Sorry, it sounded like you were trying a fairly standard line of argumentation I have heard over and over again, the false dichotomy of "If you oppose pollution, you oppose progress." If that was not what you were trying to do, then take this as a piece of constructive criticism, you appeared to be offering a false dichotomy that paints everyone concerned about pollution as Luddites. I'm glad that wasn't what you were trying to do, as I think we can both agree, that would be petty and illogical.
God damn it, what is wrong with you people? Just let me enjoy my vision of thousands of office workers flopping around like fish on the floor, will you?
I mean seriously, I think we all know that if this thing operates at 4Mbps, it can't be pulsing at anywhere near the brain-fritzing frequency. But that isn't the point. The point is, you epileptics are funny because of how you flop around.:P
The noxious neighbor should never have been noxious in the first place. If you can not create a profitable business without making others pay for part of the cost, such as cleaning up pollution, you have no right to be in business at all.
What you define is not an "imposition of externalities." It is an "imposition to mitigate externalities." Your profitability is not a consideration, the damage you case is.
The idea that, sans laws prohibiting it, pollution is acceptable, is simply ludicrous. Harm was done, regardless of the laws at the time. That harm must be rectified.
The idea that people "create" externalities is also ludicrous. They exist whether people define them or not. When you profit, but someone else must pay part of the cost, that is a negative externality, regardless of how you define it under the law. Similarly, when you do something that everyone profits from, but you are not rewarded sufficiently, that is a positive externality.
Externalities are failure modes of the free market, where the market fails to efficiently allocate resources. They are not things imposed by governments.
First poster said "Finally, someone bringing radioactive waste water releases back to America!" which is a sarcastic statement, sure. But so what? Is radioactive waste water release NOT a problem?
You sarcastically respond by assuming that, instead of criticizing pollution, the original poster must be FOR pollution in China, or AGAINST rare earth, because, as EVERYONE knows, those are the only two options.
I pointed out that that is not the case, the original poster may in fact have been against ANY pollution. Just because they did not mention the obvious solution of "Mine rare earths without polluting" does not make that solution any less obvious to most of us.
In closing, please try to pick a more original defense than "I was just joking!"
When does the government audit retail stores? They may respond to consumer complaints, but I do not believe there is a government agency that actively audits stores to find sales price violations.
I think that the moderators took "Run by a band of brigands" as an indictment of their favorite political group, when I mean it to apply to all political groups equally.
Please try to limit your criticisms to things that DON'T apply to every single human social system ever invented. And, when responding to criticism of your favored system, please try to refute the criticism rather than deflecting it with charges that apply equally to all social systems.
IRDA doesn't flicker in the visible spectrum, and thus fails to cause hilarious non-fatal seizures in coworkers, which, I'm assuming, is the whole point of this new technology.
Or, rather than waiting for the damage to happen and suing the people who cause it, we could stop it BEFORE it happens through proper enforcement of regulations. You can trace pollution, but putting it back in the bag once it's loose is problematic.
Another problem is that externalizing costs lets an entity rake in unfair profits that can be used to fight any lawsuits, and in our legal system, David loses to Goliath more often than not. Goliath simply has to keep fighting until David runs our of money. I'd love to see tort reform that put the rich and the poor on even legal footing, but I'm not holding my breath.
Who said we were a civilized country anymore? We're being run by a band of brigands intent on looting and pillaging rather than inventing and building, just like a third world banana republic. We ship raw materials and import finished goods, just like a banana republic. We lack any national health care system, when every other civilized nation has one. We execute people. We have more people in prison, per capita, than any other developed nation. We have a higher infant mortality rate than other developed countries. In all ways, we are becoming an uncivilized nation, and I didn't even mention reality television.
Well, it is all guesswork anyhow, and Molycorp has a fairly fraudulent past. More than likely, this mine will never open and the investors will see their money disappear into a giant hole in the ground. Molycorp will claim that the big bad government stopped them with its evil environmental laws, but I'm guessing they have no more intention of reopening the mine than they had any intention of running a clean mine in the first place.
