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Recycling and Trash
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Roark
post Feb 6 2008, 02:17 PM
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Let's get away from American politics for the time being. With a McLame/fruitamee ticket on the horizon it's starting to make me nauseous.

I read two articles yesterday that were quite interesting...

http://www.mises.org/story/2855
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/t...pan-778016.html

This is a classic debate of liberty vs government, and the tragedy of the commons. Where is the common ground here?

I personally prefer the US system of recycling to the Swedish system described above. We have voluntary, free recycling. The costs are paid for by resale of recycled materials (and maybe govt subsidy? I'm not sure). Trash, on the other hand, is generally paid for by volume. So you are free to throw away recyclables, but you then have to pay for it. It creates a very nifty financial incentive for people to sort their trash and recycle whatever they can, without the govt forcing their hand.

We shouldn't be recycling a lot of the things we currently recycle though, as many things take MORE energy to recycle than was used to create in the first place. I think glass is one such thing.

Long term, I think we'll eventually start firing trash into the sun. But in the meantime, we need to figure out the best way to deal with this stuff.

The other tangential point here is consumption reduction, and the role govt should play in restricting liberty in forcing people to consume less. Someone else can take up that point though, I gotta get back to work for now.

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sKiLLfrEE
post Feb 6 2008, 06:40 PM
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Coase theorem + a pinch of governmental influence to minimize the transfer costs could probably provide a solution? :)

This post has been edited by sKiLLfrEE: Feb 6 2008, 06:45 PM

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Roark
post Feb 7 2008, 12:46 AM
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A pinch? Coasian bargaining on such a large scale would be highly cost prohibitive. It's very hard to reach efficient contracts with public goods like landfill space, and the freerider problem is considerable.

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sKiLLfrEE
post Feb 7 2008, 10:44 AM
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Haha, I got owned (like I did expect already). :P

Ok then Im lost. Nothing remains but to get a one way ticket for a trash shuttle to the sun.

;)

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Roark
post Feb 7 2008, 11:09 AM
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Well don't necessarily give up the idea so easily lol. I hadn't considered the problem from a Coase standpoint, those were just my initial impressions :P

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sKiLLfrEE
post Feb 7 2008, 11:20 AM
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A rocket would still be the coolest solution......not nescessarily the cheapest/most realistic one but definately the coolest. :lol:

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KS_Rockstar
post Feb 7 2008, 11:36 AM
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One of my friends in California has a pretty cool system where they live. They put all of their trash in one bin and the city pays to have it sorted. First, you only pay for one collection. Second, you don't have any cases of people being lazy and not recycling. Third, because there is money at stake, only the things it makes sense to recycle are and the things that are a waste of time and money are not.

From what my friend told me, the money the city gets from the extra recycled items more than covers the extra cost of a company separating your trash.

rs..........

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Orion_Zorn
post Apr 23 2008, 11:59 AM
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While I understand the problem with forcing people to do something, there is a problem with this also.

QUOTE
We have voluntary, free recycling. The costs are paid for by resale of recycled materials (and maybe govt subsidy? I'm not sure). Trash, on the other hand, is generally paid for by volume. So you are free to throw away recyclables, but you then have to pay for it. It creates a very nifty financial incentive for people to sort their trash and recycle whatever they can, without the govt forcing their hand.


The incentive to recycle goes down as you go up the social ladder. Where I live, it costs me $1 to put an extra bag outside of my trash container. I only take on extra costs if I have more than I can fit in the container the trash company provides. For a family of 4, I normally don't fill it. I do recycle.

So it wouldn't cost me anything to not recycle, and I would say only the poorest of Americans would care about the $1 extra cost. (I would probably fill one bad with recyclables a week.)

This is the main problem with flat taxes and market incentives, imo. They affect the poor more than the rich.

Since the government is gathering information on everyone anyway, they might as well combine it with IRS data, and make the fees and fines in our society based on a percentage of the persons annual income.

So for someone making $8 an hour, he might pay $50 for a minor speeding ticket. Bill Gates might pay $10,000.

I might pay $5 a bag for my trash, while Bill Gates might pay $1000. Notice I made my payment higher than what I currently pay....

It is the only way I can think of the system working. With the socialist program, people will cheat, but with the capitalist program, only the poor would have a noticeable incentive to recycle.

recycling isn't the best option anyway, many things can only be recycled 'once'. Like tires. They get 'recycled' but that does not mean they are turned into new tires. They get chopped up and used as ground cover in playgrounds (adding dies for color of course) or where I live, there is a company that turns them into manhole covers. The rubber cover gets bolted to the top of a manhole cover when they repave a road. Saves the government from having to raise the manhole to the level of the new pavement, and makes our rides a little more quiet and comfy. Epic win!

