Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Fine, but are these unaccounted positive externalities? Don't you choose plastic exactly because you want its nice properties? But looking back the next day I think I may have over-reacted a bit to your comment. Of course plastic is in many ways very nice. Let's keep a fair subset. But we could benefit from paring down the variations, and the volume, a lot, IMHO.



It's not just nice it's crucial for our survival. Keep in mind plastic can be as soft as velvet and as durable and hard as diamonds. No other material does that and that allow us to make things that would be impossible otherwise. We simply have no alternatives to them yet.

The unaccounted externalities are that fossil fuel and thus ex. plastic makes modern life possible with everything from increased age, to the ability to cure the sick, to lowered childbirth, to increased living standards, food production, cleaner environments and so on.

Of course there are negative externalities too and we need to deal with them but all in all plastics and thus fossil fuels improve our lives tremendously IMO.

Ironically the problem the modern society is facing is how to deal with abundance rather than scarcity.


Now I really feel like a strawman argument is going on.

Do you believe I advocate remove all plastic?

Do you advocate keeping all plastic? None of the plastic can be replaced with other materials or designed away altogether?!

I hope you are not, because that is ludicrous.


I don't believe anything about you. I am simply telling you what I consider to be the reality.

Some parts of the plastic industry can and will be replaced but far less both short term and long term than people want to think, unless; some new fundamental scientific discoveries are done.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: