Leaving aside the environmental damage, which is obvious albeit somewhat sensationalized in this comment, how is said plastic actually harming human health today?
The article from Scientific America in the comment refers to the harm plastic can have in other animals in words such as "may", "might", "could". Has there been any study on how it is, now and actually, harming our health? Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution?
It's Earth, not a deployment you can rollback, we don't get to play that game.
We're talking hundreds or thousands of years before we'll know how bad we fucked up. Almost every life forms on the planet are linked one way or another, every changes has an impact.
Remember when DDT, asbestos and lead plumbing were harmless to humans ? Then they were classified as "could" be dangerous or "may" be harmful. Now they're straight up banned everywhere.
>It's Earth, not deployment you can rollback, we don't get to play that game.
>We're talking hundreds or thousands of years before we'll know how bad we fucked up. Almost every life forms on the planet are linked one way or another, every changes has an impact.
>Remember when DDT, asbestos and lead plumbing were harmless to humans ? Then they were classified as "could" be dangerous or "may" be harmful. Now they're straight up banned everywhere.
This is exactly the kind of emotional appeals the GP is complaining about. There are tons of different substances you come into contact with on a day to day basis. Most of them will not be harmful in any reasonable quantity. If paper or cotton clothing was invented today the parchment and wool industries would be talking up how it's not proven to not be harmful. Yes, some plastics are probably bad even in small concentrations. Just from a common sense point of view it's highly unlikely that all plastics are bad in all concentrations. No you shouldn't ingest it intentionally. Yes, I'd like to see less plastics in the world. No I don't think it's going to be a massive future problem. If it really does turn out to be a serious problem we'll find a way to solve it. Remember when CFCs were going to deplete the ozone and give us all skin cancer?
I hate to be that guy but, did you read any of the links I provided ? It's not as if a weird hippie guy was predicting the end of the world. It's scientifically proven, measurable, it's right here, right now. And it's just the beginning of a very long process.
I read the first few and skimmed the rest. Yes plastics are a problem, the same way that smog in cities (mostly solved in developed nations) and CFCs were problems. None of them present an existential crisis to humanity. Sure we might spend a fraction of a percentage of global wealth dealing with the trade-offs of spewing plastic everywhere but we'll be fine in the long run.
> Sure we might spend a fraction of a percentage of global wealth dealing with the trade-offs of spewing plastic everywhere but we'll be fine in the long run.
If you look at each large scale environmental issue in isolation, sure, there's a chance that it will be mitigated down the line.
But at what cost in the mean time?
Because this stuff is hitting vital and fragile ecosystems now at scales unprecedented.
Might I remind you that we are well into a mass extinction that shows no signs of slowing down?
With regard to microplastics, it's only a matter of time before we microbes learn to digest them. Those little guys are gonna be everybodies' best friends.
Because of the likelihood that microbes will be learning to eat plastic pretty soon, I don't see microplastics as being quite as daunting of a problem, in isolation.
But I take issue with your casual attitude and prioritization of humanity over the larger ecologies that humanity evolved in and depends on.
We absolutely need to be alert about this and other ecologically issues collectively.
That's exactly the type of thinking that will destroy us. It's always China, or Russia, or developing countries, or your neighbours, or the damn democrats/republicans. Nobody wants to take responsibility. Let's continue to act like 8 years old while our home is slowly burning.
I think their point was that technological advancements have 'solved' the problem of smog in the cities that have the legal and physical infrastructure (i.e. developed) to implement the solutions. They did not seem to be saying that pollution is someone else's fault.
I live it one of these cities. In California. Beautiful landscape. Fields and mountains and ocean. My car is always covered in filth from the air. As is my balcony. I often stand atop a mountain and look out over the thick, visible layer of smog that tops the city - a city that has made vast progress in the last 4 decades. That progress has gotten us from nearly inhabitable to simply disgusting and unhealthy. Where are these solutions, exactly?
I don't live in a city with a smog problem, and this is not my area of expertise. I was just clarifying what I thought @dsfyu404ed was saying, since it seemed to me that @lm28469 had taken it out of context and jumped to a nasty reply that wasn't really pertinent to what was being claimed.
You could argue that @dsfu404ed's reply was actually way "nastier", as nonchalant as their attitude was, in the sense that it downplays the effects of "nasty" pollution in general.
Not sure how to reply to you directly @welearndnothing, I think we reached max depth?
I don't live in a city with a smog problem, and this is not my area of expertise. I was just clarifying what I thought @dsfyu404ed was saying, since it seemed to me that @lm28469 had taken it out of context and jumped to a nasty reply that wasn't really pertinent to what was being claimed.
That's the way I took it as well. And it is true in some places. When I first moved to the Los Angeles area long ago it was quite smoggy. But look at it now http://aqicn.org/city/los-angeles/ (all green = aqi reading less than 50).
First we have to wait for the science, then we have to wait for the establishment to deny the science, then we have to wait for the establishment to lobby against the science. In the post-truth, post-science zeitgeist, should we acquiesce to all these demands?
