only one of them is an "economic analyst" who doesn't seem to have published any academic paper in the field of economics (he's still entitled to his view but I don't think he made a good case for recycling in the article).
> You don't seem to have any rebuttal to the actual content of the essay.
What would you like to argue about? There's nothing for me to rebut. Steven's experience is his own, he's free to interpret the world however he wants. If he's scared of environmentalism and wants to rant about it, that's his choice. He forfeits any reasonable discussion automatically by comparing a general desire to have clean air and water with religious fundamentalism. It's an ad hominem that doesn't deserve any response.
> This doesn't make me a kind of naive environmentalists as described in Landsburg's essay.
Sounds like we're getting somewhere now. Let's talk about the good environmentalists like you, not the naive ones. What makes you a better environmentalist than the kind Landsburg talks about? What is your improved plan for keeping the air and water clean and available forever, without needing to recycle? Will your plan be cost and energy effective?
I didn't see Landsburg drawing a line between naive environmentalists and other kinds, did I miss something? He seemed to draw a blanket conclusion that all environmentalism is nothing more than faith. I know you don't agree with that.
> I understand that you personally prefer recycling though (for religious/aesthetic reasons). I respect your choice.
I haven't stated a preference for recycling, nor given any religious or aesthetic reasons for said preference, so I'm not convinced you understand. Calling it religious is pretty disrespectful, which you already know. But you don't know me, nor my preferences on recycling, so all I can do is return the favor and say I respect your choices too.
> He forfeits any reasonable discussion automatically by comparing a general desire to have clean air and water with religious fundamentalism
This doesn't seem like a fair characterisation of his position. Which part of his essay did he compare people who desire clean air/water with religious fundamentalists? He didn't, right?
> Let's talk about the good environmentalists like you, not the naive ones
I don't consider myself an environmentalist, but I think there are some things that can be done to improve the environment.
For example, one of the biggest environmental problems poor people in poor countries have is indoor air pollution, and the use of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels is one solution there.
Cambridge physicist David MacKay recommends some individual actions to save energy (e.g. not flying/driving often) for those who are interested in taking personal actions.
Recycling isn't one of them, but not buying clutter in the first place would be a good thing to do (which people are already financially incentivized to do).
I'm interested in progressive consumption tax though, as explained by Cornell economist Robert Frank. I want to see some experimentation done in this area.
> I don't consider myself an environmentalist, but I think there are some things that can be done to improve the environment.
Then you are an environmentalist. It's hard not to be one, if you're a human and want to live.
> not buying clutter in the first place would be a good thing to do
Yes!!
> I'm interested in progressive consumption tax
Me too!
> poor people in poor countries have is indoor air pollution, and the use of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels is one solution there. [...] Fossil fuels are essential to fight poverty too
I can agree that fossil fuels may be good solutions to the immediate problems of today like poverty and indoor pollution. But I see from your wording you already understand, as I do, that fossil fuels are only one option, and may not be the ideal solution in the future. G7 countries are now setting goals to reduce dependance on fossil fuels. Why? Is their belief in cleaner energy a religious cause with only faith and no evidence? No, there are both environmental and economic reasons for the US to start avoiding fossil fuels.
> This doesn't seem like a fair characterisation of his position. Which part of his essay did he compare people who desire clean air/water with religious fundamentalists? He didn't, right?
Wrong. And it's not just me, The American Enterprise Institute characterized this article of Landsburg's explicitly as "Why naive environmentalism is like religious fundamentalism", which is accurate since that's exactly what Landsburg said.
"We consider environmentalism a form of mass hysteria akin to Islamic fundamentalism or the War on Drugs."
"The naive environmentalism of my daughter's preschool is a force-fed potpourri of myth, superstition, and ritual that has much in common with the least reputable varieties of religious Fundamentalism."
"The underlying need to sacrifice, and to compel others to sacrifice, is a fundamentally religious impulse."
That point was stated explicitly multiple times, and is more or less the entire thrust of this divisive, mean spirited, and self-righteous rant from beginning to end. Are you reading the same thing I'm reading? You yourself adopted and used the term "religious" to describe recycling already in this thread, by what leaps of logic are you suddenly claiming to be not aware of this?
Forget the fundamentalist angle, just calling it "religious" is an attempt to discredit the environmental position as lacking any evidence or logical thought. Calling someone's reasons religious, without understanding them and when they wouldn't describe them that way is not just disrespectful, it's intentionally ignorant, it's trying to not understand and trying to disagree, self-righteously so. It's too bad Landsburg doesn't recognize the deep hypocrisy of his own self-righteousness, nor the fact that like you and I, he does actually believe that clean air and clean water being available now and to future generations is a mission worth fighting for. He, like you, is an environmentalist.
You might think Landsburg's writing sounds great, and that it makes a good reference in a discussion like this, but he said a lot of disrespectful things about a vague unspecified group of people without a single piece of evidence. He only states that their position is unreasonable and zealous, but hasn't shown that even once, nor clarified who he's even talking about. This paper is really weak, you are doing a much better job explaining your views on recycling than Landsburg did explaining his. You'd certainly make your points quicker and more agreeably if you left his writing out and spoke for y...
Landsburg says it's naive environmentalists that are similar to religious fundamentalists (which I fully agree). Those are the kind of people who don't care about e.g. the cost-benefit analysis of recycling and simply believe recycling is A Right Thing To Do and attack people who don't share their view.
I don't want to call myself an environmentalist for the simple reason that I want to distance myself from those naive environmentalists (I view these people very negatively).
