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Comment by quotemstr | Hacker News Reader

> Because apparel is specifically the consumer industry where enormous quantities of unsold product are intentionally destroyed to then be replaced in the market by newly made equivalent articles

If that's so bad, why is doing so the cheapest option? What makes you think you know better than the market what's wasteful?

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What makes you think that what's cost effective (in terms of money, of course) for a given company involves optimally conserving resources?

The obvious counter-example is that polluting is very cost-effective in an unregulated environment there are others - such as this.

> What makes you think that what's cost effective...involves optimally conserving resources

The words "cost" and "effective "perhaps?

> Polluting

Pollution is an economic externality. If I buy a shift and throw it out unworn, I've wasted only my own resources. (I'm paying for the landfill of course.)

You could argue that my wasting that shirt hurt you because I could have instead spent those resources on productive activity that benefits you, and therefore I had a duty to keep it -- but that's just communism with extra steps.

Are you under the impression that the planet has effectively infinite carrying capacity and ability to support an "optimal market" indefinitely?

I am of the opinion that markets and prices, not EU regulators, should tell us where scarcity is. We're bad at optimizing manually for the same reason we're bad at guessing where program hotspots are. The market is a profiler.

Do you honestly believe this? Where did you study economics? This regulation is not about scarcity. It is about over abundance.

Overproduction is a failure mode in capitalist systems. The market can’t correct for this because negative externalities do not feed back into supply or demand.

Actors in a capitalist system have an incentive to maximize profit. How is it profit-maximizing to pay to produce an item and throw it away unsold?

> negative externalities do not feed back into supply or demand.

What is the unaccounted externality? Clothing makers pay for material inputs and labor inputs. They pay for transportation. If they discard goods, they pay for more transportation and for the landfill. What specific externality is unaccounted?

The unaccounted externality is the wasted energy to create a thing and destroy it without ever using it.

This may be profit maximizing because it maintains the exclusivity of the brand.

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

And you presume to know better than they do what to do with that energy? Do you think you have a general right to override people's resource allocation decisions when you believe they're being wasteful?

> Do you think you have a general right to override people's resource allocation decisions when you believe they're being wasteful?

Me personally? No, of course not. But I do think our government has the responsibility to govern.

1. In this case, not using the energy at all would have been better. 2. The legislature of a sovereign polity would have, and be able to delegate, that right. If and when the legislature should make use of that right is a political question.

What if I dump toxic industrial waste in the river upstream of your house? I pay for access to the river. Does that hurt you?

Regulation is not about knowing better than the market. It is about correcting harmful externalities that markets would not solve on their own.

If disposing of my own shirt in a landfill I pay for is an "externality[y]" justifying state intervention, then every domain of life is subject to top down control. I don't want to live in a society in which resources are allocation in general by edict instead of the market.

Look it's not that hard. Is <problem> (in this case, pollution) a problem that needs solving? If the answer is yes, then it needs to be regulated even if you personally don't like laws. Sorry!

Why is <problem> a problem? Because you say so? If it's such a problem, why is it so cheap to do? What cost is unaccounted?

By definition externality is not priced in by the market.

Why should I believe an externality exists in this situation? What is the evidence?

> If it's such a problem, why is it so cheap to do?

Why would you assume it doesn’t based on price when externality by definition is not accounted for in price?

But why are you lying? It's not about you, no one is stopping you to go and throw everything you own in a landfill, this is about the companies that act environmental in their marketing, but then go ahead and destroy new and unused products.

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