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California May Waive Environmental Rules For Tesla
cartechboy writes: We all know Tesla is working on its Gigafactory, and it has yet to announce officially where it will be. But the automaker did announce a shortlist of possible locations, and California wasn't on it. The state has quickly been trying to lure Tesla to get back into contention. Now the state may waive environmental rules which would normally make construction of such a large manufacturing facility more difficult. Apparently, Governor Jerry Brown's office is currently negotiating an incentive package for Tesla that would waive certain parts of the nearly half-century-old California Environmental Quality Act. Not only that, but state officials are reportedly considering letting Tesla begin construction and perform damage mitigation later, along with limiting lawsuits that could slow down the project. Let's not forget some massive tax breaks, to the tune of $500 million. Is California stepping out of bounds here?
Surprise, surprise, surprise!
Californians are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to this shit: they've got state regulations that do a better job (at least better than anywhere else in the US, with the possible exception of Hawaii) of limiting their exposure to nasty, carcinogenic shit, environmentally-devastating corporate irresponsibility, etc etc... but as long as there are cheaper places with less regulations to run a business (Texas, Mexico, China...), that's where industry's going to go. And California will continue it's steady slide down the economic toilet.
Instead of waiving the rules for certain companies, get rid of those rules.
How do you get 10? I only even get 5 at a time.
"Is California stepping out of bounds here?"
California is like breakfast cereal - what isn't fruits, or nuts, are flakes...
It's kind of funny ... these big money, massive development sorts of projects are probably the ones that most need to have the environmental review that the law was put in place for.
... lets get that money and those jobs into our state. But isn't it selling out a little, as well unfairly burdening the little guy?
So Joe Blow with his small business needs to go through all the red tape, but big ol' money making Elon Musk can avoid them. I can understand the impetus behind it
Yes, the rules are waived... for now.
However, how easily can that waiver be pulled? Is Tesla standing with a just flick of a governor's pen between them and having to shutter the entire factory, or is there some due process in place so they can't be shut down if they don't toe the politicians' line exactly?
If you have enough money, the government will make it legal.
I'd rather California get the money than Arizona... I dislike corporatations fueling (investing) in ignorance in the states. These low tax states keep citizens poor, and voting against their own best intentions because they're ignorant as shit. It fuels itself.
While California ain't perfect-- it's sure a helluva lot more forward thinking and progressive than a rival like Arizona (which I believe has been in the lead).
Good karma, I guess. 15 points a pop.
I was curious about what rules would be waived so actually read the article. This article says almost nothing. And the supposedly supporting link on 'waive the rules' doesn't go anywhere. About all I can tell is that they will let them do their Impact Assessment as they begin construction instead of ahead of time.
Seems like much ado about nothing unless anyone has some real info.
It's just a battery factory. It's unlikely it will employ that many people. Tesla says 6500, but that's probably exaggerated, including the construction phase. The battery factory for the Chevy Volt has only 100 people. It's a big, highly automated plant.
is that they're talking about exceptions, and not simply getting rid of the massive regulations that have killed businesses for years.
We now have state inspectors go through out trash cans looking for light bulbs. We will not, ever, be in a position to negotiate an exemption.
It would be amusing to see someone file a lawsuit - at the federal level - for equal protection violations. A class action lawsuit, with the class being everyone who is not eligible for the exemption. Or maybe a RICO lawsuit, since this is certainly affecting interstate commerce.
It wouldn't be the first time a government agency in California has been sued for RICO violations. And certainly won't be the last.
I just got this at the top of my /. page:
Does anyone know what that really means? Does it mean that the totally shit beta site will be going live then, totally replacing the old site, driving many of us away from /. forever?
Sad to see even CA isn't immune from the impact of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom ...
There are rules. Either you have environmental protection laws or you don't. If you have them, don't start making exceptions to them because anyone who didn't get an exception and lost money as a result can (and should!) sue the everlasting shit out of you. If there's a problem with your laws, repeal them and replace them with more sensible ones.
We have laws and due process in this country! As much as I like Tesla, go look up "Equal Protection Under The Law" and get back to me. Kthxbye.
In some cases, it can be cash upfront for jobs. A town council I lived near got in trouble with that as the company took the cash and ran. All political negotiations are a form of corruption as they are at best something bad for the people for something good. Similar laws could be introduced in states after the factory is built. It is more a question of how pliable the politicians are in a given jurisdiction and if the people will allow them to keep being so 'helpful'. In other words as long as you are friendly, you want the most corrupt politician. When building gigafactories it would be great if all the laws were straight and just, but it is just impossible at that level of importance. A lot of out right bribery and personal demands from politicians and officials will also likely be involved no matter what. Power corrupts and something this important involves a lot of power.
The only purpose of technological advance is to reduce the effort necessary to keep people subservient to their masters.
FTFY
Peasants working less?
What are you, a commie? The plebs are not allowed spare time, or they might find out how we bullshit them into compliance!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If I were Tesla, I'd go to lengths to adhere to those waived environmental regulations should the final choice for the Gigafactory be California. Doing anything less would result in a lovely soundbite for the detractors who want to complain about how Tesla, and by extension electric cars, are actually really, really horrible for the environment. And we have enough of those idiots running around as it is.
Is California stepping out of bounds here?
Maybe, maybe not ... the devil is in the details.
California does go overboard on regulations. I'm saying this based on conversations with a friend who has an environmental remediation business cleaning up other people's industrial messes or preventing the messes in the first place. He's quite the environmentalist, an environmentalist of the scientific school of thought not the political school of thought. The State Legislature is more of the later. If it "sounds" pro-environment "pass it" is their approach. If its useless or counterproductive it doesn't matter, it just has to sound like a good thing.
If Tesla is only getting breaks on the sillier stuff it may be a good idea.
Now on the legal side, California is a nightmare. The State Legislature is bought and paid for by the trial lawyers.
There is a word for making special exceptions in the law: corruption
Sounds like the article's discussing the way in which it's not screwed.
There are circumstances under which such rules can be waived.
I especially hope they wave them, because Tesla's almost certainly a net-benefit to California's environment anyway (by making the industry wake up to electric vehicles when traditional automakers seemed like they were intentionally failing).
Two things ... 1) Doing the impact assessment means that the impact assessment is irrelevant. 2) The impact assessment takes 2 years + court battles for a project of that magnitude. By not completing the assessment, they skip the arbitrarily long court battles.
Sure, when you have to race to the bottom.
This seems to be a big enough decision for a ballot measure. Even though it would be nice to have that factory here, I think it is a mistake to make all those concessions.
Waivers for individual companies (or tailored so that they only apply to one company in practice) really suck. How is this the rule of law? It's a popularity contest. Worse, it favors only big companies with enough sway to browbeat the government. If anything, we should be working towards better global standards to clamp down on regulation-shopping. At least, goods should be produced under similar regulations to those where they will be consumed, otherwise local industry is unfairly undermined and externalities are rampant.
If Musk is as smart as I think he is, he's not gonna touch California with a ten foot pole no matter what they dangle in front of his nose. Don't feed the parasites! Just let the bloodsuckers collapse under the weight of their own stupidity. He'd be doing the rest of the country one huge favor.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Why? Just because it is suspending established law enforced on everyone else to try to pump public money into the pocket of a notorious fellow liberal? Whatever put THAT idea in your head? It's just good, sound, selective enforcement. Standard Operating Procedure for Democrats. Nobody believes in that "Equal protection under the law" crap any more! Wake up and smell the corruption!
Sometime in the late 70's, government's started bribing large companies using huge tax breaks, relaxation of regulations, land grants, etc. using taxpayer money. This has led to very little except badness and a culture of auctioning business locations to the highest (or lowest?) bidder. Nothing good has come of that atmosphere and it's continuing to get worse. How to stop it though?
Damn talk about picking winners and losers. Our laws suck so we'll wave them just for you. California the state of kings and proud of it.
This seems to affirm the giant elephant in the "save the Earth" room: Tesla (as well as other products relying on highly-capable batteries) aren't all that "green". It may be a great car to drive, but if one needs violates environmental regulations — and not the recent ones — to make it, then green it is not.
