[Fischgericht]

There is a reason these kind of things are no longer possible in much of the western world and especially Europe-like US states like California:

After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water.

As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively.

I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forbidden to swim in it, and if you did, you had weird oily chemicals on your skin that felt unhealthy (burn, itching etc).

Back then we had huge production industries upstream, employing thousands of people.

Today you can swim in the river without any problem at all. But the industry and the jobs have shrunken a lot, because not polluting the air and water simply is expensive.

You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing.

So, if the US wants production industry again, and want it to be competitive, than have a look on how the environment in the countries you will be competing with looks like, and then to an informed decision if you really want that.

I'd pick the clean air and water, and have people poisoned far away that I don't know and can ignore.

What would be your choice?

[kardianos]

Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean.

I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference.

So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.

But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

[SoftTalker]

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer

We cannot. We are richer because we don't do it. We export it to areas so poor they view the environmental impact as a fair trade-off for being able to eat.

[temp8830]

USA is already effectively priced out of manufacturing due to high labor costs. Doing things with the "correct choices" simply makes the impossible even more so.

[kspacewalk2]

The trade-off to safety and caring about people and the environment is very often cost. Caring about the environment is not a binary concept, it is a matter of where your break-even point is between caring about the environment and absorbing higher costs.

[Empact]

You can also use pigouvian taxation to make polluting expensive. Cost savings is generally the motivation for allowing negative externalities like pollution, so a natural way to reverse it in many cases while allowing flexibility when there is no practical alternative.

[Fischgericht]

"So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment?"

- I don't need a car, I'll use public transport. - I will only buy and eat the amount of calories I actually burn. - This 10 year old phone actually works pretty well. I don't need a new one.

etc

You need new factories because you want more stuff. If you stop wanting more stuff, you don't need more factories, and therefore nobody needs to cry about his industry being "banned".

I have visited the US a hell lot of times. I swear, I never ever in all these visits in any part of the US had the following thought in my head: "Boy, these people really need more car factories!".

[nitwit005]

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

The idea that people setting pollution rules secretly don't care is silly.

California can't fix the whole world's problems.

[danesparza]

The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts.

Also: I suggest rethinking your opening line. It's not very endearing.

[Aardwolf]

> But people don't actually care about the environment.

They probably do if it's near their backyard

[overfeed]

> I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing

America barely cares about the domestic poor[1] - do you think its captains of industry will care about the poor abroad? Charity begins at home.

1. See locations of Superfund sites. Or for a modern example, where they are choosing to build AI datacenters powered by on-site diesel generators or gas turbines.

[lokar]

FWIW, California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. CA can't tell other states to ban various manufacturing techniques.

[verteu]

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products

No, California can't do that. States cannot impose tariffs per the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1...

They could push for more regulations at the federal level (and indeed, Californians do this quite often!)

[culi]

> You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean.

Yes exactly. And most of the complaints in this post is not stuff that's outright banned but stuff that's "hard to do".

These companies are complaining about how much more it costs to do this AND keep the environment clean. In an ideal world we would just have environmental protections all over the world so these companies don't simply find some small town with a local gov't they can buy off and do whatever they want

[Teever]

I’m sure it’s possible to do both in theory but I find it hard to believe that it’s possible in practice.

If it was California wouldn’t be covered in superfund sites that originated from industrial activities that took place decades ago.

[expedition32]

A lot of people are poor. The cheap Chinese shit keeps them alive and relatively happy.

In your proposal you'd also cede the global market to China- because nobody in Angola cares about how those solar panels were made.

[deaux]

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

This is about as true as saying "But people don't care about child sexual abuse". Sure, those partying with Epstein don't.

Plenty of people do care and indeed are today making sacrifices that align with this. Including lowering living standards. If you don't then that's on you, but speak for yourself.

[jayd16]

You keep saying reduce regulation and then bring up things like adding permitting and taxing certain processes which is regulation.

The other thing you're not understanding is how the state can enforce regulations and how the federal government has to. States cannot levy tariffs.

[dragonwriter]

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process.

If you don't have regulation, for profit industry won't do it right “through process”, because that would be throwig away money. Regulation is how you do it right through process.

