[joe_the_user]

What makes you think that what's cost effective (in terms of money, of course) for a given company involves optimally conserving resources?

The obvious counter-example is that polluting is very cost-effective in an unregulated environment there are others - such as this.

[quotemstr]

> What makes you think that what's cost effective...involves optimally conserving resources

The words "cost" and "effective "perhaps?

> Polluting

Pollution is an economic externality. If I buy a shift and throw it out unworn, I've wasted only my own resources. (I'm paying for the landfill of course.)

You could argue that my wasting that shirt hurt you because I could have instead spent those resources on productive activity that benefits you, and therefore I had a duty to keep it -- but that's just communism with extra steps.

[Atreiden]

Are you under the impression that the planet has effectively infinite carrying capacity and ability to support an "optimal market" indefinitely?

[quotemstr]

I am of the opinion that markets and prices, not EU regulators, should tell us where scarcity is. We're bad at optimizing manually for the same reason we're bad at guessing where program hotspots are. The market is a profiler.

[mulmen]

Do you honestly believe this? Where did you study economics? This regulation is not about scarcity. It is about over abundance.

Overproduction is a failure mode in capitalist systems. The market can’t correct for this because negative externalities do not feed back into supply or demand.

[quotemstr]

Actors in a capitalist system have an incentive to maximize profit. How is it profit-maximizing to pay to produce an item and throw it away unsold?

> negative externalities do not feed back into supply or demand.

What is the unaccounted externality? Clothing makers pay for material inputs and labor inputs. They pay for transportation. If they discard goods, they pay for more transportation and for the landfill. What specific externality is unaccounted?

[mulmen]

The unaccounted externality is the wasted energy to create a thing and destroy it without ever using it.

This may be profit maximizing because it maintains the exclusivity of the brand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

[mulmen]

What if I dump toxic industrial waste in the river upstream of your house? I pay for access to the river. Does that hurt you?