Oh, and then comes the problem of disposing of those wonderful batteries — or recycling them...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The states shouldn't be allowed to engage in bribery like this. For any company. What? It's not illegal if the payoff is done in the open? A payoff is a payoff whether it's done at a local club in the dark, or at city hall in the light of day. This... is corruption. Writ large.
Is California too hot for battery production or is there some other reason why Tesla aren't interested in placing a factory there. Sure the environmental laws plays a role, but there could be practical problems too like production facilities needing expensive air conditioning for not overheating or logistic problems. There could be non-environmental legal reasons too. Just assuming it is due to environmental laws without any proof will make it just a theory. As likely as it is, it will not be anything but a theory until there is an actual proof.
Making special laws just for a single company is suspect. Avoiding complains and lawsuits is highly suspect. In a system without lawsuits, the legal system is out of power and the politicians can allow anything. It might be illegal, but you can't sue, which sort of makes it legal. I would go as far as to say it is borderline corruption, which is defined as simple as "when the rules doesn't apply equally to everybody".
Having said that, it would actually be a good idea to look at environmental laws and economic consequences. In fact as weird as it may sound, the environment might even benefit from less restrictive laws. California has quite a number of outdated coal fired powerplants. Getting money to upgrade those with filters and/or increase efficiency would make a major environmental change. If the laws are like here, they will not upgrade because if you do anything, you need approval like it's new. Make that mean reducing emissions by 20% can be illegal if demands from newly constructed ones are reduced by 40%. The end result is that nothing happens because then it will not need new approvals. Often making laws to do good for the environment is way more complex than most people think.
The only purpose of technological advance is to reduce the time people need to spend working.
Surprise, people have other priorities than merely working less.
They put in place all their ideological rules (always insisting that the new rules are practical and that any critic is evil and dishonest and owned by "big oil" or the Koch Brothers ) and then when reality sets-in they put in place "waivers" for the few politically-favored and they demand that nobody point this out. When they put these laws in place in California they DEMANDED that they were good rules that would not cause job losses. As the employers took millions of manufacturing jobs out of the state, these same know-nothings jammed their fingers into their ears and yelled "naa naa naa naa" pretending that their actions were having no effect on the state. They ignored all the damage being done to the middle class and to the upward-mobility chances of the poorer citizens whose path to the middle was traditionally via manufacturing jobs. They were SAVING THE PLANET, and all their rich friends in the bay area insistent that they were not being harmed. The left (which has a 2-to-1 death-grip on the legislature) has RUINED California - it's now a state of a super-rich class (in gated colonies), a dwindling middle-class, and a rapidly-growing lower-class composed largely of government-aid-dependent poor immigrants and their kids. Note to the left: If your plans require waivers, then your plans are BAD and the waiver is the proof.
Same with Obamacare. The people who wrote it and passed it into law DEMANDED that it would work and everybody would love it - and they denounced all the critics as corrupt, dishonest, or racist --- but then when all the left-wing groups like the unions whined about its negative effects THEY were granted "waivers"...
Oh, and another note for you guys on the left re demonization of your opponents: The current bogeyman of the left-wing fundraisers and politicians is "The Koch Brothers" (who are libertarians, NOT conservative Republicans) BUT you may have forgotten the previous bogeyman the DNC rode around on for well over a decade: Richard Mellon Scaife. If you go back and look at all the fundraisers and speeches from the nineties, you see people like the Clintons using the exact same attacks on the "evil" Mr Scaife that they curently use on the Kochs - but you might have missed the recent funeral of Mr Scaife (where Bill Clinton eulogized him as a good guy and a friend). A Huge portion of the scapegoating that people in Washington (and particularly in their activist groups) use against their critics while pushing really bad policies is completely dishonest and phoney.
Truly good laws and policies require NO waivers
I explain it as what people want and need aren't always the same. People want the big UI change. They want to see the new thing that'll make life easier. And then they'll get frustrated and want it back the way it was.
It's not that bad. Even worst case, it can be like a major organization making motions to move away from Windows towards Linux. The moment they do so, Microsoft, California and such start offering massive deals.
IE if Musk spends $1M surveying sites outside of the state of California and gets $300M in concessions from California to build the factory there? That's a rather crazy return on investment...
I don't read AC A human right
If rumors are to be believed, the plant is already under construction.
I find it hard to believe that California state officials are not aware of this. Therefore, they must have some other agenda beyond Tesla. Tesla is a red herring.
We need to have environmental protections, but many of California's regulations are ridiculous. Every business owner has to post a notice that their customers might get cancer if they eat the toner in the fax machine, or drink the toilet cleaner. The requirements for contaminants in waste water from semiconductor plants is more stringent than for tap water. So the semiconductor plants have mostly left the state, and taken the jobs with them. For at least the last ten years, California has had an unemployment rate about two points above the national average.
I was wondering about that myself
And because of that, we have to keep working? We reduced the average worker's schedule from 12 hour workdays 7 days a week to the 40 hour week... with late 19th century technology.
But you're happy with that not changing in over a century, because of your neuroses? Despite all the "productivity" and technology and game changers we keep hearing about??
You're a horrid person.
Everyone is required to follow a labrynth of regulations, laws, guidelines, and permits. That is unless you have the favor of the executive leadership of a state or federal government. It is happening in increasing frequency because actually following the law and regulations is so difficult as to be effectively impossible.
Enter selective enforcement.
JJ
Nothing new here. Look up the Oakland Bay Bridge project. This is just the latest report on it.
http://www.sacbee.com/static/sinclair/sinclair.jquery/baybridge/
The state exported the construction to China to avoid their own regulations. Volumes and volumes of regulations for the masses to follow. When the politicians who passed the regulations want to ignore or circumvent them, they do so. Do as I say, not as I do. Amazingly, our citizens reelect these people.
We need to do something to prohibit governments from bargaining away the laws. We've devolved into a system where the law is for sale to the highest bidder. The USA's reputation for being less corrupt than other nations is becoming more and more of a joke every day because of stuff like this. Either justice is blind, or it's lame. No "different rules for different folks". Either your state has a code applied equally to all comers, or it's arguable that it has no code at all.
California isn't OOB. It's just cheating because all the other kids in class are cheating. Johnny looked at Joe's paper. Didn't get caught. What am I knocking myself out for? Jane knows math. I'll look at here paper. It works great until nobody in class knows math any more.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's strange how California's environmental protection law was put in place by the beloved icon of Republican party... the same party who now say it's the reason for companies to stay away from California.
"California's landmark environmental statute, widely known by its acronym CEQA, was signed into law by former Gov. Ronald Reagan. It requires state and local government agencies to review development projects to identify potential threats to the environment and recommend ways to reduce or eliminate any potential damage."
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
And by "people", you mean corporations.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They are adamant about the letter of the law if you are a conventional business, just trying to address market needs and make a profit. But, if you are supporting their wet dream crap (windmills, solar farms, trains to nowhere, etc.), they throw all the rules out the window. To hell with the environment, raptors, Desert Tortoises or anyone and anything that gets in their way. If the laws and regulations are necessary and good, they they are necessary good for everyone. If they are bad, then they are bad for everyone. Should leftists ever gain full control of government, does anyone still believe that corruption of this ilk will not be the norm?
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
is to dial back the restrictions for everybody then, not give specific influential moneyed interests both environmental waivers and tax exemptions.
They did a similiar thing in Sacramento allowing Nestle to buy water for their bottled water at the residential rates while purchasing commercial quantities. And then they're telling us we have to cut back on our water consumption while also raising our rates...
Businesses have repeated shown no concern for their workers or the surrounding populace when it comes to safety or pollution, and no remorse for the consequences of their actions. Rivers in the Appalachians, lead poisoning in Industry, plant explosions in Texas, worker deaths and oil spills from a rig explosion in the Gulf, the Ohio River literally on fire are all examples of this psychopathic behavior.
If a business cannot provide a safe workplace, and clean up its own waste, it should not be in business, because neither of those is all that hard.
If the products the factory produces are more beneficial for the environment than the harm of the factory's pollutants, go for it. It would probably still be worthwhile if they ran the damn thing on unfiltered coal, frankly.