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.

Standardization and final safety measurements are literally regulations (and permitting is just a means of enforcing standardization.) So, basically, you “cut regulations” plan is actually to pair regulations doing exactly what the regulations you claim to cut do, call them a different thing, and add tariffs on top.

Which, is a long winded way of just saying “add tariffs”, which of course, a US state can’t do.

[bjourne]

> I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forbidden to swim in it, and if you did, you had weird oily chemicals on your skin that felt unhealthy (burn, itching etc).

That's almost exactly how my dad and many of his siblings got permanently disabling muscular dystonia. The old times were fucking bad and we don't want them back.

> So, if the US wants production industry again

It should be noted that the VALUE of US industrial output is many times higher than it was 20 years ago, even if the VOLUME is lower.

[Fischgericht]

Yes, it is crazy.

The good old coal? Have a look at the life expectancy of a coal worker, and maybe a ct scan of a coal workers lung.

Good old nuclear? Will you accept the nuclear waste getting store in your neighborhood? No? What about your neighbors neighbor? No? Keep asking until you get a yes. See you again after having asked 341.8 Million people.

There are reasons we moved on from this and de-industrialized. Because the industries we got rid of simply weren't actually that great. Go visit a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen/China. I have done it a couple of times. The part of electronics production that is not done by machines is painful and exhausting work. Your back will hurt. Your eyes will hurt.

I really wonder what people are thinking how these jobs look like. Nobody would want them. The only ones in the US who would accept those jobs would be immigrants who have seen far worse and therefore view these jobs as an upgrade. But the US doesn't want those immigrants. So why try to build industries creating jobs only the kind of people would accept that you do not want in the country?

[clarionbell]

When people can't afford homes, food and medicine, environment ceases to be a priority.

It's mostly a question of when, not if.

[tonyedgecombe]

Housing and medicine is largely a political decision with little relation to environmental concerns. The political party that favours deregulation is the same one that wants to keep private health care.

Food is slightly different, judging by the rates of obesity people can afford more than they need.

[paulryanrogers]

> What would be your choice?

Less stuff and less pollution everywhere.

[tonyedgecombe]

It’s an inconvenient truth that the better off don’t want to face up to. Your environmental impact is going to be correlated to your consumption. More spending == more damage.

Something to bear in mind when you are being told environmental damage is being caused by the poor or some foreign country.

[Fischgericht]

Yes, I fully agree.

And that choice is basically the exact opposite of what western civilization is heading for, and thanks to the AI boom, it has never been worse at any time in human history, I guess. Which means you are likely surrounded by people who want the opposite of what you want. That will be problematic.

However, this really only would be the proper answer if given by a majority as a community. In a crowd of people who want more, more, more more MORE, you will just drown and die.

But in principle you are right:

No, you do not really need to re-industrialize your country. Instead think about how endless growth in a reality of finite resources is going to play out. California is just fine as it is. Let's think about where Californians will get drinking water from in the near future, instead of thinking about building water-consuming factories.

[ajsnigrutin]

As someone born in a socialist country that doesn't exist anymore (i'm still here), a very common progress of time over here was:

- a factory is built relatively far away from populated areas

- workers were moving closer to the factory, building houses (when factory workers could still afford them and were allowed to build them) closer and closer to the factory

- workers retire, die, their now adult children live in, or inherit, the houses

- adult children complain about factory being too close to the city, complain about trucks, noise, pollution, dust, demand this and that

In some cases, there is the next step too:

- factory eventually closes down, people complain about having to drive to work far away, usually to the capital city where factories and many other businesses still operate. Centralization bad! Same people protest when someone else wants to start a new factory, industrial zone, anything in their city.

In some more extreme cases:

- since everyone is driving to the capital city, they also shop there, send post there, visit doctors there, do bank stuff there... this means that the store, post office, the bank, etc. close down in their smaller city. Again, people protest. Sometimes literally: https://siol-net.translate.goog/novice/slovenija/krajani-gri... & https://www-nadlani-si.translate.goog/novice/zapirajo-kar-dv... & https://www-kostel-si.translate.goog/objava/1129317?_x_tr_sl...

