Interesting Links for 09-12-2013

[andrewducker]

• Dammit - I want the Technomancer Digital Wizard Hoodie. And to be 12 again.
  (tags: technology clothing awesome )
• Why Life Does Not Really Exist
  (tags: life science meaning complexity )
• Some fascinating writing on interrogation
  (tags: interrogation )
• I have no idea what you're supposed to do if your child is a psychopath (warning: All the trigger

Comments

[momentsmusicaux]

> And my first thought was: if your job can be done more cheaply without you, and the only reason you have it is because people would feel sorry for you if you didn’t, so the government forces your company to keep you on - well then, it’s not a job. It’s a welfare program that requires you to work 9 to 5 before seeing your welfare check.

This echoes something I've thought for years. The purpose of work is not to get people earning money, it's to get stuff done. If we need fewer working hours to get everything done, then what we should all be saying is: hooray! we can all go home early! -- if society were working sensibly, that is.

> So suppose that instead of banning mercury, the government just places a tax on it. The tax could be the cost of mercury cleanup

Errrrrm... author has lost me there. Everything I've read about that approach suggests that companies with deep enough pockets just pay the tax and pollute as much as they like and the end result is not pretty.

A

[andrewducker]

They usually aren't paying the actual costs of the clean-up. If they were then it would all be cleaned up and everyone would be happy!

Re: A

[momentsmusicaux]

Isn't the tax worked out to be roughly that?

Re: A

[andrewducker]

Well that's rather the point. At the moment companies tend to not be charged enough to actually clear up their messes - so some of the mess remains.

Companies generally want to avoid paying for their externalities, because that's one easy way to make a profit, if you don't care about causing damage. Forcing companies to clear up after themselves would make a massive difference.

(One solution to global warming is to work out how much it would cost to clear up each kg of carbon, and add that as a tax onto all carbon producers. Oddly, many large carbon producers spend a fortune lobbying against this.)