But you are right that economists (and people who apply economic thinking to policy matters) are usually the best kind of environmentalists. I don't think we need a separate category called "environmentalists". We need people who can do calm and cold cost-benefit analysis of given policies (environmental or otherwise), which most people who identify as "environmentalists" can't seem to do.
> Landsburg says it's naive environmentalists that are similar to religious fundamentalists (which I fully agree).
Well, I suppose good luck to you both in your quest to sway any reasonable people, if you want to carry on with your ad hominem attacks. The comparison is flat-out inaccurate, and you know it. But worse, it's attempting to escalate the disagreement rather than find common ground.
As far as I can tell, you and Landsburg are both reacting to people acting self-righteously. Yeah, it happens. It happens everywhere in all subject matters and all corners of the earth. Smart people do it, and dumb people do it. Religious people do it, and secular people do it. It's fairly human for someone who is certain they are right to act self-righteously and attempt to demean the opposition with less than pure logic and evidence. I can point out examples of where both you and I have said self-righteous things in this thread. I will refrain from comparing you or me to Islamic fundamentalists, you're welcome, but I'm happy to identify the double-standard you've established for yourself.
Wouldn't it be better to identify as the kind of environmentalist you want to see other people being, and give it a better name, than to exaggerate your way to negativity and hate?
Steven didn't make a clear distinction between naive environmentalists and other kinds, didn't define what "naive" means, and did not qualify every intentionally inflammatory reference to religious environmentalism with the word "naive". Both the title and the very first quote I cited above fail to qualify with "naive", they are talking fairly unambiguously about all environmentalists. The implication was made absolutely and repeatedly clear that he's saying environmentalism is naive, not that there's a slice of environmentalism that is rational and right. It sounds to me like you don't fully agree with what he's saying.
> But you are right that economists are usually the best kind of environmentalists. We need people who can do calm and cold cost-benefit analysis of given policies (environmental or otherwise)
I appreciate the attempt to bridge our gap. I do agree that considering the larger benefits of environmental policy is a good idea. I disagree that economists are the "best" environmentalists - I'm not convinced economics is the best framework for evaluating the benefits of environmental policy.
> which most people who identify as "environmentalists" can't seem to do.
Do you want to provide some evidence for this claim? One of the problems with your argument, fueled by Landsburg, is you're providing only random amateurs as evidence against, and limiting to only the ones acting badly. You're happy to provide a line of professionals to support you, but you don't seem to be seeking out the professional contrary position. How about debating the people who've established some of the current recycling policy, rather than worrying about what people in a parade think when they're provoked?
> Steven didn't make a clear distinction between naive environmentalists and other kinds
But you do agree that he did NOT say people who desire clean air are like religious fundamentalists, right?
Isn't it clear from context that he's talking about the intrusive kind of environmentalists who try to impose their preference onto others (not people who want clean water for their kids)? It was clear to me at least.
I think some words (like "environmentalist" or "feminist") are so tainted by bad actors (who mostly rely on superstition and indoctrination) who label themselves as such that good actors (who mostly rely on reason and evidence) who used to call themselves that no longer want to use those words to describe themselves, and I think it's an understandable sentiment.
I think fossil fuels are great, and I eat meat every day and I appreciate factory farming that allows me to do so, and I don't recycle. I don't have any data on this but I think most people who call themselves environmentalists probably don't want to call someone like me an environmentalist, and I'm fine with that.
I'm not sure where you are looking but there are tons of options for $30-$100 glasses out there. In fact I got designer brand frames from my optometrist with upgraded lense material and anti scratch and anti glare coatings for less than $500.
Certain "extras" run up the cost of lenses. Options like self-darkening on UV exposure, low-reflection and anti-scratch coatings. UV coatings can add to the cost, but are probably unnecessary since most polymer lenses are inherently UV-absorbing.
Also, "no-line" bifocal versions cost more, as well as high-refraction materials that reduce lens weight and thickness.
Frames also vary in quality and durability. The glasses I'm wearing now are using frames > 20 years old. Of titanium construction they've outlasted other frames made of less robust materials or marginally engineered.
Don't know if on-line suppliers offer these options at lower cost. I suppose there's some risk of lenses being off-spec with any optician, an experience I've had several times over the years. The last set of lenses made for me had to be redone twice.
Getting lenses from a local shop likely costs more, but having someone to complain to directly face-to-face has a value of its own.
Warby Parker advertises on a lot of podcasts but their prices seem to be at least twice the two places listed above.
Both times took 3-4 weeks to get the frames so I assume they are made in china but they are cheap and I never had any problems with my last pair or my current pair.
Apart from the recent startups mentioned by others, there are also established Asian sellers of prescription eyeglasses. About 9 years ago I bought two pairs of single-vision prescription glasses from optical4less.com for 58 USD total, including shipping from Hong Kong to the UK. Assuming you live in the US, you could have gotten the same deal, and could still get it today.
If you have a really strong prescription or need varifocals, this increases the price. Be careful about buying varifocals online. It's worth contacting the company usong their chat/messaging function prior to ordering.
There are several competing efforts to produce low-cost eyeglasses. Focus On Vision has adjustable eyeglasses.[1] Project Congo has some kind of eyeglass-making kit.[2] Briefcase-sized eyeglass kits used to be popular in India. They contained round frames and several hundred round lenses. The idea is that glasses have three parameters - spherical curvature, elliptical curvature, and axis of the ellipse. The usual options for the first two are only about 100-200 lenses. With a round lens, you can set the axis in any direction. There's a little notching tool in the kit, and once you have the axis set, the plastic lens is notched, then snapped into the frame, where it locks.
Not that they really cost much. The manufacturing cost of eyeglasses is about $2. The insane price of frames comes from a monopoly by Luxottica, which owns most of the retail outlets in malls in the US.
