[sph]

In a perfect world where governments are competent, I would love a law stating that packaging must not last more than 10x times the shelf life of the product itself. Ham expires after 3 days? Put it in packaging that lasts no more than 30 days when left outside.

[peteradio]

Something that only lasts 30 days is going to partially start breaking down on day 1, I don't think people want that touching their meat.

[sph]

Just brainstorming here: anything temperature-based? Starts degrading above 10C for example. In your fridge it's no problem, chuck it out of the window like a savage and it will eventually degrade, unless you live on the poles.

Sounds like a good avenue for (organic) material science research.

[bluGill]

Does something like that exist? Can something like that exist? don't forget it needs to be food safe - including whatever it breaks down to, and whatever bacteria might grow on it - so long as the food itself is safe to eat.

Materials science has come a long way, but some problems still are not solved and it isn't always clear if the problem can be solved.

[BurningFrog]

Water ice fits the description, but it's hard to see how that would be practical.

[sph]

We need Ice 9: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine

[Projectiboga]

Ok 100, or 500, both way below the hundreds of years they now last.

[verisimi]

You know, this is simply not true.

I have found old buried plastic bags, from supermarkets - I remember the bag style from just a few years ago. The bags had severely degraded. When I tried to pick one up, it fell apart into small pieces, what integrity it had was gone. I've had the same experience with bags left in lofts - they degrade.

From my personal experience, I therefore assume that plastics already disintegrate after about 10 years, not 100 or 500 years, as you state.

[hombre_fatal]

You're just talking about a bag degrading into smaller and smaller plastic particles (microplastics) while the people above are talking about biodegrading into natural elements.

[verisimi]

You think I'm unfair in comparing a plastic bag to plastic packaging? If you follow this particular thread, they were talking about packaging.

[littlestymaar]

No, you're just confusing macroscopic level of degradation (the whole structure degrades) and microscopic degradation (molecules are being degraded).

The problem with plastic is that while the macroscopic structure can be altered in just a few years (depending on the conditions), the resulting parts aren't being metabolized away by micro-organisms and they remain as small plastic chunks, and then micro-plastic, then nano plastic, until they eventually break down entirely after decades, which is very unlike what happens with what we call biodegradable materials.

[logtempo]

Adjust the variable in consequence, we're talking about a fictional material. You're using a strawman there, just to be in contradiction.

[zik]

"Last no more than 30 days" with currently available degradable plastics just means it breaks down into microplastics really quickly and pollutes the environment with them.

[randomdata]

> In a perfect world where governments are competent

Yet the general consensus seems to be that in a perfect world governments are democratic, and therefore beholden to the will of the people, not authoritarian like you suggest. But if the will of the people wants to see a change in the use of plastic, they don't need it to flow through government, they can simply change their buying habits.

[AstralStorm]

You cannot buy something that doesn't exist or is otherwise unavailable.

And good packaging materials rarely make for good marketing.

[randomdata]

> You cannot buy something that doesn't exist or is otherwise unavailable.

Of course you can. Facilitating such a thing is Kickstarter's entire business model, as an example. You can also refrain from buying, communicating to other people that "I'm not buying your product unless you..." which gives really strong incentive to do things differently.

It's not like government is some kind of magical thing. It's just people. And in the case of democratic government, it's the very same people.

[littlestymaar]

> You can also refrain from buying

Day 56 after I refrained from buying food: I'm now dead.

[randomdata]

If only the people had chosen to enact a law that made it illegal to sell you food packaged in harmful packaging that you had already decided not to buy. I mean, you'd still be dead, but you'd have 56 days of satisfaction knowing that your voice was heard.

[comicjk]

We're talking about negative externalities, of which pollution is a perfect example: the effects of pollution are spread across everyone, no matter who emits it, so no one has an individual incentive to change their buying habits. It's a coordination problem, which can be solved democratically by the voters demanding an overall change in incentives (such as an appropriate tax on single-use non-biodegradable plastics).

[randomdata]

> We're talking about negative externalities

No. Not sure why would you would choose to reply before reading the comments, but since you have... we are quite explicitly talking about at least one consumer expecting food packaging to degrade within a similar period as the food contained within, with a suggestion that an authoritarian government in a perfect world would recognize that as a good idea and force it upon the people.

But the general consensus seems to be that, in a perfect world, governments are democratic – a notion you do not seem to discount.

