With more charge, you can do more work. It is as valid a gauge of how much work you can do as knowing how full your gas tank is tells you how far you can get without refueling
Yes, but only in the context of you knowing how many gallons your gas tank can hold and what your average mpg is. Half a tank on my motorcycle is 100 miles if I'm lucky. My car, 150, my truck 200.
We were told the mpg; not the size of the tank.
Power is the rate at which we can do work, Energy is how much work we can do. We were given neither for the battery.
Re: charging : carbon credits (a form of bullshit, really) has worked out so well for us before. I mean, it surely stopped pollution, right?
1. CO2 isn't a proper pollutant. Slowing/Stopping global warming is good, but CO2 isn't a direct danger 2. They implemented a crazy 'cap&trade' system. Not a 'simple' fee for the amount they emit. 3. Full of loopholes. 4. I'd simply charge X per ton of CO2, gradually raising the price until we reach the equilibrium we're willing to live with.
Financial penalties do not motivate companies to do anything other than avoid them.
'You will be charged $5k per ton of SO2 you emit' won't motivate the company to avoid said fee by reducing their SO2 emissions so long as said reductions are cheaper than $10k per ton over the lifespan on the control? (Simplified math here).
As for giving them credits to reduce emissions, well, you're simply giving former polluters advantages over those that never polluted at all. Me, I'm straight up charging them for their emissions: (Damage from pollutant/Total Amount of pollutant released each year)*amount they release*1.2(or so). Reduce/eliminate your emissions? Reduced fees in response. As science refines the estimates of damage done, tweak the charges. Is it not practical to reduce emissions? Pay the toll. Is it? Okay. Put some language in to pay companies who remove/clean up pollution. Done.
Congratulations, you just described a cooperative! Now, in order to reduce costs, your neighborhood merges with a number of other neighborhoods, and next thing you know you have a city-wide cooperative. Said cooperative proceeds to provision it's own wells and water treatment facilities because it's cheaper than constantly paying the profits of a private company.
Also looking at the cost of 12" vs 8" pipe is nutty, because most of your costs are labor to dig a trench and bury the pipe.
Very good! You just identified another reason why running duplicate networks is very uneconomical, making competition impractical. Hint: It was just an example.
The developer can put them in and charge for maintenance and access. In fact, letting the supplier own them is very stupid because, as you've said, it's a conflict of interest of epic proportions, and all the regulation in the universe could never make up for it
Then what's preventing the developer from also becoming the supplier? In this case I'd probably prefer to use the term 'infrastructure owner' or 'transporter'. What's preventing them from charging you out the rear even if they aren't the supplier? For that matter, separating the supplier and transporter adds a lot of paperwork and therefore expense, and in terms of energy/water they normally end up so closely related anyways that they might as well be one company.
Also, I mentioned electrical connection, not water. Still, how about $1k for up to 350 feet?, and it's mandatory. Even if you don't hook up to the water, if they have a main within 350' you have to pay the connection charge and minimum fee. Of course, I wonder how they'd handle it if you didn't pay when you don't have any water to shut off...
In addition 3/8th HDPE? Some quick research says that the MINIMUM size for the service connection is 3/4", and 1" is more normal today. Here's $5k for the city of Ann Arbor. Want new construction? $30k for water and sewer.
Keep in mind that we were talking about connecting - not just running some line.
I'm not sure where your thinking process is broken, but I'll give it a try.
Amp-hours isn't a statement of energy. For example, you could have 2 '5 amp-hour' batteries, but because one is 12V and the other 6V, the amount of energy each contains is very different, with the 12V one being able to supply twice as much energy before becoming exhausted. Because this is a new battery technology, we don't know what the voltage of the battery is.
Watts are a statement of power, Joules are a statement of energy, or power over time. Amps are mostly a statement of volume of electron flow. Without knowing the force behind them(voltage), you can't say how much work you can do with them.
Reading through this thread, you're guilty of it too. GP said "right people in the CCP" and specified "extremely powerful people". Odds are that YOU don't know any of these 'extremely powerful people', even though you know a 'bunch of commies'. You know paper pushers, not movers&shakers as Cusco mentioned.
And there's probably more similarities between the rulers of Communist China and 'Washington' than with common people. Elan Musk probably promised the prospect of a space rocket ride(or a little assistance with the Chinese space program), or even just a car to the *RIGHT* person, who then arranged for the patent troll(who's probably peon level) to get slapped down.
