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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

The calls the shut down the factories are rational. They might not be reasonable, but that is debatable.

Typically, if you find someone is lying or manipulating repeatedly, you jump to stricter outcomes. If you ban a specific substance in cookware and they just create a slightly different, untested, one... If they promise that waste won't escape the facility because there are safe ways to handle it, yet it continues to happen...

It's like having a child that continually pushes the limits of the rules and repeatedly causes trouble. At some point you must realize they are lying and will hurt themselves or others. You can't play with that ball responsibly? Guess what, it's gone.

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When are we gonna have stricter outcomes for the people who use such tactics to peddle things like bag bans, onerous management of residential water consumption, vehicle inspection requirements and other things that waste resources and political capital treating something that is at best a tiny fraction of whatever the problem supposedly is? These people at best do nothing and at worse sully the good name of people who want to enact smarter but less emotionally appealing policy to treat those problems. They've been caught repeatedly using the same sleazy tactics you say are worthy of stricter treatment.

Why act as if emotions aren't a component of people? People are emotional. It's real. It hasn't stopped us from getting this far.

Not everything is a slippery slope. PFAS are causing health and hormone dysregulation issues across the globe. Working to eliminate them in the interests of improved health and happiness for all humanity is not a bad thing and will not necessarily lead to banning whatever the bogey of the month happens to be.

Can you explain more? It seems like you're arguing with yourself.

You say if we ban one substance, they'll just come out with a less tested, less understood, and likely worse new one. I probably agree with this!

Then you say we have to just take it away, like a kid who is being irresponsible with a ball. I understand this means you think we should ban the materials.

If we ban these substances, won't research just pour all the more heavily into the new ones, causing the 1st scenario you mentioned? Are you suggesting we ban research into _any_ new materials whatsoever?

"Are you suggesting we ban research into _any_ new materials whatsoever?"

Quite the opposite. I'm saying the items should be tested/researched. Hence my use of untested, as you also point out.

Essentially, stop trusting the company because they are acting like a child. You ban that class of chemicals until they can prove they are responsible and the chemical can realilistically be handled safely (unlikely for consumer products since the waste at product life end would be unmanageable). You can do this through a strict certification and surveillance program as well as limiting the use of the product to industrial applications where no alternatives exist.

But the only real point I was trying to make is that people are more likely to support bans on a rational basis that the companies have fucked up before and lied/manipulated and are likely to cause more harm like that in the future. The stuff we are discussing at this point is a little outside of that as we are getting into what people would debate considering what is reasonable.

It's like no one remembers the "BPA-Free" crap where manufacturers replaced it with other, untested, possibly-just-as-bad analogues. Those manufacturers have already acted in bad faith, why would anyone trust them to do better next time? They weren't punished and they have all the wrong incentives.

Yeah, the current system requires demonstrable harm.

We should have a system that requires demonstrable safety.

He's simply suggesting new materials be banned by default, and research and studies that prove it is safe are needed to allow a material to be mass produced.

It's always funny when people pretend such policies would be the end of the world, when Europe has been doing this for years.

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