Under a democracy, if he stands alone in that desire of short-life packaging, nothing is going to change. No business is going to cater to his unique want (well, maybe if he's exceedingly rich and is willing to pay disproportionally for it) and government is not going to act on the wishes of one person (that would be undemocratic). If a majority of people share in that desire, though, then businesses would face pressure to provide when consumers make that choice clear. Any business that fails to comply will suffer the consequences of lost profits. The people can enact a law that prevents themselves from buying the product they already don't want to buy, but that doesn't accomplish anything. They've already decided they don't want to buy it!

Democratic government is useful for cleaning up minority groups who try to act against the wishes of the majority, but in this particular case you have not even made clear why the minority would be stuck on buying 'forever' packaging or what businesses would gain from catering to the minority. People don't care about food packaging that much. Once the majority are buying short-life packaging, the small number of people who want to watch the world burn will be priced out of the market anyway. As such, there is no need for government. The people can just do it...

...and if they don't, that's the end of it. Magic isn't going to swoop in and save the day. The democratic government is nothing other than the very same people who have already decided that, in this scenario, they don't want to do anything.

But maybe what you're really struggling to say is that democracy wouldn't be found in a perfect world? Fair enough, but I'm still not sure that's the general consensus.

[littlestymaar]

> they can simply change their buying habits.

Sure. And where am I supposed to find affordable food not wrapped in plastic? Ideally in my city and not 100kms away, and not 10 times the price. And now that you're at it, please tell me where I can buy food that is not already polluted by microplastics?

This kind of argument is a just a “blaming the victim” kind of reasoning.

[randomdata]

> And where am I supposed to find affordable food not wrapped in plastic?

The same place you expect to find it when you outlaw food wrapped in plastic. It's not going to disappear until people stop buying it. You can create a law to remind you to not buy food wrapped in plastic, or you can just not buy food wrapped in plastic. So long as the population is on board with the idea of not buying food wrapped in plastic, there is absolutely no difference.

If you are suggesting that the population isn't on board and everyone other than you is quite happy to keep buying food wrapped in plastic then a democratic government would never create such a law in the first place, rendering the entire discussion moot. That would not be in alignment with the will of the people. Democracy does not serve individual whims.

[littlestymaar]

> The same place you expect to find it when you outlaw food wrapped in plastic. It's not going to disappear until people stop buying it.

People aren't going to stop buying it as long as it's the only option!

> You can create a law to remind you to not buy food wrapped in plastic,

It's not about reminding you not to buy, it's about banning people from selling. You know, as they already do for dangerous stuff like Kinder Suprise in the US…

> or you can just not buy food wrapped in plastic.

You cannot because nobody is selling it.

> If you're suggesting that the population isn't on board, then a democratic government would never create such a law in the first place. It would not be the will of the people.

The population is on board, but population-wide synchronization don't happen for free you know. Here's a fun example: here in Europe the majority of people is against daylight saving time. Yet there is one. That's stupid you'd say, because they could actually collectively decide not to change their clocks' time and call it a day, DST is gone. But in fact, doing so would require an enormous amount of coordination, and this kind of amount of coordination is the exact reason why we've created the State in the first place! And it's actually its only power! (armed force: literally started as just a well synchronized militia, same for law enforcement, collecting taxes: just make sure to get a big enough group to raid the house of the people who refuse to pay, etc.)

[randomdata]

> People aren't going to stop buying it as long as it's the only option!

Then that's it. Game over. Until buyers stop buying what's already out there, vendors don't have an avenue to sell any kind of replacement. Fortunately, your view is quite disconnected from reality. In the real world people talk, negotiate, and work to satisfy the buyer's wants and needs.

> It's not about reminding you not to buy, it's about banning people from selling. You know, as they already do for dangerous stuff like Kinder Suprise in the US…

Not to mention illicit drugs. They, of course, straight up vanished from the US as soon as it became illegal to sell them. Oh wait.

Let's be real: If someone is buying, there will be someone ready to sell. The law ultimately has to compel the buyer to back away. You can say the onus is on the seller, but you're just looking at the opposite side of the same coin.

> Yet there is one.

Meaning that if I decide to keep my clocks on a constant schedule it's straight to jail for me? If not, how does that relate to a law that would penalize you if you sell (or buy) plastic-wrapped food? In this part of the world, at least, if you want to ignore DST, go nuts. DST only exists because the people just do it, not because there is some legal threat that keeps them on the straight and narrow.