We got lucky with CFCs because there was a cheap alternative, so the industry didn't really push against it. We are seeing a very different outcome with climate change, and now we enter another very similar debate with microplastics.
> * If it really does turn out to be a serious problem we'll find a way to solve it.*
We can only dodge so many bullets, that is even if we can dodge the current bullet. If society can only solve problems after they become a tragedy, it just takes a slow building tragedy to end it.
> Remember when DDT, asbestos and lead plumbing were harmless to humans ? Then they were classified as "could" be dangerous or "may" be harmful. Now they're straight up banned everywhere.
DDT is banned for agricultural use, but is still permitted (and used) for vector control (ex: controlling mosquitos).
Asbestos is banned in many applications, but still has permitted uses in the US, although there's an open proposal to further restrict use [1]
I wasn't able to find any evidence of permitted use of new lead plumbing, however; so that one might be straight up banned.
> Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution?
Plasticizers are endocrine disruptors. Sperms counts have been decreasing world-wide for decades (if you're male, your sperm count is almost certainly significantly lower than your father's), and epidemiologists believe plastics in the environment are the cause.[0]
Has there been any study on how it is, now and actually, harming our health? Any measurements, case studies, or collective data from people suffering from any sort of disease related to plastic pollution?
No.
Note that this does not mean they're safe. It means we don't know if they're safe, or the extent to which they're harmful if they're dangerous. It goes from "we got lucky, it's all going to be fine" to "literally everyone will die from the plastics equivalent of asbestosis in the near future". If that doesn't scare the living shit out of you then you've misunderstood the scale of the problem.
Do you literally believe no epidemiological study of the effects of plastics on human health has occurred?
The question was about plastic pollution, and specifically the effect of micro plastic particulates on humans. I couldn't find anything after a cursory search, although to be honest I don't really know what terms I should be searching for.
In all honesty, you're probably right to not waste (a lot of) energy worrying about it. The best you can do is not use many plastics and advocate for better policies to reduce, reuse, and recycle the plastics are out there, as well as cleanup programs for the huge problems like the macroplastics in the ocean currently.
As for "the environment is full of tons of stuff", microplastics are pretty new to the biosphere, so who knows what we should suspect? Personally I think microplastics are bad at all scales, and it'll just get worse. They weaken individuals, species, and whole ecosystems right as we're delivering them a big punch in the gut with habitat destruction, overfishing, and climate change. Are they what's going to kill the world? Nah, maybe only #4 on the list. Only!
If we treat microplastics as a symptom of business-as-usual, then they are a marker, and we can think of them as the canary in the coal mine. Entropically, we dug up a bunch of dead stuff and either burned it into the air or refined it into plastic, which we are now mixing into the biosphere at all scales. What other effluents are we dispersing that will have unwanted effects?
Structurally, we concentrate exotic materials and then disperse them. Nothing like that has ever happened at global scale to life before. The economic changes to achieve a system that doesn't make this its default trend are almost unthinkable. That's what I see as the real #4 (or whatever) on the list.
It is by no means unreasonable or unscientific to suspect whether plastics in your stool, the air and water around is a special threat. Animal studies have shown cause for concern. Sensationalist? Perhaps.
I've used this information to try to eke out my single use plastic use. (Use of single use plastic? single plastic use?)
"Adverse effects of microplastics ingestion have only been observed in aquatic organisms under laboratory conditions, usually at very high exposure concentrations that exceed present environmental concentrations by several orders of magnitude"
Weirdly, as a scientist by training, I am quite unscientific when it comes to these kinds of things. Nature is exquisitely subtle and it can be really hard to "measure" these things when you may not even know what to measure for.
That said, I know full well that physiological chemistry can be sensitive with reaped to down isotopic distributions due to competing kinetic pathways, even though isotopes are supposed to "behave the same". Meanwhile, we're just about realizing that gut fauna can influence a bunch of stuff that ought to be "orthogonal".
So when it comes to wide scale exposure to things like this I typically keep an open mind because biology is crazy complex and most our models are woefully simplistic.
In any case global spread of microplastics can't really be good...
Microplastics have a large surface area, and that gets covered with other pollutants.
Animals eat the plastic (which can pass through them without much harm, or can get lodged in their guts causing harm to that animal). When the animal has eaten the plastic they're also eating the other contaminents, and these get taken up b y the animal and anything that eats the animal.
I think the point is that we might not know the dangers, but regardless of if they are dangerous, they are here. So figuring out the danger is just a matter of telling us how screwed we are, when we usually want to find ways to prevent a possible disaster in advance.
It is a bit fatalistic. We still have to care about things not getting worse and all degrees of severity matter.
You can pay the NASDAQ (or any exchange) to colocate your server beside their server with a low-latency network link and see a live feed of the orders as they hit the book.
I know about colocation, but I was under the impression that once you see an order in the book it is in the book. I.e. your order will be placed after it.