[marcosdumay]

You can avoid this scenario with trains.

[jojobas]

My choice would be, if banning a particular process, also ban imports of products made with this process.

Another facet is that not only we got to enjoy clean air and outsourced pollution, we also paid our strategic enemies enough for them to transcend us.

[owisd]

The EU started charging carbon tariffs from 1 January- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Me...

[ericd]

Right now, there are Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAMs) going into place that put a price on the externality of carbon pollution in other countries with lower standards than your own. It's basically a carbon tax, the EU's just went into force. All the recordkeeping is probably not going to be cheap, but it seems like in theory, you could do something similar with other industrial emissions, and try to bring others onto the same level playing field, so that there's not that same pressure to cut corners.

[PowerElectronix]

There a lot of processes like those done in other states and in europe. PCB etching, cnc milling, allumunium anodizing are some of the ones that I order on a regular basis from european manufacturers.

One thing is to regulate the industrial sector to be cleaner if waaaay more expensive and another is to just forbid stuff that can be reasonably be done cleanly (but again, waaaay more expensive than in asia, for example)

[mint5]

Well than it’s good that none of this is literally forbidden despite the dramatics.

Then author just wanted to be over dramatic about how it’s not cost competitive to build in the Bay Area vs places like Reno where the land is cheaper and labor is less. Their scape goat or whipping boy is regulations but that’s highly myopic at best.

[Fischgericht]

All true. But these are done in areas where the required resources are available.

A hell lot of industries, including most the original author is mentioning, simply would not work in California. California is running out of drinking water for humans. You can de-regulate all that you want, even cancel all environmental laws, but that will not change the reality: You don't have water. Want to build a water-consuming factory? Great, but please go to somewhere where water is available.

Yes, bureaucracy can be annoying, and of course California has a hell lot of "let's not fix the actual problem, but make it mandatory to put up a sign about it" regulations that for someone from the outside (like me) look silly. If the state of California knows this substance REALLY is harmful, why... is it here?! Either it's not really harmful, but if it is... what? A sign is the solution?! ;)

So I understand people complaining about environmental regulations in California. We had the same in Europe for decades. Everybody was complaining and making fun about all the EU regulations. Then the UK left via Brexit. And learned a lesson. And today nobody is joking about EU regulations anymore.

Anyway: One may call it "banned", or "expensive" or whatever. But it really is "does it really make sense to put this here?".

[phendrenad2]

This is the conclusion anyone who look at things rationally must come to. The problem is, there's an endless influx of people, drunk on space-age optimism from their K-12 education system, that think "I reject that reality, there MUST be a way to have it all". They haven't learned that the universe hates us and wants us to suffer, not the opposite.

[casey2]

Gen Z spends less than 30 minutes outside a day, that's with 1/5 having no job/school at all. The choice is obvious, they aren't swimming either way.

Green manufacturing tech is much closer in viability, now is the best time to re-industrialize. 1/5 of people having no work is a crisis, how can they support their family?

[delfinom]

>than have a look on how the environment in the countries you will be competing with looks like,

You are absolutely relying on some very outdated tropes, especially because I know China is in your mind. China remains a production powerhouse and has radically overhaul the country environmentally in the last 15 years. It's pulling away fast and hard in green energy. It's a country that had to go from mass poverty to modern era in 50 years compared to the hundreds of years. They aren't perfect yet, not California level of drinking water from sewers, but I fully believe they'll get there and still be a production power house by not having delusions and anti-engineering drive decisions.

[Fischgericht]

No, China wasn't "on my mind". Last been there two weeks ago. I am well aware that China in most areas is lightyears ahead of the Western world. I like highspeed trains ;)

I really meant what I wrote: Compare the environment. Pretty much everybody in Shenzhen hates Shenzhen. People live in tiny apartments. And not because they are poor: Even if you have money, you live in such a tiny box. Because everybody understands that Shenzhen is a Machine, and you are a part of that machine. Your goal is to one day be able to have made enough money to be able to exit that system, and unlike the USA, that actually really works.

