[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.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

You're both likely correct.

We can afford to do it right. It will cost more and we'll have to make more prudent, effective, efficient, etc... decisions about producing and allocating goods and services and would need to give up many of the net negative/zero economic activities we like.

We've also likely enriched ourselves by externalizing the negative externalities of some of our goods and services to other countries. That's our choice, and I don't think it's a great one.

[morganw]

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

> We cannot.

Apple can afford to do test fabrication while abiding by the rules, but chooses not to. https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-fine-over-bay-area...

[harvey9]

Glad you said areas rather than countries. It is quite common to degrade the environment within rich countries as long as it isn't near where powerful people live.

[bloomingeek]

Correct. We are also richer because we won't do it. The EPA has saved countless lives, at least did, it's been basically dismantled.

[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.

[rini17]

Central/Eastern European here. Our labor costs are comparable or even lower than China today. And the manufacturing is still struggling. So it's not only that.

[vablings]

This is false, patently incorrect. With a good manufacturing line workers are not priced out by "cheap labor" they are priced out by almost zero cost labor, Robots are basically a rounding error compared to human's wages.

[parineum]

It's actually not labor costs at all.

The difference between the USA and, for example, China, in manufacturing is the difficulty of getting a new factory built.

If you have a product designed and ready for production, it will take you years to build a factory in the USA. All the while you'll be losing money managing the build, paying your employees and, most importantly, letting your competitors get a head start.

Likewise, if you build that factory in China, it'll be up and running in less than a year and you can start making your R&D money back, get to market before your competitors and not bleed money keeping your companies doors open.

The labor costs are easily offset by removing the logistics of moving the product.

Tesla Gigafactories are a pretty good example of this. The first two took ~3 years to build in Nevada and New York. The third, in Shanghai, took 10 months.

[kardianos]

I live in Texas, which is still part of the USA, and we manufacture a great deal.

I have a friend who works as an environmental engineer at a chem plant. They work hard to keep things safe and clean, and rigorously monitor their output.

I'm sure we could do even more if we weren't competing in meany areas against legal jurisdictions which DON'T care about such things. We aren't "priced out". We are regulated out and out competed by jurisdiction which have many fewer labor laws and much more lax environmental monitoring. If we are out-competed on product, then we deserve to loose, which is where libertarians and free-trade have a point. But if we are out-competed on keeping people and the environment reasonably safe? That's when we enact trade barriers.

That is how you actually keep the environment and people safe.

[guywithahat]

I don't think we're priced out, there's still a lot of competitive manufacturing in the US. I think it stems from a regulatory side, primarily in unions and logistics, which is unfortunate because these provide very little or no benefit to citizens but make it sometimes impossible to invest heavily in manufacturing here. People can't create dense factories cities like Detroit if a union may come in and destroy it, and we can't move fast enough if it's going to take years to get regulatory approval to develop a large factory (the Micron factory in Syracuse comes to mind, although there are many like it).

[deepsun]

Shipbuilding in particular has negligible labour costs, even for rich countries. Cost to build a ship is about 80% materials costs.

[HardCodedBias]

You sure it is about labor prices? These are highly capital intensive businesses.

You may want to ask your LLM to do very detailed research.

[shimman]

The USA is priced out of manufacturing due to greedy capitalists and business owners. Acting like labor is an insurmountable expense is just hilariously out of touch.

Maybe those that own the wealth should pony up more in taxes or give away their factories to the workers so they can run it themselves (something tells me they'll do a better job than greedy owners that just care about money rather than building a community).

[Fischgericht]

For most industries: No, you aren't. The limiting factor mostly is natural resources. Which is what the articles author is complaining about. "I am not allowed to use up the last drops of drinking water California still has! SOCIALISM!".

And the other limiting factor is knowledge/education. Your region has been known for 100 years to be highly skilled at building $THING? That knowledge is still there and has not fully retired? That's also a resource.

"High labor cost" is a smoke screen. We are not talking about acquiring from a pool of lazy dancing monkeys. The labor you need are for tasks that machines can not yet do. Those jobs are either really shitty, or need a lot of qualification.

Due to this: If you want to build a factory in an area where there aren't already similar factories, you first need to build a University and come back 25 years later.

The articles author should next try to build a business based on offering camel riding in Greenland. Camel riding? Banned in Greenland!!!1

[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.

[PaulHoule]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

[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.

[bombcar]

The problem is you can't enforce your taxation outside your borders without things like tariffs or subsidies.

[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.

[palmotea]

> 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.

The meat of their comment wasn't the personal anecdote, it was actually on government policy:

>>> 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.

This is 100% about globalization: if some countries let their rivers catch on fire, the externality lets them out-compete anyone who tries to do the process cleanly. So if you let their externality-fueled products into your country, you just can't build similar things, because they wouldn't be price-competitive.

If labor and environmental standards were strong and global, or countries with high standards refused to trade with countries with low standards, we wouldn't have this situation. There would be an economic motivation to develop and implement cleaner processes.

[grosswait]

One persons experience with a river 30 years ago doesn’t invalidate a theory about how things could be done differently.

[lazide]

In my experience, it’s the conflict of the ‘in theory’ vs ‘In practice’.

Practically, ‘in theory’ might actually be doable - if there was a single, overarching regulatory environment. That was enforced.

Chances are, that would defacto make a bunch of people starve in poorer countries, and blow a lot of stuff up, so would also likely be worse than ‘the disease’. At least right now.

But maybe I’m just being a cynical bastard.

[Aardwolf]

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

They probably do if it's near their backyard

[datsci_est_2015]

Also I have significantly more influence in my local elections than elections on the other side of the world.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Corporations don't have a backyard, based on their historical behavior. The resource extraction and manufacturing sectors simply move on after they screw up or deplete one area.

[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.

[mrguyorama]

A note about Superfund sites: It used to be funded by a small tax on chemical production companies. 70% of cleanup was paid for by the companies who caused it.

Then in 1995, congress "chose not to renew" that provision.

Now you and I literally and directly pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste. Companies don't really. Yet somehow they "Can't make factories" here

[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.

[5upplied_demand]

> California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe.

I'm not sure about that, maybe it is based on the definition of "safe". There are tortilla chips made in Chicago that explicitly say they cannot be sold in California on the packaging. This is due to chemicals banned in Prop 65.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1220zn9/...

[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.

[markemer]

Also Environmental regulations are like vaccines. They're victims of their own success. In the late 1960s early 1970s, before the EPA, the air and water in the US was a disaster. The EPA documented it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-b...

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493

[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.