If there are multiple exchanges trading the same (or very similar) products, then you might be able to see an order on one, and quickly send an order to the other one. In the US, equities trade on multiple exchanges.
Here in Brazil my experience has been the same: drivers use all apps.
I just don't see how Uber can maintain said network on the long run and still be profitable, not something I'd put my money in.
What Uber is doing would generally be described as predatory pricing on other sectors. On sufficiently unregulated markets such is Uber's it's extremely risky, no anti-trust legislation is needed to trump it, just a continuously low entry barrier, including lax regulation. For a more concrete, though only related example (rather than speculation as to Uber's future) see Dow's history.
Of course they're creating value, Uber and the like is of great value for its users.
The service is merely being subsidized by investors who believe in such practice.
Is it a bad investment? Maybe, their investors did not think so and they were free to compare it with other options you deem obviously better, considering you're even saying Uber and the like are stealing these other business would-be money...
If they aren't making a profit they aren't creating value. They are destroying some value and transferring other value from investors to customers. The difference here is when you add everything up you have less, when for a good investment the total should go up.
In principle, in a fair market economy, that is OK because someone has to take the risk of being wrong about what is a good idea.
The concern being voiced is that monetary policy is diverting resources away from people who are known to make good long term decisions and towards people who have access to loans from the central bank. At some point the people who are borrowing money can't pay it back and the losses are revealed - not in and of itself a problem; those responsible take the hit. But in the mean time, the people who would have used the resources more sensibly to build infrastructure or sustainable logistics chains havn't been because they weren't being given the time of day by the markets.
The worry is that a dropping tide lowers all ships. If value is being systematically destroyed and the cause is government incentives then the potential for that to crop up in unexpected places is quite high. I'm always tempted to link monetary policy to the themes of pension issues, low real wage growth, poor infrastructure and rising inequality seen in the US.
Economic value exceeds or matches market value. Market value drives revenue. Profit is a function of revenue and cost.
These are well defined terms; please be careful saying things like "If they aren't making a profit they aren't creating value." It detracts from your otherwise strong argument.
If that line were true, non-profit organizations wouldn't exist.
Now that you have pointed it is obvious that, say, a non profit can create value without creating a profit or that there might be externalities.
But we aren't really talking about that sort of concern here, we are talking about for-profit companies that aren't doing research and any externalities are tenuous.
It is completely unreasonable to say that such a company could be creating value. They are clearly a wealth transfer mechanism from who-knows-where to consumers. It doesn't make sense if it isn't malinvestment. People love to pull out hypothetical externalities to justify things they like that just aren't worth doing; they aren't going to justify running a corporation at a loss.
> The concern being voiced is that monetary policy is diverting resources away from people who are known to make good long term decisions and towards people who have access to loans from the central bank.
A very interesting statement. I'd like to understand this cash path. Can anyone describe the flow of cash from the central bank to Silicon Valley VC firm? How exactly does this work?
Also do low central bank rates guarantee the kind of money losing VC investments we're seeing? Are their other central banks outside the US with low rates but no accompanying flurry of money-losing investments?
The grandparent comment's specifics are off a bit, but I think the general principle --it takes money to make money -- concisely explains a good portion of the underclass' economic predicament.
I'm going to have a blog post about the economic situation that led me to taxi driving. The tl/dr is basically that they loaned me a car for 12 hours at a time. In the beginning I made enough to make it worth my while...
These two factors combined unlocked possibilities (ex: universal delivery service) or significantly improved existing industries (Uber app is far more convenient than finding then phoning the local taxi company and hoping blindly for the taxi to arrive).
Federation eases the use of the service as you don't have to either setup your own service (for example, hiring delivery guys for your restaurant) or find out the local services available (if they existed in the first place), and discover which one is good, which one is bad. The last decade development of mobile networks and smartphones was the catalyst for this evolution.
Cost is the other aspect, these services are cheaper than legacy alternatives. But this second aspect is key. On one hand, these services are losing money like crazy, on the other, they have a detrimental social impact, basically exploiting loopholes in the legislation to have "low rights" workers with no protection. But this will change at one point, laws and court decisions will close the loopholes, and the magic money tree will dry up, meaning these services will become significantly more expensive.
The question, when this will happen is: Was the federation improvement enough to sustain this industry long term? Or was the cost the major factor? If it's more of the second, these start-ups will mostly collapse, if it's more of the first they will become sustainable businesses (specially given it's easy to start using using these services, it's a bit harder to stop using them).
I'm still puzzled as to why these companies are losing so much money, and I cannot help but think these could have have been created with more reasonable losses for their first few years and now, they should nearly be cash flow positive.
Uber app USED to be more convenient than the taxis that had to be called. However the companies have caught up, nearly every European taxi company has their own app. Additionally, not even Uber can beat the ease of just hailing a cab or walking into a cab on the street.
Oh, and they are losing money because of platform competition, nothing else. That she only reason a market is making a loss for Uber, because of price/driver bonus war. I can go more in-depth into this if you want.
