Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-27/plastic-recycling-is-a-problem-consumers-can-t-solve <comment><USER2> This is a classic externality problem. We can berate consumers all day long to be more diligent in their recycling, but all that finger wagging is for show meant to distract from the real source of the garbage, the manufacturers.

Just like the classic "blame the user" mentality, the users were given an impossibly complex system with barely any incentive to get it right. Nothing about the interface is intuitive or discoverable.

The creators of all this garbage do so because it's profitable. They can create disposable and single use items, in thousands of variations, out of materials that create hundreds of years of environmental impact, and none of that consequence comes back to their bottom line. They'll happily point the finger all day long at us stupid users and inept local governments and bad China, as long as it all distracts from their culpability.

If we forced all producers of trash to account for its safe reuse, recycling or disposal as part of the cost of doing business, this problem would disappear quickly. Because here's the thing, the bill always comes due. If we let them skip out on it, then we will be the ones who pay.

<comment><USER3> This is such a big part of it and it's amazing that they get away with it.

Case in point: Blue Apron. Blue Apron positioned itself as one of the more "recycle-friendly" food delivery services to try and fight the stigma against every delivery having bags upon bags of individually wrapped goods by providing recycling services. As a former Blue Apron customer, I loved that I could separate stuff out (hard plastic, soft plastic, paper, etc.) and throw away anything that touched raw meat and just send it back to them in the same cardboard box I received it in.

Blue Apron then cancelled their recycling services and now just redirects people to do it themselves because "recycling is hard". Now, the number of people that will actually recycle will drop further and Blue Apron doesn't have to change its operations one iota. I cancelled my subscription as soon as they removed the recycling options because they wanted to put the blame on the end user instead of themselves for producing all that waste in the first place.

There is a solution here. Until it's financially incentivized for them to find it, though, we'll be stuck here creating more and more waste.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be surprised if "Pack the box back up and burn a bunch more jet fuel sending it back to New York" turns out to be even worse than just sending it all to the landfill.

Given that they require air mailing boxes full of (mostly, by weight) frozen liquids all over the place on a weekly basis, I'm not convinced that these meal kit services can ever be made sustainable. Compared to that cost, worrying about recycling and whether their food suppliers are organic or not seems like it's probably just bikeshedding.

It might be cool to see what a company like Imperfect Produce could come up with in this space.

<comment><USER5> We subscribed to Terra's Kitchen after trying a few services including Blue Apron and Freshly.

Terra's Kitchen, in addition to using non-disposable, durable vessels and cold packs that you return, also pre-chops and pre-preps many of the ingredients so meal prep and cleanup is truly 20-30 mins, which is half the time (or less) than Blue Apron.

Here are the vessels they use: [https://www.terraskitchen.com/how-it- works/](https://www.terraskitchen.com/how-it-works/)

Highly recommend.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if the added cost is worth it as far as freshness and quality are concerned. I know I'm not the typical case, but I never got a bad shipment from Blue Apron when I was using it. I really wish I could continue to use it but I just can't justify the amount of waste that piles up over just going to the store myself. I spend almost as much time unpacking and prepping everything for recycling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps we should start doing something like what Taiwan did with their trash: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/separation- anxiety/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/separation-anxiety/)

> The trucks only accept trash bags officially sanctioned by the government of > Taiwan which come in a distinctive blue color, complete with an official > seal. The bags range in price and size, from 3 liters to 120 liters. The > most popular bag is 25 liters (similar to a tiny bathroom wastebasket > liner), which costs about $5 for a pack of 20. This effectively makes a pay- > as-you-waste model, incentivizing citizens to recycle and compost as much as > possible since those services are offered for free. The musical garbage > trucks are tailed by a recycling truck, where workers help the residents > sort their recyclables and compost into thirteen distinct bins. Should > people fail to sort their materials properly, the government will fine them > up to $200.

<comment><USER7> Is careful sorting of trash/recycling really a good use of time?

Seems better to put that effort towards development of techniques to sort en- masse. Likely controversial, but I think there is also an argument for simply throwing hard-to-recycle items in a landfill. If consumption continues to increase, it will likely become economically viable to eventually mine those landfills for raw materials.

