[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.