
Recycling Eyeglasses Is a Waste of Money - mbgaxyz
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-05-03/recycling-eyeglasses-is-a-feel-good-waste-of-money
======
Animats
There are several competing efforts to produce low-cost eyeglasses. Focus On
Vision has adjustable eyeglasses.[1] Project Congo has some kind of eyeglass-
making kit.[2] Briefcase-sized eyeglass kits used to be popular in India. They
contained round frames and several hundred round lenses. The idea is that
glasses have three parameters - spherical curvature, elliptical curvature, and
axis of the ellipse. The usual options for the first two are only about
100-200 lenses. With a round lens, you can set the axis in any direction.
There's a little notching tool in the kit, and once you have the axis set, the
plastic lens is notched, then snapped into the frame, where it locks.

Not that they really cost much. The manufacturing cost of eyeglasses is about
$2. The insane price of frames comes from a monopoly by Luxottica, which owns
most of the retail outlets in malls in the US.

[1] [http://www.focus-on-vision.org/](http://www.focus-on-vision.org/) [2]
[http://projectcongo.org/photocollections/eyeglassmaking.html](http://projectcongo.org/photocollections/eyeglassmaking.html)

~~~
dkksfj
>The insane price of frames comes from a monopoly by Luxottica, which owns
most of the retail outlets in malls in the US.

How is owning most of the retail outlets in malls a monopoly?

~~~
threatofrain
Luxottica owns many things, but the most important thing any company can own
are distribution channels. Then you can just refuse to sell your competitor's
goods.

~~~
Animats
That's how they took over Oakley. They cut off their distribution channels.
Luxottica took over Sunglass Hut and pushed out Oakley. Oakley had to sell out
to Luxottica. Then the prices for Oakley went way up.

Luxottica did something similar with Ray-Ban. Their products used to sell for
around $19 in gas stations. After the Luxottica takeover, they became a
"luxury" brand, with prices from $129 to $300.

------
jlg23
Questions unfortunately not answered by the article:

a) Who profits from this recycling program? How many people get a western
salary to coordinate all this?

b) Following from (a), how many optometrists and lens makers could make a
living in Cambodia if people just put $1 in a collection box each time they'd
dump their used glasses in a box?

This suspiciously sounds like the "2nd hand clothes for Africa" scam that only
profits the collectors of those in western countries and destroys local
tailors' businesses in the target market.

~~~
WalterBright
> scam

I'm glad someone makes money off of my old clothes rather than they go in the
trash.

> destroys local tailors' businesses

That's a variation on the broken window fallacy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window)

~~~
jlg23
> I'm glad someone makes money off of my old clothes rather than they go in
> the trash.

I don't have a problem with that per se, only that it happens under the
pretense of charity and that the model exploits economic inequality in a
globalized world on the expense of those the "charity" claims to help.

> That's a variation on the broken window fallacy.

I fail to see the connection because the broken window fallacy is about a
coherent economic system, not about a global economy where one can make a
profit by exploiting inequalities. The proverb says: Give a man a fish and you
feed him for the day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Following that idea, I am much more for transfer of knowledge than for
transfer of goods. And in extension also for sourcing urgently required
products locally (and if required donating to build the required industry)
than just sending products.

One does not have to see that in any ideological way: Just publish all
numbers, show me that it's more cost-effective to send assembled products to a
place and I won't object. But the article just showed that we again failed to
run the numbers, thereby _wasting_ money and potentially harming the local
economy in the target country.

~~~
WalterBright
By sheltering tailors, everyone else in the economy pays a higher price and is
thereby worse off. It's a net loss. Might as well go around smashing windows
so the local glaziers can make money.

------
danieltillett
This goes for most (almost all) recycling programs.