<comment><USER8> I'd say yes it is a good use of our time. I really want ours to be the generation that stops punting problems out to the next generation. I'd be happy if my friend's children don't need to grow up worrying about how to deal with oceans filled with plastics, global warming induced fire storms and flooded coastal cities.

<comment><USER9> Isn't our generation the most overworked, least-amount-of-free-time one? How does this extra job fit into that major issue?

<comment><USER10> By exercising other parts of your brain you let those used for work recover.

<comment><USER9> I'm hoping this is sarcasm. If not, I don't need the government assigning me work to "exercise other parts of my brain" thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's incredible that corporations are allowed to pump out massive quantities of single use plastic and then we blame the consumer for not recycling it. The idea that the solution is to change the habits of billions of people rather than enforce some rules on a few thousand companies is just crazy.

<comment><USER12> The entire packaging industry is ridiculous.

For example: Why do garbage bags come in boxes or bags when they could be stored _inside a garbage bag_ that's folded up properly to contain them?

<comment><USER13> That seems like a very small efficiency gain. At one bag per week, a single, recyclable cardboard box of 45 garbage bags will last you just under a year. Each box folds down to about one legal-size manilla envelope. I'm personally okay with wasting one manilla envelope per year.

<comment><USER12> It's an example of how the product could be the packaging. You, personally, use one box per year. Cleaning companies go through a _lot_ more.

Even if it's just one box per year, it's one box that doesn't need to exist, the bag itself is more than adequate. That and the bag company has to buy boxes for no reason other than a lack of awareness on their own part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to live in central New Jersey, where the people of Waste Management would send out quarterly fliers telling people "When in doubt throw it out"[0]

I now live in Seattle, and when I tell people this campaign, they get extremely preachy and judgmental. Then when I try to explain that no, it's actually better for the environment, things really go no where. I should probably just give up on that.

[0] [http://www.hamiltonnj.com/filestorage/228309/252258/Calendar...](http://www.hamiltonnj.com/filestorage/228309/252258/Calendar_Middle_Insert_Section_2016_How_Do_I_Get_Rid_Of_Page_Full_Document.pdf)

<comment><USER15> > _I now live in Seattle, and when I tell people this campaign, they get > extremely preachy and judgmental._

Seattle and the region have been leading recyclers for decades. Waste Management sends a similar brochure to King County residents: [http://wmnorthwest.com/kingcounty/calendars/guidelines.pdf](http://wmnorthwest.com/kingcounty/calendars/guidelines.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Heh, first time I've seen this part:

• Two (2) feet apart with lids opening toward street • At least three (3) feet from cars, trees and mailboxes, fences and utility boxes

Lol. Yeah. As if there's enough room on the street to do that with modern townhouse designs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This has long driven me crazy. I have a version of this argument with my wife every few weeks. I live in a city that has three bins: compost, landfill, and recycling, and overall the city (SF) does a really good job apparently of sorting trash.

But if you want a system that doesn't break down if someone throws a handful of batteries in the compost bin, then someone or something somewhere still has to sort the trash stream.

So, at best, you've used all the labor of everyone in SF to reduce the number of people/things/processes downstream to sort the trash properly.

So, yes, the ball is ultimately in the manufacturer's court for a lot of this, but home recycling is at best a terrible use of labor/time/money. Raise taxes to hire more sorting capability, because if it requires 100 more trained humans sorting somewhere downstream that's surely less than all-the-people-in- SF-a-few-minutes-everyday to do a less-than-perfect job.

Also, I think a lot of these laws also do another disservice in that they make people _feel_ like they're doing something to help the situation which keeps them from _actually_ solving the problem.

Like the new plastic straws ban to keep plastic out of the ocean. If the problem is "keep plastic out of the ocean", then solve "why does plastic get in the ocean" problem. Banning plastic straws might be _part_ of the solution, but what seems to happen so often is that we make one of these "feel-good" laws that keeps a negligible amount of plastic out of the ocean, and I have to drink out of a shitty straw, and people think that someone we've made substantive progress to a real solution.

