BraveSirZaphod

Well, this is Brown we’re talking about. The students probably got too high and just accepted whatever deal was thrown at them without thinking about it.

Okay, so imagine you just ban plastic soda bottles. Now plastic bottles cannot be used in any circumstances, no matter how genuinely warranted, even if a user is willing to pay all costs to ensure its environmental impacts are offset. Also, all soda is now significantly more expensive, so “the poors” still have less access to it.

And by definition the amount you would have to tax to achieve this has to be so much that it destabilizes the market.

Potentially, yes. The entire point is that these artificial low prices are only possible because the negative externalities are being inflicted on other people in the form of pollution. By actually factoring this impact into the cost of the good, its true cost emerges and the market will settle into whatever the equilibrium is. If the only thing enabling mass access to cheap soda is a ton of pollution, then you either accept mass pollution or you lose the mass access to cheap soda. There’s not really any way around that fundamental trade-off.

The spot where you charge it really doesn’t matter much except to the accountants; it’ll always just be factored into the price of the product. There’s no real difference between the company increasing the price by ten cents or a ten cent tax being levied at the register.

I really wouldn’t call it an indulgence tax though. There are plenty of uses for single-use plastics that aren’t sodas or indulgences.

You frame this as a ‘there is no solution i can see that’s worth it so why bother’ and this tells me you are not interested in a solution.

That is the exact opposite of what I’m saying. I’m saying that an externality tax to capture the actual cost of single-use plastics would do a lot to reduce their use without distorting markets and causing unintended side effects while likely being more effective than blanket bans.

Regulation is fine, but people need to realize that there are always downstream effects that often result in a less efficient version of the same outcome.

For instance, say you just pass a blanket ban on plastic soda bottles and mandate glass. Production costs immediately go up (not to mention transportation and logistics), and those costs are naturally passed onto the consumer, so the prices of all sodas go up.

Has this really improved things? There are real questions about the environment impact of glass, since they’re significantly heavier and thus require more carbon emissions to transport. Glass is better if it’s reused, but there are situations where it’s unlikely to be reused. Soda is now more expensive, just as it would have been under a plastic tax (and because lower income people tend to drink more soda, you’ve hit them extra hard relatively), but now you’ve also eliminated the ability for plastic bottles to be used in situations where they truly are called for; for instance, you probably don’t want to be selling glass bottles at a music festival, so an organizer will need to instead purchase extra plastic cups instead, resulting in the consumption of extra glass and plastic.

I know people have this idea that the only factor that goes into a price is how greedy the CEO happens to feel that morning, but that’s simply not the case. Prices are set by market circumstances, not greed. It’s not like NYC landlords suddenly got less greedy in 2020; the market radically changed. They’re already charging the most that the market will bear. In terms of regulation, it’s almost always more effective to go after the market incentives - that is, price signals - instead of just taking a hammer to the thing you don’t like and hoping it doesn’t have any bad effects.

If something is possible, and this simply indeed is, someone is going to develop it regardless of how we feel about it, so it’s important for non-malicious actors to make people aware of the potential negative impacts so we can start to develop ways to handle them before actively malicious actors start deploying it.

Critical businesses and governments need to know that identity verification via video and voice is much less trustworthy than it used to be, and so if you’re currently doing that, you need to mitigate these risks. There are tools, namely public-private key cryptography, that can be used to verify identity in a much tighter way, and we’re probably going to need to start implementing them in more places.

That’s what’s always a bit maddening about these conversations. It’s not like companies are just shredding plastic into the atmosphere because they’re cartoon villains who love evil.

They’re making cheap plastic shit because we love cheap plastic shit. They’re making this stuff in response to explicit consumer prioritization of low costs above all other factors. If consumers broadly demanded soda in glass bottles and expressed a willingness to pay the extra cost that this entails, every soda company would use glass.

I’m not saying that you individually should be blamed for all environmental pollution, but we have to realize that companies are responding to the exact same incentives that we do. They’re obviously operating at a much larger scale, but they use cheap plastic shit for the exact same reason we do. If you’re looking for policy solutions, a great option would be to introduce an externality tax on plastic so that this environmental cost is actually factored into the production and end price and can fund remediate the damage, similar to carbon taxes. Of course though, the moment you say the word ‘tax’ people’s brains completely shut off, so this is probably a non-starter.