Recycling programs are a worse than a waste of money since you are using up
some of people’s limited support for environmental causes. This would not
matter if we did not have some really huge, long term problems that we need to
deal with that we are not doing enough about.

~~~
sliverstorm
What would you mark as the worthwhile ones?

Personally I place high value on raw material recycling. Even if it's more
expensive monetarily, so long as it uses less resources it seems worth it to
me.

 _Aluminum cans are currently recycled more than any other beverage container
in the U.S, which is good for business and the environment, says the Aluminum
Association, because making a can from recycled aluminum saves not only
aluminum but 92 percent of the energy required to make a new can_

~~~
douche
Aluminum (and steel) is one of the very few things that is in any way
worthwhile to recycle. Most of the things that we are urged to recycle (glass,
plastics, paper, cardboard, etc) are cheaper and easier to make new from the
abundant raw materials.

~~~
ams6110
Corrugated cardboard is a net benefit to recycle, I've heard. Otherwise you
are correct. It's just feel-good. Most of what you drop off at recycling
centers is just trucked to landfills after it's out of your sight.

~~~
titzer
> Most of what you drop off at recycling centers is just trucked to landfills
> after it's out of your sight.

This is definitely not true in Germany. And for glass bottle recycling, most
bottles are washed and reused up to 50 times before being melted down.

------
WalterBright
> The price of the physical glasses is minor -- only $1.88 for a new pair of
> ready-made spectacles.

Sigh. Why is it I can't get a pair of prescription glasses for under $500?

~~~
brianwawok
Monopolies. Why don't we have an eyeglass startup?

~~~
jonlucc
I think that's Warby Parker. They're few years in now, but their low-cost
acetate frames are pretty much the norm.

------
Spooky23
I think these programs are a legacy of a past era where the costs of
manufacturing glasses was relatively high.

But the suggestion that cheap glasses should be just put in racks is
simplistic. Getting people sort of okay glasses isn't acceptable. My vision is
asymmetrical, and using the same power lenses would leave me with a
debilitating headache.

There should be a few standard cheap lens patterns so you can mix and match.

------
13of40
I think I read somewhere that it used to be standard practice to go to the eye
doctor (or glasses-monger?) and just try on pairs until you found one that
worked, rather than getting a laser-precise eye exam. At the time I thought it
was a terrible, backwards idea, but it makes sense in this context. Getting an
affordable, almost-fit pair of glasses is probably a lot better than no
glasses at all.

~~~
Rinum
That's pretty much what I did. I bought a super cheap pair (0.5 SPH) at $5,
split the lenses and placed them over each other until what I saw at a
distance was clear enough to read. I added up the SPH (they were 0.5 lenses, I
ended up overlaying 4 pieces - so 2.0 total) and bought the resulting glasses.
That was about 2 or 3 years ago and those glasses are still perfect for me.

~~~
13of40
I could probably do the same, but I'm blessed with one eye that's twice as
myopic as the other, so I'd have do some lens swapping.

------
acoravos
This study is old, but glad it's getting published on major media sources.

The cost of distributing the glasses and reaching rural locations is often
more challenging than the cost of the glasses itself. One of the leading
companies distributing low-cost eye glasses is VisionSpring
(www.visionspring.org), and they are also main partner for Warby Parker
([https://www.warbyparker.com/buy-a-pair-give-a-
pair](https://www.warbyparker.com/buy-a-pair-give-a-pair)).

VS is making radically affordable quality glasses ubiquitous in frontier and
emerging markets. Their customers earn less than $4 per day and are highly
price sensitive. They sell to seed markets, are accountable for delivering on
a value proposition, and gain consumer commitment for a product customers will
need for the rest of their lifetime.

~~~
throwaway6436
You could have warned of an incoming message from our sponsors.

------
Lagged2Death
Either way it's done, providing glasses to people who can't pay for them is a
charitable act, and humans are not very rational about charitable acts.

Given two choices:

1) Give $5 to a program that provides brand new custom prescribed eyeglasses
to people who need them but cannot buy them

2) Give $10 to a program that provides shitty, old, out-of-date, recycled
eyeglasses of questionable prescription to people who need them but cannot buy
them

Many people will respond more supportively to #2 and see #1 as fundamentally
unfair ("I worked hard to earn the money for _my_ glasses, why should a needy
person have something just as good as mine? They should count themselves lucky
to have anything at all!"). Many people see it as a moral imperative that the
poor should suffer.

------
dahart
This argument seems really weird to me. It's a "waste" compared to what? If
the alternative is glasses going in the garbage or plastic recycling to
recover nothing more than raw materials, then 7% of donations surviving the
donation process seems like a massive win.