Once he's declared the father and responsible for the child's upkeep the obligation to pay will last until the child is at least 18, with the exact date depending on state law and whether the child goes to college/has graduated high school yet/etc...
Though I'm wondering if my reply was somehow attached to the wrong parent. My reply just seems nonsensical where it is. I could have sworn it was in response to a poster who actually asked who would get the money.
Looking at the cost for the final connection from the power line/main water line is like looking at the cost of a door to try to say how much a store costs. The final connection to your house for power might be $500, but that's only for ideal connections. I've heard amounts in excess of $5k, and generally utility companies heavily subsidize final connections.
Consider if you have two competing water companies. In order to be truly 'competitive' they have to be separate. That means that they can't share the same pipes. That means that rather than running a 12" pipe to a neighborhood, each needs to run at least an 8" pipe. 12" pipe has more than double the capacity of 8", by the way, but it doesn't cost twice as much, as it only uses 50% more material. But half the customers are on each competitor...
Alternatively the companies would 'lease' capacity in their lines to each other, but if that happens they end up so tightly in bed with each other that they're effectively one company with two names anyways.
A secondary option that happens sometimes for electricity is that you have a service company that manages the lines, the company you purchase your power from is the one that arranges for 'your' electricity to get on the lines, whether that's by operating their own generators or just buying the power on the open market. But even then, there's such a natural advantage for the one that runs the lines in your area to manage that that it's a 'natural monopoly'.
This has been proposed for telecoms - your ISP arranges to lease the connection from your house and the appropriate backhaul to their facility where your packets then go to the internet at large. However unless the telecom company that owns the connection is forbidden from being an ISP(government regulation!), they have a generally insurmountable advantage along the lines of charging as much or more simply to lease the line than it is to simply go to them for internet service. Tends to kill competition.
You know, I think I'm going to start using 'competitive market' instead of 'free market'? In areas where competition is impractical, such as water/electricity to the house, I prefer that the provider be a cooperative. Otherwise most of the regulation methodologies I support are designed to increase competition.
Not even accounting for different tastes, 90% of what is produced is crap, and 90% of that remaining is generally transitory. This has been true since we were able to record music.
For the most part you can build a really good movie list simply by taking the BEST 1-2 movies produced each year. Same deal with songs.
The USA doesn't produce much in the way of consumer stuff today; but while it's been fairly flat for a couple decades we actually still have just as much industry as we did in the past. It's just so much more automated that it's like the difference between modern and ancient farming - more production from less than 1% of the workers.
What we don't produce in consumer goods we tend to produce in industrial stuff. We make a lot of the machines that China uses to make our goods.
They could be doing a heck of a lot more to control pollution.
Screwed that up. Somehow the first part of my post was eaten.
For those that haven't researched the case, besides it being the State of Kansas suing, not the lesbians, they won't even see any money from the man even if the state wins, as the money will go to the state to repay the benefits given to the child.
Also, the couple was fine until they seperated(divorce anyone?) and one lost her job due to illness.
I don't think you can blame the parents for "fucking over" the donor: it's the Kansas Department for Children and Families that has brought the case, and the recipients of the funds may not have a say in the matter.
illness. 2. The custodial parent at that point applied for state benefits. During this the state hounded her into giving up the father's name. 3. Seeking to recover benefits, the Kansas Department sued to have him declared the father and require child support payments, noting that they paid $189 in cash benefits and 'over $6k' in medical.
The way this goes, the Department of Department of Children and Families will get all the money until the ~$6200 is recovered. The woman, as custodial parent of the child, won't see a cent of it until then.
No regulation is perfect, which is why I think we need to avoid trying for perfection with regulations, but this is still fairly easy to keep track of. Base the tariffs on country of production, not the exporting country.
Have you never been taught that opening a debate by insulting the other party doesn't help? I mean, I say 'Even though I fit mostly within libertarian models of thought I'm NOT okay with what China is doing' and you still attack me? Yes, there's lots of idiot 'libertarians', just like there's lots of idiot republicans and democrats. There are lots of all parties that haven't thought things through. I HAVE. As a result if I'm trying to describe myself better I'll say things like 'moderate libertarian', and sometimes 'practical minarchist'.
The excess/lack of liberty thing - I KNOW. I mean, I identified a restriction of liberty in a ONE SENTENCE post, and yet you still attack that strawman. Where I disagree with the crowd is WHERE those restrictions should take place, and I ID with the libertarian party most because as I go through various issues I identify more areas where I'd relax governmental control than I'd increase it. Yes, there are areas where I'd increase it, pollution being one of them.
but nobody wants to try to crack down on china due to their own problems being exposed.