> and this kind of amount of coordination is the exact reason why we've created the State in the first place!

If the state is democratic, the people have to coordinate first. Without such coordination, there is no way for democracy to take place. Once the people have coordinated their will, they can just do it. Like you point out with DST – at least to the extent of its existence in my part of the world – you don't need a law to force people to do what they've already decided to do. They can just do it. Simple as that.

Such laws are useful for keeping the minority dissenters in line with the will of the majority, but in this case once the majority has stopped buying plastic-wrapped food, it is highly unlikely there will be a compelling business case to serve the small handful of people who want to see the world burn. I mean, even if you don't give a rat's ass about the environment, are you really going to go well out of your way to buy plastic-wrapped food? Not likely. You're just going to buy the food the same way everyone else is. It will be cheaper and much, much, much more convenient.

The previous commenter's idea of an authoritative higher power forcing the people to bend to his will is great and all, but doesn't work with democracy. If a perfect world sees that government be a democracy, as the prevailing consensus seems to indicate, then that idea is out the window in said perfect world.

[littlestymaar]

> Then that's it. Game over. Until buyers stop buying what's already out there, vendors don't have an avenue to sell anything else.

That's pretty fascinating to see that you're reading literally everything backward, like not only the real world around you but even what I'm writing! I'm talking about the fact that nobody is offering the possibility to buy stuff that's not wrapped (and for legit business reasons, it's much easier on their supply-chain management to do so this way), and you're interpreting as if the problem was on the demand side.

And everything is in the same vein: I'm talking about a situation where the supply side is definitely not providing what the consumer want, at least a significant fraction of the population, and you insist in arguing as if plastic packaging was driven by consumer demand: it is not it's cost saving and supply chain ease of use on the supply side, not demand. And that's why you can't find any: why would a business bother doing what the customer want when they can get away with costs savings because customers have nowhere to go.

> Meaning that if I decide to keep my clocks on a constant schedule, it's straight to jail for me?

Chances are that you'll straight up lose your job after a couple days. Then you'll see how your freedom not to change your clock time is respected when you're being evicted because you could not pay your rents due to lack of revenue. By the way that's a good illustration of the difference between freedom in a vacuum, and the actual exercise of freedom in a socially interconnected world where your agency is in fact very constrained by material factors.

> If the state is democratic, the people have to coordinate first. Without such coordination, there is no way for democracy to take place.

Fascinatingly steady with backward-driven thinking indeed! You can't have democracy if you don't have a state entity that's able to run the elections and enforce them. The democratic character of the state comes later, once the people already in charge have been confirmed through the election, or when they decided to step down if they lose. Coordination comes from the state, which can then replicate itself thanks to this coordination. No state started with an election, at the very beginning was always somebody getting power through other means (be it a foreign invader, a previously ruling king, or a group of insurrectionist).

> Laws are useful for keeping the minority dissenters in line with the will of the majority, but in this case once the majority has stopped buying plastic-wrapped food, it is highly unlikely there will be a compelling business case to serve the small handful of people who want to see the world burn.

But without enforcement, nobody will ever be able to buy such food, because nobody has an incentive to sell it in the first place. It's cheaper to sell plastic wrapped food, and because the externalities come for free, the business isn't paying the cost of their behavior. Buyers, or at least a significant fraction of it, realize the cost, but they don't have any leverage on the business because there's nowhere to go. The same way I'm not buying a smartphone that's being manufactured in my country, because there isn't any.

> Laws are useful for keeping the minority dissenters in line with the will of the majority

Not only. Laws are also setting the state budget, the tax levels or food and drugs safety standards, your interpretation of what law is supposed to do is indeed very limited in comparison to what it actually is in the real world.

> he previous commenter's idea of a higher power forcing the people to bend to his will is great and all, but doesn't work with democracy.

No, there's no non-democratic high power in charge up there, it's just a matter of democratic state intervening to fix a market imperfection (negative externalities), but in your now infamous skill to misinterpret everything, you managed somehow invented some authoritarian power in the discussion. Well done.

Maybe you could try reading what other people are writing twice before commenting, or maybe three or four times, just to be sure you're not making things up in your head, because that's a recurring theme at that point.

Edit: oh I found this gem in another comment of yours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39783570)

Not sure why would you would choose to reply before reading the comments

The irony is absolutely delicious.