They also manufacture almost all of the major glasses frame brands. They don't have a complete monopoly, but they do control a vast majority of the market.
I'm not sure about the monopoly accusation, but Luxottica's influence extends far beyond the US, and is not just retail. The company owns over 7000 retail outlets across North and South America, Asia-Pacific, China, South Africa and the Middle East, under well-known retail brands such as Sunglass Hut, LensCrafters, OPSM and others.
Moreover, Luxottica are vertically-integrated, controlling design, manufacture and distribution of many major brands in both prescription and fashion eyewear. Their in-house brands include Arnette, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Ray-Ban, Vogue and others. Additionally they manufacture product under license for many more, like Brooks Brothers, Chanel, D&G, DKNY, Ralph Lauren, Prada, Tiffany and Versace.
So, monopoly or not, it's fair to say that Luxottica exerts considerable control over the worldwide eyewear market!
Luxottica owns many things, but the most important thing any company can own are distribution channels. Then you can just refuse to sell your competitor's goods.
That's how they took over Oakley. They cut off their distribution channels. Luxottica took over Sunglass Hut and pushed out Oakley. Oakley had to sell out to Luxottica. Then the prices for Oakley went way up.
Luxottica did something similar with Ray-Ban. Their products used to sell for around $19 in gas stations. After the Luxottica takeover, they became a "luxury" brand, with prices from $129 to $300.
let's stop/reduce buying new glasses so there'll be no/less recycling.
i wore -4 diopter and i'm six months in 'no glasses' experiment after reading 'getting stronger' blog on eyes homeostatis. Here's what i found:
- i can read books without glasses at all. i used to wear my -4 for anything. no more.
- for laptop, i can use reduced (-2) and texts come sharp. i opt for no glasses and increase the text font size instead.
- for driving <motorbike>, daylight gives sharper vision (it's like wearing a -2, with no glasses). it's a bit blurry for driving, but i don't need eagle-sharp clarity, i just need to avoid collisions.
so instead of donating your old glasses, you can use them to train your eyes, say for example:
no glasses for books, -1 for tvs, -2 for laptop, -3 for driving, etc
i chose cold turkey because i often forget where i put my glasses and it's frustrating.
there is a plus lens therapy which i don't practice much because i keep losing my plus glasses.
This argument seems really weird to me. It's a "waste" compared to what? If the alternative is glasses going in the garbage or plastic recycling to recover nothing more than raw materials, then 7% of donations surviving the donation process seems like a massive win.
That doesn't make sense: spending $24 to retrieve 75¢ of materials is a massive loss, not a win.
Throwing stuff away isn't a problem (the world's huge; besides, today's landfills will be a future generation's mines); throwing recyclable stuff away isn't a problem (why, every day you excrete water which you could distil & drink — at a ridiculous cost); throwing away stuff which could be recycled or reused profitably is a problem.
This study is old, but glad it's getting published on major media sources.
The cost of distributing the glasses and reaching rural locations is often more challenging than the cost of the glasses itself. One of the leading companies distributing low-cost eye glasses is VisionSpring (www.visionspring.org), and they are also main partner for Warby Parker (https://www.warbyparker.com/buy-a-pair-give-a-pair).
VS is making radically affordable quality glasses ubiquitous in frontier and emerging markets. Their customers earn less than $4 per day and are highly price sensitive. They sell to seed markets, are accountable for delivering on a value proposition, and gain consumer commitment for a product customers will need for the rest of their lifetime.
Either way it's done, providing glasses to people who can't pay for them is a charitable act, and humans are not very rational about charitable acts.
Given two choices:
1) Give $5 to a program that provides brand new custom prescribed eyeglasses to people who need them but cannot buy them
2) Give $10 to a program that provides shitty, old, out-of-date, recycled eyeglasses of questionable prescription to people who need them but cannot buy them
Many people will respond more supportively to #2 and see #1 as fundamentally unfair ("I worked hard to earn the money for my glasses, why should a needy person have something just as good as mine? They should count themselves lucky to have anything at all!"). Many people see it as a moral imperative that the poor should suffer.
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[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadRecycling programs are a worse than a waste of money since you are using up some of people’s limited support for environmental causes. This would not matter if we did not have some really huge, long term problems that we need to deal with that we are not doing enough about.
This is one of those case where there has been actual research, but the results mat be fairly complex.
Personally I place high value on raw material recycling. Even if it's more expensive monetarily, so long as it uses less resources it seems worth it to me.
Aluminum cans are currently recycled more than any other beverage container in the U.S, which is good for business and the environment, says the Aluminum Association, because making a can from recycled aluminum saves not only aluminum but 92 percent of the energy required to make a new can
This is definitely not true in Germany. And for glass bottle recycling, most bottles are washed and reused up to 50 times before being melted down.
Of course, most of the studies on this are sponsored by the paper industry, and it's really difficult to get unbiased information on the subject.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverage_can#Fabrication_proce...
[2] http://www.alcoa.com/recycling/en/info_page/why_recycle.asp
Your wikipedia article says:
> When recycled without other metals being mixed in, the can–lid combination is perfect for producing new stock for the main part of the can—the loss of magnesium during melting is made up for by the high magnesium content of the lid.
[1] https://www.alcoa.com/mill_products/catalog/pdf/China_Specs/...
The really big environmental issue that is not being tackled is anthropomorphic climate change. Really it is not going to matter how many plastic bottles we recycle if we push CO2 over 1000 ppm and which we are on track to do.