~~~
wtbob
That doesn't make sense: spending $24 to retrieve 75¢ of materials is a
massive _loss_ , not a win.

Throwing stuff away isn't a problem (the world's huge; besides, today's
landfills will be a future generation's mines); throwing recyclable stuff away
isn't a problem (why, every day you excrete water which you could distil &
drink — at a ridiculous cost); throwing away stuff which could be recycled or
reused profitably _is_ a problem.

------
holri
But not a waste of resources and CO2.

------
throwaway_exer
I read the complete article, and I'm kind of skeptical of the conclusions.

Having travelled in Asia, for example, they have the skill and parts to repair
eyeglasses and cut lenses to old frames. (In fact, I get my glasses repaired
in Manila since the eyeglass cartel in the USA refuses to do major repairs.
I've certainly tried in Silicon Valley multiple times.)

Also, eyeglass cases are considered to be valuable and resold for $1 - $5
each.

And finally, somebody with a suitcase could haul 100 - 200 frames on their
next trip at no cost.

I think if they were willing to do minor repairs and record the measurements
in a database, donations could be a much more efficient charity.

~~~
wvenable
At a $1.88 to make a pair of glasses, I fail to see how your economics works.
Minor repairs, databases, etc all cost more than that for a potentially
inferior product.

------
MichaelBurge
I would've expected people to throw their glasses into a recycling bin, where
it's melted down and made into beer bottles.

------
redthrow
Recycling is Garbage (1996)

[http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-
garb...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html)

~~~
dahart
Wow, hard to believe this was actually linked to. That opinion article article
was thoroughly debunked two decades ago, yet somehow it's still doing damage.

Debunking the Myths of the “Anti-Recyclers”
[http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/174_Sep96.pdf](http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/174_Sep96.pdf)

Recycling is not garbage - MIT technology review 1997
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400100/recycling-is-
not-g...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400100/recycling-is-not-garbage/)

~~~
redthrow
Think Globally, Act Irrationally: Recycling

[http://econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungerrecycling.htm...](http://econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungerrecycling.html)

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/07/munger_on_recyc.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/07/munger_on_recyc.html)

~~~
dahart
Munger makes the same mistake that Tierney does by focusing on something
that's easy to attack, and sounds good on the face, but is in fact nearly
irrelevant to the discussion.

Tierney's argument that it takes energy to recycle is completely moot; the
point isn't energy at all, the point is to recover materials & to slow
production and consumption of wasteful single use containers. Combine that
with our ability to use abundant and unending solar power, and you can see
that Tierney's assumption that energy is part of the economy of recycling is a
straw man and doesn't stand up to reason or reality.

Munger's entire argument is that recycling is expensive, there's a cost to
recycling. Like Tierney, this is a misdirection. Cost is not the point of
recycling. He's right, there's a cost, but he doesn't compare it to anything.
What's the alternative to recycling, and how much does that cost? There's a
cost to landfills too -- how much does it cost to throw away? Munger ignores
the long term costs of not recycling. Running out of resources is going to be
a lot more expensive than recycling. The byproducts of plastic production are
toxic, and historically there have been some plastic factories that made
workers fatally sick. Munger didn't try to factor in the health care costs of
people who work in or live near factories. He hasn't attempted to consider the
heavy cost of pollution. He doesn't calculate the costs of transporting
garbage. He hasn't attempted to calculate the environmental costs of not
recycling at all -- and this is the entire point of recycling, the entire
basis upon which the economics of recycling is evaluated. The recycling
movement is not even remotely concerned about the transaction price of
recycling a bottle, it's concerned with slowing our frivolous and wasteful use
of this planet's finite and valuable resources on one time deliveries of 12
ounces of Coke.

There's a lot of information on the many large costs of not recycling that
Munger is deliberately ignoring, here's just one:
[http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/dangers-
of-p...](http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/dangers-of-plastic)

Thinking about cost alone is a persuasion strategy, it's a way to manipulate
the argument and the audience, it's a way to put something seemingly tactile
on the perceived downsides of recycling. It's a way to convince you that
you're being cheated out of money -- but he's the one trying to trick you --
don't let it work on you so easily!