Someone always pays the cost for pollution. It is a negative externality. Most people are only conditionally moral creatures, and do not mind externalizing costs onto someone else, especially when diffusion of responsibility lets them think "Well, it wasn't ME that did it, it was ALL of us." No one raindrop thinks it caused the flood, and all that.
That is the point: people are NOT voting with their dollars for cheaper, less clean products, they are voting with other people's dollars. They are voting with the dollars of the people who will get sick, and they are voting with the dollars of people whose land gets ruined. That is what externality means, someone else pays the true cost.
Your statement leads me to believe one of two things: you are either stupid or dishonest. No one said they are okay with pollution in China. You present a false dichotomy: either accept pollution, or do not use rare earths. What about, pay the full cost of extracting using rare earths in an environmental fashion? Personally, I would be fine paying a little more if that is what things really cost. I'm not comfortable making other people pay for the things I use, yet that is what happens with rare earths. I get them for cheap, while other people get sick and die. I'd rather pay more and have less of the getting sick and dying thing.
So, were you deliberately ignoring the obvious third choice, "Pay the full cost for what you use rather than harming others and refusing to pay for it" and are therefore dishonest? Or could you really not see that choice, and are therefore stupid?
No one was claiming these were engineering problems. The problem is obviously not an engineering one, it is a profit motive problem. The owners would rather have someone else pay for the impact they cause. Even after numerous warnings, they refused to fix things. They were shut down as punishment, because they refused to pay for their mistakes the honest and easy way, they had to pay for their mistakes the hard way. You see, that is what civilized countries do to people who profit off of harming others: we stop them.
I call it "The Tragedy of the Privates." There is no incentive for a private owner to manage a resource sustainably when they can simply use their profits to buy another resource to exploit. Democratically manged resources will be managed sustainably, as everyone has an incentive to leave the resource usable by their children, and no one can withdraw all the profits and move on.
The better known "Tragedy of the Commons" is a fairly useless parable, as it compares privately owned resources with unmanaged resources, as opposed to comparing them with democratically managed resources.
Those workers aren't going anywhere. Those mines will not be shut down just because the US may produce up to 20% of our rare earths domestically. The rest of the world still needs rare earths, and we still need to get 80% of ours from someplace else.
The Mountain Pass rare earth mine uses froth floatation, a water intensive process. For goodness sake get some facts right. Even in the high desert, we have these things known as "pipes."
Progress does not consist of a small group of people enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. Progress consists of better things for everyone, not a trade off where some people must lose in order for others to win.
All I ask is that people pay all the costs they generate, rather than asking others to pay. Why should I burn in hell for asking that people take responsibility for their actions, and how their actions affect others?
I'm all for real progress, but poisoning people, animals, plants and ecosystems in order to extract useful minerals is not progress. When we extract those minerals without harming others, that is progress. Making things better for some by making things worse for others is not progress.
I am trying to bring a Rare Earths Elements Company online (I have two mineral resources right herre in the U.S.....But sadly, I can't find funding to start operations.
Wait a second, I call shenanigans. We gave all kinds of tax breaks to the rich, just so they would have money to invest in things like this. Are you trying to tell me the rich aren't investing in American businesses? Next you are going to tell me that rather than funding businesses here, they are investing it all in foreign corporations in countries with cheaper labor and no environmental laws.
As we run out of oil, transportation costs will only go up. World wide demand for rare earths is rising, at the same time supply is dwindling. Previously, it was just not financially feasible to mine rare earths in environmentally friendly ways. The true costs were externalized. Mine owners got rich at the cost of other people's health. But we have gotten better at doing things in safe, clean ways now. So it looks like we are at the intersection of rising prices and demand for rare earth, and declining costs of environmental technologies.
Really? You are confused here? What is the difference between concentrating radioactive elements and running hundreds of thousands of gallons of water through them, and having tiny amounts of water percolate through the same elements widely dispersed in their natural state? You need help figuring that out, do you? Take off the blinders and stop apologizing for people who will gladly ruin your entire family's health and take no responsibility for it.
This is basic, people, something we all should have learned no later than preschool: you make a mess, you clean it up.
