"The cost of ignorance is, eventually, everything. The cost of knowledge, however painful, can never exceed it."
Now THAT'S putting some ideas together with words, properly.
Much appreciated.
Socializing expenses, including the health burden of routine and sometimes (not entirely) unanticipated dissemination of toxic products and byproducts of industrial processes, is indispensable if such industries are to remain profitable.
There's a cool word for it- externalities.
I mean, as cool as complete bullshit can be.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has, as my kids might say, the 411 (the cited article focuses on fossil fuels, but applies to the petrochemical industry and heavy manufacturing generally):
"We’ve all paid a utility bill or purchased gasoline. Those represent the direct costs of fossil fuels; money paid out of pocket for energy from coal, natural gas, and oil.
But those expenses don’t reflect the total cost of fossil fuels to each of us individually or to society as a whole. Known as externalities, the hidden costs of fossil fuels aren’t represented in their market price, despite serious impacts to our health and environment.
Externalities are sometimes easy to see, such as pollution and land degradation, and sometimes less obvious, such as the costs of asthma and cancer, or the impacts of sea level rise. Many consequences are far removed from our daily lives and may only affect a minority or marginalized subset of the population.
Costs accrue at every point of the fossil fuel supply chain. Extraction processes can generate air and water pollution, and harm local communities. Transporting fuels from the mine or well can cause air pollution and lead to serious accidents and spills. When the fuels are burned, they emit toxins and global warming emissions. Even the waste products are hazardous to public health and the environment."
Know what's even cooler?
Superfund.
I mean, it sounds... super.
It's socializing the costs, of course.
The Center for Public Integrity has (quoting my kids, again) the DL:
Bankrupt companies avoid more than $700 million in cleanup costs.
"Four companies connected by the Environmental Protection Agency to some of America’s worst toxic waste sites have escaped more than half a billion dollars in pollution cleanup costs by declaring bankruptcy, potentially passing the tab onto taxpayers.
A Center for Public Integrity analysis of court documents shows that these four companies included on the EPA’s list of 100 companies connected to the largest number of Superfund sites could have owed the federal government about $750 million to clean up their sites...
An EPA spokeswoman said that bankruptcy does not let companies off the hook. “EPA, working with DOJ [the Department of Justice] … aggressively pursue[s] liable parties including during bankruptcy court proceedings,” said Jennifer Wood, the EPA’s spokeswoman, in an e-mail to the Center. “Filing for bankruptcy does not extinguish Superfund liability nor necessarily prevent EPA from recovering cleanup costs.”
But bankruptcy complicates the EPA’s ability to force companies to pay for their messes. Like other creditors, the EPA scrambles to secure as much money as it can from failing companies. In the end, the agency may recover “a payment of only pennies on the dollar amount” of its Superfund claims on bankrupt companies, according to the 2005 GAO report. Sometimes, the agency gets nothing at all.
“There is a limited amount of money, and the question is who should get that money — environmental cleanups, for example, versus asbestos claims or retiree claims,” said Joel Gross, a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter and a former head of the Justice Department’s environmental enforcement section. “It’s not just fights between debtors and creditors. It’s fights among creditors.”
Sounds a bit like the cancer scenario you outline, right? Let the survivors fight for scraps, and so forth.
apologies for being pedantic but I think you messed up your "big thing in the ground" acronym (BTOG and then written as BOTG following) in the first Story 2 section in the middle, unless there is a joke there I'm not getting.
Let me offer another dimension to your example about the derailment, insofar as you may not be a former railroad employee or train buff.
Positive Train Control, or PTC, is Important for the reasons you outline. Amtrak, to its credit, worked for a long time to meet the PTC directive. Keeping people safe is, in my opinion, Very Important. On a 1-5 scale, this would be a 5. Maybe a 6.
I point this out because Amtrak operates largely on largess from US Congressional budget awards, for reasons related to Sabotage and Expensive Lies. Without making this its own essay, I'll simply point out Amtrak would make a profit where it could control its traffic. The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is largely owned and operated by Amtrak, and Amtrak makes a good profit there.