If nothing else, if I haven't convinced you at all, at least Google all the
articles you can on the critiques of Teirney and Munger, read them all and try
to rebut them yourself.

~~~
redthrow
> the point is to recover materials & to slow production and consumption of
> wasteful single use containers

You are simply assuming throwing single use containers in landfill is more
wasteful than recycling.

> our ability to use abundant and unending solar power

Yeah, that's why electricity is free, right? Also by this logic you can
equally argue that recycling is pointless because in the future we can use
robots (which run on free energy 24/7) to go through landfills to recover
useful resources.

> Munger's entire argument is that recycling is expensive, there's a cost to
> recycling

Way to simplify the opponent's position. Munger says recycling things like
aluminium would probably make sense.

He's accusing recycling proponents of not calculating the long term cost of
recycling (which you demonstrated), which in many cases would be higher than
simply throwing garbage away in landfill.

 _Munger argues that recycling can save resources, of course, but it can also
require more resources than production from scratch. Some curbside recycling,
for example, makes sense, while other forms (such as green glass) may be akin
to a form of religious expression rather than a wise policy that is
environmentally productive._

Why I'm Not an Environmentalist

[http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPol/EnviroPhil...](http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPol/EnviroPhilo/WhyNotEnviro.pdf)

~~~
dahart
Whew, that essay is its very own brand of crazy. It seems both freightened and
mean spirited through and through. I feel really bad for you if recycling and
environmentalism scares you as much as it appears to scare Steven Landsburg.

I know why are you _are_ an environmentalist: because you breathe air and
drink water, just like I do. I'd guess you are just as interested in those
things being non-toxic as I am. I'd guess you're just as interested in your
grandchildren and humanity finding abundant clean air and water in the future
as I am. I could be wrong about these things since I don't know you, but I'd
still be willing to bet money that you enjoy being outdoors sometimes.

> Yeah, that's why electricity is free, right? Also by this logic

What a nice straw man you have there. You're trying to change the subject,
just like Tierney and Munger did. I was talking about energy, not about cost.
I claim energy is abundant, not free. Tierney argued against recycling by
claiming that recycling uses more energy than new production. Tierney is
pretending to miss the point of recycling completely. He's fully aware that
debating the relative energy consumption of recycling vs new products has
nothing to do with why people recycle, and he's fully aware that even if
recycling uses lots of energy, even if recycling wastes tons of energy, there
are still compelling reasons to recycle.

Petroleum is limited, while neither energy nor money are limited. Arguing over
the percentages of waste of energy & cost is arguing over margins of the two
things that won't run out. The earth and it's oil, on the other hand, are
finite, and we're starting to see their limits. You can choose to ignore that,
if you want, and continue to argue over the margins of the unlimited
resources.

Just curious, but why are you using the weak political opines and outright
rants of non-expert journalists who have agendas to argue economic and
scientific issues, when there are actual economists and scientists who are
writing about these things? I'm sure there are real scientists who have good
arguments against recycling, if what you really want is to oppose recycling.

~~~
redthrow
> that essay is its very own brand of crazy. It seems both freightened and
> mean spirited through and through.

You don't seem to have any rebuttal to the actual content of the essay. As a
professional economist Landsburg is very open to different preferences people
have. He's only asking for the same kind of open-mindedness in return by
environmentalists (e.g. not calling anyone who doesn't agree with their dogma
"crazy" and respecting those who don't participate in their quasi-religious
rituals).

> I know why are you are an environmentalist: because you breathe air and
> drink water, just like I do. I'd guess you are just as interested in those
> things being non-toxic as I am. [...]

This doesn't make me a kind of naive environmentalists as described in
Landsburg's essay.

> [...] even if recycling wastes tons of energy, there are still compelling
> reasons to recycle.

So far you cited none that's compelling. The issue of pollution from landfill
sites is a concern but you don't talk about (a) how big the impact is
(probably different in different landfill facilities) and (b) why people's
effort to recycle can be an effective solution (my hunch is it's not very
effective). Also we are far from running out of fossil fuels anytime soon so
that's not a compelling reason either.

I understand that you personally prefer recycling though (for
religious/aesthetic reasons). I respect your choice.

> why are you using the weak political opines and outright rants of non-expert
> journalists who have agendas to argue economic and scientific issues [...]

I cited Steven Landsburg, Mike Munger, and Russ Roberts who are all
professional economists. Your 2 links (one from an environmental advocacy
group) are virtually identical in their content written by the same 2 authors
and only one of them is an "economic analyst" who doesn't seem to have
published any academic paper in the field of economics (he's still entitled to
his view but I don't think he made a good case for recycling in the article).