Here we are dutifully separating cans, paper, trash, looking at the little triangle and number on each plastic item. And then I had a vision of these trucks going to the same dump, and dumping it all in one big pile, or putting it on a ship and sending it off to another country to be burried there, away from EPA's reach.
The answer I think is it makes us feel good, it makes us think we are doing this to help mother earth, that is important to many people.
In the meantime maybe there is a coal plant across town that is dumping 1000x worse crap in the air, and putting a plastic bottle in the wrong bin is nothing compared to that.
In a way it reminds me when adults would give kids mindless tasks to keep them busy so they don't get bothered. "Here separate the M&Ms by color, I'll be back to check on your progress" kind of a deal.
I doubt that's the case. (The yard waste and recycling bins are more full in my neighbourhood than the garbage cans...)
Not doubting -- see Annie Leonard's Worldwatch Institute (2013) piece on the fallacy of individual responsibility, particularly in disposable packaging littering. But I'd like to see specifics if you've got them.
That's a concept I'm still working out, and is based on a re-reading of much foundational economic work (Smith, Mill, Jevons, Hotelling, among others). I'm not in the least presenting this as mainstream. But it would call into question the market-price basis of both resources and recycling.
Food for thought, for now.
You go online and you find the same talking point, the same urban myths (they just dump it in a landfill!), the same links to professional political pundit's think pieces rather than to actual expert opinion.
They've never taken glass for that reason.
The economics are better for bigger population centers, but here the modest amount of material and trucking really put pressure on it.
Of course there are several businesses paying for metal in the area.
Let's go with "small town Midwest".
(But maybe "laser" was meant as a metaphor above?)
But the suggestion that cheap glasses should be just put in racks is simplistic. Getting people sort of okay glasses isn't acceptable. My vision is asymmetrical, and using the same power lenses would leave me with a debilitating headache.
There should be a few standard cheap lens patterns so you can mix and match.
a) Who profits from this recycling program? How many people get a western salary to coordinate all this?
b) Following from (a), how many optometrists and lens makers could make a living in Cambodia if people just put $1 in a collection box each time they'd dump their used glasses in a box?
This suspiciously sounds like the "2nd hand clothes for Africa" scam that only profits the collectors of those in western countries and destroys local tailors' businesses in the target market.
I'm glad someone makes money off of my old clothes rather than they go in the trash.
> destroys local tailors' businesses
That's a variation on the broken window fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
I don't have a problem with that per se, only that it happens under the pretense of charity and that the model exploits economic inequality in a globalized world on the expense of those the "charity" claims to help.
> That's a variation on the broken window fallacy.
I fail to see the connection because the broken window fallacy is about a coherent economic system, not about a global economy where one can make a profit by exploiting inequalities. The proverb says: Give a man a fish and you feed him for the day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Following that idea, I am much more for transfer of knowledge than for transfer of goods. And in extension also for sourcing urgently required products locally (and if required donating to build the required industry) than just sending products.
One does not have to see that in any ideological way: Just publish all numbers, show me that it's more cost-effective to send assembled products to a place and I won't object. But the article just showed that we again failed to run the numbers, thereby wasting money and potentially harming the local economy in the target country.
Giving away second hand clothes to developing countries is indistinguishable from "dumping", a trade practice which more developed countries (including the U.S) frequently take trade action against.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
I think you're accounting only for first-order effects and ignoring costs to reboot industries that have been shut down.
EDIT: To clarify, I think your position is logically consistent and my guess is that you'd explain WTO actions / anti dumping enforcement as regulatory capture and protectionism.
Not if you do it right.
If your goal is to destroy an industry in another country, you can stop dumping after that industry has been destroyed. Then, the people of that country will have no choice but to buy from you, because there is nobody left in that country that produces the goods you produce.
So I suppose the point I'd like to refute is that "dumping is always a losing game for the dumper".
The following article: http://www.nap.edu/read/5902/chapter/28
Discusses the case of the British steel industry between about 1880 to 1914. It's not 100% clear that dumping was the proximate cause of their industrial decline (these things are very hard to be sure about!), but a strong case is made that it was a major factor. It's actually a pretty interesting read.
Britain had a free market for steel, while the U.S. and German industries enjoyed substantial protection in their home markets. It's better to run a steel plant at 100% capacity, so it actually makes sense to sell extra production overseas even at a loss. Quote:
"The U.S. Consul General in Berlin reported in 1916 that "the Steel Verband believes in dumping. They justify their position as follows: Large steel plants must work at a certain maximum capacity without interruption if they are to remain efficient and produce at a minimum cost. It is impossible for the home market of any plant in any country to absorb a large output without interruption in the flow of orders due to periods of depression, from economic causes outside the influence of the steel industry. Also, the increased complication of the coal, iron, and steel industries, the increased use of furnace gases for industrial purposes (gas engines), for running lighting plants for neighboring towns, also the concentration of all stages of production in a few large mills, have made it increasingly difficult to reduce production in any one line of all the allied processes, without causing grave losses and disorganization in other lines. The Steel Verband therefore maintains that it is better for the entire economic life of the country in slack years at home to dispose of surplus products abroad at prices which may even cause a loss, inasmuch as the loss incurred by dumping abroad is in no comparison to the losses which would be incurred if production were reduced at home. "
Of course in an ideal world everyone in Britain was now "free to do other things than make steel" but of course that ignores the fact that when the steel industry goes, so does a lot of related industry, manufacturing investment, industrial expertise and research and development. This means that a country which falls behind due to dumping will tend to fall further behind.
Interestingly enough if you look through US anti-dumping / countervailing duties messages here: http://adcvd.cbp.dhs.gov/adcvdweb/ it seems like steel is still pretty relevant today.