<comment><USER18> > I have a version of this argument with my wife every few weeks.

You make some good points here no doubt, but recycling is definitely _not_ worth arguing with your wife over. Be loving and overlook her (perceived) faults.

<comment><USER19> I'd argue that having (respectful) arguments is a pretty healthy thing for a couple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's look at some actual numbers without the hype.

"91% of potentially recyclable plastic ends up in landfills, or worse, in oceans."

So right there, no ratio. How much goes into the landfill and how much into the ocean? Because lets face it:

Landfill>Ocean

For comparison, 8m tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean annually according to the cited 2015 UCSB study: [http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/014985/ocean- plastic](http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/014985/ocean-plastic)

That's 8m tonnes globally. The US makes about 30m tonnes a year. What's the US' share of plastic in the ocean?

[https://jambeck.engr.uga.edu/landplasticinput](https://jambeck.engr.uga.edu/landplasticinput)

About 340 tonnes a year. Yeah, that's a lot, but that's 0.00425% of the total. We're in 20th place.

China drops 2.4m tonnes a year. About 30% of all the plastic waste that goes into the ocean each year.

Article does nothing to point out the plastic waste just getting chucked into rivers in India and Asia.

<comment><USER21> How much of that 2.4m tonnes comes from other countries though? And the other countries know that it's not getting recycled properly yet still send it over to offload their guilt.

Also you can't just use raw numbers as the population numbers are completely different. Waste generated per capita (excluding and import/export) would be a more accurate metric.

<comment><USER20> None, at the moment, considering China just instituted a plastic waste import ban.

But you're still implying that people are sending it to China in order to alleviate themselves of guilt, without China's consent. That's crap. They were conducting waste/recycling operations for business. If you agree to send plastic waste to China, then it's on China NOT to chuck the plastic in a river. Just because they're negligent doesn't make you liable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the article makes some good points but it keeps jarring me with the "impossible to recycle" statements.

There is "recycling" as implied by the author of the article which is that the material is converted into feedstock to make the same material again, there is "recycling" which can be defined by "is used again", and their is "recycling" which is defined as "it didn't end up in a landfill or ocean." The nuance is important.

For example, you can chemically break down plastic by exposing it to high heat in an oxygen free environment (like a nitrogen)[1]. For many polymers this will reduce it to essentially various long chain polymers, some water vapor, and some left over carbon. You can incinerate plastic in a closed loop exhaust system and extract net positive energy from it. You can mechanically decompose it (think shreedding) and then either ultrasonically or thermally bond into engineered materials (which are not yogurt cups but can provide structural insulation for example)

I had thought at one time that using an engineered material approach you could make things like picnic tables for Forest Service campgrounds (they would be extremely durable, insect and weather immune, and difficult to burn) however in discussions with people who could advocate for such a program I learned that they often just re-used lumber they were clearing as part of the forest management mission for such things so their materials were "free" to begin with. Conceptually though I still like the idea.

[1] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/app.1974.070...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/app.1974.070180314)

</comment><comment><USER23> Startup I will never get around to:

A store which sells only bulk and fresh food, and durable containers: mesh bags, Mason jars, glass bottles.

Every container, dispenser, and display has a scale, and unlocks with a nearfield chip. Enter the store, tap phone or insert chip card, get a card.

Fill up your cart, stick the card back into the slot, get charged, done. One customer service kiosk for buying back clean containers at 80% of retail cost.

<comment><USER24> Depending on where you live, it might already (mostly) exist, minus the NFC part.

Grocery co-op in my area has a big back room of bulk goods, sells durable containers too, run by hippies and has been around for decades.

The real hurdles with selling bulk & having customers reuse containers is handling tare smoothly and getting customers to remember to bring their containers.