No, it's because they like the cheap goods from China and, for the most part, the pollution isn't affecting them more than what compliant local production would yet. Cracking down on China would be expensive.
If you go through my other posts here in the thread, you'll see that I'm in favor of charging companies for their pollution - none of this 'you're permitted to emit X amount of Y for free before we start fining you' stuff.
For the race to the bottom solution. Any promising ideas so far? Let me throw out one - promote cheap microfinancing over the warrantied life of the product (or some percentage). How often is the superior product actually cheaper on a cost-per-year basis, but passed over in favor of the lower sticker price? Or even just requiring cost-per-warranty-year to be prominently displayed on the sticker price for all non-consumables?
Cheap microfinancing? Do you mean something like a 0% loan over the course of the warranty? IE a $500 fridge with a 4 year warranty would be $125/year, vs a $600 year fridge with a 6 year warranty being $100? That would be an interesting option. Though you have the problem that in many cases everybody offers the same 1/2 year warranty, but your option might just convince those with better products to increase the warranties, then improve their products so they cost less even with the longer warranty.
As for labeling - we already require energy star guides; one of my ideas was to do with ALL products what we're requiring for LED lights - make manufacturers estimate product lifespans, and hold them to them. I know that even if it costs a little more electricity, a fridge that lasts 15 years is probably going to be cheaper and more energy efficient than having to go through 2 that only last 7. Lots of energy involved in creating and shipping one, after all. Not to mention having to shop for a new one. As such, I'd probably spend the extra money to get a longer lasting appliance, if I had any real way to telling how long I could expect one to last(and somebody making sure they actually DO normally last that long).
As for lead though, you're dead wrong. Elemental lead is absorbed through the skin, lungs, and digestive track.
Skin: incorrect. Lungs & Digestive track: I'm not suggesting that you smoke or eat your electronics.
For that matter, unless you're coating your product in lead there shouldn't be any skin contact anyways.
Moderate lead exposure may not be likely to kill you, but it makes you more likely to kill me.
At this point I believe that Tetraethyllead(TEL) was the cause of the crime spike that ended in the '90s. But TEL isn't elemental lead. Neither is the lead found in paint - PbCrO4 or PbCO3. Kids are much more likely to eat paint than a DVD player.
I have no problems with banning leaded gas/paint. The amount of lead a child is likely to absorb from solder in electrical appliances is likely less than he'll get eating fish(at least for the next couple hundred years). Heck, if a factory wants to eliminate the lead in their soldering to keep exposure in the workers down, it's free to do so.
I agree that sooner or later the Chinese are going to start caring, but the problem with exporting work to places like sub-Saharan Africa is that at least China's stable(important for this), and has the population and education.
Roughly speaking, once China and India are moving into post-industrialization we'll have to find a new paradigm because no longer will most people on the world be poor in developing countries. It'll spark a change as drastic as when the population shifted from most living on farms to most living in cities. Why? Because there just won't be ENOUGH labor in developing countries that care little about pollution to satisfy the demands of China in addition to the US, Europe, and rest of the world.
Even that wouldn't be proof as the pollution off the coast could(and probably would be) coming from the USA. You'd need a series of measurements, backed up by theoretical models showing pollution flow.
Ocean wise, things like debris from the Tsunamis that hit Japan washing up on the shores of Alaska/Washington.
Elemental lead isn't that big of a concern, at least not against concerns about reduced lifespan. Though you're right with the race to the bottom. I've played around a bit trying to find a way that doesn't place more power with the government yet still increases rewards for making stuff that will actually last.
My idea for pollution basically amounts to: (Damage from pollution type in $)/(amount released by all industries in selected area)*(amount you released over the period)*1.2*(Hassle Modifier; IE it goes up the more granular you want the selected area/release type to be)
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With more charge, you can do more work. It is as valid a gauge of how much work you can do as knowing how full your gas tank is tells you how far you can get without refueling
Yes, but only in the context of you knowing how many gallons your gas tank can hold and what your average mpg is. Half a tank on my motorcycle is 100 miles if I'm lucky. My car, 150, my truck 200.
We were told the mpg; not the size of the tank.
Power is the rate at which we can do work, Energy is how much work we can do. We were given neither for the battery.