I'm aware that many countries have anti-dumping laws and protective tariffs. I suspect the "dumping" charge is just an excuse to insulate oneself from competition. The cost of protecting an industry in this way is higher prices for everyone else in the country.
Economic prosperity comes from exploiting comparative advantage, not blunting it.
You can't privately dump. Well, you can try.
Since you're selling at a loss on the open market, others with capital will see an unexpected price and wonder if you have developed a unique efficiency. After some basic research, some will guess at what you're trying to do.
They then have some great options. Invest in competitors or substitutes for the coming reduced supply. Or, stockpile the goods you sell, buying cheaply from you and even undercutting you in the future. Or, develop ways to reduce fixed costs. Build "fast spin up" sites with on-call labor so you can quickly return to market.
The dumping strategy works pretty well in a game with only two players. It does not work against the entire global system of capital and investment.
That's a straw man. Markets have lots of failure modes, this just isn't one of them.
It's like an underpants gnome plan. Maybe it looks OK on paper, but it falls apart under any outside strategic pressure.
Which will be at a loss, so you need just as much money. This is especially hard in developing countries. The market will still be destroyed, and you'll end up with a oligopoly.
> Or, stockpile the goods you sell,
Many things can't be stockpiled, and stockpiling also costs money (see the above)
One example where private dumping is tried, is uber with the taxi business. Uber regularly subsidizes fares (e.g. [1]). Local independent taxi drivers don't have the economic backing of investors and can't fight against dumping.
[1]: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/busin...
You say that reality tends to punish irrational practices which means that some escape this punishment. Hence I will conclude that with time irrational business practices accumulate in the free market.
To me it seems that you are using some game theory ideas to explain how markets behave. The problem is that you forget to incorporate concepts from the "reality" you speak of in the last reply - more precisely timespace.
If you incorporate timespace, the enounciation becomes "the probability of the market punishing dumpers increases with time and becomes certainty after an infinit milenia have passed"
Right, and there are other responses in those situations, as described above.
But even if you retreat to the position that dumping is really only feasible for goods that can't be stockpiled, then you already agree with me in enough cases for this to be moot.
Almost all public concern about dumping is directed at things like tires or concrete or steel that could be easily stockpiled if it were really a dumping strategy, if prices were returning to monopolistic high levels after reduced competition.
What's usually happening is that the other region simply has lower costs of production or is selling off overproduction at their own loss.
Often there exists a price point where it is more profitable to sell less than 100% at a larger price point instead of lowering the price until you can sell everything.
At this point the question is what to do with the rest supply. Physically dumping it is one option that might not be legal. Selling it to another market[0] may net you a small profit on top of the already good profit of the amount sold at the optimal price point.
[0]: this might be another country or even as white label to local distributors.
(Source: farming school economics. : )
Nobody makes money off your old clothes. People make money off of the money donated to keep the charity running. That is okay if the charity is actually helping people; but if it isn't that money isn't being used right.
Anecdata. My second home country, Latvia, has so many more second hand than new clothes shops. At the same time, local textile industry seems to be thriving even within the EU single market. Local shops manufacturing high end clothing for Western EU clients...
Having travelled in Asia, for example, they have the skill and parts to repair eyeglasses and cut lenses to old frames. (In fact, I get my glasses repaired in Manila since the eyeglass cartel in the USA refuses to do major repairs. I've certainly tried in Silicon Valley multiple times.)
Also, eyeglass cases are considered to be valuable and resold for $1 - $5 each.
And finally, somebody with a suitcase could haul 100 - 200 frames on their next trip at no cost.
I think if they were willing to do minor repairs and record the measurements in a database, donations could be a much more efficient charity.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garb...
Debunking the Myths of the “Anti-Recyclers” http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/174_Sep96.pdf
Recycling is not garbage - MIT technology review 1997 https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400100/recycling-is-not-g...
http://econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungerrecycling.htm...
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/07/munger_on_recyc.htm...
Tierney's argument that it takes energy to recycle is completely moot; the point isn't energy at all, the point is to recover materials & to slow production and consumption of wasteful single use containers. Combine that with our ability to use abundant and unending solar power, and you can see that Tierney's assumption that energy is part of the economy of recycling is a straw man and doesn't stand up to reason or reality.
Munger's entire argument is that recycling is expensive, there's a cost to recycling. Like Tierney, this is a misdirection. Cost is not the point of recycling. He's right, there's a cost, but he doesn't compare it to anything. What's the alternative to recycling, and how much does that cost? There's a cost to landfills too -- how much does it cost to throw away? Munger ignores the long term costs of not recycling. Running out of resources is going to be a lot more expensive than recycling. The byproducts of plastic production are toxic, and historically there have been some plastic factories that made workers fatally sick. Munger didn't try to factor in the health care costs of people who work in or live near factories. He hasn't attempted to consider the heavy cost of pollution. He doesn't calculate the costs of transporting garbage. He hasn't attempted to calculate the environmental costs of not recycling at all -- and this is the entire point of recycling, the entire basis upon which the economics of recycling is evaluated. The recycling movement is not even remotely concerned about the transaction price of recycling a bottle, it's concerned with slowing our frivolous and wasteful use of this planet's finite and valuable resources on one time deliveries of 12 ounces of Coke.
There's a lot of information on the many large costs of not recycling that Munger is deliberately ignoring, here's just one: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/dangers-of-p...
Thinking about cost alone is a persuasion strategy, it's a way to manipulate the argument and the audience, it's a way to put something seemingly tactile on the perceived downsides of recycling. It's a way to convince you that you're being cheated out of money -- but he's the one trying to trick you -- don't let it work on you so easily!