<comment><USER25> There was a zero-waste grocer in Austin, but they recently went out of business. [http://austin.culturemap.com/news/restaurants- bars/04-25-18-...](http://austin.culturemap.com/news/restaurants- bars/04-25-18-ingredients-grocery-store-closing-zero-waste-east-austi/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Call me crazy but I'd love to see the next round of LEED certifications require any food establishment with seating for dining required to serve with reusable dinnerware and utensils, i.e. plates, forks, knives, spoons, cups and glasses. The amount of plastic wasted by people like me who get lunch from a food court, walk ten feet away to eat lunch and then toss single use items is astounding.

Yet there's no other solution without restaurants moving back to reusable items: health code won't allow them to take my container for food nor should it.

<comment><USER27> I'd love to see that too. I've seen a range of industrially-compostable products, such that I feel it ought to be possible to eliminate the recycling bin altogether (for plastics, I guess metals/glass/paper still work), and have cities/states mandate the use of compostable packaging. They'd save a ton on reducing landfill/plastics recycling, and also being able to sell the resulting compost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's way past time to start pricing in externalities. More of a push to "reduce and reuse".

<comment><USER29> Lets start with the supply chain. Don't just dump this on consumers. I want to see less individually plastic wrapped/boxed fruit.

<comment><USER30> Consumers are at fault there, too. If people didn't buy it, companies wouldn't produce it. Consumers need to be disincentivized from purchasing such wasteful products.

<comment><USER29> Consumers are limited because suppliers (in aggregate) often control the market.

If all the stores supply wasteful products, what are your options. If you're a store and you have limited options on what you can sell (because all the suppliers have wasteful packaging) what are your options?

The problem (plastic junk) comes from the supply-side. It doesn't really help consumers for the most part - heck I think most would prefer fruit that was local (all else being equal).

<comment><USER28> Granted, it should be attacked from all sides, but how much of that do consumers actually need?

It's _possible_ (not easy, nor very practical let's say) to have almost zero waste if you're really dedicated. This is 4 years worth of trash that fits in a mason jar: [https://youtu.be/BxKfpt70rLI?t=30s](https://youtu.be/BxKfpt70rLI?t=30s)

So making a pretty sizable reduction even as things are should be doable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The underlying problem is that manufacturers of things we buy have been permitted to "externalize" part of their supply chain cost (onto the rest of us).

So the fix would be to un-do that : if you sell something, you have to take back all the waste and packaging.

Probably not going to happen, but this is the real problem.

<comment><USER32> Or just charge manufacturers a "packaging tax" based on weight and composition of any materials included with a product but not part of said product. You could use the money to pay for better sorting of the waste stream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hence it is always important to remember: reduce, reuse and recycle, in that order. You don't have to recycle if you can reuse.

<comment><USER34> While I agree with that order of operations so to speak, I'm not sure why the responsibility is pushed onto consumers. It's hard to make a choice when it comes down to plastic, plastic, or plastic.

What is being/can be done to get companies to stop using plastic in packaging? I understand that it is necessary for a lot of modern conveniences, but surely there is something that can be done to curb the production and use on the manufacturing side.

<comment><USER35> The problem is that companies use a stupidly ridiculous amount of plastic. The other week I bought some dessert which had a non-recyclable box, then each portion was in a non-recyclable plastic cup, held in place by a non-recyclable plastic tray with a non-recyclable plastic lid on each cup. Absolutely insane.

<comment><USER36> That's the place for regulation. Let's forbid the damned thing or at least tax it heavily. Anything not reusable? Make them pay for externalities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A remarkably accurate summary of the mess we've brought upon ourselves. It very much is a game, or recycling theatre.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm always confused why we aren't pyrolyzing refuse and reusing the hydrocarbons in them.

It's energetically and monetarily expensive, but both costs are more or less paid for by the output products and input products, as far as I am aware. And you get out fairly high quality fuels.

<comment><USER39> Air pollution is worse than landfills. Incineration increases our exposure to heavy metals and dioxins. Burning plastic is a fairly nasty process and can only be done "cleanly" at very high temperatures.

Trash also contains stuff like batteries that explode when burned.