This isn’t even true though. The vast majority will agree that a little bit of inflation is good, deflation is very bad, and hyperinflation is essentially cataclysmic.

That’s the infuriating thing about this whole mess that feels impossible to solve.

Rhetoric like this directly radicalizes Israelis and pushes them towards violent escalation, which then radicalizes Palestinians into violence as well, further inspiring more Israeli violence, and on and on the cycle goes.

And then anyone who advocates for any amount of moderation will simultaneously get called a terrorist sympathizer for not wanting to nuke Gaza and a genocide accomplice for not wanting to forcibly remove or kill every Israeli.

I certainly hope you’re not an American and have never been to the United States, because I’ve got some unfortunate news about who that land properly belongs to.

I’d love to see your thoughts if you’d been in the area to experience Hamas’ “peace” on October 7th.

That is not at all what right to work means.

I get the frustration, but if you’re going to criticize a thing, it’s a lot more effective if you actually know what the thing is.

Austerity does not tend to foster economic growth

I mean, that’s precisely the point. Growth isn’t really the priority right now, because that also tends to increase inflation. The loose aim of Milei’s plan is to return things to an actually accurate economic baseline by cutting extremely distortionary government spending and subsidies and allowing the peso to fall to its true actual value, and only then pivoting to focus on real and sustainable growth that’s actually backed by legitimate increases in efficiency and production rather than government money printers and IMF loans that only make the problem worse.

I won’t pretend that this approach doesn’t have some harsh consequences on people that will be disproportionately born by the poor or that there aren’t any other options, but there is a legitimate economic basis for the idea. Whether it’s worth it or is fair and just is another question.

I can imagine a non-zero amount of people would consent to a deep-fake porn video of themselves having sex with some generic hot woman, just as one example.

It’s just amusing that these people know that they can’t openly say “I think all Israelis should be either removed or murdered”, so they’ll just heavily imply it without having the balls to actually own up to their position.

Speaking as someone who would not at all be upset to see a rocket happen to fall on Netanyahu and Ben Gvir.

You’re the one who seems to be incapable of actually stating a concrete desire that isn’t the violent removal or murder of all Israeli citizens, but by all means, tell me how I’m the genocidal one.

Okay, so who are the people responsible? A handful of leaders? Most of the original Zionists have been dead for a long time. Is it literally every single Israeli? What exactly does this freedom and justice look like? I don’t think locking up Netanyahu and Ben Gvir would exactly satisfy the Palestinian cause, so ultimately, you have the situation of millions of Israelis, most of which were born there, who do not want to leave and will only do so by force.

So, what do you want? The forced removal of all Israelis? That’s not an inconsistent position given your general perspective, but if that’s the case, come out and actually say it.

You’ve said a lot of nice abstract things about wanting freedom and justice, and very little actual concrete info about the situation on the ground.

Jews conquered large parts of Palestine (not all of it AFAIK)

This isn’t really true to the historical record, not that it’s significantly relevant to the modern conflict. Contrary to the Biblical Exodus account, from what the archeological and linguistic record seems to show, a unique Jewish culture seems to organically emerge from a particular group of Canaanites who were not otherwise previously distinct from any of their neighbors. There certainly was no mass migration and conquest from Egypt. Over time, the Jews/Israelites developed a distinct cultural identity, possibly with some amount of external influence, and later developed individual minor kingdoms before being subjugated by the Egyptian New Kingdom, the Assyrians (thus the Lost Tribes of Israel), the Babylonians (thus the first Exile and the destruction of the first Temple), the Persians (who returned the previously exiled Jews), Alexander the Great, and lastly the Romans, who destroyed the Second Temple and began the Diaspora.

Again though, none of this should really be seen as being particularly relevant to the modern issue any more than Roman territorial claims are to the modern borders of Italy.

Oh, come on now. And what, exactly, do you want to happen the evil Zionists?

Sure, it’d be nice if there was a cute kumbaya moment, but absent that, if Israelis have no desire to leave, what do you want to happen to them?

If you believe that the murder of all Israelis is just, come out and actually say it. Don’t be shy now.