There's dozens of machine shops in Sacramento, and I assume all over the state. While there may be fewer of the 'Detroit Automotive' scale shops, that's mostly because of the limited automotive production still going on in California. Some of which I might add Toyota, possibly Nissan, and Honda have begun mitigating by putting in Engine plants and I believe some truck assembly lines in California. Additionally Toyota and Honda both have major prototyping and educational facilities in the bay->LA region and the central valley.
Doesn't Elon Musk pride himself in doing the right thing, and showing that a businessman can be ethical AND successful?
If anything, I expected Tesla would have a factory that would exceed environmental regulations. I'm deeply disappointed that he needs exemptions, given that California has many other auto factories that are fully compliant. Tesla should be no exception.
Gotta say, I really lost a lot of respect for him over this. If anyone could have done a better job, it would be him. Sad that it isn't.
California State and federal EPA environmental regulations are all unnecessary and harmful. The massive, wasteful, expensive, totalitarian, sadistic and incompetent EPA bureaucracy can be abolished and the environment made cleaner and safer. All that is required to efficiently limit environmental pollution and risks to any desired levels are these two measures:
1. The government implements pollution monitoring and sells tradable pollution licenses for individual pollutants in specified quantities. It buys back licenses to reduce emissions. It sells more credits to increase emissions.
2. The government monetizes risk by mandating bonding, requiring that any enterprise which risks accidental environmental damage hold a bond at the value of the maximum potential damage. (Offshore drilling is a good example.) This prevents companies from causing damage which they can not afford to pay for. The cap also limits the feeding frenzy among lawyers after an accident. To reduce risk exposure the government mandates more expensive bonds. To decrease risk exposure the government mandates less expensive bonds. Let insurers price and sell bonds to those business which are required to buy them. Obviously, the actual price of the bond to the purchaser from the insurer will typically be less than the nominal value of the bond because the price will be the nominal value of the bond multiplied by a risk factor usually less than 1.
Those two measures in combination reduce pollution and accident risks to any desired level with high efficiency and they do so equitably. Externalities are bad. Internalize externalities by compelling polluters to pay for the costs of polluting and the risk-takers to safeguard against risk.
That system allows state and local preferences for pollution levels and corporate favors to combine easily and transparently with national standards. Suppose that system was actually in place in California and Tesla was lured in with either subsidies or by slackening environmental regulations. Well, under that system, it would be done by giving/subsidizing/purchasing Tesla pollution licenses and adjusting the bond requirements or subsidizing a bond. Those actions would have assigned monetary values and identifiable and quantifiable changes to the level of pollution and risk. So we would know exactly what doing favors for Tesla costs the environment in increased pollution and risk and what it costs the taxpayer in dollars.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
The real problem is bipartisan control of the US government.
When you schmucks take a stand and work out with your friends who to vote for to ensure the election after next has 9-10 different parties all recieving the same percentage of federal funds to help mitigate need for 'private' donations, the first step towards dissolving the modern oligarchy will have taken place. Until then shut up, get up, and make an actual different, instead of whining like a partisan sheeple for whichever dumbfuck banner you somehow thing is superior.
California is by far the number one state for manufacturing jobs, firms and output â" accounting for 11.7 percent of the total output, and employing 9 percent of the workforce.
I'd love to see that in per-capita or per-acre terms.
It's also the largest state in population, with 11.91% as of the 2010 census. That's half again as many as Texas, a pinch under twice as many as New York or Florida, almost three times that of Illinois or Pennsylvania, and by then you've used up more than a third of them.
11.7% of the output jobs vs. 11.91% of the population says the AVERAGE of the rest of the states has it beat. Some of the others are REALLY depressed, so the best of them beat it into the ground.
Similarly, it's the third largest state in area - with the largest amount of COMFY area.
It has resources, the best ports for trade with Asia, decent roads and railroads to the rest of the continent, etc. And it's got some capital-intensive industries and lots of access TO capital. It SHOULD be a nova to the rest of the country's furnaces. So why isn't it?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...except those with several billon dollars.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
That particular regulation (prop 65) was voter initiated, not legislature initiated. All it requires is: the state must publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive harm (defined as having a 1 in 100,000 chance of causing cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm); businesses must label products and areas, like workplaces or apartments, that contain or release *significant amounts* of those poisons; and businesses are prohibited from knowingly releasing listed chemicals into drinking water sources. Many businesses have taken the position that they're better off posting warnings when any amount of a carcinogenic substance is present.
Given that semiconductor manufacturing is one of the more hazardous and polluting industries out there, I'm not surprised fab plants have a difficult time meeting environmental regulations in CA and have been willing to deal with the costs associated with moving to states or coutries who don't care as much about the health of workers or the cost of environmental cleanup. The solution to lost jobs isn't to drop regulation so employers can go back to putting employee health at risk, it's to improve the standards of the rest of the world so there isn't an unregulated bolt-hole for fab plant owners to run off to.
Oops: Got output and jobs merged:
11.91% of the population vs 11.7% of the total output. A bit behind in value added. (Horrible, since the value added in, say, computers is hysterically high.)
11.91% of the population vs. 9% of the workforce. That says 32% fewer jobs per capita in the manufacturing sector. Doesn't sound like the "number one state for manufacturing jobs" to me.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
11.91% of the population vs. 9% of the workforce. That says 32% fewer jobs per capita in the manufacturing sector.
Make that "24.4% fewer" or "other states have 32% more" jobs per capita.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I was getting 15 mod points a week until the first time I posted "fuck Beta" in a comment during the mass "audience" (*cough*) revolt. Then, no mod points for three months. I now get them maybe once a month, five at a time.
Occam sent me a nice letter explaining this was no fucking coincidence.
So, fuck Beta, and also: I'm a member of a community, not a goddamn audience. Enjoy your secret blacklisting... I probably just re-upped.
And not having these rules is bad for keeping them alive. It's just easier to force other people's health to suffer for your well-being than it is to man up and have some integrity.
the semiconductor plants have mostly left the state
Good. A perpetually drought-stricken state is not the place for a water intensive industry like semiconductors.
And because of that, we have to keep working?
Nobody forces you to work. But of course, if you want stuff other than just not working, then you need to come up with a way to get that or have someone get it for you.
But you're happy with that not changing in over a century, because of your neuroses?
My neuroses don't matter. What do you care if I don't buy into your assertion? Slack all you want, it's nothing to me.
You're a horrid person.
I guess that's what happens when you don't work. You just can't afford a decent class of insult.
No, I mean people. What's the point of pushing this phony argument? We already know lots of people choose to work more for a variety of reasons.
Mining is often done with a promise or funds put aside to do rehabilitation later. Maybe their act needs to be amended to allow it to be extended to other cases like this in general instead of in specific cases.
If I were Tesla, I wouldn't fall for this. Once they've got their factory up and running in California, then the regulatory and tax fun begins.
Just because California is run as if on drugs does not mean that the idea of regulation is a bad one in all circumstances. Kneejerk reactions like the one above should not be laughed at because they are merely a demonstration of too much focus on an aspect of a thing and not the whole, and the act of extrapolating it to the whole is merely laziness instead of the abject stupidity that it first appears to be.
All it requires is: the state must publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive harm
oh, thats all?