<comment><USER38> Not incineration. Pyrolysis, in an anoxic environment. It's the same process by which syngas is produced, except that the results are longer chain carbons and thus just have to be cracked and distilled rather than Fischer-Tropsch'd into usable feedstocks. You use about 30% of the input mass of organics to power the process (usually the lightest fraction that is equivalent to syngas), and the result is about 10% waste material and 60% usable mass fractions in the fuel-to-wax range, just like a normal oil refinery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There is only one answer, ban all consumable plastics. Absolutely no reason to use them when alternatives exist in every application of them.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think I could handle one bin for plastic, one bin for metal+glass, one bin for paper. Anything more complicated I don't really trust myself do right without a lot of vigilance.

And I've heard that things as typical as staples in the cardboard/paper stream ruin everything cost-wise, which makes it all seem sort of lost-cause-ish.

<comment><USER9> At one point in NYC we had to use four - FOUR - different bins. In a tiny ass apartment. And still, there were so many damn edge cases that I gave up. Sorry, but I have a full time job and plenty to do outside of work. Make the recycling process easy on my end and I'll do it. Make it ridiculously complicated and I won't.

Honest question - at what point do my tax dollars cap out and the onus gets put back on me? Might be naive, but I always wanted to know the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The 70% landfill rate for Europe is probably true but if you look at countries individually it's a completely different stories. The top 10 recycling countries in the EU have leas than 5% landfilled plastics.

[https://www.plasticseurope.org/application/files/5715/1717/4...](https://www.plasticseurope.org/application/files/5715/1717/4180/Plastics_the_facts_2017_FINAL_for_website_one_page.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER43> While the marketers will cry, if more packaging was more standardized then reuse would be easier and ideally less expensive.

The standardization of shipping containers made the movement of goods more effective and less expensive. It's time to do the same for packaging.

As a side note: perhaps less disposable is appropriate at times as well. Those 16.9 oz water bottles are purposely one-and-done. It's 2018. Certainly someone can find a way to make them so they can be reused.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have no affiliation with the company Renewlogy (formerly PK Clean) in Salt Lake City, but they have a very interesting method for turning plastic into diesel fuel that is in use today:

[https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900014582/utah-based- ren...](https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900014582/utah-based-renewlogy- offers-solution-to-plastic-waste-problem.html)

The Chinese ban on plastics is not having a major impact in Salt Lake City, according to Sophia Nicholas, Salt Lake City sustainability department communications manager.

Officials in both Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County say they are still picking up plastics from recycling bins as usual. By contract, none of that is ending up in landfills. Salt Lake City's contracts require the recycling vendors to accept and recycle plastics No. 1 through No. 7.

"We know that there is a lot of a upheaval right now," Nicholas said. "But the markets are dynamic and they're finding other alternatives for that type of material."

The city of Boise, Idaho, recently banned plastics No. 3 through No. 7 in its recycling program and contracted with Renewlogy. Residents must separate those plastics into separate bags that now come to Salt Lake City.

<comment><USER45> Unfortunately that article reads like a press release from "Renewlogy" and doesn't seem to have a complete basis in reality. In reality at present the area is facing a $900,000 increase in recycling costs largely because china isn't taking it anymore.

[https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2018/06/26/curbside-...](https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2018/06/26/curbside- recycling-in-utah-and-elsewhere-is-at-risk-as-china-gets-more-picky-about-the- waste-it-imports/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> -snip, self-censorship for safety-

<comment><USER47> This is a good point. I'm reminded of a thread from yesterday: [1]. There are tons of places where nobody gives a single crap about waste disposal. The sides of the roads are literal trash heaps. "The West" is not going to solve this global problem by making everyone sort their trash into 10 different bins. It needs to stop at the source: the companies producing all this waste (mostly discarded packaging).

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17403526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17403526)

EDIT: updated for the sensitive

<comment><USER48> small nit - the sorting of trash is not the exclusive domain of women. "by making people sort their trash". :-)

(I say this as the household Ph.D. trash sorter...)

Thanks for updating. --the sensitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've always thought the single bin was stupid. Remember when you at least separated paper, plastics and cans? It's way way easier, efficient and less labor intensive for a consumer to do that very basic sorting than getting a facility to do it.

