I was just reading an NYT article about lead battery recyclers in Africa and how their operations are basically unregulated and are poisoning entire towns.

Things going a little slow or costing a little more is very often preferable to the alternative where you begin operations recklessly and negatively impact neighbors, sometimes irreparably.

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nemomarx 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think part of the story here is that as we regulate things at home we also out source activity that wouldn't fly here to those African regions?

That may keep it out of sight but if it's still happening it might have been better to do it in a managed way at home.

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shswkna 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Its exactly this. And the majority of persons in powerful regulatory roles completely don’t get or comprehend this effect.

When regulatory efforts depart from reality,and fail to find the correct middle ground, this happens:

The reality still exists, and will always find its expression in one of the following:

- people circumvent rules and go criminal

- undesired behaviours move elsewhere where the regulation doesn’t exist

- sections of an economy die

- issues remain unaddressed with the over regulated issues becoming too taboo to even discuss in a sane way.

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johnnyanmac an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US can't do much about other countries. We can definitely control how and who we outsource to, but the past 30 years of US government doesn't make me confident that we'll do that anytime soon.

But that's a tiny bit tangential from regulations.

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dangus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“All outsourced, vendor, and subcontractor companies down the entire production/waste chain to the raw material must meet US environmental regulations.”

Done, fixed the loophole.

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some_random 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh of course, just identify your entire supply chain in both directions and make sure they're compliant. What an obviously easy thing to do.

	▲	pabs3 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If the chain is all onshore then it must all be compliant ... right?
	▲	samdoesnothing 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The world is so simple when you can just assert that your intervention will have positive effects eh.

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tjwebbnorfolk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When someone says being overweight is bad, do you think they are saying they shouldn't exist at all?

Of course not, they want to be a normal weight. That's the discussion reasonable people hope to have about regulation. Your strawman isn't welcome here -- I've never seen anyone seriously argue that ALL regulations should be removed.

	▲	johnnyanmac an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> I've never seen anyone seriously argue that ALL regulations should be removed. I've been seeing it in real time this entire year in my country. And yes, on certain topics I see it here quite a bit. Maybe not "ALL" regulation, but some members of the community have an extremely libertarian take on conducting business.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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