Author: Curt Doolittle

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/06/03/michael-c-munger/recycling-can-it-be-wrong-when-it-feels-so-rightRECYCLING IS BAD.

“Will someone tell me this article is wrong?!”

No, the article is not wrong. It is correct. Even graciously so.

HOWEVER:

1) THE ECONOMICS OF THE RECYCLING MOVEMENT

The reasons to enforce recycling are (a) political in that it advances the leftist ideological vacuum created by the failure of socialism in theory and practice, (b) psychological – it creates awareness of the veyr important issue of maintaining a clean environment, and (c) it places economic pressure (the possibility of boycott) on marketing and packaging companies.

But recycling anything other than ‘oil, gas, liquid poisons and radioactives’ is not ‘good for the environment’ or logical or economic in any sense of the word. The optimum solution is to compartmentalize deposits land-fills so that they can be sold off and ‘mined’ at a future date when and if it ever becomes economically viable. In other words, the cost of sorting, transporting, breaking down and distributing goods is not sensible.

The problem with plastics is not recycling but that they don’t break down well. Plastic bottles and packaging in particular. Recycling is simply a means of providing political cover using false economic calculations for what is probably the most troublesome pollutant that we make. The seas are full of that junk (although, mining the seas for plastic might eventually become a good business for someone. it depreciates our experience of the environment.)

Contrary to popular belief, landfills are small, inexpensive, and concentrate waste, and create an opportunity for future recycling at low cost. They concentrate resources at low cost for future use. They are ‘savings accounts’ full of resources that can be mined when the economics make it sensible to mine them. Conversely, it’s extremely expensive to transport all that nonsense around to use it now, when we don’t NEED to use it. And we can only tell that we NEED to use something if FIRST, the pricing system tells us so, and SECOND if our moral codes, once understood, suggest that there are not involuntary transfers being created .

Of course, the economic solution is to drastically reduce population and drastically increase consumption. It’s not that we consume too much. That’s not really logical. It’s that we have too many people consuming.

Consumption is like information. The more the better. Space travel for example, is the ultimate consumption. It’s freaking expensive. The mass required to convert into energy necessary to get to another planet is terrifyingly expensive in every possible term. So is the information necessary to solve the problem. Every cost we distribute widely is a cost not dedicated to the narrow pursuit of something like space travel.

2) MORAL RULES ARE PROHIBITIONS ON THEFT

The author is correct in what he senses, but cannot articulate:

(a) the pricing system does not make visible ALL costs. (This is one of the three or for conceptual failures in libertarian economic theory – because it discounts the cost of morals – norms, and morals are extremely costly to develop in any society.) Prices tell us what people WANT, what they NEED, and are WILLING TO DO to get it. The last being the most important. But that’s ALL they tell us.

(b) He doesn’t understand that morals costs are material costs. Because our actions are costly. Our time is costly. But most importantly, our OPPORTUNITIES that we DON’T TAKE are very costly – that’s what manners and ethics are: lists of opportunities that we do NOT take, because it transfers costs in time, opportunity, effort and money, from others involuntarily. Most economists do not make this mistake. Almost all political science, and all political philosophers make this mistake – almost bar none.

3) LIES AND DAMNED LIES

The excuses offered by producers of pollutants, and those of the recycling movement are as ridiculous as the carbon market argument: POLLUTING IS STEALING. PERIOD. And GOVERNMENTS created the ability to pollute by giving SANCTION to polluters, and requiring that ordinary consumers have ‘standing’ in order to sue polluters. There is no reason that we cannot require x number of signatures in order to produce ‘standing’ for a crime of pollution, in which every single person has only a micro-claim against the polluter.

The current argument is that our politicians are elected for this purpose. The stupidity of the argument never ceases to amaze me: why then do we need demonstrably influenceable and corruptible politicians elected by majority rule instead of courts to resolve what are of necessity property rights? This is yet another illustration of the argument against representational government and in favor of the common law, courts, and property rights.

You can’t sue polluters because the government prevents you from doing it. The common law allows you to. It allowed you to. Governments took away that right on purpose in order to increase taxation available from pollution generating manufacturers. (Yes, you can look it up.)