If nothing else, if I haven't convinced you at all, at least Google all the articles you can on the critiques of Teirney and Munger, read them all and try to rebut them yourself.
You are simply assuming throwing single use containers in landfill is more wasteful than recycling.
> our ability to use abundant and unending solar power
Yeah, that's why electricity is free, right? Also by this logic you can equally argue that recycling is pointless because in the future we can use robots (which run on free energy 24/7) to go through landfills to recover useful resources.
> Munger's entire argument is that recycling is expensive, there's a cost to recycling
Way to simplify the opponent's position. Munger says recycling things like aluminium would probably make sense.
He's accusing recycling proponents of not calculating the long term cost of recycling (which you demonstrated), which in many cases would be higher than simply throwing garbage away in landfill.
Munger argues that recycling can save resources, of course, but it can also require more resources than production from scratch. Some curbside recycling, for example, makes sense, while other forms (such as green glass) may be akin to a form of religious expression rather than a wise policy that is environmentally productive.
Why I'm Not an Environmentalist
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPol/EnviroPhil...
I know why are you are an environmentalist: because you breathe air and drink water, just like I do. I'd guess you are just as interested in those things being non-toxic as I am. I'd guess you're just as interested in your grandchildren and humanity finding abundant clean air and water in the future as I am. I could be wrong about these things since I don't know you, but I'd still be willing to bet money that you enjoy being outdoors sometimes.
> Yeah, that's why electricity is free, right? Also by this logic
What a nice straw man you have there. You're trying to change the subject, just like Tierney and Munger did. I was talking about energy, not about cost. I claim energy is abundant, not free. Tierney argued against recycling by claiming that recycling uses more energy than new production. Tierney is pretending to miss the point of recycling completely. He's fully aware that debating the relative energy consumption of recycling vs new products has nothing to do with why people recycle, and he's fully aware that even if recycling uses lots of energy, even if recycling wastes tons of energy, there are still compelling reasons to recycle.
Petroleum is limited, while neither energy nor money are limited. Arguing over the percentages of waste of energy & cost is arguing over margins of the two things that won't run out. The earth and it's oil, on the other hand, are finite, and we're starting to see their limits. You can choose to ignore that, if you want, and continue to argue over the margins of the unlimited resources.
Just curious, but why are you using the weak political opines and outright rants of non-expert journalists who have agendas to argue economic and scientific issues, when there are actual economists and scientists who are writing about these things? I'm sure there are real scientists who have good arguments against recycling, if what you really want is to oppose recycling.
You don't seem to have any rebuttal to the actual content of the essay. As a professional economist Landsburg is very open to different preferences people have. He's only asking for the same kind of open-mindedness in return by environmentalists (e.g. not calling anyone who doesn't agree with their dogma "crazy" and respecting those who don't participate in their quasi-religious rituals).
> I know why are you are an environmentalist: because you breathe air and drink water, just like I do. I'd guess you are just as interested in those things being non-toxic as I am. [...]
This doesn't make me a kind of naive environmentalists as described in Landsburg's essay.
> [...] even if recycling wastes tons of energy, there are still compelling reasons to recycle.
So far you cited none that's compelling. The issue of pollution from landfill sites is a concern but you don't talk about (a) how big the impact is (probably different in different landfill facilities) and (b) why people's effort to recycle can be an effective solution (my hunch is it's not very effective). Also we are far from running out of fossil fuels anytime soon so that's not a compelling reason either.
I understand that you personally prefer recycling though (for religious/aesthetic reasons). I respect your choice.
> why are you using the weak political opines and outright rants of non-expert journalists who have agendas to argue economic and scientific issues [...]
I cited Steven Landsburg, Mike Munger, and Russ Roberts who are all professional economists. Your 2 links (one from an environmental advocacy group) are virtually identical in their content written by the same 2 authors and only one of them is an "economic analyst" who doesn't seem to have published any academic paper in the field of economics (he's still entitled to his view but I don't think he made a good case for recycling in the article).
What would you like to argue about? There's nothing for me to rebut. Steven's experience is his own, he's free to interpret the world however he wants. If he's scared of environmentalism and wants to rant about it, that's his choice. He forfeits any reasonable discussion automatically by comparing a general desire to have clean air and water with religious fundamentalism. It's an ad hominem that doesn't deserve any response.
> This doesn't make me a kind of naive environmentalists as described in Landsburg's essay.
Sounds like we're getting somewhere now. Let's talk about the good environmentalists like you, not the naive ones. What makes you a better environmentalist than the kind Landsburg talks about? What is your improved plan for keeping the air and water clean and available forever, without needing to recycle? Will your plan be cost and energy effective?
I didn't see Landsburg drawing a line between naive environmentalists and other kinds, did I miss something? He seemed to draw a blanket conclusion that all environmentalism is nothing more than faith. I know you don't agree with that.
> I understand that you personally prefer recycling though (for religious/aesthetic reasons). I respect your choice.
I haven't stated a preference for recycling, nor given any religious or aesthetic reasons for said preference, so I'm not convinced you understand. Calling it religious is pretty disrespectful, which you already know. But you don't know me, nor my preferences on recycling, so all I can do is return the favor and say I respect your choices too.
This doesn't seem like a fair characterisation of his position. Which part of his essay did he compare people who desire clean air/water with religious fundamentalists? He didn't, right?
> Let's talk about the good environmentalists like you, not the naive ones
I don't consider myself an environmentalist, but I think there are some things that can be done to improve the environment.