It's like data entry people who copy paper forms to a machine. Why not have a device the consumer can type their own data into? You'll get less mistakes and save a lot of time.

Having four basic sort bins is a very low effort for the person throwing shit out. It also reduces the amount of contaminates and makes life easier for people who do have to sort through all that.

American bottle deposits also suck pretty bad compared to our EU counterparts. At least in The Netherlands and Germany, every shop that sells glass has to take that glass back. Many have machines that scan the barcodes on the bottle and issue you a ticket you can use for purchases or cash.

The bottles actually get reused too. Old German beer bottles often have physical have grooves on them from the plastic rollers in machines! They get reused that much!

</comment><comment><USER50> As much as I hate plastics, I find that it is here to stay. As consumers, what we can do is to reduce the plastics that we use. Re-use plastic bags. Re-use takeout containers (always have a bunch of them in my car). Reduce purchases of food items that are wrapped in plastic (they are mostly processed food anyway). Buy produce that isn't shrink-wrapped. Don't use a straw for drinks. Don't ask for plastic cutlery when getting takeout.

I do think that some sort of tax on plastic use would help deter and reduce, but not completely eliminate plastic waste. Restaurants should be taxed on every plastic takeout container they use. Manufacturers, food producers should be taxed on plastic packaging. Blue Apron should be taxed for all the plastic containers that they send out to customers.

Maybe Elon Musk would be the new China and ship the world's plastic waste to space. It would cost quite a bit of fuel though so maybe it's not as sustainable or eco-friendly.

<comment><USER51> Someone pitch to Elon their bioreactor that converts plastic to rocket fuel.

I mean wouldn't that be cool?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I have single stream recycling and the shit that people put into it is ridiculous sometimes. Greasy pizza boxes are a popular one.

<comment><USER53> Our recycle company specifically told us to throw pizza boxes in the recycling. I'm told there are some ways to still use it just not in making paper again.

<comment><USER54> They can probably be composted.

<comment><USER55> There could be concerns over potential toxins arising from the breakdown of the inks and adhesives used in making the boxes entering the food stream?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I think the basic problem is that there is no feedback mechanism for recycling. For example, I could judge an eaten-but-not-entirely-washed-out plastic container of hummus to be clean enough for recycling, but I will never know if it is ultimately recycled or thrown away once it leaves the green bin.

Machine learning could help consumers by leaps and bounds by being able to say with a picture or two whether a given item is recyclable.

I don't know how you would incentivize people to use such an app, but I imagine options such as redeemable points or discounts (like paying less for coffee in a reusable container at most coffee shops) or public shaming (like when the power company tells you how much you spend on electricity versus your neighbors) could help make recycling more efficient.

Aside from that, though, I'm not sure how to do much more on the consumer side of things. As others have mentioned here, the choices are often plastic, plastic, and plastic.

<comment><USER56> Well, in Japan the trash all has labels telling you what category it is and they're much more fine-grained (you might have to peel off one part and throw it away separately from the rest, for instance).

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> During wartime, A significant difference to waste stream happened inside manufacturing, as a function of government directive. I believe its written up in quite a few places, my source is 'the peoples war' by Angus Calder.

In principle, if manufacturing is _obligated_ to handle waste stream better, the evidence is, it can.

</comment><comment><USER55> Fast Company published a good article [1] about the Precious Plastic effort [2] to spread open source DIY machines that recycle plastic. I hope someone helps them publish plans for a limonene-based styrofoam recycler as well, as that is supposedly a fairly simple reaction. Then agree upon standardized sizes, and manufacture bricks of plastic-encased styrofoam insulation, where the plastic casing is designed to interlock into near-airtight joints. Then pump out insulation for the housing of the co-op members helping, 4-5 feet thick, and you start creating near PassivHaus-grade insulation.

Use other plastics to create a mechanically interlocking building envelope perhaps, and thermal bridge isolation pieces, and you could drive ACH in the way building down.