Complete list of things that give you cancer (according to epidemiologists)
Acetaldehyde, acrylamide, acrylonitril, abortion, agent orange, alar, alcohol, air pollution, aldrin, alfatoxin, arsenic, arsine, asbestos, asphalt fumes, atrazine, AZT, baby food, barbequed meat, benzene, benzidine, benzopyrene, beryllium, beta-carotene, betel nuts, birth control pills, bottled water, bracken, bread, breasts, brooms, bus stations, calcium channel blockers, cadmium, candles, captan, carbon black, carbon tetrachloride, careers for women, casual sex, car fumes, celery, charred foods, cooked foods, chewing gum, Chinese food, Chinese herbal supplements, chips, chloramphenicol, chlordane, chlorinated camphene, chlorinated water, chlorodiphenyl, chloroform, cholesterol, low cholesterol, chromium, coal tar, coffee, coke ovens, crackers, creosote, cyclamates, dairy products, deodorants, depleted uranium, depression, dichloryacetylene, DDT, dieldrin, diesel exhaust, diet soda, dimethyl sulphate, dinitrotouluene, dioxin, dioxane, epichlorhydrin, ethyle acrilate, ethylene, ethilene dibromide, ethnic beliefs,ethylene dichloride, Ex-Lax, fat, fluoridation, flying, formaldehyde, free radicals, french fries, fruit, gasoline, genes, gingerbread, global warming, gluteraldehyde, granite, grilled meat, Gulf war, hair dyes, hamburgers, heliobacter pylori, hepatitis B virus, hexachlorbutadiene, hexachlorethane, high bone mass, hot tea, HPMA, HRT, hydrazine, hydrogen peroxide, incense, infertility, jewellery, Kepone, kissing, lack of exercise, laxatives, lead, left handedness, Lindane, Listerine, low fibre diet, magnetic fields, malonaldehyde, mammograms, manganese, marijuana, methyl bromide, methylene chloride, menopause, microwave ovens, milk hormones, mixed spices, mobile phones, MTBE, nickel, night lighting, night shifts, nitrates, not breast feeding, not having a twin, nuclear power plants, Nutrasweet, obesity, oestrogen, olestra, olive oil, orange juice, oxygenated gasoline, oyster sauce, ozone, ozone depletion, passive smoking, PCBs, peanuts, pesticides, pet birds, plastic IV bags, polio vaccine, potato crisps (chips), power lines, proteins, Prozac, PVC, radio masts, radon, railway sleepers, red meat, Roundup, saccharin, salt, sausage, selenium, semiconductor plants, shellfish, sick buildings, soy sauce, stress, strontium, styrene, sulphuric acid, sun beds, sunlight, sunscreen, talc, tetrachloroethylene, testosterone, tight bras, toast, toasters, tobacco, tooth fillings, toothpaste (with fluoride or bleach), train stations, trichloroethylene, under-arm shaving, unvented stoves, uranium, UV radiation, Vatican radio masts, vegetables, vinyl bromide, vinyl chloride, vinyl fluoride, vinyl toys, vitamins, vitreous fibres, wallpaper, weedkiller (2-4 D), welding fumes, well water, weight gain, winter, wood dust, work, x-rays.
"His name was James Damore."
It's more that just jobs though. If this factory reduces the cost of the batteries to the point where lots more people can afford to purchase Teslas this could significantly impact air pollution in cities. While you'd need data to really know the answer this might actually be a case where the laws to protect the environment are not actually doing so.
1) Make rules that prevent anyone from doing anything.
2) Waive rules for people and companies you favor.
Now you effectively control who gets to do anything, and all in the name of the environment, or puppies, or whatever your original rule purported to protect.
An previous company of mine contracted a South Korean company to build a large facility for it. The facility was designed to standards accepted around the world. Their price was about $9M on a fixed price fee, it seemed quite reasonable at the time as the facility mimicked other facilities in China and the Philippines.
When they went to apply for permits, they were not meeting the environmental quality standards by California regulations. They modified the design to meet them, but in turn realized that the price tag would jump to $27M. They asked us for recompense, and we gave them some but not fully, as part of the bid was for them to meet all local standards.
Granted they did a bad job of bidding. However, a facility accepted around the world in various other places costs 3X as much to build in California because of environmental standards. That's not only ridiculous, it's business prevention. California is fortunate that it's in it's geographic location, because it's one of the worst places in the world to do business.
Watch California bend the rules to get Tesla in, then screw them over once things are rolling. The credo holds true man, If she cheated WITH you, she'll cheat ON you.
This IS California we are talking about. What the legislative pen can give, the legislative pen can take away as soon as the facility has been completed.
I don't know of any states off hand that have actually done this, but it happens at the municipal level all the time.
" then you need to come up with a way to get that or have someone get it for you."
If you're a corporation, then it's OK to leverage society's entire output to facilitate that for you.
If you're a person, then it's bad. Is that what technology is for you? A tool that should not be used for personal benefit?
Good thing you and your horrific psychopathy weren't around in 1897...
"We reduced the average worker's schedule from 12 hour workdays 7 days a week to the 40 hour week... with late 19th century technology."
No answer for that, eh?
No wonder you're a Space Nutter, the misanthropy and depression really shines through in your posts.
Please *DO* leave this planet as soon as possible and don't come back.
Please. (then you can show me this work ethic of yours that will make oxygen spring forth from a vacuum by itself)
A coke oven is a chemical? Or did you not read the sentence fully?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
There is always that strange force that drives people into evil. It is sneaky and persistent. So we have California who has better environmental protections than any other state but also is stuck with the curse of capitalism. Only growth appears to offer financial survival and in order to have growth and money they are willing to let the environment be ruined. The sad fact is that in reality California is over populated. Worse yet those large numbers of people live in an excessively dangerous place where mega catastrophes are certainly going to take place rather frequently. Earthquakes, mud slides, floods and a severe fire problem that is ongoing topped by the sad fact that this is the type of terrain likely to have a new volcano form or an old volcano erupt make California a bad place to build anything at all. Now imagine the worlds largest battery factory in a catastrophic event and think about what might occur. If anything California needs to condemn large areas of land and tare down homes and businesses and return the land to an untouched condition. If you want to see insurance companies and banks collapse just imagine the chain of events if the San Francisco area was destroyed by a major quake. It could bankrupt the entire nation.
And because of that, we have to keep working?
Nobody forces you to work. But of course, if you want stuff other than just not working, then you need to come up with a way to get that or have someone get it for you.
But you're happy with that not changing in over a century, because of your neuroses?
My neuroses don't matter. What do you care if I don't buy into your assertion? Slack all you want, it's nothing to me.
I'd rather work less, at least when I work for someone else. When I work for me, work time takes on an entirely different meaning. Having FT work with health care benefits be 25-30 hours per week would be awesome (insert something here about how universal basic healthcare could enable this environment without costing employers) A 25 hour week (at reduced pay) would allow me to do a whole host of other activities should I so choose, without having to give up a living wage. I might even be more productive during those 25 hours than the normal 40 expected today.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
No, I mean people. What's the point of pushing this phony argument? We already know lots of people choose to work more for a variety of reasons.
Like keeping your job through the next layoff, where you'll be asked to work more hours?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
A perpetually drought-stricken state is not the place for a water intensive industry like semiconductors.
Growing rice in the Central Valley uses a thousand times as much water as the semiconductor industry ever did. But the semiconductor industry employed a hundred times as many people. If making semiconductors was dumb, then growing rice in the desert is 100,000 times dumber.
I get the impression you have an opinion. Maybe you should just state what that opinion is.
Can you (or anybody else) substantiate that claim? I'll admit that I never participated in the revolt - I've never actually been subjected to the beta site, because I always just browse from the homepage - but if they actually did that they should be smacked. It sounds like a more extreme reaction than I would expect, though.
Just got, and used, 15 mod points today. Though admittedly it had been a while since I'd gotten any.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I'd rather work less
Then follow your desires. I really don't get the point of this thread. The world doesn't end just because some people work 80+ hours per week while others don't work at all.
I might even be more productive during those 25 hours than the normal 40 expected today.
I agree that your assessment may be right. Mentally demanding jobs, for example, tend not to be 40 hours per week jobs.
Of course they are.
And how does anyone even pretend this is legal? They can just 'waive' laws for special people and leave them in place for us proles now?
This is not the American way. One law for everyone. If the law is wrong, repeal it, don't 'waive' it for your friends while the rest suffer.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Who's paying for that? Employers are the obvious first target. Employees are the obvious second target. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Like keeping your job through the next layoff, where you'll be asked to work more hours?
What's so important about keeping your job, if you don't have any priorities other than working less? Losing that job furthers your goals.
>But of course, if you want stuff other than just not working, then you need to come up with a way to get that or have someone get it for you.
Indeed - and that mechanism is typicaly simplified as money. And since most people are working 40-60 hour weeks that greatly deflates my bargaining power for compensation - the labor market is flooded.
Just for the sake of argument lets suppose I was elected God for the week, and cut the length of the work week in half, along with doubling all pay rates so that everybody makes the same amount of money as before despite working half as long. And banned any preferential treatment for people working multiple shifts on pain of damnation (What? Where's the fun in being God if you don't get to dish out some hellfire?). What would that do?
