[philbarr]

How would this "circular sustainable economy" work?

People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets determine what we make.

We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to make and sell more stuff.

[vnorilo]

We'd need to increase the price of materials compared to labor.

Correct taxation of negative externalities would work towards this.

I (like everyone else in my neighborhood) have super cheap, barely servicable tools in my shed that I have used once or twice. There's no way that's a reasonable allocation of resources in comparison to neighbor sharing, renting high quality tools or hiring a pro who owns such, but price and convenience heavily push me towards owning disposable crap, and I have to consciously fight it.

[Super_Jambo]

Switch the limited liability companies from their current blacklist based regulation to whitelisting allowed behaviour. Focus this entirely on creating highly competitive markets & fostering innovation in technology, logistics and production. Markets should be full of small companies making a specific product or service as efficiently as possible. Comparison of different products should be simple, pricing should be transparent. Basically the market for products and services should resemble as closely as possible the stock market.

It's really telling that the only market the wealthy class needs to care about has incredibly tight regulation on how you describe the 'product' (Accounting standards, auditing, what the CEO tweets...).

Meanwhile the markets every day consumers & workers lives are ruled by are wall to wall lies and deception.

Our current low-regulation markets are basically designed to innovate in manipulating voters, consumers and workers. Where our most profitable industries main focus is buying off their regulators, competitors and focusing on creating moats and monopolies.

In my view a good first step would be to bring in tight regulation on political spending & lobbying. Followed by regulating advertising with a view to nationalized product discovery. Basically if even Amazon can't stop fake reviews we should make it a publicly funded good. Let every company freely list their products and (as with listed companies accounting regulation) any product produced by a big company should have stats which are directly comparable to their competitors products & legally binding. We could also require companies to list the CAD files for replacement parts they no longer make.

[emiliobumachar]

> Comparison of different products should be simple

Could you elaborate on this bit please? Do we regulate away all but one way to differentiate a product? How do we decide which one?

[lm28469]

> We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable.

That's what happened pre 50s. My mother still uses the sewing machine my grandma was using and it was made in my country, not in buttfuck nowhere SE asia.

As it turns out making long lasting products isn't the most profitable thing so we shifted to producing to the least reliable standards people would still accept

[lotsofpulp]

People shifted to buying the cheapest products available.

[OJFord]

No, far cheaper products became available.

[lotsofpulp]

Obviously, if people are buying them. The point is if consumers prefer cheaper, lower quality products, then how is a business offering more expensive, higher quality products supposed to survive?

[OJFord]

My point is that the cost of the cheapest got lower, due to industrialisation & globalisation, rather than a shift in habits as people started to think 'actually sod this expensive stuff that lasts a life time, gimme cheap & disposable'.

[lotsofpulp]

Oh, I see what you mean. But I think people do choose to cheap and disposable for things they think they won't need. The rule of thumb for household tools is you go to harbor freight and buy the cheapest thing, and only go higher end if and when it breaks or can't do the job. Similar with electronics that keep changing or furniture if you keep moving.

I myself don't see any value to furniture of better quality than IKEA, since my kids won't want it, and I don't gain any utility of getting something of higher quality.

There's also probably some confluence with people's buying power stagnating forcing them to buy cheaper goods.

[edanm]

> People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets determine what we make.

Then people are wrong. Almost no economy is purely one of the other - even the most "free market" economies have lots of government regulation, government spending makes up huge parts of their economy, etc.

> We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to make and sell more stuff.

Totally doable in a completely free market way. You tax externalities.

This is basic stuff - economists generally agree that if you set up a carbon tax, people will use less carbon.

[philbarr]

The OP implied there was a third way. I didn't mean only one way or another.

[AtlasBarfed]

Taxing externalities reduces to a blame avoidance game in the political arena.

If you think America has "free markets" you haven't been watching the steady march of monopolies and cartels in virtually all sectors.

Corporations own the political process in America to avoid these well past the point of usefulness to reducing emissions/concentrations.

The toothless and ineffective Paris accords show this is roughly the same for even "progressive" economies like Europe.

The privileged will risk complete destruction over the surrender of advantage. That cute quote is frightening accurate when applied to modern partisan republican politics, think tanks, and especially the billionaire donor class, and has been for 40-50 years now with respect to environmental policy.

The only hope right now is the near-miraculous development of solar/wind/EV tech that can challenge and hopefully fundamentally undercut the viability of fossil fuels.

The article's suggestion for mass investment in sequestration technologies is warranted.

But if externality taxing was actually something politically doable as opposed to some policy dream by an economist, then we would have had a carbon tax on gasoline two decades ago, which any look at the cost of sequestration of carbon generally leads to a 3-10$/gallon tax.

And we are probably a decade from it now.

I do agree that it is basic stuff from an economic theory, which is tragically hilarious given the fundamental arrogance of Republican policy towards progressive reforms such as carbon taxation always invokes laissez faire principles.

The fact that basically applicable economic theory is politically untenable means that the people in economics as discipline have utterly failed humanity, sitting on their hands as this happened for some, or actively contributing to its exacerbation from the free market/laissez faire/libertarian wing of the University of Chicago.

[dd36]

One way I recall from college is “producer responsibility”. If you produce it, you’re on the hook for its safe disposal. You can bake disposal deposits or some other such mechanism into the price. Such a mechanism would help deter cheap plastic junk (Chucky Cheese prizes).

[smt88]

> If you produce it, you’re on the hook for its safe disposal

I'd prefer laws that producers are on the hook for enabling safe disposal.

This would cover the plastic junk issue, because most of those things cannot be recycled. Some can be "downcycled" (recycled into something less valuable), but that's still not great.

The problem with your proposal is that lots of products (like batteries) can be safely disposed, but a consumer could do something malicious, like throwing them into a river. A manufacturer should be responsible for producing products that are easy to use safely, not for the actual safe use.

We see the same thing in other industries: auto makers have to include seatbelts, but they can't be sued if someone chooses not to use one.

[incangold]

The U.K. will soon charge manufacturers for the recycling of their packaging:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46261129

[distances]

That's from 2018, did it go into effect?

[acd]

You design and build products which are 100% recyclable. Own less stuff, give away things you do not need. Price waste and good sustainable eco systems