Want to build electronics manufacturing and be able to compete with Shenzhen? Start by first building 50,000 box apartments of 200 square feet in size. Next step: Find 50,000 US Americans who want to work in that machine.

So yes, when it comes to electronics, it's not so much about getting poisoned by a poisoned nature, but by suffering in another way.

For clothes it's a different matter, for example. There you still have the oldschool stuff - want the US to be able to compete? Let's give the kids some cancer!

Let me try to re-phrase: Go to the place where stuff is successfully made that you want to in-source into the USA. Then make an informed decision if you really want the baggage that comes with it at home.

I am massively benefitting from something like Shenzhen existing on this planet. It is so effective and productive because it was designed for that from the ground up. Would I want anything like Shenzhen anywhere near me? Hell no!

Most US Americans asking for re-industrialization have neither worked in those industries nor even have a clue what it feels like working in those industries. The people who are asking for these industrial jobs to be re-created are those who do not have any intention to take one of those jobs.

[tencentshill]

It's not about clean inputs, its about industrial outputs and waste product. China is NOT a leader in that field. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57853-z

[morkalork]

Wasn't there some magical thinking about how by outsourcing industries to those poor countries will bring them money and raise their standard of living to a point where they care just as much about their environment as us and it will all eventually equalize. Didn't quite pan out like that, did it.

[triceratops]

Actually it did pan out. You just weren't paying attention.

Chinese cities had terrible air quality 20 years ago. Now they don't.

The Chinese and Indian governments have climate change plans that they're actively working on, sometimes ahead of schedule. The current US government has banned the words "climate change" in official documents.

[kergonath]

They are not quite there yet. China now has a huge middle class, but they also still have a massive underclass. It’s too early to claim these projections were wrong. I think they are misguided, but there is no denying that China now pays more attention to pollution than it did a decade or two ago. There are massive investments to clean the air in large cities. Same in India: the situation is dire but the political cost of supporting the status quo keeps increasing.

[laughing_man]

It's not magical thinking; it just doesn't happen overnight. The real question is as we get relatively less wealthy in the West, will we start moving the other direction?

[XorNot]

China deploys more solar and wind power then the US.

Americans seem to love to count their past successes and then declare the game is over and they won.

History doesn't end though.

[indoordin0saur]

China

[api]

All these things can be done with healthy air and clean water, but the cost goes up, and people don't want to pay that cost. So we send them elsewhere instead.

The same is true re: data center water use. Evaporative cooling is cheaper. You can build a DC that uses little or no water but it costs more.

[hsuduebc2]

Yea, this romantizing of a past is doing no good to us. For example, It's weird how people romantize back breaking work on farm as "simple life". But I guess this was here with us every time. Grass is greener somewhere else and was greener in good old times.

[chasd00]

hah yeah same goes for blue collar trades type jobs, it's weirdly romanticized here. My mom's side of my extended family were all blue collar types in West Texas, ranch hands, truckers, welders, that sort of thing. All of the men were basically crippled by 55 from using their bodies to make money and died in their 60s of various diseases. My father's side is all white collar and they're all still around, my dad is a minor pickleball celebrity in FL at age 80.

[rglover]

Simple != easy

[joe_mamba]

>But the industry and the jobs have shrunken a lot

And those people left jobless still have the right to vote. So you'll have to bribe them with welfare or invest in their upskilling, otherwise they'll turn to crime to survive and vote the most extremist parties to power that will undo all your environmentalism.

It also leaves you economically and militarily vulnerable to the countries you outsourced all your manufacturing too, as you can't fight back an invading army of mass produced consumer drones with just your remaining HR and software departments.

>I'd pick the clean air and water, and have people poisoned far away that I don't know and can ignore.

Until they mass migrate as refugees out of their polluted hlleholes you helped create, and move into your clean country straining your resources, making it your problem once again. Or, they tool up and economically or militarily crush you, turning your country into one of their colonies.

You(the West in thsi case) reap what you sow. There's no free lunch where you can have your cake and eat it too. In a highly globalized, highly mobile world, things tend to come back at you pretty quickly and the only ones safe from this are the ones who profited the most form this, the billionaires with private islands and doomsday bunkers.