I am curious to see if Hazard reads this and notices I said 'raise the manhole'. :thumbsup: There has to be a joke there somewhere.

There are probably issues with the 'pay based on your income' idea, but if you notice in the Socialist system ... rich people recycle. Here, they only reason they would recycle is due to social pressure, or their own conscience. Which basically means our system does not affect their decision at all.

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Roark
post Apr 23 2008, 12:57 PM
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Well the system I have here in Virginia is different than I had in Mass. Here, I just put everything out on the street and pay a monthly fee that ignores volume. They pick up trash and recycling (unsorted) and haul it away. The Massachusetts system I paid a fee of a $couple for every bag I threw away. There was no trash pickup, I had to haul every bag down to the local landfill and pay for each one. Recycling was free. So I guess there's a lot of variation across communities.

Your income-based plan is just insane Zorn.

What you are describing is price discrimination... charging a different price to different consumers for the same product, based on their willingness to pay. It's a corporate wet dream. In a market, there are a whole set of consumers willing to pay different prices for something; aggregated, they make up a demand curve. Likewise, there is a whole set of producers willing to sell at different prices (dependent on their costs); they make up a supply curve. The equilibrium price (the intersection) creates consumer surplus and producer surplus (the consumers who were willing to pay more but don't have to, and the producers who were able to charge less but don't have to).

Firms would LOVE to charge different prices for their goods to those consumers with higher willingnesses to pay. Why? Because it would take out of the consumer surplus pie and add to the producer surplus pie. They devise all sort of clever ways to do this. Special prices for seniors/kids for example. Or they time-lag the discrimination, by having the price of something be very high at first (captures those with high willingnesses to pay) then cutting the price after the first segment of people have paid (examples: high-end electronics, hardcover/paperback books).

Why is this so bad? Because it only happens on one end of the curve. While producers take from consumer surplus, consumers CAN'T take from producer surplus. This would require a firm selling a product at BELOW market equilibrium price. They would never do this, as it would just lose them money. You are thus helping the corporations, harming the rich, and not helping the poor. Didn't we just go over this?

I'm also curious why you've stopped with just trash and speeding tickets? If you extend your preferred system across all sectors of consumption (and make it compulsory that firms HAVE to sell to low-income people at below-market prices), then having additional money carries no benefit. Oh you make $1m a year? Then this computer will cost you $50k. This sandwich will cost you $80.

You will have achieved ultimate income equality, removing all incentive for a person to work (Oh your income is $0? Then you will pay $0 for your trash, tickets, computers, and sandwiches). Your entire economic system grinds to a halt.

This post has been edited by Roark: Apr 23 2008, 12:58 PM

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Orion_Zorn
post Apr 23 2008, 02:34 PM
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I only meant 'fines' or places the government has to step in.

Afaik, companies don't charge people extra for recycling because the market demands it, they are ordered to by the local or state laws.

No one would recycle if things were left alone, as no one but hyper-environmentalists would offer to give up money to help the environment.

I didn't go any further because I know it wouldn't work with normal goods, I don't know why you assumed I would think that. Your example of how the economy would grind to a halt is taking my idea, making an incorrect assumption (that I would apply it to every product, if I could) and then coming to a conclusion that would not happen... since I would not advocate setting prices per income level for everything.

Only fines, or times where 'market incentives' have to be created. market incentives is just a way of saying 'we want to shape the market, because it is not doing what we want on its own' right? People would not recycle unless the solution requires zero extra work, or they have some monetary incentive to do so. This is why the government, as far as I can tell, makes laws to 'incent' people to do something they would otherwise never do.

I said the plan probably had issues. In contrast, i could say the current system is insane. Why?

You stated that the plan would hurt the rich, and not help the poor.

The current system hurts the poor, and does not affect the rich. The poor people, struggling to pay for gas and food, now have to spend valuable time sorting and cleaning recyclables, taking time to return them to the grocery store (cans and bottles cannot be picked up at your home where I live, you have to return them to the store), while the rich can ignore the system, since it has virtually no effect on them at all.

As for government intervention, or the anti-socialism argument that will inevitably pop up here... our government is going to spend $280 Billion on the Farm Bill this year. If we can Socialize corporate farmers, why can't we socialize recycling and traffic tickets? ;)

Why exactly is it ok to socialize things like... the airline industry, or farming, or put price caps on insurance in areas like Miami or New Orleans. Did you know if we didn't cap insurance rates (read: go against the Free Market) we wouldn't have had to waste money rebuilding (or trying to) New Orleans? Because no one would have built there, because no one would have paid for the insurance.

Or for that matter, why do we socialize the bail outs of big banks like we are doing now?

