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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

> The survey also showed that, across all regions, farmers, almost unanimously, were opposed to covering the costs of recycling themselves.

> The answer: Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Shifting the responsibility for managing materials at the end of life away from consumers and onto producers, … It’s not uncommon for manufacturers of computers or tires to ask consumers to pay an extra fee at the time of purchase for the cost of collecting and recycling the product.

Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows that this is economically equivalent to making the farmers pay for the recycling.

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Plastic recycling is a scam. It was never actually viable, just propped up by the plastics industry to alleviate consumer conscience about all the waste and environmental degradation. Since China stopped accepting plastics almost a decade ago (due to the expense and mounting burden on their healthcare system) most of our recycled and sorted plastic in the US gets shipped across the globe only to be burned or dumped in the ocean on route.

Caveat: there are exactly 2 types of plastic that are economically viable to recycle (it still loses money for everyone involved along the way to the plant, but at least the final recycler can recoup costs): PET and HDPE. Unfortunately, according to google, these are not the most used types of plastic in farming. That would be PP and LDPE.

Yeah when I was a teenager I investigated my high schools plastic recycling supply chain. It is absolutely a scam, at least in many modern ‘single stream’ incarnations.

Split stream is real for at least some I think. Or was.

> Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows that this is economically equivalent to making the farmers pay for the recycling.

Which, in turn, is economically equivalent to food eaters paying the cost. There's no free lunch – figuratively and literally. Economically, it doesn't really matter all that much where you place the cost. Socially, though...

Good. It's part of their businesses expenses and should not be externalized. If that causes them to shift away from plastic then it was never viable to begin with.

"It’s not uncommon for manufacturers of computers or tires to ask consumers to pay an extra fee at the time of purchase for the cost of collecting and recycling the product."

The quote is stating that expenses are passed to the consumer, how is that good? It's also talking about things like tires, I think we can all agree the world wouldn't function without tires unless we're all willing to go back to the horse and buggy?

Purchasers should pay externality costs, that is good.

If they can’t afford the plastic now, society was losing on the transaction originally.

I don't want to pay for the cleanup of pollution, let the farmer and farmer's customers pay for that.

You are the farmer's customer.

So you’re against putting economic disincentives on plastic pollution…

… but you don’t believe in market forces coming into play to drive consumers to less expensive food grown by farmers who use less plastic.

Are you replying to the right person?

So, everyone that buys food?

Yes lol. I can’t believe you have difficulty understanding that costs that go into producing food accumulate into the cost of the food.

Or is plastic pollution the part you don’t understand?

Either way, both are simple.

I live down-wind of most of said plastic garbage where I live. Trust me: by now I'd happily pay the neighbours to clean their own plastic garbage from my field. Right now it costs me a day of work every spring to get rud of it.

Is there any other way? Either it can be extra fee or included in the price. In every case the buyer will end up paying for it one way or an other. And either of those is better than it being paid from general taxes.

I fully agree, but think it is misleading that the article presents this as a solution for the farmers desires.

it's a solution in the sense that it forces them to pay even though they don't want to, just like payroll withholding is a solution to the problem of people not wanting to pay income tax

There's a minor difference in that the cost of recycling is extracted up front so it disincentivizes a farmer from mounding up plastic waste in a field and burning it.

Economically it’s the same, but not psychologically.

And that’s probably equally important because the homo oeconomicus is just the spherical cow of economics and not a real thing.

You’re probably right, but I also think this perspective of “they don’t want these costs, so we will find some way of laundering it into the supply chain” makes people feel like they are being infantilized.

People don’t like the increasingly paternalistic perspective policymakers take, even if it is perhaps justified sometimes.

It might be that some people feel infantilized, but it seems to work for the majority?

For example, in lots of jurisdictions there is your gross salary, but then there are often additional costs like employer taxes, or social security contributions that are "paid by the employer". But the reality is, that employing me costs my employer 1.2 times my gross salary.

Do I feel infantilized by this - actually I do, but that's the point - some do, but the majority clearly does not. For them it's actually the opposite, it sounds great: "wow my employer pays that, not me, how great".

And it's the same here: "Oh, I don't have to pay, great." People seem to rarely care about the bottom line. Just think about free shipping.

If you feel infantilized, that’s good because it means that you have a conscience and you realize that you are actually in the wrong.

Don’t act like an infant if you don’t want to be treated like one.

The reality is that this is a political problem and making the population feel like infants or assholes is not going to endear them to your policies.

Either you somehow wrest control by force or you have to win hearts.

Education has been tried. If that doesn’t work, yes you have to try something else.

“Just let them be assholes or else you’re the real asshole for not letting them be assholes” is not a good argument.

Let people buy any gun they want, because infantilizing.

Let people sell meth, because…

Let people withhold wages…

You and what army will make people do what they don’t want to do?

People don’t like others selling meth and withholding wages, so it is easy to get popular support. But if people don’t understand and support the environmental mandates, all you will get is large-scale popular backlash - unless you can somehow restrain democratic will with force.

I don’t think we really disagree - I just think that we need to either come up with better ways of selling people on this, better ways of being sneaky, or force - and think the first is probably the best option.

Offer an economy not based on growth. The larger a company, the more sociopathic its aggregate behavior.

I’m not talking about going back to mom-and-pop farms. The fact that there’s an enormous supply chain that economizes plastic use on farms is what I’m talking about. Oil companies are more powerful than nation states.

I think we can sell people on reducing consumption and consuming more sustainable materials. How? Work less, have more time for leisure, go out and breathe clean air.

Also Malthusianism is real. But providing education and contraceptives works to reduce birthrates. No genocide needed.

it’s so good to have you here on HN as of three hours ago spouting nice opinions like ecofascists should seize power and upend the economy

There’s room in all forms of society for regulation. Changing part of the economy isn’t automatically fascism. Slow your roll. Then slow your roll again.

You sit in privilege and sneer at the potential for change. Why change the status quo if you already feel comfortable?

Justify how the most powerful companies in the world, with the worst track records for dishonesty, and with mounds of scientific evidence toward the harm of their products should not be targets of regulation.

Or go ahead and start putting lead into your gas tank, like a hero who doesn’t listen to others.

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