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Comment by danharaj | Hacker News Reader

So, does selling their externalities to poorer nations absolve a rich nation of their responsibility?

China has the second largest GDP of any nation in the world. I think it's safe to say they are not poor.

what does it mean to be poor? Economic output of an entire country? Or per capita. When measured by the latter, I can ensure you, China has a shit ton of poor people... greater than the population of the U.S.

Even measured per capita, they're about a third of a way from the top of the list. They have lots of high tech industry, nuclear weapons, etc. They can definitely afford to keep the rivers clean, it's a policy choice not an economic one. They are not poor in any meaningful sense of the word, being taken advantage of by the US and EU to dump our trash on.

China is spending trillions in foreign aid.

I don't know where you heard that at man, but China is not poor. At all. I mean that place is the opposite of poor.

I've been to poor countries. Cuba is poor for instance. Or Guinea. China? Not so much.

Why do you think GDP is a good measure of wealth?

What would you propose that is better? In any measure they're above the median in wealth. Poorer than the most advanced Western nations, yes. Too poor to keep their rivers clean? Hardly.

Depending on what you are actually trying to find out, you may also need to look into how that wealth is distributed. GDP doesn't mean much for most if 99.9% of that wealth is just owned by .01% of the population. Cost of living is also significant. Plus there are other externalities. How much use is it being rich if you can't step outside because the air is so polluted? Does the population have to work on average 80 hours a week to achieve that GDP? How much corruption is there? etc..

But of course, if you are trying to find out if they can afford to clean up their rivers, GDP is probably a fairly good measure..

GDP tells you precisely nothing about where a country's wealth is going, who it is going to or even anything about the well-being of its people.

GDP may as well be simply a measure of how much richer the rich are getting.

China presents itself as a rich nation when it suits its purposes.

China presents itself as a poor nation when it suits its purposes.

It depends on whether the poorer nation misrepresented what it would do with the trash.

This is the "How was I supposed to know the guns I sold would kill people?" defense

Or the "How was I supposed to know the car I sold would be used to run over a crowd of people?" defence

After a few decades of exported plastic trash ending up in the oceans being common knowledge it doesn't matter whether the handling was initially misrepresented. At best it's willful ignorance, but let's not pretend people have been sending plastic trash to China under the assumption that it would be dealt with responsibly.

was there ever any illusion what poorer nations would do with the trash?

A poorer nation probably will misrepresent what they do with the trash.

The sellers can't in all honestly claim they didn't know this would be the result.

What do you propose, that we stop doing any business with a poorer nation if we suspect they will somehow behave badly - according to our standards - while carrying out the task?

Are you looking at this from a western perspective? Is China really poor? I would question that.

don't buy it if you don't want it

Who said it does?

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