First off you'd need to pay twice as many wages for the same amount of labor, so the labor costs of every good and service on the planet would roughly double - the capital costs however would remain unchanged, so depending on the particular good or service the point-of-sale costs would be somewhere in the range of 100-200% of normal. Let's say 30% of the average purchase is labor costs - double that and the average item then costs (.7+.3*2) = 130% of normal. That means your buying power from working a single job has has been cut to 1/(130%) = 77% of before.
Certainly everyone could start working double shifts to launch themselves to 144% of their previous buying power, but I'm betting a whole lot of people would decide that effectively earning 77% as much while halving their workload is actually the better deal. And if 10-20% of the population was happy with one job unemployment would vanish almost overnight as the market scrambled to fill empty shifts.
If *most* people were content with one job and a reduced income things would start to really improve - the labor market would be dramatically slashed, and the law of supply and demand means that wages would rise across the board as businesses compete for a limited labor pool. Hard to tell where things might end up, but if we were to assume another doubling in hourly wages we'd be talking about increasing the average item cost to (.7+.3*4)=190% of present, while the average single-job earner would be making 200% of present, for a 5% increase over current buying power despite working half as much.
Of course more advanced automation would also become more cost effective - but the price of that is in free-fall already, so I doubt it would make much difference in the long term.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I say fuck beta all the time and have an anti-beta sig and I seem to get mod points at the same rate. You only get 15 if you are at max karma (which is +50 IIRC). You can't gain any points but you can lose points so if you get any downmods you will only get 5 points until you are at 50 again.
Enigma
The Hypocrisy and Irony coming from CA is Delicious!
AND ESPECIALLY RABBITS!
Dark Reflection
They're only bad for keeping people working if nobody else has the same restrictions. If every other state had the same level of restrictions, California would be in contention without having to waive rules. If the entire world had the same restrictions, jobs wouldn't be outsourced to third world countries with near slave laborers.
That's the real problem with rules like environmental or worker protections - if only a subset of countries are onboard, companies move to those places where they have more power. If they have the same amount of power everywhere, the laws have no effect on the state of employment.
Your statement, and the sentiment many people hold towards regulation, is ignorant to the facts. You present it as if these companies are choosing between creating jobs and not creating jobs, when the reality is that they're creating the jobs anyway, and they're just choosing where to create them, with a substantial basis in the regulatory environment. Tesla is building a battery factory, they're just not considering California because it's easier to create them elsewhere.
Given that semiconductor manufacturing is one of the more hazardous and polluting industries out there, I'm not surprised fab plants have a difficult time meeting environmental regulations in CA and have been willing to deal with the costs associated with moving to states or coutries who don't care as much about the health of workers or the cost of environmental cleanup. The solution to lost jobs isn't to drop regulation so employers can go back to putting employee health at risk, it's to improve the standards of the rest of the world so there isn't an unregulated bolt-hole for fab plant owners to run off to.
This does not refute the OP's point that semiconductor plants are unnecessarily held to higher standards that water treatment facilities. Although I do appreciate my very healthy local job market(and still very healthy coworkers) due to such policies.
A coke oven is a chemical? Or did you not read the sentence fully?
So we go after someone for not culling the "complete" list of things that cause cancer to include only chemicals, even though quite clearly there are well over a hundred chemicals in this list?
Apparently so.
Why do we do that?
"His name was James Damore."
Right. Unless they have a very skewed RNG, there is a blacklist.
My former account was at the karma max even back when they still published numerical karma values, and there was a period of several years where I got literally zero mod points while at karma max, browsing logged in daily, and even metamodding. Then, one day, I was "forgiven" and the mod points resumed at the normal rate.
I moved to this higher UID account a few years ago and I got mod points very regularly (more than once a week) until the day of the revolt. Then literally nothing for three months. I have probably gotten a 5 spot of mod points no more than 3 times since then. My karma is still listed as "excellent", though the hidden numerical value is unknown.
Draw your own conclusions. Or not.
Yes, a feature (or bug depending on how you view it) of any restriction... is that it is restrictive.
I could see giving Tesla a pass on environmental regulation bureaucracy -- if they mess up, it will bite them hard because they are in the public eye and their customers are eco-conscious.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The law just says "Businesses are prohibited from knowingly releasing listed chemicals into drinking water sources."
The law *doesn't* say industry is held to higher standards than water treatment facilites - just that industry can't deliberately dump known carcinogens into the water supply. Per this particular law, industry could still dump known carcinogens into any other random body of water they like.
You could at least quote the actual list published under this law in California: http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/pro...
So get rid of the rice farming too. Surely that was your point.
Yes, but the mindset and framework that it passed in is what is hurting California, namely (1) a culture driven by fear, FUD, and sensationlism, (2) fundamental lack of respect for individual liberties, and (3) tyranny of the majority.
Why would the rest of the world care? If Californians eliminate themselves as a competitor through insane regulation, other countries benefit. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "pro-environmental lobbying" in California isn't sponsored by foreign competitors seeking to harm their rivals.
I explain it as what people want and need aren't always the same. People want the big UI change. They want to see the new thing that'll make life easier. And then they'll get frustrated and want it back the way it was.
Actually many changes have more to do with the developer's wants and little to do with the user's needs.
http://www.bloombergview.com/a...
"Why would the rest of the world care? If Californians eliminate themselves as a competitor through insane regulation, other countries benefit."
Well, another way to look at it is Californians have calculated the real cost. Sure, you get a couple of hundred FAB plant jobs, and a dribble of corporate and payroll tax out of it, but FABs are notoriously hard on worker health and on the surrounding environment. So the state ends up paying big dollars down the track to clean up the toxic mess left behind (and remember the only thing prop 65 bans is businesses dumping known carcinogens *into the drinking water supply* - under this law you can still dump carcinogenic waste wherever else you want), and pays again for healthcare costs for workers and their families (or we all pay it through increased insurance premiums if the state doesn't end up paying for it with our taxes).
About the only reason you'd want a FAB plant in your state that wasn't willing or able to comply with California's environmental laws is if you want to be able to boast about how you 'created more jobs' in the leadup to the next election, and didn't give a shit what the real cost to the state would be over the next 30 years.
Let's say 30% of the average purchase is labor costs - double that and the average item then costs (.7+.3*2) = 130% of normal.
Well while we're making up numbers, why not say it's 3%? Or 93%? As long as you can just pull numbers out of your ass you can make any kind of long-winded comment you like!
We can kill people with environomental contamination, or we can kill people by casting them into poverty because there are no jobs, said jobs being overseas, or in another state, or simply not existing anywhere. What's worse? I mean, people die, either way. People in poverty die about 6.5 years before they otherwise would. We have about 47 million in poverty, so that's a lot of "death" out there and a lot of the reason for the poverty is the environmental obstructions to industry.
The environmental extremists need to realize that they're not saving anyone, really.
The only purpose of technological advance is to reduce the time people need to spend working.
This is half right and half wrong. There's that need to reduce the amount of work they have to do to accomplish the same thing, and there's also that they want technology so that they can do things that they haven't been able to do before. Take for example, building and flying jumbo jets instead of walking (without these, a trip from say New York to Paris would be incredibly more expensive and time consuming.)
Technology likewise also increases the amount of work for people to do. For example, (and ignoring the staff needed for the transportation itself) if you used that jumbo jet to take a trip to Brazil, the hotel staff would need to be paid, whereas without that jumbo jet you would have simply taken a trip down to Grandma's house in the next state.
I myself have had it happen numerous times that people will just call me up and ask if I can fix this or that for them, and I'll be occupied with something else. I'll let them know this, and that maybe I'll come do it some other day when I'm not really doing much. I've had it happen where they really want it done sooner, so they offer to pay me (sometimes at a rate of about $40'ish per hour, though usually these people are friends who are running some kind of business) if I can come over and take care of it right away, even knowing that had they just waited a few days I would have done it for free anyways.
Scenarios like that will always happen. This is why the economy of Star Trek is pure fantasy. There will never be a day where there's no longer anything that somebody else doesn't want bad enough that they aren't willing to pay somebody else for it, unless human nature changes. People are just never content. The "if you give a mouse a cookie" analogy applies pretty much universally. If they were always content, then they'd probably get bored, depressed, suicidal, etc. This is also why communism doesn't work.
