[wyager]

Destruction of light/sound pollution sources in places otherwise free of such pollution is totally morally justified IMO.

I was in Vegas a few weeks ago at a pool club. The bouncer was checking everyone's bags; not for guns, drugs, or alcohol, but for bluetooth speakers.

[ryan_j_naughton]

> Destruction of light/sound pollution sources in places otherwise free of such pollution is totally morally justified IMO.

What do you mean by "destruction"? If you mean actually breaking someone's speaker, then you're wrong and fundamentally don't understand externalities.

If you read the original Pigouvian and Coasian theory behind externalities, you'll realize that inherent to the nature of an externality is each side, by getting their way, is externalizing on the other. If you mandate silence, you're forcing that silence on others just as much as them playing music is forcing that sound on you. It's morally equivalent. You just have a belief that the absence of sound is the preferred state but that's not inherent. If birds are making tons of concurrent bird songs, that might sound like a cacophony to you, but you have no right to just go and destroy the birds.

You are right and where I sympathize with you is that those with speakers basically thrust their noise on others with no system to push back and find a socially optimal equilibrium. And that is unfair.

But what we could/should do is either: (A) create beach decibel maximums such that a person's music cannot be heard beyond X feet from them. That way they would have to find a place where they aren't externalizing on others. I always try to do this when I go to the beach anyway. (B) create beach areas where noise is allowed and areas where it isn't. But this shouldn't be limited to just music. Boisterous people can disrupt a serene beach environment too.

Both of these solutions attempt to create win-win solutions with some compromise, which is the whole point of how an externality is internalized. Just blanket letting one side win or the other side win is not solving the problem.

[genidoi]

I don't see how there are 'sides' to this. Blasting a BT speaker with your music, which the majority of people aren't likely to enjoy because of the huge variety of peoples taste in music, is a uniquely selfish thing to do.

I don't know about you, but blasting my Spotify likes on a BT speaker in a crowded, and particularly an enclosed environment, would not be an enjoyable experience. I can imagine it's only enjoyable if one is sufficiently self absorbed enough to think that their music is universally enjoyed by everyone.

[throitallaway]

Go to any nature area with hiking trails near decent population centers and you're likely to encounter this. If you want to "enjoy" music while in nature, wear headphones... I'd rather hear birds, the wind hitting leaves, approaching wildlife, etc. I don't want to hear your shitty music from 40 feet away.

[jyrkesh]

Yeah, because you defined a line where the vast majority of people would agree.

But you can slide the line over to a point where people would be more split on the issue. E.g. say you're alone on a public beach playing your music, and one other person walks up to also enjoy the beach and who doesn't want to hear your music. Should you turn off the music? Is there a db level that's acceptable? Should the other person be required to find a quieter spot further down the coast? Or should you have to relocate to an empty spot?

[ericd]

Use headphones.

[ryan_j_naughton]

What about when it is a small group playing very low music such that it is quickly drowned out by the sound of the waves and the birds after 10 feet of distance. Headphones are actually impede their enjoyment of the situation there because (a) they cannot easily talk to one another with headphones in (b) they cannot enjoy the mixing sounds of nature and music. In many cases, folk music or classical music at low volume mixed with nature can be very enjoyable for people.

The problem here is you see no value to their enjoyment of these things and thus weight their enjoyment of such experience at zero while their interruption of your situation as an invasion. But if you force them to stop listening to music, you too are disrupting or invading their lives. That's the two-sided nature of any negative externality and attempts to internalize it. We all need to view this from the perspective of social costs and social benefits (i.e. a utilitarian perspective across all people's happiness). The result is almost always a compromise between the two extremes.

[acheron]

Correct. I also see no value to someone’s enjoyment of punching others in the face. I am perfectly fine disrupting and invading their lives to force them to stop punching others in the face.

[ryan_j_naughton]

I was drafting an extensive response to this, but I am on a time crunch with my work schedule. If you are honestly interested in understand optimal solutions to externalities and handling the problem of social costs, I would recommend checking out Ronald Coase's paper "The Problem of Social Cost" for which he won the Nobel prize.[1]

I will hopefully have time this weekend to draft my response.

The TLDR is that, their "right to noise" impedes upon your "right to silence" but also your "right to silence" impedes upon their "right to noise". Giving either side the complete right and banning the other side is effectively having one force its way upon the other. Forcing silence is by definition an externality as well -- it just happens to be the side you value. But there are better middle ground solutions where we balance the benefits of each side.