Where Amtrak doesn't make a profit is everything outside its owned- and maintained-rail. There, it must rely on freight owned rail. And lemme tell you something, freight owned rail is a mess.
Rail has class ratings. Amtrak runs a class 6 rail, meaning it is well maintained, straight, has proper signaling and schedule control, and is capable of supporting speeds up to 150mph. Where Amtrak has to move a train to, say, Miami in Florida, it has to traverse freight lines. Freight can have classes as low as 1; although I couldn't say for sure what the track rating are from Virginia to Florida, I can say the max speed is generally 80mph.
So freight has lower class ratings, and also, freight prioritizes its traffic over Amtrak. Oranges, LPG, and liquid vinyl chloride, are all prioritized ahead of people, in a very real way. Freight charges rent on these connections, so Amtrak has to pay whatever the cost per mile is for people.
Amtrak makes zero money on the NYC-Miami trip. Not because Amtrak is terrible, but because freight owns the rail.
What if rail was owned by the US Government instead? What if the US Government controlled rail, maintained rail, had guidelines for rail conditions to the same level as, oh I dunno, federal highways? What if train operators had to pass rigorous inspections, meet certain safety standards, employ people with proper training, just like we do with truckers?
Why don't we? Because someone told the lie that privatization is cheaper, more efficient, and delivers higher quality than the government. Because someone sabotaged Amtrak's ability to turn a profit.
Just like the Post Office having to pre-pay its pension plan beyond anything remotely reasonable. The sabotage, and then the lie: the US Post Office is worse than Fedex / Amazon / UPS.
Just like school vouchers for charter schools, that can poach teachers from public schools, that exist to make profits, because someone told the lie that private can teach better than public. And sabotaged public schools to make it true.
"The cost of ignorance is, eventually, everything. The cost of knowledge, however painful, can never exceed it."
Now THAT'S putting some ideas together with words, properly.
Much appreciated.
Socializing expenses, including the health burden of routine and sometimes (not entirely) unanticipated dissemination of toxic products and byproducts of industrial processes, is indispensable if such industries are to remain profitable.
There's a cool word for it- externalities.
I mean, as cool as complete bullshit can be.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has, as my kids might say, the 411 (the cited article focuses on fossil fuels, but applies to the petrochemical industry and heavy manufacturing generally):
The Hidden Costs of Fossil Fuels
Published Jul 15, 2008 Updated Aug 30, 2016
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/hidden-costs-fossil-fuels
"We’ve all paid a utility bill or purchased gasoline. Those represent the direct costs of fossil fuels; money paid out of pocket for energy from coal, natural gas, and oil.
But those expenses don’t reflect the total cost of fossil fuels to each of us individually or to society as a whole. Known as externalities, the hidden costs of fossil fuels aren’t represented in their market price, despite serious impacts to our health and environment.
Externalities are sometimes easy to see, such as pollution and land degradation, and sometimes less obvious, such as the costs of asthma and cancer, or the impacts of sea level rise. Many consequences are far removed from our daily lives and may only affect a minority or marginalized subset of the population.
Costs accrue at every point of the fossil fuel supply chain. Extraction processes can generate air and water pollution, and harm local communities. Transporting fuels from the mine or well can cause air pollution and lead to serious accidents and spills. When the fuels are burned, they emit toxins and global warming emissions. Even the waste products are hazardous to public health and the environment."
Know what's even cooler?
Superfund.
I mean, it sounds... super.
It's socializing the costs, of course.
The Center for Public Integrity has (quoting my kids, again) the DL:
Bankrupt companies avoid more than $700 million in cleanup costs.
May 3, 2007
https://publicintegrity.org/environment/bankrupt-companies-avoid-more-than-700-million-in-cleanup-costs/
"Four companies connected by the Environmental Protection Agency to some of America’s worst toxic waste sites have escaped more than half a billion dollars in pollution cleanup costs by declaring bankruptcy, potentially passing the tab onto taxpayers.