Yes, we do. This is a shitty list. Abortion is on the list.
California already has number of big, powerful companies headquartered there. They've got a number of great universities. Why pull out all of the stops to get Tesla to set up shop in-state? The US is a big country, and a few other states might want a share of the wealth that a company like Telsa could bring in.
Of course they are.
And how does anyone even pretend this is legal? They can just 'waive' laws for special people and leave them in place for us proles now?
This is not the American way. One law for everyone. If the law is wrong, repeal it, don't 'waive' it for your friends while the rest suffer.
Are you seriously surprised that Justice is not blind? She hasn't been for quite some time, as best I can tell, not to mention that someone rigged her scales.
"Two-tier justice", I think that's what they call it. The common practice of threatening outrageous sentences to pressure people into a plea bargain, which is to say be found guilty without a day in court -- but of course they only even attempt that when they estimate the cost of mounting a defense would prove problematic.
Actually it seems to me that now we ought to distinguish three- or even four-tier justice, accounting for cases such as this one where political considerations come into play and recently there have even been cases of corporations being found guilty of very serious offenses but deemed " to big to jail".
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
On the other hand they are rather useful for making life not suck in almost every other respect.
Whats the point of working a smog ridden hole when you can get a job somewhere else.
There is an irony in tesla, the great white hope of putting a serious dent in the US's appaling carbon outputs needing this however. Oh well.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
If waiving environmental laws and giving huge tax breaks for big businesses is good for the state, then doing the same for small and medium businesses is also good for the state. In fact, this kind of thing is evidence that the laws should be revisited and possibly revised. I already felt that way about the tax laws here in California (some of the highest taxes in the country). I'm not so sure about the environment laws, however.
-- Will program for bandwidth
You're suggesting that dozens of European and Asian countries where semiconductor manufacturing is growing are all run by morons, while California's ridiculous cast of politicians has figured out things perfectly?
You're suggesting that California politicians are acting out of concern over the fiscal health of the state 30 years from now? I haven't heard anything more ridiculous than that in a long time.
http://www.mercurynews.com/cal...
When you cited the mantra: "Joe Wilson's wife" you outed yourself.
Joe Wilson's wife had a desk job in the US and was outed by Colin Powell's guy Richard Armitage (both from the left-edge of the GOP - Powell voted for Obama) but you guys on the left went insane and insisted Cheney outed her and posted all over the internet that this was treason and you guys demanded prison time for the leaker. Bush appointed a special prosecutor who immediately found out who the leaker was and concluded it had been inadvertent BUT he needed a scalp so he prosecuted Cheney's assistant (Scooter Libby) for having a different recollection of the content of a phone call from a journalist's recollection (there was no recording and no way to know who was right, BUT it did not matter as the phone call did not involve the leak.
This year the Obama administration outed the identity of of the actual CIA station chief IN AFGHANISTAN!!!!! (they are also the same clown-show that outed the identity of the doctor in Pakistan who helped us get Bin Laden - who they then left to languish in prison there) Are you guys OUTRAGED about THIS "obvious treason" and demanding jail time???? Nope. You guys who pretend to be outraged by the outing of an agent are as silent as a church mouse when a REAL UNDERCOVER AGENT who is IN-COUNTRY is outed by your guys.
You're suggesting that dozens of European and Asian countries where semiconductor manufacturing is growing are all run by morons, while California's ridiculous cast of politicians has figured out things perfectly?
Yes, and it's obvious that they have. The Los Angeles basin has gone from one of the most polluted regions in the world to relatively clean in 30 years, saving residents billions in health care costs. This is despite the basin being probably one of the worst places to build a city in terms of air quality: LA is basically a giant bowl that gets far less wind on any given day than most other similar cities. Compare to other cities around the world where pollution is a large and growing problem. Around here the only real remaining problem is the port, because we still have to cater to every other states' and countries' dirty, inefficient, leaky ships and trucks, and the water, because water politics have 150 years of bureaucracy weighing them down, and there remains a lot of complicated, expensive work to do to keep out gigantic ag industry satisfied.
You're suggesting that California politicians are acting out of concern over the fiscal health of the state 30 years from now? I haven't heard anything more ridiculous than that in a long time.
http://www.mercurynews.com/cal...
California politicians didn't have anything to do with the law; it was voter-initiated. The politicians are still as short-sighted as ever; they're the ones who negotiated the union contracts at around the same time that back-loaded so much in retirement benefits 30 years down the line without allocating any money to pay for it that the state nearly went bankrupt a few years ago. Voter initiatives cause a lot of headaches, especially for politicians who have to live with them, but it's largely because of that initiative system that California can boast that it's doing really well for itself, despite getting screwed by our conservative national government (the state only gets back about 50 cents in benefits and funding for every dollar paid in federal taxes; if the state seceded from the US we'd pay off our debts in a few years, but then the rest of the country would go bankrupt in about the same amount of time so nobody really wants that to happen.)
If *most* people were content with one job and a reduced income things would start to really improve - the labor market would be dramatically slashed, and the law of supply and demand means that wages would rise across the board as businesses compete for a limited labor pool.
Apologies for being blunt, but you are delusional. Have you heard about Ireland? People have "accepted" wage cuts just for the privilege of keeping their job BUT:
1) The labor market has NOT improved;
2) Cost of living has NOT gone down;
In other words: things are tough all over.
And dot get me started about the mythical "law of supply and demand", because we might as well be talking about Santa Klaus, the Tooth Fairy or, since I mentioned Ireland, Leprechauns.
RT.
I don't think you have to worry too much about having to tell that your restaurants burgers might contain Gulf War because probably they don't.
however, if you're using uranium as a spice, sure, having it labeled would be nice.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The Protestant "Arbeit macht frei" work ethic
DAFUQ did I just read?! The "Arbeit macht frei" was a sick joke that was put over the Auschwitz internment camp main entrance. The Calvinists/Huguenot is nowhere near that term. To refresh your memory the "protestant work ethic" is has it's roots in Calvinist Protestantism and that has it's roots in France. It later also had a strong movement in the Netherlands. Germany was marked by Lutheran Protestantism with had no work ethic attached to it at all. Trowing these two terms together is just a sick perversion of history!
A coke oven is a chemical?
Strictly speaking pretty much everything we sorround ourselves with is a chemical. (Although a coke oven will typically be several chemicals.)
Obvious exceptions include light and other EM phenomena, plasmas, and elementary particles. Neutrinos aren't chemicals but then we don't really see much of them either even if they are everywhere.
sigs are hazardous to your health
This is a hypocritical act that is wrong. If California wants to attract business it should relax its stifling regulations to all. Not just for certain one's like Tesla.
California is in the debt crisis it is in because it has chased out so many existing businesses. Sorry, Governor brown, if I were Tesla I would stay far away from California because you never know what new regulation is just around the corner.
The only purpose of technological advance is to reduce the time people need to spend working.
Quaintly phrased, with a good, pro-worker spin. I prefer the more honest
The only purpose of technological advance is to reduce the number of people who have to be paid
You see, working hours haven't really decreased. Sure, you're probably working less today than if you'd been born in 1820, but workweek has actually increased over the last 30 years (at least for those employed). Now, this can still be positive - those people no longer employed in their newly-automated job are free to find other work and to grow the economy in new and exciting ways. I've been rather astonished, though, how few capitalists actually have any interest in "new and exciting," when it's easy to make more money by selling the same product as last year with lower manufacturing cost.
I wonder if they would bend the laws to make some more money if say H&K or Colt were looking to build a new factory.
The world doesn't end just because some people work 80+ hours per week while others don't work at all.
I think, although I am not certain, that the people who want or desire short hour work weeks are pissed those that will work 40/50/80 hours a week because to them as long as there are those that are willing to work long hours the short hours they desire won't come to fruition. Just a guess though.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
That about sums it up. The hypocrisy of the environmental left knows no bounds.
California has so many lovely places: Richmond (Iron Triangle), Vallejo, Oakland, Antioch, South Central L.A.. We won't want to destroy the natural beauty of these post-industrial homicide capitals with bothersome economic prosperity.
