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Comment by mavhc | Hacker News Reader

Without charging the creators of products the total cost to create and dispose of the product the incentives are always wrong.

Charge oil companies for the cost of removing their product from the atmosphere after it's been burnt, and charge battery companies the cost of mining pollution and recycling

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I am actually very much in favor of this, mostly because I believe the true cost of FF is orders of magnitude higher than the lifetime cost of batteries. Just the cost of deaths from burning FFs alone would make using them as fuel unfeasible.

Also, it'd be nice to do this all the way down the line, then maybe we'd finally see the legislation implemented for disposable packaging that the "Keep America Beautiful" propaganda was designed to counter[0].

[0] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec...

Not only that: the fossil fuel industry should also shoulder the burden it creates to the healthcare systems. We can’t just ignore the externalities.

How much does it cost to get one year of life from an average citizen? How would one estimate that? Healthcare system does not heal an ill person to 100% of health, it just tries to prevent death or most ill conditions.

I would even argue that it's possible to increase pollutions so more people would die and burden on healthcare systems would be reduced because of that. Weird argument, but still.

Does the logic go both ways? Should the fossil fuel industry be rewarded for the benefits it creates for the healthcare system?

presumably the benefits are priced in.

It is already rewarded for those benefits, that's what the money is for.

So there are no positive externalities to good health, transportation, manufacturing, climate control, or the millions of other uses for fossil fuels?

Those are benefits that are explicitly paid for, that's why we are using them. We don't buy them for other reasons then just get climate control by accident.

An externality is a cost or a benefit that is not accounted for in the trade.

The massive number of COPD cases are not paid for when fossil fuels are burned. The good things we get from fossil fuels is why we pay for them, that's their value and it is accounted for.

Aren’t there unaccounted for benefits to 3rd parties from me being able to get to work or the grocery store, heat my house, or the million other things I use fossil fuels for? Just as there unaccounted for costs?

Edit: I guess what I'm saying is that I really have no clue what you're suggesting here as a potential external benefit. The external costs are well documented, but I don't understand what you are trying to say is the unaccounted for benefit.

If you think that those things are more valuable than what fossil fuels charge you right now, shouldn't you call up your utility and offer to pay more?

What sense of "value" are you using here? I like to live, so I find food to be a great thing, so perhaps in one sense the value of food is infinite, but in a much more useful sens of value I pay something that it much closer to the cost to provide it than how much I would theoretically pay if my choice were to go without.

In the case of food, what happens when the manufacturer uses a new additive in their food that happens to decrease your lifespan by 1 day every time you eat one serving. It just happens that this additive is cheaper than the previous ingredient that was used for the same purpose (as happens so often color / texture / ...) The manufacturer receives a benefit (decreased cost) while pushing the cost (decreased lifespan) on you, the consumer.

Now recognize that this happens across all industries in the world every single day. New things are discovered that displace old things. We don't know all of the consequences for the new shiny product when we start producing and selling it to mass markets. Sometimes the new things have major disadvantages that we just don't know at the time we start using them. Look at historical problems with CFCs (which lead to ozone holes in the atmosphere) PCBs (which cause birth defects and can cause cancer), or how neonicotinoids impact insects (which can lead to the deaths of beehives). If the vendor pushing these products had to bear the full cost of the consequences of their use, they might never have been widely accepted. Capitalism is and always will be imperfect in this regard.

Though externalities are a well-studied phenomenon and failure mode of capitalism, I think that it will be a problem for nearly any conceivable economic system. Any economic system will have to deal both with unintended and unknown consequences, as well as with any harm/benefit to society that is not accounted for in a trade.

This. Externalities need to become accounted for when we want to completely evaluate the cost of an activity.

Just because those companies or us as individuals don't need to pay for the future damage, doesn't mean that cost doesn't exist, and by not accounting the externalities, the consumption of said products is incentivised since they become "cheaper" than alternatives that are presented to the end user with a higher cost.

In Norway the producer or importer must pay an environmental fee (miljøgebyr) that finances the infrastructure for recycling of things like batteries, tyres, etc.

THIS. In many legal systems companies are required to pay to recycle their waste. And recycling is expensive.

This created huge incentives for criminal organizations. Sketchy recycling companies that dodge regulations, bury toxic waste into building foundations, and make huge profits.

Also, most companies in developed countries simply offshore polluting industrial processes to less rich countries.

> Also, most companies in developed countries simply offshore polluting industrial processes to less rich countries.

Exactly what shocked me when I heard about all the plastic rubbish shipped to Malaysia. Shocked, because I was kinda proud how much rubbish we sort (Germany) only to be put into a container and sent around the globe...

Not that I wasn't aware of all the electronic waste shipped to Africa to be burnt and scavenged. It just made me a bit more cynical. Our politicians really couldn't care less, if it wasn't for the votes.

When will we know the cost of recycling batteries at scale?

At some point you still need to make someone responsible for disposal. And they may act improperly whatever the economic model adopted. Ultimately we need well run countries with laws and enforcement. And a culture that supports that.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just tax imported metals and miners in the US - for the externalities of mining metals - than to tax battery makers specifically?

Tax everyone for making anything. And if a country doesn't sign up, tax their imports.

Also means they're all incentivised to invent cheaper ways of cleaning the planet.

The only "issue" is the cost will passed down to consumers.

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