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Sorry, it sounded like you were trying a fairly standard line of argumentation I have heard over and over again, the false dichotomy of "If you oppose pollution, you oppose progress." If that was not what you were trying to do, then take this as a piece of constructive criticism, you appeared to be offering a false dichotomy that paints everyone concerned about pollution as Luddites. I'm glad that wasn't what you were trying to do, as I think we can both agree, that would be petty and illogical.
God damn it, what is wrong with you people? Just let me enjoy my vision of thousands of office workers flopping around like fish on the floor, will you?
I'm not overreacting, I'm always this much of a bastard.
You killed the joke, you bastard.
I mean seriously, I think we all know that if this thing operates at 4Mbps, it can't be pulsing at anywhere near the brain-fritzing frequency. But that isn't the point. The point is, you epileptics are funny because of how you flop around. :P
Before we begin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
The noxious neighbor should never have been noxious in the first place. If you can not create a profitable business without making others pay for part of the cost, such as cleaning up pollution, you have no right to be in business at all.
What you define is not an "imposition of externalities." It is an "imposition to mitigate externalities." Your profitability is not a consideration, the damage you case is.
The idea that, sans laws prohibiting it, pollution is acceptable, is simply ludicrous. Harm was done, regardless of the laws at the time. That harm must be rectified.
The idea that people "create" externalities is also ludicrous. They exist whether people define them or not. When you profit, but someone else must pay part of the cost, that is a negative externality, regardless of how you define it under the law. Similarly, when you do something that everyone profits from, but you are not rewarded sufficiently, that is a positive externality.
Externalities are failure modes of the free market, where the market fails to efficiently allocate resources. They are not things imposed by governments.
First poster said "Finally, someone bringing radioactive waste water releases back to America!" which is a sarcastic statement, sure. But so what? Is radioactive waste water release NOT a problem?
You sarcastically respond by assuming that, instead of criticizing pollution, the original poster must be FOR pollution in China, or AGAINST rare earth, because, as EVERYONE knows, those are the only two options.
I pointed out that that is not the case, the original poster may in fact have been against ANY pollution. Just because they did not mention the obvious solution of "Mine rare earths without polluting" does not make that solution any less obvious to most of us.
In closing, please try to pick a more original defense than "I was just joking!"
Citations, or are you just making stuff up?
When does the government audit retail stores? They may respond to consumer complaints, but I do not believe there is a government agency that actively audits stores to find sales price violations.
I think that the moderators took "Run by a band of brigands" as an indictment of their favorite political group, when I mean it to apply to all political groups equally.
Please try to limit your criticisms to things that DON'T apply to every single human social system ever invented. And, when responding to criticism of your favored system, please try to refute the criticism rather than deflecting it with charges that apply equally to all social systems.
IRDA doesn't flicker in the visible spectrum, and thus fails to cause hilarious non-fatal seizures in coworkers, which, I'm assuming, is the whole point of this new technology.
Or, rather than waiting for the damage to happen and suing the people who cause it, we could stop it BEFORE it happens through proper enforcement of regulations. You can trace pollution, but putting it back in the bag once it's loose is problematic.
Another problem is that externalizing costs lets an entity rake in unfair profits that can be used to fight any lawsuits, and in our legal system, David loses to Goliath more often than not. Goliath simply has to keep fighting until David runs our of money. I'd love to see tort reform that put the rich and the poor on even legal footing, but I'm not holding my breath.
Who said we were a civilized country anymore? We're being run by a band of brigands intent on looting and pillaging rather than inventing and building, just like a third world banana republic. We ship raw materials and import finished goods, just like a banana republic. We lack any national health care system, when every other civilized nation has one. We execute people. We have more people in prison, per capita, than any other developed nation. We have a higher infant mortality rate than other developed countries. In all ways, we are becoming an uncivilized nation, and I didn't even mention reality television.
Well, it is all guesswork anyhow, and Molycorp has a fairly fraudulent past. More than likely, this mine will never open and the investors will see their money disappear into a giant hole in the ground. Molycorp will claim that the big bad government stopped them with its evil environmental laws, but I'm guessing they have no more intention of reopening the mine than they had any intention of running a clean mine in the first place.
