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- Newsgroups: misc.consumers
- Path: sparky!uunet!rde!gator!towers!mwhhlaw!jim
- From: jim@mwhhlaw (James P. Cavanaugh III)
- Subject: Re: Carburetors, gasoline and why I don't recycle
- Message-ID: <1992Sep4.182859.9720@mwhhlaw.uucp>
- Sender: jim@mwhhlaw.uucp
- Organization: Martin Wade Hartley & Hollingsworth
- Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 18:28:59 GMT
- Lines: 48
-
- The original poster reached the correct answer in not
- recycling, but for the wrong reason. The correct reason is that
- recycling is wasteful. (Yes, you read that correctly).
- 1. Everything is scarce. That is, there is not enough of
- anything in all creation to employ it for all possible uses.
- 2. Everything being scarce, there is a need to allocate all
- recources to the most efficient use. I sense no serious disagreement
- so far.
- 3. Is it better to allocate things based upon the prejudices
- and theories of a few people or get input from everyone? My vote is
- for the latter. (The former did not do so well in Eastern Europe over
- the last 40 years or so).
- 4. This allocation system is called: THE PRICE SYSTEM. This
- elegantly simple system considers what EVERYONE will or will not pay
- for EVERYTHING. The higher the price, the more value to the most
- people, relative to the scarcity of the resource. The system
- automatically channels resources to the most efficient uses. It also
- channels resources away from their least efficient uses. All that is
- necessary is that people act in their own self interest.
- 5. Rule: The least costly alternative, all things considered,
- is the most effecient. The most costly is the least efficient.
- 6. If civilization wanted recycled newspapers and plastic
- bottles, I would be able to sell them for some price. As it is, I
- cannot just give them away. I must either pay someone to come and get
- them or I must consume other resources to take them where wome kind
- soul will releive me of them.
- 7. Landfilling is, at present, much less costly to me and most
- other people.
- 8. Result: Landfilling is a more efficient use of ALL
- resources (as opposed to one or two isolated resources) than is
- recycling.
- A recent article in the Wall Street Journal told us that the
- USA is awash in landfill space. So much so, in fact, that the cost of
- landfilling is actually going down across the country.
- For those hard core environmentalists who are convinced that
- all landfilling is bad, I would suggest that they target an end to
- socialized trash collection and waste disposal. To the extent that
- consumers must pay for what they dispose of, the market works. To the
- extent that subsidized municipal trash collection artificially reduces
- the cost to consumers (prompting more consumption of landfill space
- than would naturally occour at market prices), then it artificially
- increases our use of landfilling at the expense of other methods of
- waste disposal.
- Once again, governmental intervention into the market is
- ignored as the cause of the problem (if there is a problem).
-
- Jim Cavanaugh
-
-