The statement "The requirements for contaminants in waste water from semiconductor plants is more stringent than for tap water. " is not refuted by your discussion of proposition 65. There are other regulations in play here.
I get the impression you have an opinion. Maybe you should just state what that opinion is.
That would require the skills of elaborating one's thoughts in a cogent manner. Such a skill has been long lost in the /. wastelands for a long time now.
So get rid of the rice farming too. Surely that was your point.
It would actually be a good point. One should farm crops that are sustainable and economical according to the available resources. It would make economic sense to grow valuable crops that do not require such amounts of water, even if it means an additional expense of importing those crops from somewhere else. ECO 101 kind of thing.
Growing rice in the Central Valley is as stupid as trying to grow tropical crops in North Dakota by enclosing hundreds of thousands of hectares in greenhouses, or trying either fish farming or planting sugarcane in the Sahara.
But hey, that's what agricultural incentives are for.
The darling of the left can pollute. Surprise, surprise.
what do you call startups?
Manifestations of a niche, specialized sector of the economy, highly vulnerable to (or causative of) speculation, which are incidentally highly localized in a single location in the entire state, with an attrition rate worse than what we typically think of as "small businesses", and that can only employ people with a very narrow set of educational criteria.
Conversations regarding small businesses only make sense when they occur in a highly diversified economy and that are capable of hiring people with diverse skills, many of them with utilitarian services.
The number of startups, and software startups in particular are not relevant to this type of conversation. The ability for someone to just start a business - a restaurant, a gardening service, a plumbing store, whatever - that is what is important. Other states are doing far better in that respect than California.
But hey, if all you know and care is software, then things that matter the most are startups. Bias is a funny mistress.
RNG only means that the entire set is apparently random not the individual participants drawing from it.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
and as long as we are simply making shit up, if i were god for a week... no , never mind, there is no point in making shit up
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
i dont know as much about Auschwich as Dachau, but that was in the gate at Dachau,(ive been there) perhaps it was at all the camps?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I think that is the key consideration for the equitable application of laws. Environmental laws are one of the things that are killing the middle class in America. Not because it is bad to have environmental standards, but because it is bad to have standards that only apply if you don't have enough lawyers, lobbyists, consultants and money to get around them.
We should ditch the corrupt permit system altogether and move towards a system of equally applied standards for all. Violate the law and be forced to correct the mistake, fined or imprisoned depending on the severity of the violation sure, but don't just bog everyone down in mindless reviews after reviews for permits which only serve to line the pockets of lawyers, environmental engineers and politicians.
About the only reason you'd want a FAB plant in your state that wasn't willing or able to comply with California's environmental laws is if you want to be able to boast about how you 'created more jobs'
I dont know about you, well i guess by your post i do.... but jobs right now are whats important
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
so what you are saying is that the voters are not as stupid as the politicians they voted in...however they still voted in those politicians so im not so sure
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
if the entire country had to live by cali rules? we would be a 3rd world country by now because every company with any sense would have left the country
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
gotta be the karma, ive been getting 15 for years now
Random Number Generator
Oh, some environmental regulations are fine. The question is whether California has gone overboard, and you can't show anything about that by showing the success of regulations. And, note how you have shifted from semiconductor fabs to air pollution in the LA basin, something completely different.
"The law"? California has numerous causes of fiscal disasters, some voter initiated, many initiated by politicians.
Oh those poor, poor politicians, the people are causing them headaches with their wishes! What is the world coming to!
Seriously, if you're a politician and the voters give you less money to spend, you spend less money; you don't go off wrecking the fiscal future of the state.
You state that analysis as if it were fact, but it's an interpretation and includes crap most states don't want to "get back". And, furthermore, conservatives have a simple fix to this "problem": reduce federal taxation and federal spending.
You're kidding yourself. California is a basket case. It's a bloody shame what has happened to this state over the past several decades.
Oh, of course. The great Illuminati/Inventor conspiracy.
California has such a mind boggling inefficient bureaucracy that is buoyed by labor unions that demand more and more and whose unchecked campaign finance bucket buys the very politicians that deliver all this mess.
The system is designed to limit competition from the "little guys" but if you are a billionaire the Governor rolls out the red carpet for more corporate welfare - because that is what it all is - welfare.
Where are your tax breaks Mr Start-up? Where are your health, enviorn and safety breaks?
Want to raise the roof on your mom and pop assembly shop? Let's ask the Fairy Shrimp. Want to build a Gigafactory to make toxic batteries? Here is $500 million and a free pass.
Chances are this project is already under construction in Nevada - Reno.
I know a manager at a big cheese plant in Hilmar, CA. they tried to expand their factory by less than 5% and it took 6 years to get nowhere. the company decided to build a new factory form scratch in Texas and broke ground in 90 days.
California and its hypocritical democratic party can drop dead.
As someone who works in environmental regulation but wants Tesla's (or some other electric car manufacturer's) success, all I can say is: "Yay? Aww... eh?"
If that were true, people would only need to work for leisure, fun or experience. In reality, the purpose of technological advance is to fatten the wallets of corporate owners and politicians. The slaves, or employees, will only be paid according to their living expenses (and not proportional to their contribution to company profits), so they will die if they stop working.
Since the price of goods does not noticeably drop due to innovation (ex, Amazon book prices are not lower than real bookstore prices although their operating costs are much lower), we can conclude that the increased profits (due to reduced manufacturing/operating costs) ends up in corporate owners' pockets, and not with the customer or the employee.
In countries with such a system, everyone pays for it in their taxes. It's a constant, manageable amount with no surprises, and costs less per person than under the US system. That means everyone pays the same whether they are sick or not, and the difference between being sick or hurt and not will never cost your house, or even endanger it in any way. Heck, it won't even touch your bank account, as you simply are never charged in a hospital, beyond what happens in some countries where you pay a small fee (~$10) for every visit to the ER. People are also free to get "upgraded" to private health coverage where they can get better rooms, etc., but that costs about $100 per month.
When everyone works together great things can happen.
I don't think anyone at Tesla is dumb enough to even consider CA a friendly business environment.
Don't hold your breath... Well, on second thought.
Given you could retain your same outcome but spend half as much with universal care, everyone would benefit. Bug no, that's socialism....
You have something that didn't come out of your butt to back up such a far reaching statement? Yeah I didn't think so, you just pulled it all out of your ass.
Not tomorrow.
Look at your record drought, the dustbowl you created which is spreading dust tornadoes all the way to Washington State, and get your head out of the polluted sands.
Adapt. Or Die.
That includes Tesla.
(my next car is a Tesla C)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Which it is!
It just amuses me that california has regulated themselves out of the competitive market (even more so than other unionized states).
Folks, Big government isn't the answer anymore than laissez faire. Find a happy middle, don't vote in politicians that only listen to their fringe bases (of which california has ALOT) and get over it.
Just vaguely referring to some environmental rules. The only ones it does mention are to allow it to provide environmental mitigation during construction instead of before.
It's hard to discuss how bad this is without knowing what is being discussed.
it should not be applied to anyone..
I seriously doubt that more than a very small percentage of those working 80+ hours a week are truly willing to work those hours. I am willing to bet the vast majority of them have no reasonable choice.
That way Tesla would have real power and be 'persuaded' to build in the new state of "Tesla", formerly known as California.
Given you could retain your same outcome but spend half as much with universal care
"Could" is not the same as "will". Since we're speaking of the US system here, we could be spending half as much now with no changes at all to the system. But we're not. One has to pay attention to what's actually going on in the system.
I seriously doubt that more than a very small percentage of those working 80+ hours a week are truly willing to work those hours.
I put that percentage at 100% in the developed world (I can't rule out slavery in the rest of the world) since that work is voluntary. "Truly willing" is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
If *most* people were content with one job and a reduced income
"IF". If we assume you are absolutely right, then you're absolutely right. Amazing how that works.
The problem is that most people would not be satisfied with only working 20 hours. And inflation would consume whatever gains you think you were making here.