Re: charging : carbon credits (a form of bullshit, really) has worked out so well for us before. I mean, it surely stopped pollution, right?
1. CO2 isn't a proper pollutant. Slowing/Stopping global warming is good, but CO2 isn't a direct danger
2. They implemented a crazy 'cap&trade' system. Not a 'simple' fee for the amount they emit.
3. Full of loopholes.
4. I'd simply charge X per ton of CO2, gradually raising the price until we reach the equilibrium we're willing to live with.
Financial penalties do not motivate companies to do anything other than avoid them.
'You will be charged $5k per ton of SO2 you emit' won't motivate the company to avoid said fee by reducing their SO2 emissions so long as said reductions are cheaper than $10k per ton over the lifespan on the control? (Simplified math here).
As for giving them credits to reduce emissions, well, you're simply giving former polluters advantages over those that never polluted at all. Me, I'm straight up charging them for their emissions: (Damage from pollutant/Total Amount of pollutant released each year)*amount they release*1.2(or so). Reduce/eliminate your emissions? Reduced fees in response. As science refines the estimates of damage done, tweak the charges. Is it not practical to reduce emissions? Pay the toll. Is it? Okay. Put some language in to pay companies who remove/clean up pollution. Done.
and a share of the pipes in his neighborhood.
Congratulations, you just described a cooperative! Now, in order to reduce costs, your neighborhood merges with a number of other neighborhoods, and next thing you know you have a city-wide cooperative. Said cooperative proceeds to provision it's own wells and water treatment facilities because it's cheaper than constantly paying the profits of a private company.
Also looking at the cost of 12" vs 8" pipe is nutty, because most of your costs are labor to dig a trench and bury the pipe.
Very good! You just identified another reason why running duplicate networks is very uneconomical, making competition impractical. Hint: It was just an example.
The developer can put them in and charge for maintenance and access. In fact, letting the supplier own them is very stupid because, as you've said, it's a conflict of interest of epic proportions, and all the regulation in the universe could never make up for it
Then what's preventing the developer from also becoming the supplier? In this case I'd probably prefer to use the term 'infrastructure owner' or 'transporter'. What's preventing them from charging you out the rear even if they aren't the supplier? For that matter, separating the supplier and transporter adds a lot of paperwork and therefore expense, and in terms of energy/water they normally end up so closely related anyways that they might as well be one company.
Also, I mentioned electrical connection, not water. Still, how about $1k for up to 350 feet?, and it's mandatory. Even if you don't hook up to the water, if they have a main within 350' you have to pay the connection charge and minimum fee. Of course, I wonder how they'd handle it if you didn't pay when you don't have any water to shut off...
In addition 3/8th HDPE? Some quick research says that the MINIMUM size for the service connection is 3/4", and 1" is more normal today. Here's $5k for the city of Ann Arbor. Want new construction? $30k for water and sewer.
Keep in mind that we were talking about connecting - not just running some line.
I'm not sure where your thinking process is broken, but I'll give it a try.
Amp-hours isn't a statement of energy. For example, you could have 2 '5 amp-hour' batteries, but because one is 12V and the other 6V, the amount of energy each contains is very different, with the 12V one being able to supply twice as much energy before becoming exhausted. Because this is a new battery technology, we don't know what the voltage of the battery is.
Watts are a statement of power, Joules are a statement of energy, or power over time. Amps are mostly a statement of volume of electron flow. Without knowing the force behind them(voltage), you can't say how much work you can do with them.
Reading through this thread, you're guilty of it too. GP said "right people in the CCP" and specified "extremely powerful people". Odds are that YOU don't know any of these 'extremely powerful people', even though you know a 'bunch of commies'. You know paper pushers, not movers&shakers as Cusco mentioned.
And there's probably more similarities between the rulers of Communist China and 'Washington' than with common people. Elan Musk probably promised the prospect of a space rocket ride(or a little assistance with the Chinese space program), or even just a car to the *RIGHT* person, who then arranged for the patent troll(who's probably peon level) to get slapped down.
Once he's declared the father and responsible for the child's upkeep the obligation to pay will last until the child is at least 18, with the exact date depending on state law and whether the child goes to college/has graduated high school yet/etc...
Though I'm wondering if my reply was somehow attached to the wrong parent. My reply just seems nonsensical where it is. I could have sworn it was in response to a poster who actually asked who would get the money.