~~~
dahart
> You don't seem to have any rebuttal to the actual content of the essay.

What would you like to argue about? There's nothing for me to rebut. Steven's
experience is his own, he's free to interpret the world however he wants. If
he's scared of environmentalism and wants to rant about it, that's his choice.
He forfeits any reasonable discussion automatically by comparing a general
desire to have clean air and water with religious fundamentalism. It's an ad
hominem that doesn't deserve any response.

> This doesn't make me a kind of naive environmentalists as described in
> Landsburg's essay.

Sounds like we're getting somewhere now. Let's talk about the good
environmentalists like you, not the naive ones. What makes you a better
environmentalist than the kind Landsburg talks about? What is your improved
plan for keeping the air and water clean and available forever, without
needing to recycle? Will your plan be cost and energy effective?

I didn't see Landsburg drawing a line between naive environmentalists and
other kinds, did I miss something? He seemed to draw a blanket conclusion that
all environmentalism is nothing more than faith. I know you don't agree with
that.

> I understand that you personally prefer recycling though (for
> religious/aesthetic reasons). I respect your choice.

I haven't stated a preference for recycling, nor given any religious or
aesthetic reasons for said preference, so I'm not convinced you understand.
Calling it religious is pretty disrespectful, which you already know. But you
don't know me, nor my preferences on recycling, so all I can do is return the
favor and say I respect your choices too.

~~~
redthrow
> He forfeits any reasonable discussion automatically by comparing a general
> desire to have clean air and water with religious fundamentalism

This doesn't seem like a fair characterisation of his position. Which part of
his essay did he compare people who desire clean air/water with religious
fundamentalists? He didn't, right?

> Let's talk about the good environmentalists like you, not the naive ones

I don't consider myself an environmentalist, but I think there are some things
that can be done to improve the environment.

For example, one of the biggest environmental problems poor people in poor
countries have is indoor air pollution, and the use of cheap and plentiful
fossil fuels is one solution there.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTdEoHklmE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTdEoHklmE)

Fossil fuels are essential to fight poverty too, as people in China
demonstrated.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v15q6M_z13Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v15q6M_z13Q)

In developed countries, loosening zoning and immigration laws and encourage
development in big cities would be great for the environment too.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/glaeser-triumph-
of...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/glaeser-triumph-of-the-city-
excerpt/)

Cambridge physicist David MacKay recommends some individual actions to save
energy (e.g. not flying/driving often) for those who are interested in taking
personal actions.

[http://www.withouthotair.com/c29/page_229.shtml](http://www.withouthotair.com/c29/page_229.shtml)

Recycling isn't one of them, but not buying clutter in the first place would
be a good thing to do (which people are already financially incentivized to
do).

I'm interested in progressive consumption tax though, as explained by Cornell
economist Robert Frank. I want to see some experimentation done in this area.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/the_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/the_progressive_consumption_tax_a_win_win_solution_for_reducing_american_economic_inequality_.html)

~~~
dahart
> I don't consider myself an environmentalist, but I think there are some
> things that can be done to improve the environment.

Then you are an environmentalist. It's hard not to be one, if you're a human
and want to live.

> not buying clutter in the first place would be a good thing to do

Yes!!

> I'm interested in progressive consumption tax

Me too!