Just saying, we do a lot of things that are bad for our economy, things that cause a lot more problems than my idea would. You can't claim price fixing recycling costs would crush our economy when we spend billions subsidizing food. Hell if we didn't subsidize food, a pound of beef would probably double in price, bread and baked goods would double in price... but the cost of a carrot, or a green pepper, or a strawberry... would stay the same. Again, why would price fixing recycling be any worse than anything else we do every day....?

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Roark
post Apr 23 2008, 02:54 PM
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QUOTE
Afaik, companies don't charge people extra for recycling because the market demands it, they are ordered to by the local or state laws.

Huh? The government forces companies to charge for a service? If it would be free without the government intercession, why even intercede in the first place?

QUOTE
No one would recycle if things were left alone, as no one but hyper-environmentalists would offer to give up money to help the environment.

Well yes and no. There are ways of dealing with externalities (waste). One such manner is the Coasian bargaining that Skillfree and I touched on briefly (which I think wouldn't work because of the large scale of the negotiations). But in many ways recycling IS a profitable undertaking. For many substances, it is easier to recycle than to refine/produce new materials from scratch. Thus private markets have incentive to offer the service for free, or use a deposit system (like with bottles/cans). So people have to pay to dispose of waste, but not recycling. This provides the incentive to recycle.

Fining based on income is an interesting idea (but be careful here, waste disposal is not entirely in the public domain. So speeding tickets is one thing, but trash fees are partially driven by the market of supply/demand of disposal options). I think Finland gives out traffic tickets based on income. Since our bail system is already based on how much income a person makes, seems it would make sense to bring other elements of criminal deterrence into line as well. But you have to keep this separate from waste disposal, which can be coordinated/sponsored/subsidized by local governments, but is broadly based on market allocations and supply/demand.

QUOTE
As for government intervention, or the anti-socialism argument that will inevitably pop up here... our government is going to spend $280 Billion on the Farm Bill this year. If we can Socialize corporate farmers, why can't we socialize recycling and traffic tickets? ;)

Why exactly is it ok to socialize things like... the airline industry, or farming, or put price caps on insurance in areas like Miami or New Orleans. Did you know if we didn't cap insurance rates (read: go against the Free Market) we wouldn't have had to waste money rebuilding (or trying to) New Orleans? Because no one would have built there, because no one would have paid for the insurance.

Or for that matter, why do we socialize the bail outs of big banks like we are doing now?

Just saying, we do a lot of things that are bad for our economy, things that cause a lot more problems than my idea would. You can't claim price fixing recycling costs would crush our economy when we spend billions subsidizing food. Hell if we didn't subsidize food, a pound of beef would probably double in price, bread and baked goods would double in price... but the cost of a carrot, or a green pepper, or a strawberry... would stay the same. Again, why would price fixing recycling be any worse than anything else we do every day....?

I don't know how to respond to this, because I don't support any of your counter-examples either :D

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Orion_Zorn
post Apr 23 2008, 03:29 PM
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QUOTE
Huh? The government forces companies to charge for a service? If it would be free without the government intercession, why even intercede in the first place?


I was saying that people don't demand that bottling companies charge them a deposit on the bottles, the government passes a law to force companies to do so. Isn't this an example of creating a 'market incentive'?

Also, couldn't they just tax waste disposal, but use a progressive tax, and not a flat tax? (is Progressive Tax the right term here? Not sure.)

This post has been edited by VnX_Zorn: Apr 23 2008, 03:31 PM

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Roark
post Apr 23 2008, 04:31 PM
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Only ~11-12 out of the 50 states and a handful of other countries have deposit laws. It's not a very common practice. Do they internalize the externalities of bottle waste? Some of them, but certainly not in an ideal manner. Some of the problems include "gaming" the system (bringing cans over state lines to receive a deposit that wasn't paid - in some years certain Coke brands see more than 100% redemption rates in some states). Or price inflation (as with any sales tax) and the inefficiencies they bring. Most of that inflation probably gets passed off on the consumer (unless out-of-state substitutes are readily available). I think if we were to imagine a true Coasian bargain, the outcome would share the cost on producer and consumer. The deposit system puts it almost all on the consumer and lets the govt profit from any bottles that aren't recycled.

Any time you want to tax something to force behavior, you introduce economic problems like this. Is it worth it? I don't know. Personally I like the govt forcing my hand as little as possible. Free-riding on a waste-disposal system is one thing, but if a rich person is paying for his waste at the same rate I am, why should it matter how much he makes? Why are us normal citizens entitled to have the rich person subsidize our waste by paying a much higher price? Such a system would drive down the prices for poor people, and then you'd have the same problem in reverse (poor people wasting because it's nice and cheap). And there are a LOT more poor people :P

Enforcing a progressive tax on personal waste would also be a nightmare. Rich people would pay poor people to dispose of their trash at far less cost. Also as much as you try to disguise it, it IS price discrimination. The rich would be charged for their consumption of landfill space at a much higher rate. Regulating the price of a service is different from assigning deterrence fines for a crime. Once you start charging rich people more for waste, why don't you charge them more for other services too? Your logic applies to a wealth of different situations in which you could have the rich subsidize the poor. That's why I brought that up before.

