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Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

Agree. I really try to just not buy new stuff nowadays.

Food packaging and things like building materials are the most difficult.

There are certain things that I think make sense to buy new or 'lightly used' - if you're going to run a vehicle (bicycle, motorcycle, car, whatever) into the ground then you're getting full use of it; and cars, at least until they're almost completely useless and melted for scrap, have a decent ecosystem for second hand parts.

In some sense I think manufacturing has become too 'good' relative to human labour. We're throwing things away because it "costs more" to repair them.

But it doesn't really cost more - it just costs more in monetary terms because waste (both in manufacturing and disposal) is externalized.

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> But it doesn't really cost more - it just costs more in monetary terms because waste (both in manufacturing and disposal) is externalized.

And actually making the environmental impact and waste recovery part of the price won't happen, because the masses will then vote for the populist party that promises not to take away your daily steak and cheap appliances.

We're kind of fucked — although I would love to have some glimmer of hope to hold on to.

A general algorithm for internalizing externalities (for the set of all conscious beings) would be the greatest human achievement I can think of.

A late friend of mine work real hard to achieve something like this in a way that made sense to me: a tax on resource extraction rather than a tax on value add.

Was your friend's name Henry George? :p

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George

No, Eckart Wintzen.

https://ex-tax.com/

Wow, I have had exactly this idea and it makes so much sense I was surprised I never heard anyone else come to this conclusion yet, but finally I seem to have found one. My idea in a nutshell:

tax only non renewable or finite resources and not labour

Finite resources include - land use (be it housing, leisure or agriculture though desirable locations should have higher taxes) - resources (metals, minerals) - fossil fuels

Not to be taxed: - labour - wealth (having money has no environmental impact. It's the spending that matters) - added value (get rid of VAT)

I feel like all tax systems are based on what is easy to be taxed, but I have never heard a good argument on why e.g. income should be taxed, but environmental impact not

> And actually making the environmental impact and waste recovery part of the price won't happen, because the masses will then vote for the populist party that promises not to take away your daily steak and cheap appliances.

It could, if the populist party promises a massive increase in working class jobs that repair the kinds of things we currently throw away.

Why would the billionaires funding the populist party and providing vital coverage via their media empires want to do that though?

C.f. UK election 2019

I actually buy a lot of things from the thrift store and the pawn shop. Mostly things like books, dvds, records, file cabinets, tools, tool boxes, TVs, tablets, luggage, cables, and other electronics. For example, just last week I bought a high quality set of jumper cables for $5. A while back I bought a very nice oscilloscope in perfect order for $40.

When I'm done with it it goes back to the thrift store :-)

Sometimes it is automation related but I think more often it is due to the near slavery conditions of much of the world. Obvious slavery and colonialism is no longer fashionable but the current economic system acheives much the same effect by other means. Wealthy countries use a varity of methods to keep the rest of the world producing goods at low cost. Even "fair trade", while slightly better than non-"fair trade" is rarely anywhere near what anyone purchasing items would consider fair if on the other end of the transaction. A global minimum wage or global basic income would do a lot to reduce waste.

Some waste is related to health or the logistics of mass production and would not be eliminated without more radical changes (and in some cases might not be possible to eliminated without major effects on health, such as many disposable items used in health care). In theory, manufacturing could work the way scientific exchanges is supposed to, with knowledge shared, and production more localized. This could also reduce waste quite a bit but is obviously a much larger and more difficult change from the current system.

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