Last spring I was in a hardware store and heard a painter talking about new regulations that he thought might ruin his business, which included repainting houses, windows in particular.
Doing it the pre-regulation way, he would put a dropcloth on the ground, scrape the windows, and put the scrapings in the trash. The new way, he would have to dress up in a has-mat suit with a rebreather, put special dropcloths down, and put the waste in special bags, which would have to be disposed of.
Now, before WC lectures me on the dangers of lead poisoning, let’s stipulate that as a problem.
What he was concerned about was what would happen if he came up with a quote for the job. He feared many of his customers would choke on the cost per window and would decide never to do the job.
Or, he would avoid all the hassle, let the paint scrapings fall into the flower beds and let the customer worry about it, maybe throw in some mulch to cover it up.
Same thing with the CFC bulbs. They get tossed into someone else’s dumpster, after cleaning the fingerprints. This is called progress.
Last spring I was in a hardware store and heard a painter talking about new regulations that he thought might ruin his business, which included repainting houses, windows in particular.
Doing it the pre-regulation way, he would put a dropcloth on the ground, scrape the windows, and put the scrapings in the trash. The new way, he would have to dress up in a has-mat suit with a rebreather, put special dropcloths down, and put the waste in special bags, which would have to be disposed of.
Now, before WC lectures me on the dangers of lead poisoning, let’s stipulate that as a problem.
What he was concerned about was what would happen if he came up with a quote for the job. He feared many of his customers would choke on the cost per window and would decide never to do the job.
Or, he would avoid all the hassle, let the paint scrapings fall into the flower beds and let the customer worry about it, maybe throw in some mulch to cover it up.
Same thing with the CFC bulbs. They get tossed into someone else’s dumpster, after cleaning the fingerprints. This is called progress.
Mea culpa. I have consistently misspelled Landsburg. Apologies from a hypocrite.
Do we need Pigouvian taxes on mercury content? 😀
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