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Comment by _adamb | Hacker News Reader

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?

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"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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