For example, one of the biggest environmental problems poor people in poor countries have is indoor air pollution, and the use of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels is one solution there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTdEoHklmE
Fossil fuels are essential to fight poverty too, as people in China demonstrated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v15q6M_z13Q
In developed countries, loosening zoning and immigration laws and encourage development in big cities would be great for the environment too.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/glaeser-triumph-of...
Cambridge physicist David MacKay recommends some individual actions to save energy (e.g. not flying/driving often) for those who are interested in taking personal actions.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c29/page_229.shtml
Recycling isn't one of them, but not buying clutter in the first place would be a good thing to do (which people are already financially incentivized to do).
I'm interested in progressive consumption tax though, as explained by Cornell economist Robert Frank. I want to see some experimentation done in this area.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/the_...
Then you are an environmentalist. It's hard not to be one, if you're a human and want to live.
> not buying clutter in the first place would be a good thing to do
Yes!!
> I'm interested in progressive consumption tax
Me too!
> poor people in poor countries have is indoor air pollution, and the use of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels is one solution there. [...] Fossil fuels are essential to fight poverty too
I can agree that fossil fuels may be good solutions to the immediate problems of today like poverty and indoor pollution. But I see from your wording you already understand, as I do, that fossil fuels are only one option, and may not be the ideal solution in the future. G7 countries are now setting goals to reduce dependance on fossil fuels. Why? Is their belief in cleaner energy a religious cause with only faith and no evidence? No, there are both environmental and economic reasons for the US to start avoiding fossil fuels.
> This doesn't seem like a fair characterisation of his position. Which part of his essay did he compare people who desire clean air/water with religious fundamentalists? He didn't, right?
Wrong. And it's not just me, The American Enterprise Institute characterized this article of Landsburg's explicitly as "Why naive environmentalism is like religious fundamentalism", which is accurate since that's exactly what Landsburg said.
http://www.aei.org/publication/why-naive-environmentalism-is...
Just a few direct quotes from Landsburg:
"We consider environmentalism a form of mass hysteria akin to Islamic fundamentalism or the War on Drugs."
"The naive environmentalism of my daughter's preschool is a force-fed potpourri of myth, superstition, and ritual that has much in common with the least reputable varieties of religious Fundamentalism."
"The underlying need to sacrifice, and to compel others to sacrifice, is a fundamentally religious impulse."
That point was stated explicitly multiple times, and is more or less the entire thrust of this divisive, mean spirited, and self-righteous rant from beginning to end. Are you reading the same thing I'm reading? You yourself adopted and used the term "religious" to describe recycling already in this thread, by what leaps of logic are you suddenly claiming to be not aware of this?
Forget the fundamentalist angle, just calling it "religious" is an attempt to discredit the environmental position as lacking any evidence or logical thought. Calling someone's reasons religious, without understanding them and when they wouldn't describe them that way is not just disrespectful, it's intentionally ignorant, it's trying to not understand and trying to disagree, self-righteously so. It's too bad Landsburg doesn't recognize the deep hypocrisy of his own self-righteousness, nor the fact that like you and I, he does actually believe that clean air and clean water being available now and to future generations is a mission worth fighting for. He, like you, is an environmentalist.
You might think Landsburg's writing sounds great, and that it makes a good reference in a discussion like this, but he said a lot of disrespectful things about a vague unspecified group of people without a single piece of evidence. He only states that their position is unreasonable and zealous, but hasn't shown that even once, nor clarified who he's even talking about. This paper is really weak, you are doing a much better job explaining your views on recycling than Landsburg did explaining his. You'd certainly make your points quicker and more agreeably if you left his writing out and spoke for y...
I don't want to call myself an environmentalist for the simple reason that I want to distance myself from those naive environmentalists (I view these people very negatively).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mojiBJ55G2g
But you are right that economists (and people who apply economic thinking to policy matters) are usually the best kind of environmentalists. I don't think we need a separate category called "environmentalists". We need people who can do calm and cold cost-benefit analysis of given policies (environmental or otherwise), which most people who identify as "environmentalists" can't seem to do.
Well, I suppose good luck to you both in your quest to sway any reasonable people, if you want to carry on with your ad hominem attacks. The comparison is flat-out inaccurate, and you know it. But worse, it's attempting to escalate the disagreement rather than find common ground.
As far as I can tell, you and Landsburg are both reacting to people acting self-righteously. Yeah, it happens. It happens everywhere in all subject matters and all corners of the earth. Smart people do it, and dumb people do it. Religious people do it, and secular people do it. It's fairly human for someone who is certain they are right to act self-righteously and attempt to demean the opposition with less than pure logic and evidence. I can point out examples of where both you and I have said self-righteous things in this thread. I will refrain from comparing you or me to Islamic fundamentalists, you're welcome, but I'm happy to identify the double-standard you've established for yourself.
Wouldn't it be better to identify as the kind of environmentalist you want to see other people being, and give it a better name, than to exaggerate your way to negativity and hate?
Steven didn't make a clear distinction between naive environmentalists and other kinds, didn't define what "naive" means, and did not qualify every intentionally inflammatory reference to religious environmentalism with the word "naive". Both the title and the very first quote I cited above fail to qualify with "naive", they are talking fairly unambiguously about all environmentalists. The implication was made absolutely and repeatedly clear that he's saying environmentalism is naive, not that there's a slice of environmentalism that is rational and right. It sounds to me like you don't fully agree with what he's saying.
> But you are right that economists are usually the best kind of environmentalists. We need people who can do calm and cold cost-benefit analysis of given policies (environmental or otherwise)
I appreciate the attempt to bridge our gap. I do agree that considering the larger benefits of environmental policy is a good idea. I disagree that economists are the "best" environmentalists - I'm not convinced economics is the best framework for evaluating the benefits of environmental policy.