A very clean example of this is noise pollution next to an airport. If the houses next to the airport had a complete right to silence then we couldn't have airplanes. But if the airplanes had a complete right to noise, then quality of life around the airport would diminish way too much. Instead, the socially optimal solution lies in the middle. It is why zero pollution is actually NOT socially optimal as the costs of zero pollution are too high.

For each additional decibel produced, the marginal social costs increase at a faster rate. Thus, people whispering at the beach or playing very low music such that it is quickly drowned out by the sound of the waves and the birds after 5 feet of distance is fine.

A blanket ban on all music on the beach doesn't actually enable us to find the socially optimal levels in the same way as a blanket allowance of music on the beach. In the airport example, a blanket ban or allowance would prevent innovations in things like sound protective walls to internalize some (though never all) of the externality.

[1] https://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/file/coase-problem.pdf

[jyrkesh]

Without necessarily supporting it, there's a property-based take as well, in which you have complete rights over the air, water, light, noise, etc. within your private property boundaries. As a society, we've largely agreed that there are too many logistical challenges and societal benefits to take a hardline stance here, but you _could_ make a case that any unwanted pollution into your property (without agreed upon compensation, which do exist today in the form of easements) would be equivalent to trespassing.

[throwaway675309]

1. Silence is the default mode, Bluetooth speakers require a much more active effort so that's not really a fair comparison.

2. Birds like any animal or creature acts on instinct; there's not an active decision on their part to disrupt the environment with sound, again not a fair comparison.

3. The idea of requiring a maximum dB doesn't really work in the sound doesn't just instantly drop off like that so the physics aren't really going to work out.

[ryan_j_naughton]

> 1. Silence is the default mode, Bluetooth speakers require a much more active effort so that's not really a fair comparison.

That is a logical fallacy called "Default Bias." There is nothing inherent about something being the default that makes it better. We should never have created writing, architecture, or anything new because the status quo was better? The status quo can be objectively bad and sometimes the active effort to change it is warranted. Systemic racism is the default. Lack of access to clean water was the default. Woman as stay-at-home moms and excluded from the workforce was the default. Additionally, "much more active effort" is a nonsense statement. Everyone is engaging in effort to get value/happiness. It is not for you to judge how much effort I am willing to exert for my own happiness. It took a lot of effort for women to not be silences in the political system through the suffragette movement. Many people just over 100 years ago in the US were saying that the default role for women was silence. (Clarification, I am not saying that there is not a value to silence or that people playing music is not a harm -- there is a value to silence and people blasting music is a harm -- but it is not simply as black and white as you want to make it out to be on the social cost-benefit)

> 3. The idea of requiring a maximum dB doesn't really work in the sound doesn't just instantly drop off like that so the physics aren't really going to work out.

If there is other natural sounds that drown out the artificial sound, then the maximum dB rule is pretty effective. A beach with active waves and lots of birds is a great example of this. My level of noise is very relative to the ambient background noise.

[ryukafalz]

> If you mandate silence, you're forcing that silence on others just as much as them playing music is forcing that sound on you.

Except that personal audio sources are much more feasible than personal noise suppression, especially if you also want to be able to carry a conversation.

[ryan_j_naughton]

That is very true and a reason why an individual listening to music alone should bias towards a personal audio source to internal his sound externality. That is because there is virtually no additional benefit to the individual to play music loudly than to play it in headphones when it is just for his benefit.

But you are ignoring that a substantial percentage (if not majority) of music enjoyment situations are simultaneously social situations. Personal audio sources are objectively sub-optimal in that situation. Thus, there is a cost to those enjoying the music of using a personal audio source. Silent discos result in a total inability to talk to one another. If you are playing ambient music as you have conversations, then a personal audio source simply doesn't work.

[ryukafalz]

> Silent discos result in a total inability to talk to one another.

This largely depends on the headphones used. I can listen to ambient music on my bone conduction headphones while holding a conversation just fine. I might have to lower the volume to hear people around me well, but at least I can lower the volume.

I’m surprised that after all this time there isn’t really a standard for synchronizing music playback between a large number of nearby smartphones.

[c54]

This is a great response, you did a good job elucidating the deeper moral and interpersonal issue while also connecting with and understanding the reason the OP is upset and even suggesting real policy changes. Thanks!

[wyager]

I understand coaseian externality calculations very well; the optimal externality allocation is so far biased in one direction that my statement about destroying bluetooth speakers is an extremely accurate and low-computational-cost estimate of the actual optimum.

[BrandonWatson]

This will be a very underappreciated observation.