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Comment by nlperguiy | Hacker News Reader

> Not sure what a capitalist incentive is, but we have plenty of ways to potentially regulate this. Are you asking about technical feasibility of finding the actors responsible for it?

I was thinking, in the framework of capitalism, what would the incentive be, other than regulation, to not pollute? Why does it not work, is the incentive missing?

For example, there are companies like Clean Harbors that earn billions from recycling toxic waste, oil etc. Are they earning money because regulations need to be met, or is there a profit to be made?

If latter, how come no one is trying to make profit by capturing pesticides/insecticides?

Would deregularization make these billion dollar waste collection companies bankrupt?

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> Are they earning money because regulations need to be met?

Yes? If there aren't regulations, then waste will be disposed of by the cheapest method, which usually involves dumping it into the atmosphere and/or water. This is how it used to be until environmental campaigning in the 70s and 80s got the regulations introduced in the West, and far more recently in China.

> the cheapest method, which usually involves dumping it into the atmosphere and/or water

The ironic thing is that we behave exactly like bacteria and animals and all other life, which have no choice but to expel their waste products directly into the environment. Properly adapted ecosystems have mechanisms for recycling all waste.

The difference with humans is threefold:

1.) We are too many, so the capacity of the environment into which we expunge our waste products can no longer handle the volume of waste we produce, forcing us to handle it with industrial processes.

2.) We produce waste types that the environment has no natural recycling mechanisms for, such as plastic, metal, and thousands of industrially produced chemicals, not to mention nuclear waste. We have only barely scratched the surface for recycling some materials, and the rest we literally just dump into giant holes or the oceans.

3.) We are busy destroying all the ecosystems that would naturally support us and recycle our waste, not only through loss of habitat, but mass dieoffs of insects, fish, etc.

> We are too many

Almost all natural ecosystems are death-limited, usually through some combination of predation, disease, or starvation. This was the case for humans up until about the 19th century. We've killed our predators and have to a great (but not total) extent achieved victories over disease and starvation. But if we're not to become death-limited again we must become contraception-limited.

Whey is waste in the dairy industry, yet it's sold profitably as a dietary supplement and used all over the processed food market.

Unfit oranges, apples etc. are waste to the fruit producers, but juices love it.

Cow shit is a complete waste but is used as a fertilizer. Although, a bunch of cow shit is also thrown into rivers.

Wasted food is ground into powder and given to animals.

I guess food might be an exception. I don't know if there exists something similar for oil, chemicals etc.

Well, yes, the difference between "waste" and "feedstock" is whether there is some valuable use for the thing and whether it can be easily collected. Insecticide once used cannot be easily collected again.

Much of the history of the petrochemicals industry is trying to find valuable things to do with less-valuable fractions and non-oil stuff that comes up from wells. Of course, if it's not valuable it tends to be flared off and contributes to global warming.

> Wasted food is ground into powder and given to animals

.. although since the CJD epidemic I think this is extremely limited. By regulations.

Capitalism optimizes for the impact it has on the actors involved in the transaction. The party offering the service/product, and the party paying for it. The impact of other parties is not part of that equation.

So if you want create an incentive, have the health impact on society as a whole, impact the profits of the parties involved in creating the pollutants.

So you could for instance bind their taxes to some health measurements. Then you would have a market for capturing pesticides (if that's even possible).

Much simpler and probably more efficient is just to regulate.

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