Garbage and Socialism
Today Wired magazine republished an article from Yale Environment 360 about China's new policy of not accepting plastics for recycling. Plastic garbage is piling up in America and Europe. China's new "National Sword" policy has stopped the recyclers in China who had been buying 95% of the EU's and 70% of America's plastic recycling from buying any.
Today Paul Krugman commented on Devin Nunes's (Rep-California) comment in a restaurant. After being asked if he wanted a straw rather than simply getting one, he said, "Welcome to socialism."
Both these articles tell the same story: we don't pay the full cost of our actions as consumers. Buying a vegetable and putting it in a new plastic bag that is then thrown away is very similar to getting a plastic straw and throwing it away. We pay for the cost of receiving these items in the cost of the product but the costs we don't pay is the cost of getting rid of them in an environmentally acceptable way. This applies to many other things and services. Fossil fuels are getting the most notoriety lately because while we pay the cost of buying gasoline we don't pay the cost of burning gasoline. When I was a kid the roadside used to be littered with beer cans, paper, garbage of all sorts, until the anti-littering law was passed. Things got cleaned up and it looked nice, but where did the stuff go? Into a landfill usually. But that law never applied to other disposed of items like carbon dioxide, methane, soot from coal and diesel, and fluorocarbons. These items are litter also just not as obvious until the climate began warming up.
Since the Chinese are no longer taking our plastics, perhaps we need a little socialist intervention just like the socialist model we employ for our military, schools, water delivery and disposal, distribution of electric power, highway construction and maintenance, and radio oversight. Perhaps we need a government sponsored industrial plastic recycling service to turn all this garbage into something useful. The government talks about infrastructure enhancements, what about enhancing our recycling services. This would both create jobs and solve a problem that the private sector has not solved.
The Republican trope that government is inefficient is untrue. Medicare is a perfect example with an overhead of 3-4% compared to 25-30% for the private sector insurance. A governmental industrial system of recycling would solve a problem that is only going to get worse. Some things like air, water, energy, airwaves, interstate highways, and healthcare, military, and air traffic belong to all of us and not to a private company. Private industry does not take care of these overarching issues in a cost effective way. And, we the people, need oversight of these areas because they concern us all. Since we own the government we get oversight. We do not get oversight of private companies.
Garbage is a perfect place to endorse the concept of socialism. Let's get started.
Today Paul Krugman commented on Devin Nunes's (Rep-California) comment in a restaurant. After being asked if he wanted a straw rather than simply getting one, he said, "Welcome to socialism."
Both these articles tell the same story: we don't pay the full cost of our actions as consumers. Buying a vegetable and putting it in a new plastic bag that is then thrown away is very similar to getting a plastic straw and throwing it away. We pay for the cost of receiving these items in the cost of the product but the costs we don't pay is the cost of getting rid of them in an environmentally acceptable way. This applies to many other things and services. Fossil fuels are getting the most notoriety lately because while we pay the cost of buying gasoline we don't pay the cost of burning gasoline. When I was a kid the roadside used to be littered with beer cans, paper, garbage of all sorts, until the anti-littering law was passed. Things got cleaned up and it looked nice, but where did the stuff go? Into a landfill usually. But that law never applied to other disposed of items like carbon dioxide, methane, soot from coal and diesel, and fluorocarbons. These items are litter also just not as obvious until the climate began warming up.
Since the Chinese are no longer taking our plastics, perhaps we need a little socialist intervention just like the socialist model we employ for our military, schools, water delivery and disposal, distribution of electric power, highway construction and maintenance, and radio oversight. Perhaps we need a government sponsored industrial plastic recycling service to turn all this garbage into something useful. The government talks about infrastructure enhancements, what about enhancing our recycling services. This would both create jobs and solve a problem that the private sector has not solved.
The Republican trope that government is inefficient is untrue. Medicare is a perfect example with an overhead of 3-4% compared to 25-30% for the private sector insurance. A governmental industrial system of recycling would solve a problem that is only going to get worse. Some things like air, water, energy, airwaves, interstate highways, and healthcare, military, and air traffic belong to all of us and not to a private company. Private industry does not take care of these overarching issues in a cost effective way. And, we the people, need oversight of these areas because they concern us all. Since we own the government we get oversight. We do not get oversight of private companies.
Garbage is a perfect place to endorse the concept of socialism. Let's get started.
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