This post has been edited by Roark: Apr 23 2008, 04:35 PM

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Orion_Zorn
post Apr 23 2008, 08:56 PM
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QUOTE
Why are us normal citizens entitled to have the rich person subsidize our waste by paying a much higher price? Such a system would drive down the prices for poor people, and then you'd have the same problem in reverse (poor people wasting because it's nice and cheap). And there are a LOT more poor people.


hmm. I think subsidizing is the wrong word. And price... price is an objective thing, isn't it? Maybe the price people should pay for trash pickup should not be in a flat monetary amount, but a portion of their day. The cost to have your trash removed is what you would make in one hour of a workday. It's all how you look at it. Why should I spend 2 hours in a day to pay for my trash to be picked up, while a rich person can get the same service for 2 minutes of their time? (the time spent working to get the money) Do you work any harder than I do? Why should I have to spend a larger portion out of my short time on this planet than someone else to be able to have my trash taken out? Don't worry about replying to this part, I know this type of thinking doesn't work well with you.

As for the poor wasting it, again you assume. If you notice I had pointed out that the fictional price for someone like me was more than what I pay now. Who is to say that someone making $8 an hour would only pay $.30 per bag? Who is to say someone making $0 gets free trash pickup...? I don't know the answer, and don't care to flesh it out that much because no one would make this change in the US, but you are pointing out flaws based on assumptions that might not turn out to be the case, if something like this ever came about.

QUOTE
Rich people would pay poor people to dispose of their trash at far less cost.


That is what laws are for right? We have laws to stop people from drinking too young, to keep kids in school, to keep people from abusing their kids, to keep people from fighting, or saying bad things about other people (slander).

If I live in certain parts of the country, I can't even buy my wife a big huge nice person, even though I am harming no one, and am doing crazy things in the privacy of my own home.

With your reasoning, we should repeal all taxes, because people will find a way to bypass them right? :D

As I said, it would probably not work, but do you admit that it is not really fair that the poor people get hurt more by 'market incentives' than the rich?

This post has been edited by VnX_Zorn: Apr 23 2008, 08:57 PM

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Roark
post Apr 24 2008, 09:50 AM
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QUOTE
Maybe the price people should pay for trash pickup should not be in a flat monetary amount, but a portion of their day. The cost to have your trash removed is what you would make in one hour of a workday. It's all how you look at it. Why should I spend 2 hours in a day to pay for my trash to be picked up, while a rich person can get the same service for 2 minutes of their time? (the time spent working to get the money) Do you work any harder than I do? Why should I have to spend a larger portion out of my short time on this planet than someone else to be able to have my trash taken out? Don't worry about replying to this part, I know this type of thinking doesn't work well with you.

Replying anyway, because you still haven't set your trash scheme apart from other aspects of life. How about electrical? Should rich people spend a portion of their income on that? I spend about 4 hours to earn enough for my share of the monthly electrical bill. Should it be the same for a rich guy (would promote conservation). What about cars? I spend about a month earning enough for a decent used car, maybe the rich guy should have the same obligation (would promote conservation). Explain why trash is so special, and why your ideas don't promote a complete leveling of income across ALL sectors of consumption to the tune of "conservation."

As for "Do you work any harder than I do?" You already know my answer. Wages are NOT based on the rigorousness of work... they are based on specialization and productivity of work. A janitor may work 5 times as hard as a TV producer. But anyone could be a janitor, whereas good TV producers are rare. The wage is a function of how hard it is to find such a person and how good they are at it. It's not that "type of thinking doesn't work well with" me, it's that your type of thinking completely contradicts the way the economy works.

QUOTE
That is what laws are for right?

You want the government to tell a rich person he has to spend $1000 to get rid of a bag of garbage, and when a poor person volunteers to do it for $500, they both get thrown in jail? I didn't say the law would be impossible, I said enforcement would be impossible. Because if you legislate such a huge penalty on the rich, both the rich AND the poor will have a huge incentive to ignore the govt and privately arrange a better deal.

You are comparing it to the tax system? Do you really want to require everyone to file waste records with the IWS to ensure compliance? Should we set waste day as April 1?

This is not the Zorn I have come to know. Your anti-government impulses and pro-social-justice impulses are creating huge contradictions.

This post has been edited by Roark: Apr 24 2008, 10:27 AM



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