> poor people in poor countries have is indoor air pollution, and the use of
> cheap and plentiful fossil fuels is one solution there. [...] Fossil fuels
> are essential to fight poverty too

I can agree that fossil fuels may be good solutions to the immediate problems
of today like poverty and indoor pollution. But I see from your wording you
already understand, as I do, that fossil fuels are only one option, and may
not be the ideal solution in the future. G7 countries are now setting goals to
reduce dependance on fossil fuels. Why? Is their belief in cleaner energy a
religious cause with only faith and no evidence? No, there are both
environmental and economic reasons for the US to start avoiding fossil fuels.

> This doesn't seem like a fair characterisation of his position. Which part
> of his essay did he compare people who desire clean air/water with religious
> fundamentalists? He didn't, right?

Wrong. And it's not just me, The American Enterprise Institute characterized
this article of Landsburg's explicitly as "Why naive environmentalism is like
religious fundamentalism", which is accurate since that's exactly what
Landsburg said.

[http://www.aei.org/publication/why-naive-environmentalism-
is...](http://www.aei.org/publication/why-naive-environmentalism-is-like-
religious-fundamentalism/)

Just a few direct quotes from Landsburg:

"We consider environmentalism a form of mass hysteria akin to Islamic
fundamentalism or the War on Drugs."

"The naive environmentalism of my daughter's preschool is a force-fed
potpourri of myth, superstition, and ritual that has much in common with the
least reputable varieties of religious Fundamentalism."

"The underlying need to sacrifice, and to compel others to sacrifice, is a
fundamentally religious impulse."

That point was stated explicitly multiple times, and is more or less the
entire thrust of this divisive, mean spirited, and self-righteous rant from
beginning to end. Are you reading the same thing I'm reading? You yourself
adopted and used the term "religious" to describe recycling already in this
thread, by what leaps of logic are you suddenly claiming to be not aware of
this?

Forget the fundamentalist angle, just calling it "religious" is an attempt to
discredit the environmental position as lacking any evidence or logical
thought. Calling someone's reasons religious, without understanding them and
when they wouldn't describe them that way is not just disrespectful, it's
intentionally ignorant, it's trying to not understand and trying to disagree,
self-righteously so. It's too bad Landsburg doesn't recognize the deep
hypocrisy of his own self-righteousness, nor the fact that like you and I, he
does actually believe that clean air and clean water being available now and
to future generations is a mission worth fighting for. He, like you, is an
environmentalist.

You might think Landsburg's writing sounds great, and that it makes a good
reference in a discussion like this, but he said a lot of disrespectful things
about a vague unspecified group of people without a single piece of evidence.
He only states that their position is unreasonable and zealous, but hasn't
shown that even once, nor clarified who he's even talking about. This paper is
really weak, you are doing a much better job explaining your views on
recycling than Landsburg did explaining his. You'd certainly make your points
quicker and more agreeably if you left his writing out and spoke for yourself
instead.

~~~
redthrow
Landsburg says it's _naive_ environmentalists that are similar to religious
fundamentalists (which I fully agree). Those are the kind of people who don't
care about e.g. the cost-benefit analysis of recycling and simply believe
recycling is A Right Thing To Do and attack people who don't share their view.

I don't want to call myself an environmentalist for the simple reason that I
want to distance myself from those naive environmentalists (I view these
people very negatively).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mojiBJ55G2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mojiBJ55G2g)

But you are right that economists (and people who apply economic thinking to
policy matters) are usually the best kind of environmentalists. I don't think
we need a separate category called "environmentalists". We need people who can
do calm and cold cost-benefit analysis of given policies (environmental or
otherwise), which most people who identify as "environmentalists" can't seem
to do.

~~~
dahart
> Landsburg says it's _naive_ environmentalists that are similar to religious
> fundamentalists (which I fully agree).

Well, I suppose good luck to you both in your quest to sway any reasonable
people, if you want to carry on with your ad hominem attacks. The comparison
is flat-out inaccurate, and you know it. But worse, it's attempting to
escalate the disagreement rather than find common ground.