A Center for Public Integrity analysis of court documents shows that these four companies included on the EPA’s list of 100 companies connected to the largest number of Superfund sites could have owed the federal government about $750 million to clean up their sites...
An EPA spokeswoman said that bankruptcy does not let companies off the hook. “EPA, working with DOJ [the Department of Justice] … aggressively pursue[s] liable parties including during bankruptcy court proceedings,” said Jennifer Wood, the EPA’s spokeswoman, in an e-mail to the Center. “Filing for bankruptcy does not extinguish Superfund liability nor necessarily prevent EPA from recovering cleanup costs.”
But bankruptcy complicates the EPA’s ability to force companies to pay for their messes. Like other creditors, the EPA scrambles to secure as much money as it can from failing companies. In the end, the agency may recover “a payment of only pennies on the dollar amount” of its Superfund claims on bankrupt companies, according to the 2005 GAO report. Sometimes, the agency gets nothing at all.
“There is a limited amount of money, and the question is who should get that money — environmental cleanups, for example, versus asbestos claims or retiree claims,” said Joel Gross, a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter and a former head of the Justice Department’s environmental enforcement section. “It’s not just fights between debtors and creditors. It’s fights among creditors.”
Sounds a bit like the cancer scenario you outline, right? Let the survivors fight for scraps, and so forth.
Best regards,
IDR
apologies for being pedantic but I think you messed up your "big thing in the ground" acronym (BTOG and then written as BOTG following) in the first Story 2 section in the middle, unless there is a joke there I'm not getting.
"The cost of ignorance is, eventually, everything. The cost of knowledge, however painful, can never exceed it." That's a keeper.
Let me offer another dimension to your example about the derailment, insofar as you may not be a former railroad employee or train buff.
Positive Train Control, or PTC, is Important for the reasons you outline. Amtrak, to its credit, worked for a long time to meet the PTC directive. Keeping people safe is, in my opinion, Very Important. On a 1-5 scale, this would be a 5. Maybe a 6.
I point this out because Amtrak operates largely on largess from US Congressional budget awards, for reasons related to Sabotage and Expensive Lies. Without making this its own essay, I'll simply point out Amtrak would make a profit where it could control its traffic. The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is largely owned and operated by Amtrak, and Amtrak makes a good profit there.
Where Amtrak doesn't make a profit is everything outside its owned- and maintained-rail. There, it must rely on freight owned rail. And lemme tell you something, freight owned rail is a mess.
Rail has class ratings. Amtrak runs a class 6 rail, meaning it is well maintained, straight, has proper signaling and schedule control, and is capable of supporting speeds up to 150mph. Where Amtrak has to move a train to, say, Miami in Florida, it has to traverse freight lines. Freight can have classes as low as 1; although I couldn't say for sure what the track rating are from Virginia to Florida, I can say the max speed is generally 80mph.
So freight has lower class ratings, and also, freight prioritizes its traffic over Amtrak. Oranges, LPG, and liquid vinyl chloride, are all prioritized ahead of people, in a very real way. Freight charges rent on these connections, so Amtrak has to pay whatever the cost per mile is for people.
Amtrak makes zero money on the NYC-Miami trip. Not because Amtrak is terrible, but because freight owns the rail.
What if rail was owned by the US Government instead? What if the US Government controlled rail, maintained rail, had guidelines for rail conditions to the same level as, oh I dunno, federal highways? What if train operators had to pass rigorous inspections, meet certain safety standards, employ people with proper training, just like we do with truckers?
Why don't we? Because someone told the lie that privatization is cheaper, more efficient, and delivers higher quality than the government. Because someone sabotaged Amtrak's ability to turn a profit.
Just like the Post Office having to pre-pay its pension plan beyond anything remotely reasonable. The sabotage, and then the lie: the US Post Office is worse than Fedex / Amazon / UPS.
Just like school vouchers for charter schools, that can poach teachers from public schools, that exist to make profits, because someone told the lie that private can teach better than public. And sabotaged public schools to make it true.
Excellent, Charles. Thank you for such an informative and on-point comment!