[dotancohen]

Yes, exactly. That's fine - live and let live.

If somebody else values their health less - let them have pollution in their own back yard. If enough communities worldwide care about their health, then polluters will have to clean up their processes. But it's not for the residents of California to decide what happens in other jurisdictions.

[jjmarr]

The reason those countries take the "burden" on is because the USA became a global superpower by developing more industrial capacity than literally every other country in the decades prior to the World Wars.

They want to duplicate this success and displace the West, similar to how the USA displaced Europe during and after World War 2.

[iamnothere]

Do you not think it’s possible that there are many places where people do care about their health, but they are forced to allow pollution because the alternative is grinding poverty and eventual starvation?

Do you think the ship breakers in Bangladesh do it for fun?

This outsourcing of misery is the absolute worst feature of Western neoliberalism. You get a two for one, dumping misery on other countries because it’s cheaper, while outsourcing strategic concerns because they are “too dirty.” It’s NIMBYism taken to its logical conclusion.

[dotancohen]

  > they are forced to allow pollution because the alternative is grinding poverty and eventual starvation

If these people decide that pollution is preferable to starvation, why shouldn't we let them make that decision? Why should we force them into starvation?

[iamnothere]

The answer is to spread out all forms of production globally, so nations don’t lose their smaller local industries that may be less efficient than foreign alternatives. Foreign trade should fill gaps in local production, not kill local industry.

The mechanisms by which this can be accomplished are antitrust and careful application of trade barriers. The obsession with “free trade” has done damage to countries all across the world in order to benefit a small class connected to multinational industry. The short lived benefits came at a huge cost and countries are only just now seeing this.

Free trade/open borders libertarians have lost influence to nationalists because the former position is antithetical to maintaining a functional society. It’s possible to build “libertarianism in one country,” and the sooner that people wake up to that, the better. The alternative is some form of left or right despotism.