Someone always pays the cost for pollution. It is a negative externality. Most people are only conditionally moral creatures, and do not mind externalizing costs onto someone else, especially when diffusion of responsibility lets them think "Well, it wasn't ME that did it, it was ALL of us." No one raindrop thinks it caused the flood, and all that.
That is the point: people are NOT voting with their dollars for cheaper, less clean products, they are voting with other people's dollars. They are voting with the dollars of the people who will get sick, and they are voting with the dollars of people whose land gets ruined. That is what externality means, someone else pays the true cost.
Your statement leads me to believe one of two things: you are either stupid or dishonest. No one said they are okay with pollution in China. You present a false dichotomy: either accept pollution, or do not use rare earths. What about, pay the full cost of extracting using rare earths in an environmental fashion? Personally, I would be fine paying a little more if that is what things really cost. I'm not comfortable making other people pay for the things I use, yet that is what happens with rare earths. I get them for cheap, while other people get sick and die. I'd rather pay more and have less of the getting sick and dying thing.
So, were you deliberately ignoring the obvious third choice, "Pay the full cost for what you use rather than harming others and refusing to pay for it" and are therefore dishonest? Or could you really not see that choice, and are therefore stupid?
No one was claiming these were engineering problems. The problem is obviously not an engineering one, it is a profit motive problem. The owners would rather have someone else pay for the impact they cause. Even after numerous warnings, they refused to fix things. They were shut down as punishment, because they refused to pay for their mistakes the honest and easy way, they had to pay for their mistakes the hard way. You see, that is what civilized countries do to people who profit off of harming others: we stop them.
I call it "The Tragedy of the Privates." There is no incentive for a private owner to manage a resource sustainably when they can simply use their profits to buy another resource to exploit. Democratically manged resources will be managed sustainably, as everyone has an incentive to leave the resource usable by their children, and no one can withdraw all the profits and move on.
The better known "Tragedy of the Commons" is a fairly useless parable, as it compares privately owned resources with unmanaged resources, as opposed to comparing them with democratically managed resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine#Environmental_impact
Those workers aren't going anywhere. Those mines will not be shut down just because the US may produce up to 20% of our rare earths domestically. The rest of the world still needs rare earths, and we still need to get 80% of ours from someplace else.
The Mountain Pass rare earth mine uses froth floatation, a water intensive process. For goodness sake get some facts right. Even in the high desert, we have these things known as "pipes."
Progress does not consist of a small group of people enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. Progress consists of better things for everyone, not a trade off where some people must lose in order for others to win.
All I ask is that people pay all the costs they generate, rather than asking others to pay. Why should I burn in hell for asking that people take responsibility for their actions, and how their actions affect others?
I'm all for real progress, but poisoning people, animals, plants and ecosystems in order to extract useful minerals is not progress. When we extract those minerals without harming others, that is progress. Making things better for some by making things worse for others is not progress.
I am trying to bring a Rare Earths Elements Company online (I have two mineral resources right herre in the U.S. ....But sadly, I can't find funding to start operations.
Wait a second, I call shenanigans. We gave all kinds of tax breaks to the rich, just so they would have money to invest in things like this. Are you trying to tell me the rich aren't investing in American businesses? Next you are going to tell me that rather than funding businesses here, they are investing it all in foreign corporations in countries with cheaper labor and no environmental laws.
As we run out of oil, transportation costs will only go up. World wide demand for rare earths is rising, at the same time supply is dwindling. Previously, it was just not financially feasible to mine rare earths in environmentally friendly ways. The true costs were externalized. Mine owners got rich at the cost of other people's health. But we have gotten better at doing things in safe, clean ways now. So it looks like we are at the intersection of rising prices and demand for rare earth, and declining costs of environmental technologies.
Really? You are confused here? What is the difference between concentrating radioactive elements and running hundreds of thousands of gallons of water through them, and having tiny amounts of water percolate through the same elements widely dispersed in their natural state? You need help figuring that out, do you? Take off the blinders and stop apologizing for people who will gladly ruin your entire family's health and take no responsibility for it.
This is basic, people, something we all should have learned no later than preschool: you make a mess, you clean it up.