01 February 2007

Objectivist: Get the Government Out of the Recycling Business

The Objectivist
GOVERNMENT-INDUCED RECYCLING: UNSOUND ARGUMENTS
Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer
31 January 2007


Our Mystery Guest provides a number of arguments for her claim that the government should mandate and subsidize recycling. It is worth emphasizing that we are not talking about recycling in general--no one opposes this--but rather government-induced recycling. This recycling is similar to protectionist tariffs and corporate welfare in that it involves interference with the free market.

Mystery Guest provides three arguments in support of her claim for government-induced recycling. First, she argues that because landfills are unsafe, government-induced recycling is desirable. Her evidence for their lack of safety rests on the claims of some experts who argue that current landfill regulations are so inadequate as to be ticking time bombs. Second, she argues that because persons don't want landfills located near them, government should induce recycling. Third, she argues that government-induced recycling has good results, namely it creates jobs, reduces the use of virgin materials, saves energy, and reduces pollution.

Mystery Guest's first reason is irrelevant. Government-induced recycling doesn't eliminate the need for landfills. At most, it lessens it. If landfills are as dangerous as she suggests, the obvious solution is to require that new and safe landfills be built. If this is done, then her argument is disarmed. If it's not done, then government-induced recycling will do little to combat toxic contamination of air and groundwater from the material already stored there. By analogy, if there were a factory that was pouring toxic compounds into a lake, we should demand that it stop doing so rather than merely tinkering at the margins with its level of production.

It's also worth noting that the experts whom Mystery Guest cites appear to admit that there is no recorded instance of an up-to-date landfill failure (specifically, Subtitle D landfill liner failure), that is, one that allowed toxic chemicals to enter our air or groundwater. Now to be fair, she would respond that the EPA is criminally negligent in refusing to require that landfills test for more than 200 of the chemicals that are found in landfills and likely claim that the test period is too short. Even if this is correct, it's still hard to see how it supports her program.

Mystery Guest's second argument is that government should induce recycling because persons don't want landfills located near them. I doubt that she takes this argument seriously. I wonder if she would give similar weight to the majority's preference to eliminate race and gender preferences, shut down third-world immigration, and, in some areas, teach creationism.

The not-in-my-backyard problem is common to a number of goods. For example, many people don't want prisons, military bases, or sewage plants located near them. It doesn't follow from this that we should have fewer prisons, sharply reduce the military, or eliminate sewage plants. The reason for this is that persons have other preferences (for example, reduced crime, protection against foreign attack, and convenient handling of excrement) that conflict with these other preferences and at the very least we need an argument for prioritizing conflicting preferences. Even if there weren't conflicting preferences, it is worth considering the wisdom of preferences. For example, we shouldn't give much weight to irrational preferences such as those against interracial marriage or homosexual sodomy. This is particularly true when these preferences precede public discussion of the issues.

In any case, these preferences are informed only when the polled citizens know how much a community will gain from allowing landfills in their county or town. For example, if the polled citizens were told that landfill fees would fund the schools and thereby reduce staggering property taxes, the poll results might be quite different. Assessing complex policies by citing unspecific and uninformed polls won't convince anyone who isn't already a true believer.

Mystery Guest's third argument is that government-induced recycling has overall good effects because it creates jobs, reduces the use of virgin material, saves energy, and reduces pollution. Consider the first claim that government-induced recycling creates jobs. Even if this were true, she doesn't even try to show that the benefits of the additional jobs outweigh their costs. The proponents of corporate welfare and sky-high tariffs for sugar and textiles also claim that these policies create jobs but ignore the costs of doing so. In the absence of at least some argument showing that the benefits outweigh the costs, their arguments fall flat. Mystery Guest's jobs argument fails for the same reason and the same is true for her virgin-material and energy-savings arguments. This is particularly relevant since some recycled material costs considerably more than virgin material (for example, glass and plastic resin).