Looking at the cost for the final connection from the power line/main water line is like looking at the cost of a door to try to say how much a store costs. The final connection to your house for power might be $500, but that's only for ideal connections. I've heard amounts in excess of $5k, and generally utility companies heavily subsidize final connections.
Consider if you have two competing water companies. In order to be truly 'competitive' they have to be separate. That means that they can't share the same pipes. That means that rather than running a 12" pipe to a neighborhood, each needs to run at least an 8" pipe. 12" pipe has more than double the capacity of 8", by the way, but it doesn't cost twice as much, as it only uses 50% more material. But half the customers are on each competitor...
Alternatively the companies would 'lease' capacity in their lines to each other, but if that happens they end up so tightly in bed with each other that they're effectively one company with two names anyways.
A secondary option that happens sometimes for electricity is that you have a service company that manages the lines, the company you purchase your power from is the one that arranges for 'your' electricity to get on the lines, whether that's by operating their own generators or just buying the power on the open market. But even then, there's such a natural advantage for the one that runs the lines in your area to manage that that it's a 'natural monopoly'.
This has been proposed for telecoms - your ISP arranges to lease the connection from your house and the appropriate backhaul to their facility where your packets then go to the internet at large. However unless the telecom company that owns the connection is forbidden from being an ISP(government regulation!), they have a generally insurmountable advantage along the lines of charging as much or more simply to lease the line than it is to simply go to them for internet service. Tends to kill competition.
You know, I think I'm going to start using 'competitive market' instead of 'free market'? In areas where competition is impractical, such as water/electricity to the house, I prefer that the provider be a cooperative. Otherwise most of the regulation methodologies I support are designed to increase competition.
Not even accounting for different tastes, 90% of what is produced is crap, and 90% of that remaining is generally transitory. This has been true since we were able to record music.
For the most part you can build a really good movie list simply by taking the BEST 1-2 movies produced each year. Same deal with songs.
The USA doesn't produce much in the way of consumer stuff today; but while it's been fairly flat for a couple decades we actually still have just as much industry as we did in the past. It's just so much more automated that it's like the difference between modern and ancient farming - more production from less than 1% of the workers.
What we don't produce in consumer goods we tend to produce in industrial stuff. We make a lot of the machines that China uses to make our goods.
They could be doing a heck of a lot more to control pollution.
Of course, but not to the sperm donor, who wouldn't be able to recover enough money to cover said lawyer, even if he won.
Then again, lawyers actually tend to do lots of pro-bono work, though pro-bono against a 'single mother' is unlikely.
If they couldn't afford to raise their child, though, will they be able to afford to pay the judgment? My sources say no.
First line of my post.
Which is why I said 'interesting', from a legal standpoint, not profitable.
In this case it'll go to the state to repay the benefits they paid out for the child. Even after that they'll take a cut for 'managing' the payments.
They had to request state assistance, which caused this mess in the first place. Who says they have the money to pay him back?
Though him suing them for violation of the contract might be interesting.
Screwed that up. Somehow the first part of my post was eaten.
For those that haven't researched the case, besides it being the State of Kansas suing, not the lesbians, they won't even see any money from the man even if the state wins, as the money will go to the state to repay the benefits given to the child.
Also, the couple was fine until they seperated(divorce anyone?) and one lost her job due to illness.
I don't think you can blame the parents for "fucking over" the donor: it's the Kansas Department for Children and Families that has brought the case, and the recipients of the funds may not have a say in the matter.
illness.
2. The custodial parent at that point applied for state benefits. During this the state hounded her into giving up the father's name.
3. Seeking to recover benefits, the Kansas Department sued to have him declared the father and require child support payments, noting that they paid $189 in cash benefits and 'over $6k' in medical.
The way this goes, the Department of Department of Children and Families will get all the money until the ~$6200 is recovered. The woman, as custodial parent of the child, won't see a cent of it until then.
No regulation is perfect, which is why I think we need to avoid trying for perfection with regulations, but this is still fairly easy to keep track of. Base the tariffs on country of production, not the exporting country.
First:
All libertarian spells out is ignorance.
Have you never been taught that opening a debate by insulting the other party doesn't help? I mean, I say 'Even though I fit mostly within libertarian models of thought I'm NOT okay with what China is doing' and you still attack me? Yes, there's lots of idiot 'libertarians', just like there's lots of idiot republicans and democrats. There are lots of all parties that haven't thought things through. I HAVE. As a result if I'm trying to describe myself better I'll say things like 'moderate libertarian', and sometimes 'practical minarchist'.