[Fischgericht]

Just to clarify: When it comes to myself, my post has been a provocative hypothetical scenario in which I would need to make that choice.

In the real world, decided to move to a part of the planet where this question doesn't even come up, due to society having different priorities and a different base definition of "quality of life".

[harrall]

What we actually need to get to is a world where countries have somewhat equal quality of life. This would allow a country to invest in processes that reduce pollution without fundamentally making them uncompetitive.

Of course a world where everyone has an equal quality of life is almost a dream but I’d say humanity has been very slowly, very slowly getting there.

What we do now is that “1st world countries” focus on high value manufacturing and growing countries unfortunately take up the dangerous and polluting manufacturing — but bear in mind, the US and other industrial countries also had the same phase.

What fucks up this is when trust breaks down between countries. Now suddenly you need to bring lower value manufacturing in house for national security even if it doesn’t make economic sense. It’s inefficient, puts the world back at square one, causes everyone to fight for survival instead of progress, and frankly leads us away from that “Star Trek” future.

This is also why we’re having to worry about asking these questions now when we didn’t so much have to 20 years ago. We’re living in a mildly cooked part of humanity’s timeline where trust seems to be fleeting.

[hackernews90210]

I'd pick the advanced components and find ways to protect the environment as well, both can co-exist together, Why not Fischgericht?

[flakiness]

> "Europe-like US states like California"

This statement makes me smile. Although I see where this comes from...

[Fischgericht]

I'm not judging here. From my experiences in California I would say that the general mindset and cultural approach to life is comparable to that of south-western Europe.

In part that's simply because while looking different, the general environment is fostering respecting nature, giving room for arts and creative and having an open mind.

(This example of course is coming from a past world where you could safely travel to/from the US, say, 10 years ago:)

Travelling from say Portugal to Miami ) would give you a massive culture shock. Portugal to San Diego? Not so much.

) Yes, Portugal to Key West would have worked.

[biztos]

> Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

Make it non-competitive with what?

With products made via "poison outsourcing" so other people can suffer what we refuse to suffer ourselves?

Seems like if an economy like the US or the EU actually wanted to, they could pretty easily say it's the clean way or no way at all, and voila, these things would magically be competitive again.

[bubbleRefuge]

In a modern money/fiat money regime, the federal government can afford anything in nominal terms. As such, the solution would be to subsidize the industries that make the most sense for standard of living and national security so they can participate in the market. Use government subsidies to offset the costs of environmental remediation .

[nicole_express]

> You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

I mean, the true reason here seems to be that producing stuff without polluting is impossible if you have to compete with stuff produced with lesser pollution standards.

In theory, this could be an argument for heavy import tariffs from countries with lesser pollution standards. The downside, of course, is that at the end of the day this would still mean "stuff is more expensive, maybe a lot more", which is obviously unpopular as it means fewer people can get the stuff. (And of course, a US state's ability to restrict trade with other US states is extremely limited)

[bloomingeek]

Who can forget when China closed some factories in 2008 and 2022 so the smog would clear out before the Olympic games could begin? Could we potentially have "clean" factories built in America, maybe. But then could we afford the products they produced, hell no! If it was affordably possible, it would have already happened.

The working class citizens of China have paid the price for all the industrial factories. Don't believe it, look up the cancer studies China has published. (Oh right, communist countries always tell the truth, right?)

[actionfromafar]

It would have worked out fine. We would have just bought less useless junk.

[tencentshill]

If it is not profitable, then it must be subsidized. Trump could have supercharged the EPA and expanded the grants for clean manufacturing, but he destroyed it instead. Now we get the worst of both worlds and our higher taxes go to his own pocket.

[almosthere]

It's not black and white - do things smarter. But make jobs - top priority. We need jobs otherwise wealth concentrates.

[mrguyorama]

Wealth concentrates because of shitty tax policy and lack of enforcement of existing, on the books regulation to enforce a competitive market.

Famous Trust Buster Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive republican who openly stated he had no desire to harm or kill industry in the USA but was instead working to ensure there continued to be competitive pressure to make that industry work better.

Employment has never effectively redistributed wealth. Possibly it improved things a little bit after the black plague reduced the labor pool by about 25%.