The market has an advantage here in that it allows people to enjoy the benefits of their decisions and forces them to eat the costs. It thereby provides a reliable means by which to compare the benefits and costs of various decisions. This in large part explains why the market is more efficient at production and distribution than the government. For those of you who doubt this, I challenge you to name just one area (outside of natural monopolies) where the government is more efficient. Just one. I thought so.

Mystery Guest's last argument is that recycling reduces pollution. This time her argument is less than half the picture. First, she doesn't even consider the toxic by-products that recycling produces and hence her argument is one-half of the pollution picture. Second, she doesn't consider whether the costs of reducing pollution outweigh its benefits. For example, if recycling were to achieve very small amounts of pollution reduction at substantial cost, we might decide that it's not worth it. For example, it's not clear whether the benefits of marginally less greenhouse gases would outweigh the costs of an additional fifty-cent per gallon gasoline tax and up to 4,000 additional highway deaths per year due to car-efficiency requirements. In the absence of an estimate of the costs of induced recycling, Mystery Guest's argument makes about as much sense as a person who goes shopping for clothes without looking at price tags.

In short, Mystery Guest's various arguments for government-induced recycling are irrelevant, unconvincing, and incomplete. A person can't do a cost-benefit analysis if she ignores costs any more than she can intelligently shop for clothes while ignoring price tags.

3 comments:

The Objectivist said...

Guys:

Here I respond to some responses to my article.

First, I would argue that recycling is a bad idea when the government needs to coerce people to engage in it. Take a government university like FSU. What the university should do is hire the cheapest garbage-disposal service it can get and then let that service decide whether to recycle. This runs into problems if there isn't a competitive market for garbage services nad I don't know if there is one. Letting a highly political and ideological driven process like activist faculty and administrators decide how to dispose of garbage almost guarantees that proper considerations of benefits and costs will not be properly balanced against one another.

Second, here is what Christina argues about the efficiency of recycling. "A 2001 report by R.W. Beck, Inc. found that the recycling and reuse industries employ 1.1 million people with an annual payroll of $37 billion while grossing more than $236 billion in annual revenues." Note a few things. First, this includes free-market recycling (e.g., metals) and no one I have read or spoken to is opposed to this. Second, if recycling is so profitable, why does the government constantly have to coerce our partipation in it (in the 90's, most, if not all, city recycling programs had to be subsdized or mandated). Third, the return ratio is not 6:1 because this leaves out the costs of capital goods (e.g., machinery) and resources (e.g., gas).

In the absence of market support for recycling, I expect Christina to show evidence that the market is inefficient. For example, she might cite experts to show that there is a monopoly, that the garbage industry's financial estimates are wrong, or that it is efficient in other countries. She doesn't do any of these and the likely reason is that such evidence doesn't exist.

Third, why should we want to be carbon neutral? Are we running out of carbon on the earth? If we were to run low on some things (e.g., oil), then the market would more efficiently sort out the best substitute (e.g., wind, nuclear power, solar, or hydrogen cell) then ideologues and political hacks in Congress.

Fourth, as far student recycling. Students can recycle all they want by boxing up supplies and carrying them to the transport station. What they want is for taxpayers to pay for their recycling. Why should taxpayers do that if, as I argue, it is neither a matter of justice nor does it make the world a better place.

The Objectivist said...

Another response to a some questions about the above article.

Thank you for your note. Two points.

1. Recycling Reduces Energy: You assume that recycling reduces energy usage. From what I understand this is controversial. Something is causing recycling products, such as paper, to be considerably more expensive than virgin products. It's either higher costs based on more expensive capital goods (machinery and chemicals), labor (collecting), energy, or raw materials. I doubt it's the last factor. What is producing the additional costs?

2. Fredonia Recycling Will Make a Difference: Like College Senate resolutions against the Patriot Act, Fredonia's acts are such small effects that you have to wonder why it is worthwhile. Should the college make public statements against the Iraq war, out-of-control federal budget spending, slaughter in Darfur, etc.? Why bother?