The excess/lack of liberty thing - I KNOW. I mean, I identified a restriction of liberty in a ONE SENTENCE post, and yet you still attack that strawman. Where I disagree with the crowd is WHERE those restrictions should take place, and I ID with the libertarian party most because as I go through various issues I identify more areas where I'd relax governmental control than I'd increase it. Yes, there are areas where I'd increase it, pollution being one of them.
but nobody wants to try to crack down on china due to their own problems being exposed.
No, it's because they like the cheap goods from China and, for the most part, the pollution isn't affecting them more than what compliant local production would yet. Cracking down on China would be expensive.
If you go through my other posts here in the thread, you'll see that I'm in favor of charging companies for their pollution - none of this 'you're permitted to emit X amount of Y for free before we start fining you' stuff.
For the race to the bottom solution. Any promising ideas so far? Let me throw out one - promote cheap microfinancing over the warrantied life of the product (or some percentage). How often is the superior product actually cheaper on a cost-per-year basis, but passed over in favor of the lower sticker price? Or even just requiring cost-per-warranty-year to be prominently displayed on the sticker price for all non-consumables?
Cheap microfinancing? Do you mean something like a 0% loan over the course of the warranty? IE a $500 fridge with a 4 year warranty would be $125/year, vs a $600 year fridge with a 6 year warranty being $100? That would be an interesting option. Though you have the problem that in many cases everybody offers the same 1/2 year warranty, but your option might just convince those with better products to increase the warranties, then improve their products so they cost less even with the longer warranty.
As for labeling - we already require energy star guides; one of my ideas was to do with ALL products what we're requiring for LED lights - make manufacturers estimate product lifespans, and hold them to them. I know that even if it costs a little more electricity, a fridge that lasts 15 years is probably going to be cheaper and more energy efficient than having to go through 2 that only last 7. Lots of energy involved in creating and shipping one, after all. Not to mention having to shop for a new one. As such, I'd probably spend the extra money to get a longer lasting appliance, if I had any real way to telling how long I could expect one to last(and somebody making sure they actually DO normally last that long).
As for lead though, you're dead wrong. Elemental lead is absorbed through the skin, lungs, and digestive track.
Skin: incorrect.
Lungs & Digestive track: I'm not suggesting that you smoke or eat your electronics.
For that matter, unless you're coating your product in lead there shouldn't be any skin contact anyways.
Moderate lead exposure may not be likely to kill you, but it makes you more likely to kill me.
At this point I believe that Tetraethyllead(TEL) was the cause of the crime spike that ended in the '90s. But TEL isn't elemental lead. Neither is the lead found in paint - PbCrO4 or PbCO3. Kids are much more likely to eat paint than a DVD player.
I have no problems with banning leaded gas/paint. The amount of lead a child is likely to absorb from solder in electrical appliances is likely less than he'll get eating fish(at least for the next couple hundred years). Heck, if a factory wants to eliminate the lead in their soldering to keep exposure in the workers down, it's free to do so.
I agree that sooner or later the Chinese are going to start caring, but the problem with exporting work to places like sub-Saharan Africa is that at least China's stable(important for this), and has the population and education.
Roughly speaking, once China and India are moving into post-industrialization we'll have to find a new paradigm because no longer will most people on the world be poor in developing countries. It'll spark a change as drastic as when the population shifted from most living on farms to most living in cities. Why? Because there just won't be ENOUGH labor in developing countries that care little about pollution to satisfy the demands of China in addition to the US, Europe, and rest of the world.
Even that wouldn't be proof as the pollution off the coast could(and probably would be) coming from the USA. You'd need a series of measurements, backed up by theoretical models showing pollution flow.
Ocean wise, things like debris from the Tsunamis that hit Japan washing up on the shores of Alaska/Washington.
Elemental lead isn't that big of a concern, at least not against concerns about reduced lifespan. Though you're right with the race to the bottom. I've played around a bit trying to find a way that doesn't place more power with the government yet still increases rewards for making stuff that will actually last.
Tin Whiskers? Minimal return for the Gain? Expensive retooling while China was simply building new factories?
We don't actually owe them all that much, and there's historical precedent for going to war in order to be able to 'write off' debt.
I fully understand, which is why I said 'mostly'.
My idea for pollution basically amounts to:
(Damage from pollution type in $)/(amount released by all industries in selected area)*(amount you released over the period)*1.2*(Hassle Modifier; IE it goes up the more granular you want the selected area/release type to be)