Of course more advanced automation would also become more cost effective - but the price of that is in free-fall already
From really expensive to somewhat less really expensive. While Moore's Law might be still driving down cost of computation in theory, it doesn't apply to other things such as hardware for actually manipulating the real world.
everyone pays for it in their taxes
In other words, contrary to the grandparent's assertion employers and everyone else are indeed hurt by this. And it's not "constant". Just because the US system is epic fail, doesn't mean the rest of the world is good. The developed world as a whole is experiencing health care cost growth that rises faster than GDP. That should be a warning sign.
It's not the "using", as much of the "contamining".
When you use water for rice, you don't make it extremely hard to clean (it's probably even drinkable). When you use water for semiconductors, you drink it, you have no kiddies, and cleaning it is extremely expensive.
That's the difference.
Reasonable regulations on fab plants are welcome. But if the parent post is correct (waste water from semiconductor plants must be cleaner than tap water), that's simply not reasonable. That would not be a case where the rest of the world ought to emulate California's unreasonable standards; it's a case where California ought to become reasonable.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Your link contains an interesting graph, showing that CA unemployment has consistently been higher than the national average, since about 1990.
Imagine how much larger the surplus would be -- or how much lower tax rates could be, without impacting services provided by state government -- if CA unemployment had been consistently lower than the national average!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
We all know that Musk cares a lot about the environment. That's why he's Chairman of Solar City. So Musk's battery factory is not going to be a big polluter, and any regulatory regime that drives said factory out of the state is unreasonable.
California should make its regulations reasonable for all enterprises -- large and small, famous and obscure. Not only would that preclude accusations of "selling out"; it's just the right thing to do.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If Tesla is only getting breaks on the sillier stuff it may be a good idea.
A better idea would be to give everyone breaks on the sillier stuff. I.e., repeal the sillier stuff.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
There are other parameters by which mod points are handed out than just pure randomness. For example, a couple of years ago it worked for me so that if I had a couple of days of break from Slashdot (didn't load any pages), it often gave me a 5-pack of modpoints, but it didn't if I browsed constantly. Today even that trick does not work at all for me.
But comparing to the old days, there is a clear difference how much mod points there is in circulation in general. Look at this How Do Geeks Exercise article from 2008, and see how the comments are modded.
You're a stupid shit in real life and there is nothing more suitable for you than crawling back under a rock to die.
Piece of human garbage.
The whiners always crawl out to let us know how the world controls them so...
Life must be hard.
Yeah, I summarize this sometimes by suggesting that the real political problem is that we've overvalued human life, and everyone has their own solutions to this. That is to say, rather than the real cost in terms of life itself and the environment, Californians have calculated the "real cost" for our stable lifestyle. If we are going to compete (and who says we have to?), it would be necessary to sacrifice the lifestyle.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
The developed world as a whole is experiencing health care cost growth that rises faster than GDP. That should be a warning sign.
It is a warning sign, that's precisely why people are pushing for more socialism.
The developed world as whole is experiencing health care cost growth because the developed world as a whole has an aging population. The Boomers are retiring, and old people demand more healthcare. We have more people racking up costs than people working to pay for it.
There are two ways to go to solve this: increase productivity of those working, or kill off a lot of people (well, you let them die) to cut costs.
There is no system that can guarantee the former. Capitalism is only good at finding efficiencies. It doesn't guarantee how fast or how much the increase in productivity will be.
The latter is only limited by people/society's willingness to kill people. As long as they're willing, humanity has been able to kill each other throughout history. And history has shown us one of the most successful systems at killing lots and lots of people is the one that Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc used.
Here's where you say "well, why don't you kill yourself then". I don't support the idea myself. I'm just explaining why people are pushing socialism. Maybe they think they are special and would be spared from the purges.
Sure, if you count starving or being homeless as a reasonable choice. Most of the people working those kind of hours are working for minimum wage at several jobs because they couldn't afford housing or feed and clothe their kids. And if you just limit this conversation to programmers and IT guys, they still have fear of losing their jobs and not being able to find a new one before they end up without a home or food. Someone who is coerced is not willing.
And here's where the single provider payer model doesn't have to cover everything. It should just do basic / accident (ER) healthcare and palliative care. That will be a huge step up in coverage for most. Additional coverage would be private for chronic illnesses and the like, much like they are today. That limits the public exposure, reduces healthcare costs for everyone, and has little impact on those wishing private coverage. Adding additional rules preventing discrimination from signing up would be a bonus - ie, you just sign up for a class of coverage, and once signed up, you cannot be dropped.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
My primary goal is to continue to bring in a living wage, as without it, there's not much of a life. That's only possible by accepting a job and working under its requirements today. Don't be obstinately dense.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
All it requires is: the state must publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive harm
oh, thats all? Complete list of things that give you cancer (according to epidemiologists) [...]hepatitis B virus[...]
The idea of a product being sold which must bear a label stating "this product contains the virus Hepatitis B, which is known to the state of California to cause cancer" amuses me greatly.
But comparing to the old days, there is a clear difference how much mod points there is in circulation in general. Look at this How Do Geeks Exercise article from 2008, and see how the comments are modded.
Heh, when comparing to the old days, Slashdot is definitely dead (Jim!). Just look at the raw comment counts on average. That can skew analysis of mod distribution and density. For example, on that discussion I gave up after clicking "load more comments", getting up to 1250, and finding there were still more left.
In other words, if you've got a nasty chronic disease, you're SOL, pretty much like you are now unless you or your spouse has a job with a good health plan. It doesn't necessarily save money, either: a few emergency room visits because the disease isn't being treated would be likely to pay for a lot of treatment in a more sane context.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The economy of Star Trek wasn't what was shown most times on the show. On a military spaceship, one can expect to have one's needs taken care of without cash transfer. When they were off the Enterprise, they usually didn't get into situations where the economy showed through.
However, consider "The Trouble with Tribbles". Cyrano Jones is a traveler, constantly trying to hustle up some credits, partly so he can get drinks. He negotiates with the storekeeper, who is also in it for the credits. In other words, we see an economy much like our own.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Except that there is no coercion here. Just because you have needs doesn't mean someone has forced you to do any particular thing. That fear you mention is your fear not the fear of the employer.
Keep in mind also that another reasonable set of choices is look for new work, not necessarily in the same area or same field.
That's only possible by accepting a job and working under its requirements today.
And you don't acknowledge that there's more than one job out there. No job is perfect like no life is perfect. But that doesn't mean that you can't find work that fits well with what your actual priorities are.
Nor do you recognize that you can save the wealth you earn so that you have better choices in the future including not working at all.
if you've got a nasty chronic disease, you're SOL
Who's paying for it? We all have this nasty chronic disease called "life" and we'll all die of it. Arguments like this, with no consideration of cost, have a nasty built-in slippery slope to a scenario where society can't afford everyone's promised health care.
If you and your fellow sufferers have enough nasty chronic diseases and other health conditions so that society can't both pay for them and still maintain normal infrastructure (transportation, law enforcement, emergency services, national defense, etc), then you're SOL. The only distinction is whether you're SOL before or after your society falls apart.
There's not much beyond a 1-2K cost associated with an ER room visit, compared to 100s of thousands for chronic disease care. What I'm suggesting is something between "we'll pay for everything" and "we'll pay for nothing" that can be budgeted for and improves everyone's general life without taxing them into oblivion. Feel free to suggest an alternative that doesn't result in 50+% tax rates. Or pick another percentage, it doesn't matter, certain chronic diseases have unlimited costs associated with them as they progress, and the quality of life rapidly goes down. For instance, aging (the ultimate chronic disease) can go into million $ plus treatments near the end, to prolong the "life" for another few minutes, hours, or days. Where do you stop treatment? Not stepping on the slippery slope at all, by stating we'll only treat known fixable issues caps potential costs, as those are relatively well known, and provides at least a base health care for all. It's doable and most importantly, more affordable than the current solution. It should have been what was implemented instead of Obamacare. IMHO.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Nor do you recognize that you can save the wealth you earn so that you have better choices in the future including not working at all.
That doesn't mean that the in between part couldn't be a whole lot better if the general work environment wasn't what it is. Right now - if you want to work 30 hours a week, you won't get 75% of FT pay. You might get 50%, if you're lucky and no benefits and most likely less, unless you can grab an hourly based contract job with some upper and lower bounds on hours.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.