As far as I can tell, you and Landsburg are both reacting to people acting
self-righteously. Yeah, it happens. It happens everywhere in all subject
matters and all corners of the earth. Smart people do it, and dumb people do
it. Religious people do it, and secular people do it. It's fairly human for
someone who is certain they are right to act self-righteously and attempt to
demean the opposition with less than pure logic and evidence. I can point out
examples of where both you and I have said self-righteous things in this
thread. I will refrain from comparing you or me to Islamic fundamentalists,
you're welcome, but I'm happy to identify the double-standard you've
established for yourself.

Wouldn't it be better to identify as the kind of environmentalist you want to
see other people being, and give it a better name, than to exaggerate your way
to negativity and hate?

Steven didn't make a clear distinction between naive environmentalists and
other kinds, didn't define what "naive" means, and did not qualify every
intentionally inflammatory reference to religious environmentalism with the
word "naive". Both the title and the very first quote I cited above fail to
qualify with "naive", they are talking fairly unambiguously about all
environmentalists. The implication was made absolutely and repeatedly clear
that he's saying environmentalism is naive, not that there's a slice of
environmentalism that is rational and right. It sounds to me like you don't
fully agree with what he's saying.

> But you are right that economists are usually the best kind of
> environmentalists. We need people who can do calm and cold cost-benefit
> analysis of given policies (environmental or otherwise)

I appreciate the attempt to bridge our gap. I do agree that considering the
larger benefits of environmental policy is a good idea. I disagree that
economists are the "best" environmentalists - I'm not convinced economics is
the best framework for evaluating the benefits of environmental policy.

[http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/323/](http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/323/)

> which most people who identify as "environmentalists" can't seem to do.

Do you want to provide some evidence for this claim? One of the problems with
your argument, fueled by Landsburg, is you're providing only random amateurs
as evidence against, and limiting to only the ones acting badly. You're happy
to provide a line of professionals to support you, but you don't seem to be
seeking out the professional contrary position. How about debating the people
who've established some of the current recycling policy, rather than worrying
about what people in a parade think when they're provoked?

~~~
redthrow
> Steven didn't make a clear distinction between naive environmentalists and
> other kinds

But you do agree that he did NOT say people who desire clean air are like
religious fundamentalists, right?

Isn't it clear from context that he's talking about the intrusive kind of
environmentalists who try to impose their preference onto others (not people
who want clean water for their kids)? It was clear to me at least.

I think some words (like "environmentalist" or "feminist") are so tainted by
bad actors (who mostly rely on superstition and indoctrination) who label
themselves as such that good actors (who mostly rely on reason and evidence)
who used to call themselves that no longer want to use those words to describe
themselves, and I think it's an understandable sentiment.

I think fossil fuels are great, and I eat meat every day and I appreciate
factory farming that allows me to do so, and I don't recycle. I don't have any
data on this but I think most people who call themselves environmentalists
probably don't want to call someone like me an environmentalist, and I'm fine
with that.

------
dingleberry
let's stop/reduce buying new glasses so there'll be no/less recycling.

i wore -4 diopter and i'm six months in 'no glasses' experiment after reading
'getting stronger' blog on eyes homeostatis. Here's what i found: \- i can
read books without glasses at all. i used to wear my -4 for anything. no more.
\- for laptop, i can use reduced (-2) and texts come sharp. i opt for no
glasses and increase the text font size instead. \- for driving <motorbike>,
daylight gives sharper vision (it's like wearing a -2, with no glasses). it's
a bit blurry for driving, but i don't need eagle-sharp clarity, i just need to
avoid collisions.

so instead of donating your old glasses, you can use them to train your eyes,
say for example: no glasses for books, -1 for tvs, -2 for laptop, -3 for
driving, etc

i chose cold turkey because i often forget where i put my glasses and it's
frustrating.

there is a plus lens therapy which i don't practice much because i keep losing
my plus glasses.

~~~
titzer
Please don't drive without glasses. You're likely violating the law and you
are putting others in danger.

~~~
dingleberry
for motorbike, it's okay because the distance to front wheel is short and my
vision is sharp up to the distance.

i can't read number plates and stuffs clearly; however, i don't drive to see
those things clearly. my mission is move from a to b without collisions.

~~~
chillwaves
Motorbike without vision is so much safer than car without vision. I'm
relieved to hear.

~~~
dingleberry
what a creative imagination for a spin

