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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   23799 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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  1. DDT is a great insecticide, and the environmental impacts were grossly exaggerated. The egg shell thinning, in particular, was a lie. I would bet that the banning of DDT has resulted in the deaths of over a million people from insect-borne diseases.
  2. I'm unsure about CFCs.
  3. With all endangered species, the response of "threaten to jail people for rescuing woodpeckers" has been somewhat effective at actually saving them. I know people who have made their land inhospitable to some specific endangered turtle because if anyone found one of those turtles on their land, the land would lose its value and become a liability. My ideal, impossible solution would be some way to actually incentivize saving endangered species rather than just severely punishing everyone we can catch.
  4. I am not happy with the regulatory environment for American automobiles. I want mini trucks. I hate how CAFE has resulted in exactly 2 sizes of consumer vehicles available: either a "passenger car" or a "SUV/truck/van". I do not like the increased car prices from all the rules. I hate the regulatory capture that prevents new car manufacturers from threatening established ones. There is less smog, yes, but it's not like the way we did that in the US was without cost.

Actually, the example I had in mind when I wrote that was drunk driving. Our penalties for drunk driving are wildly disproportionate to the actual cost to society. We give far lower sentences to people who endanger or accidentally kill others by different means. We went with the extreme penalties to force a culture shift, and it worked. But it's not proportional. It lacks the beauty of the Invisible hand that solves so many of our other problems. It's not that we've never solved a tragedy of the commons, it's that I don't think we've ever solved it well.

No, the eggshell thinning was not a lie. It really is a great insecticide, it's a shame that's it's real bad shit for non-insects.

You'd probably lose your bet if only because it's not actually internationally banned for pest control. You just can't dump tons of it onto your crops anymore.

Yes, car regulations come with a cost - as a sedan driver I'm not happy about mega trucks sharing the road with me thanks to CAFE standards. But you can't pretend that urban smog is nowhere near as bad as it was in the 70s. That's obviously a tragedy of the commons mitigated. The mitigation isn't perfect, but that's an absurd standard.

If you're talking about hypothetical (and probably non-existent) deaths from lack of DDT you ought to weigh the people who didn't die of air pollution much more than the fact that you don't have a minitruck.

It's not that we've never solved a tragedy of the commons, it's that I don't think we've ever solved it well.

That may be because you appear to be largely unaware of the details of the examples I posted. The irony of being obsessed with showing your kids eagles that were nearly eradicated thanks to DDT crippling their eggshells while claiming that was a lie is heady stuff - history is truly doomed to repeat.

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