The only peaceful and low death form of fixing obscene wealth inequality has always been government, through taxes.

[Fischgericht]

In the US, you could work 400 hours per day, and still nothing would change in regards of wealth concentration.

Inheriting money from your parents is taxed lower than earning your own money through work. Making more money due to already having money is taxed lower than earning your own money.

US Americans by a large majority over decades got trained to believe changing that would have something to do with "socialism", which was made a bad word.

But this isn't about re-distribution, making people equal or anything.

It's just that it is not logical, does not make sense, and in the end will destroy your society if already having money, which provides no benefit to society whatsoever, is rewarded over producing something, which does provide a benefit.

Why does a teacher who provides REAL benefit to society in the US has less yearly net income than someone who does not work at all but has once inherited 200k from his parents?

You have been trained to find all of this normal, and to believe it's your fault. Just work harder! No, it's not your fault. Working harder won't change anything.

So imagine you have one of the richest countries on this planet. But you don't really have enough work for every human to work full-time. Why is this a problem instead of an ideal? What strange goal is "everyone should work hard" when it comes to enjoying life? If you have an insanely rich country, there are far better solutions than trying to artificially create jobs that make no sense.

You can not compare this to a POOR country with high unemployment. There unemployment is a problem. In the US? Who cares if there is no factory to work in? Instead go help your neighbor. Study something. Become an artist. Do a public gardening project.

Again, the problem is that "having money already" that is of no use to society whatsoever is valued and awarded higher than any of those useful things above.

So, Step 1 for the US would be: You don't have to take away anything from anyone. But stop rewarding people for already having money.

As the CEO and owner of a German limited company I can choose between paying me a salary, getting taxed 45% ) for that, or paying myself a dividend, getting taxed 25% ). The first time I learned that 20 years ago I found it totally crazy and could not believe it. I still find it crazy today. Even in my own f'ing company my OWN work is valued less by society than me owning my company!

*) Oversimplification, but the ratios are correct

[matheusmoreira]

I'd choose to be the powerful and rich industrial country every single time. If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it. Clean water to swim in? Build a pool.

Frankly, any deindustrialized country is quite simply irrelevant. You need industry to have a middle class. You need middle class for capitalist consumption. There's a reason why american corporations kowtow to China now. The USA thought it could deindustrialize and act as the world's boss. China is proving them wrong via relentless industrialization. I only wish my own country had the balls to do the same.

[unbalancedevh]

> If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it.

I used to think this way, but I've come to realize that it's very short-sighted. It's not sustainable, and we're already seeing how unchecked industrialization over the last couple centuries is leading to unintended/undesirable effects on our health, and indeed the suitability of the environment we need to live in. Sure, those problems can be pushed onto future generations, and so far (maybe) we've been able to solve them. But if we care at all about humanity's ability to thrive, we need to be more careful.

In developed countries, nobody has to struggle anymore just to stay alive, which is a far cry from the way it was 200 years ago. Advancements now are along the lines of increasing entertainment, or quality of life. But enjoying a good life doesn't have to be a zero-sum proposition, and I think society should put a higher cost on the ability of wealthy people to use up irreplaceable natural resources for their own benefit.

[lifeformed]

> If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it.

Wow. Why, because the Amazon is just a bunch of trees or something boring? If "high technology industry" is so much more valuable without even thinking twice about it, you probably don't understand very much of the world.

[bojan]

> Clean water to swim in? Build a pool.

Where do you find clean water to fill the pool with?

> You need industry to have a middle class.

Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves.

It is very much possible to keep your air and environment clean, and still reasonably grow and remain relevant - look at France.

> You need middle class for capitalist consumption.

Again, industry workers were not middle class, and if you pay them enough to be middle class, your product's price stops being competitive.

To have middle class for capitalist consumption, you need to stop funneling literally _all the money_ to single-digit amount of people and companies, leaving everyone else poor, regardless of what they do for work.

[PurpleRamen]

> Build a pool.

How does this work without water?

[betaby]

> What would be your choice?

Stop promoting overpopulation. The USA adds ~1.8 million of people every year. That's one more Phoenix city, every year.