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/323/
> which most people who identify as "environmentalists" can't seem to do.
Do you want to provide some evidence for this claim? One of the problems with your argument, fueled by Landsburg, is you're providing only random amateurs as evidence against, and limiting to only the ones acting badly. You're happy to provide a line of professionals to support you, but you don't seem to be seeking out the professional contrary position. How about debating the people who've established some of the current recycling policy, rather than worrying about what people in a parade think when they're provoked?
But you do agree that he did NOT say people who desire clean air are like religious fundamentalists, right?
Isn't it clear from context that he's talking about the intrusive kind of environmentalists who try to impose their preference onto others (not people who want clean water for their kids)? It was clear to me at least.
I think some words (like "environmentalist" or "feminist") are so tainted by bad actors (who mostly rely on superstition and indoctrination) who label themselves as such that good actors (who mostly rely on reason and evidence) who used to call themselves that no longer want to use those words to describe themselves, and I think it's an understandable sentiment.
I think fossil fuels are great, and I eat meat every day and I appreciate factory farming that allows me to do so, and I don't recycle. I don't have any data on this but I think most people who call themselves environmentalists probably don't want to call someone like me an environmentalist, and I'm fine with that.
Sigh. Why is it I can't get a pair of prescription glasses for under $500?
Check out places like America's Best, Warby Parker, or http://www.zennioptical.com
Also, "no-line" bifocal versions cost more, as well as high-refraction materials that reduce lens weight and thickness.
Frames also vary in quality and durability. The glasses I'm wearing now are using frames > 20 years old. Of titanium construction they've outlasted other frames made of less robust materials or marginally engineered.
Don't know if on-line suppliers offer these options at lower cost. I suppose there's some risk of lenses being off-spec with any optician, an experience I've had several times over the years. The last set of lenses made for me had to be redone twice.
Getting lenses from a local shop likely costs more, but having someone to complain to directly face-to-face has a value of its own.
Warby Parker advertises on a lot of podcasts but their prices seem to be at least twice the two places listed above.
Both times took 3-4 weeks to get the frames so I assume they are made in china but they are cheap and I never had any problems with my last pair or my current pair.
If you have a really strong prescription or need varifocals, this increases the price. Be careful about buying varifocals online. It's worth contacting the company usong their chat/messaging function prior to ordering.
Not that they really cost much. The manufacturing cost of eyeglasses is about $2. The insane price of frames comes from a monopoly by Luxottica, which owns most of the retail outlets in malls in the US.
[1] http://www.focus-on-vision.org/ [2] http://projectcongo.org/photocollections/eyeglassmaking.html
How is owning most of the retail outlets in malls a monopoly?
Moreover, Luxottica are vertically-integrated, controlling design, manufacture and distribution of many major brands in both prescription and fashion eyewear. Their in-house brands include Arnette, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Ray-Ban, Vogue and others. Additionally they manufacture product under license for many more, like Brooks Brothers, Chanel, D&G, DKNY, Ralph Lauren, Prada, Tiffany and Versace.
So, monopoly or not, it's fair to say that Luxottica exerts considerable control over the worldwide eyewear market!
Luxottica did something similar with Ray-Ban. Their products used to sell for around $19 in gas stations. After the Luxottica takeover, they became a "luxury" brand, with prices from $129 to $300.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfxERwUFZHc
i wore -4 diopter and i'm six months in 'no glasses' experiment after reading 'getting stronger' blog on eyes homeostatis. Here's what i found: - i can read books without glasses at all. i used to wear my -4 for anything. no more. - for laptop, i can use reduced (-2) and texts come sharp. i opt for no glasses and increase the text font size instead. - for driving <motorbike>, daylight gives sharper vision (it's like wearing a -2, with no glasses). it's a bit blurry for driving, but i don't need eagle-sharp clarity, i just need to avoid collisions.
so instead of donating your old glasses, you can use them to train your eyes, say for example: no glasses for books, -1 for tvs, -2 for laptop, -3 for driving, etc
i chose cold turkey because i often forget where i put my glasses and it's frustrating.
there is a plus lens therapy which i don't practice much because i keep losing my plus glasses.
i can't read number plates and stuffs clearly; however, i don't drive to see those things clearly. my mission is move from a to b without collisions.
Throwing stuff away isn't a problem (the world's huge; besides, today's landfills will be a future generation's mines); throwing recyclable stuff away isn't a problem (why, every day you excrete water which you could distil & drink — at a ridiculous cost); throwing away stuff which could be recycled or reused profitably is a problem.
The cost of distributing the glasses and reaching rural locations is often more challenging than the cost of the glasses itself. One of the leading companies distributing low-cost eye glasses is VisionSpring (www.visionspring.org), and they are also main partner for Warby Parker (https://www.warbyparker.com/buy-a-pair-give-a-pair).
VS is making radically affordable quality glasses ubiquitous in frontier and emerging markets. Their customers earn less than $4 per day and are highly price sensitive. They sell to seed markets, are accountable for delivering on a value proposition, and gain consumer commitment for a product customers will need for the rest of their lifetime.
Given two choices:
1) Give $5 to a program that provides brand new custom prescribed eyeglasses to people who need them but cannot buy them
2) Give $10 to a program that provides shitty, old, out-of-date, recycled eyeglasses of questionable prescription to people who need them but cannot buy them
Many people will respond more supportively to #2 and see #1 as fundamentally unfair ("I worked hard to earn the money for my glasses, why should a needy person have something just as good as mine? They should count themselves lucky to have anything at all!"). Many people see it as a moral imperative that the poor should suffer.