
Why Everything Is Dirtier (2011) - derefr
http://mises.org/daily/5267/
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mjn
The fact that trisodium phosphate (TSP) exists and is useful in laundry, but
no longer commercially allowed, is interesting. But the political angle of the
piece spends a lot of time on rhetoric that seems somewhat irrelevant. The
_substantive_ claim of this piece is that TSP is not a danger to the
environment and therefore should not be regulated. But strangely, only one
short paragraph of this lengthy piece actually makes that argument, and it
doesn't include any references or data. In fact it seems to actually admit in
passing that TSP _might_ be a danger to the environment, but claims that
alternative mitigation measures, like filtering wastewater, would be
successful (no evidence is produced for this claim). Yet the entire piece
rests on that analysis. If he doesn't establish that TSP is either safe, or
possible to make safe through less invasive regulation, then the tedious tale
of how he likes the effect of using TSP in his laundry, and how evil
government is on a crusade to ruin the joys of modern living for no good
reason (just because they hate modern living), falls apart.

~~~
001sky
This is an interesting article, but the author fails to outline the
_plausible_ rationale for regulation here. He argues that markets should make
individuals lives better through _better performance_. The issue here is the
negative side-effects (so-called-market-externalities), that mess up the
common spaces of society (ie, Environmental damage).

Since these externalities vary with _strategies for achieveing performance_ ,
its true that not all such performance stands by itself as otherwise equal.

His argument would be much more interesting if the case for externalities was
argued head on. For example, it might be the case (we would need to crunch the
data) that all of the xtra water/energy from using -less- cleaning power is
<worse> for the environment than figuring out a waste-water filtration system
for phostphate by-products.

But the article as it stands only raises the _possibility of analysis_. It
does not actually provide it. Either in framework, or in Data.
Unfortunately...