3. Price Tage: I have yet to see whether it is worth the price of a new administrator ($69,000) and the labor of the persons who separate out the garbage. It would helpful to know why this isn't already required of the college's custodians. Is it because we have too few of them to add the additional requirement, a poor contract with them, or something else. In the absence of at least a back-of-the-envelope calculation. In the absence of such an estimate, this is much like the diversity efforts. We decide that diversity is a valuable goal and suddenly this supports the hiring of a $300,000+ for affirmative action, multi-cultural affairs, and other departments. No attempt is made to explain why the goal is worth transferring this money from hiring more professors or giving out more scholarships.

The Objectivist said...

A discussion with a professor from Fredonia.

THE COLLEGE SENATE DID PASS A RESOLUTION AGAINST THE PATRIOT ACT. I’M SKEPTICAL THAT FREDONIA’S EFFECT ON INTERNATIONAL CARBON EMISSIONS WILL PROBABLY NOT HAVE TOO MUCH LARGER EFFECT THAN IT’S STATEMENT ON THE PATRIOT ACT. I’M GUESSING THAT FREDONIA HAS 6-7 THOUSAND PEOPLE ON CAMPUS AND THE WORLD AS 6 BILLION. GIVEN THE INCREDIBLY SMALL FRACTION OF THE WORLD’S PEOPLE AND THAT LITTLE MANUFACTURING HAPPENS HERE, THE RECYCLING EFFORT WILL NOT A MICROSCOPIC EFFECT ON OVERALL EMISSIONS. MUCH LIKE A STRONG STATEMENT ON THE PATRIOT ACT MIGHT HAVE SOME EFFECT ON NATIONWIDE PUBLIC OPINION, BUT FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES IT HAD NO EFFECT AT ALL. IF YOU DISAGREE, I WOULD BE INTERESTED AS TO WHAT ARGUMENT YOU HAVE THAT THE EFFECTS OF SMALL-SCALE RECYCLING ON CAMPUS WILL HAVE ON WORLD-WIDE CARBON EMISSIONS.

With regard to this issue, my argument is not so much a logical one, but more of a “spiritual” one, for lack of a better word.

In so many ways, I feel that I have a kind of “polarized” way of viewing the world. In one way, I can look at my own actions, or those of others, and measure how much difference they make, or might make given that I or only a small group of people are the only people taking those actions. From that perspective, then Fredonia’s recycling truly is insignificant.

However, if I view my, or in this case, Fredonia’s actions from the question of how they might impact others who might encounter them, then I start to think that other’s might take recycling more seriously based on the fact that they see us doing it.

In so many other parts of my life, it seems to be true.

Even in trivial ways. If there is a lot of trash on the ground where I walk, (for instance, in Canadaway Creek where I’ve already cut my hand on a piece of glass that I didn’t see when climbing down into the gorge), then it tends to make me feel like it carrying my trash out doesn’t make a difference, although I do it anyway. However, I feel as though my behavior of carrying out my trash when I’m in the woods, if someone witnesses me doing it, would tend to encourage the witness to do likewise.

Certainly, I feel that tendency when I witness another do something “conservation oriented” which is similar.

In another, quite non-logical way, I wonder if my behavior of non-littering helps to change the consciousness of others even when not witnessed. It certainly seems to change my own consciousness when I don’t litter.

If I throw something on the ground (or squash a bug even, in my house), then I start to have a consciousness that might be called, “littering doesn’t matter”, and, “bugs’ lives don’t matter”. However, when I take the effort to store the food wrapper or plastic bottle in my backpack to carry out, or to take the bug outside alive, then I start to treat the world differently.

I like this, because I enjoy how I feel when I treat trash seriously, and bug’s lives also.

So, there is this “spiritual” component to my desire to conserve trash and lives of small creatures, as 2 examples which came to my mind quickly.

