[rswail]

This is whining from someone that doesn't want to be responsible for the externality of pollution that these manufacturing facilities generate.

The regulations are to stop the pollution, if you can manufacture without polluting, then you'll comply and be able to manufacture.

The problem is that there are other regulatory environments where the people aren't protected from pollution.

What would fix that is enforcing the regulations nation wide, then applying tariffs on imported products that don't enforce the same regulations.

Net result, more expensive phones, better health and improved environment for the public. In the same way as car pollution was cleaned up.

[rob74]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion! When I read phrases like "Battery cells require electrode coating with toxic solvents (NMP), electrolyte handling, and formation cycling. This is exactly why Tesla's Gigafactory went to Reno." I (as someone not very familiar with the subject) thought it's strange that California should regulate what kind of chemicals can be used in an industrial process. Of course, they don't - but they regulate that industry can't release toxic chemicals into the environment. But because Elon thinks it's too expensive to make sure that no NMP gets out of his factory, he goes to his Republican pals in Texas or Nevada who don't worry about pollution...

[scottyah]

That's certainly one interpretation. Most of the workers there keep doing what they do to protect the environment though, so it's entirely plausible that they are taking precautions to save the environment, but find the method in which the regulations are implemented to be slow or arcane. If it's anything like cybersecurity in the government, the laborious process of filling out irrelevant paperwork is orthogonal to actually accomplishing the initial goals.

[djha-skin]

...because dumping stuff into the middle of what is already a barren wasteland isn't actually a problem.

[WhatsTheBigIdea]

The regulatory bureaucracy is a real hurdle. Even if you want to comply with the regulations, navigating the regulatory bureaucracy is a killer. Super slow, super expensive, quite opaque, somewhat arbitrary, and highly punitive.

Even if the bureaucracy didn't exist and everyone voluntarily followed the regulations, you could not run a globally cost competitive business without some sort of subsidy when competing with places where rampant pollution is allowed.

It's a real problem without an obvious long term solution that I am aware of.

[eldavido]

Yeah I think there are two problems

First: we may have gone too far toward anti-pollution. China has more naval vessels than the US. Everything changes when peace isn't a foregone conclusion, as it has been for the past 30? 50? years.

Second: it's not the regulations per se, but the difficulty of dealing with the bureaucracy, particularly (a) long delays and (b) uncertainty.

I run an electrical contractor, so this is not the least bit theoretical to me. The hassle of dealing with local government and PG&E for what should be routine things adds tremendous cost to doing business. Recent concrete example: it cost over $1,000 and two months to process a minor change to an electrical permit set, in Alameda (City). The actual change was moving some panels outside, a small revision to a plan that had already been checked and permitted. This required $1,400 in engineering fees, plus a ~$200 application fee to the City, and then the actual plan check and review charge of $650-700. It was probably one hour of actual work. The worst part was that Alameda outsources its plan check to a third party and I'm pretty sure the plans sat for two weeks on someone's desk at the City, before I asked for status, and then, an hour later, by "complete coincidence", it was sent to the outsourced plan checker.

If we could put a precise price on pollution, it would be a different story. It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.

[SiempreViernes]

Yeah, everyone wants faster bureaucracy until they see the cost estimate for proper staffing, then just pretending there wasn't any harm to regulate in the first place becomes the preferred option.

[harimau777]

I think that one solution might be making it much easier to sue companies for their externalities and then loosen the regulation. IMHO, all that regulation is necessary primarily because methods of controlling the corpos and the rich have broken down.

[terminalshort]

China has reduced its pollution massively since the 90s while aggressively expanding its industrial output. And they have done it without excessive bureaucracy and delays in construction. In the US environmental laws are not about the environment at all. They are there to enrich lawyers who profit from multi year permitting processes and lawsuits.

[danans]

> China has reduced its pollution massively since the 90s while aggressively expanding its industrial output. And they have done it without excessive bureaucracy

China's system is authoritarian state-capitalism. It is precisely the bureaucracy that steered it's industries toward this outcome.

[scottyah]

Don't forget Insurance companies! They define and enforce a lot of the requirements too, it's also why all the new parks look the same.

[gamblor956]

It really helps when the government can just disappear someone when they don't play along with government edicts.

[mistrial9]

> In the US environmental laws are not about the environment at all.

that is literally nonsense .. lazy nonsense, ill-willed nonsense.. Ignorant nonsense.

literally four seconds to search " history of us environmental law"

[pfannkuchen]

The phones might not even be more expensive in the long term, if we’re just in an easier-to-discover local maximum in efficacy x cost x pollution space.

[RajT88]

We've kicked the can down the road. Stuff used to cost more; now we make everything out of plastic overseas. Once all of those economies are wealthy enough to start caring about the environment (and I'm convinced we'll get there), pollution will have to be dealt with globally.

Maybe by then we'll have returned to building products which last (although I'm not holding my breath).

[archagon]

And starts out with a Musk quote, to boot. (Assuming it's not made up wholesale; could not verify.)

We need to push these people out of California.

[Dig1t]

By “these people” do you mean the people who actually make things?

These banned industrial processes sum to making almost every physical object. The net effect is that it’s nearly illegal to make anything physical. Do you think that the state or country will do well in the long term if it’s basically illegal to actually make things?

Also funny that you Musk derangement people will never actually engage with the content of the quote’s message, preferring to dismiss it based on your political disagreement with the person who said it.

[djha-skin]

> What would fix that is enforcing the regulations nation wide, then applying tariffs on imported products that don't enforce the same regulations.

This is the biggest lie we are told, and the most heinous. The only thing that will fix it is when people like you (and me!) stop purchasing things which were made in those regulatory environments. If you continue to purchase them under the premise that "I have no choice, I have to participate in this fallen world," so does the state of California. Banning these activities when there are alternative regulatory environments just pushes the problem to someone else.

A great example of this is the Obama-era fuel efficiency laws. No one actually wanted a more efficient truck, so to get around the laws, the manufacturers just made larger trucks, which caused more problems than they solved.

Outlawing something, then doing nothing to stop demand for that thing, that's just irresponsible.

[conk]

I want a more efficient truck!

[harimau777]

I don't think that will work. There's simply no viable path towards that much coordination; especially when late stage capitalism ensures that most people are living too hand to mouth to be able to worry about stuff like the environment.