Should more things be recycled or should more things be thrown away?

[Aikouka]

obligatory penn & teller bullshit episode reference

Beat you to it.

 

[Bignate603]

Well, the free market could handle it. Yes, I will always believe in free market money, although I believe that if government has to exist, then yes the national government should be limited to collecting revenues in gold from the states based upon their population.

I should note that we haven't had a true gold standard since 1913 and that the problem with the true hard money standard started by Jackson was inadequate laws against fraud in some states and laws that subsidized or contributed to fraud in some states. LA prospered during the Free banking era, because they mandated high specie reserve requirements. LA was controlled by hard money men. In contrast to LA which didn't feel the need to mandate low reserve ratios (in part because they kept public expenditures low), IL did not do so well because the state mandated low reserve requirements in the hopes that it could build public railroads. IL went bankrupt trying to do so. IL was controlled mostly by Henry Clay National Socialists (well, other than Stephen A Douglas).

Go take a basic econ course and ask the teacher/professor what an externality is. Then you might start to understand that there are some instances where the free market system will not work well.

 

[Anarchist420]

Go take a basic econ course and ask the teacher/professor what an externality is. Then you might start to understand that there are some instances where the free market system will not work well.

Doesn't matter. Nothings perfect, but it's the most ethical.

 

[Jeff7]

Metals: Yes, definitely.
Particularly aluminum. It is immensely cheaper to use recycled aluminum than it is to refine it out of ore. Melt it, remove impurities, and add the necessary materials to tweak the alloy to what you want - versus processing of ore and a LOT of electricity for electrolysis to extract it.
Steel - not as much of an economic incentive, but it's still definitely there.

In general, it's not terribly easy to get metals into metal form - they're usually some kind of nonmetallic compound. Once they're refined, throwing away that investment of energy is just stupid.