Additionally, I feel that if we take a really long term view of the world, then we can look at our actions/behavior as a kind of seed that when planted, grows a slow-growing hard-wood tree. Others see that our campus takes recycling seriously, and when they return to their own homes or workplaces or churches or other community organizations, then they might feel empowered to do the same. Fredonia’s impact may be insignificant at present, but perhaps in 10, 20, 50, 100, or 500 years, it may grow into a significant impact.

(I recall reading an article on the “Sarvodaya” movement in Sri Lanka, I believe it is, and the author wrote about the movement for “everlasting peace”, (I can’t recall how it was termed), as being planned to take 500 years.)

It really captured my imagination that we could see ourselves as having an impact not only beyond our own lifetime and our children’s lifetimes, but many generations into the future, and to validate very slow processes such as achieving a lasting peaceful country, however they defined that.

I AGREE WITH WHAT YOU’RE SAYING. WE SHOULD LOOK AT BOTH QUALITY AND COST OF GARBAGE SERVICES. AT ISSUE IS EVEN IF RECYCLING IS VALUABLE HOW MUCH SHOULD WE SPEND TO ACHIEVE IT. FOR EXAMPLE, SHOULD WE CHARGE EACH STUDENT A MANDATORY $25 SO THAT WE CAN HAVE RECYCLING? SHOULD REDUCE FACULTY PAY BY $125 PER FACULTY TO ACHIEVE IT? LOOKING AT COSTS FORCES US TO SAY NOT ONLY THAT WE VALUE RECYCLING, BUT HOW MUCH WE VALUE IT.

EVEN IF RECYCLING WERE MONEY-SAVING, WE WOULD STILL NEED TO ASK WHETHER RECYCLING MAKES THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. SINCE THERE IS GOOD REASON TO BELIEVE THAT IT MAKES PERSONS’ POORER, THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THERE ARE COUNTERBALANCING BENEFITS. I JUST DON’T SEE ANY ATTEMPT TO ARGUE THAT THE BENEFITS EXCEED THE MARGINAL IMPOVERISHMENT EFFECTS.

FOR EXAMPLE, THE FACULTY HERE LOVE DIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE SPENDS AROUND $300,000 PER YEAR ON DIVERSITY RELATED ADMINISTRATION COSTS. IF THE STUDENTS AND FACULTY HAD TO OVERTLY PAY AN EXTRA $50 FOR THIS EFFORT WE’D MIGHT SEE THAT PERSONS THINK THE BENEFITS DON’T OUTWEIGHT THE COSTS.

IN ADDITION, I SEE NO ATTEMPT TO LOOK AT NON-RECYCLING WAYS TO DECREASE WASTEFUL PAPER USE. FOR EXAMPLE, RAISING THE PRICE OF PAPER TO 15 CENTS PER PAGE WOULD REDUCE PAPER CONSUMPTION, BUT THIS MAKES THE COSTS CLEAR SO NO ONE IS BACKING IT. BUT IS IT LESS COSTLY THAN A RECYCLING ADMINISTRATOR AND NEW DEMANDS ON THE GARBAGE PROVIDER? I DON’T KNOW, BUT IT’S NOT OBVIOUS THAT IT WOULDN’T BE.

I like what you are saying in taking a hard look at the costs of recycling. As it stands now, I feel quite in the dark about it.

I also like the idea of using less paper in the first place. Increasing the cost of paper is an attractive solution. It certainly seems to me that we could easily reduce the amount of paper used in the department, given how many announcements are distributed to each faculty member’s mailbox and then end up almost instantly in the garbage or recycling bin.

Using fewer resources certainly is far preferable to recycling, from everything that I have read, and according to common sense.

I think these are excellent ideas which should be a large component of any kind of conservation program we implement.

Thanks again for your dialogue. I appreciate hearing your detailed views on this issue.