Other uses for recycled plastics that would help those who are short on capital but long on sweat equity might include really large fan blades for whole room ceiling fans, shelving, storage boxes, body weight equipment like traveling rings, and playground equipment. All of these don't need to be sophisticated, and confer allow the capital-constrained to avoid having to use as much capital.

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/40486883/these-diy-machines- let-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40486883/these-diy-machines-let-anyone- recycle-plastic-into-new-products)

[2] [https://preciousplastic.com/en/index.html](https://preciousplastic.com/en/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER58> I was thinking about this issue recently. Surely part of this is a UI issue. How do I know what is recyclable and what isn't? Do I need to prepare it in some way before I put it in the bin?

Governments have control over regulating a great number of things. Why not regulate packaging by requiring easy to identify recycling instructions? Standardise the bin colours across a large area - ideally an entire country - to make sure it is easy to provide 1-to-1 mappings between graphics and target bins, then require manufacturers provide clear labeling of how to dispose of the packaging. Surely the manufacturer knows without a doubt what it is making things out of. They should also know therefore how to recycle it. If some materials are more recyclable than others, regulate in favour of the more recyclable materials. Single material packaging should be favoured over multi- material packaging. Should it be rinsed before being added to a yellow bin? Have standardised graphics to show those two things.

If governments provides some incentive/encouragement/regulation for businesses to produce packaging that is not only recyclable, but also easily sorted by consumers, surely that will solve a lot of contamination issues and promote better practices by consumers.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's quite typical that when somethung in the political realm fails, our instinctive diagnosis is moral.

House prices rise? Its either corporate greed or NIMBYism. People got addicted to medicines? Pharmaceutical companies are cynical. Welfare system is full of mess? You just can't trust poor ___ people. King lost a war? Someone hasn't been pious enough.

Pollution? Ecological degradation? Extinctions? No one cares any more. In the past, we lived in harmony with nature. We took no more than we needed. We had morals.

Bollocks. Morality is just the easy answer. These are practical problems, not moral ones. What we need is more competence, not more righteousness.

Anyway, I find this striking:

" _91 percent of potentially recyclable plastic in the U.S. ended up in landfills – or worse, in the oceans. (79% in Europe)_ "

There is a massive difference between landfill and ocean. There is a massive difference between landfill 1 and landfill 2. Recycling has been idealised as some sort of moral goal. Garbage has been vilified as a moral failing. The practical impacts on the environment have a lot more to do with how much garbage makes it to landfill, and what they do with it there.

Give me 0% recycling and 0% stray garbage and I think we'd have a big net win.

</comment><comment><USER60> I teach college and I see students throwing their empty recyclable bottles into the trash nearly every day when the recycling bin is literally right next to it.

</comment><comment><USER61> I suspect that separating a stream of trash is simpler if the stream is younger and lower volume. Suppose we created a "Recycler" \-- a mandatory household appliance like "Dishwasher" and "Dryer" and "Oven". This fantasy device has a few holes on top for common use cases, it beeps at the user if they screw up or when full, and it compacts the waste into small blocks. A cross between a paper shredder and trash compactor.

Since it integrates with your household Nest devices, you can link the device to the city waste department to receive sweet rebates on the electricity you wasted to power it. Rebates that the city pays for with the money they receive from taxes levied on manufacturers.

The entire scheme is far more wasteful than requiring manufacturers to pay for disposal of their packaging, but since it pushes even more burden onto the consumer I think it's a winner.

</comment><comment><USER62> Is there a place where the world can provide ideas on how to solve complex global issues? Something that that curated the best ideas, forms pros and cons to approaches proposed and automatic weighs the risks? I guess what I imagine is some sort of machine learning solution that takes in account the knowledge of the internet and allows for weighing of various factors based on assigned trust scores. It seems weird that we live in this information rich society, a ton of ideas float around the web but they are never acted upon or formulated in ways that harness public support. Am I just envisioning a utopian idea or is this possible to build? There Must be a way to pull most prominent ideas into one place for public scrutiny without creating additional noise.

</comment><comment><USER63> Whenever you think about plastic consumption, remember that gasoline weighs about 6 pounds a gallon.

Especially remember this if you drive to the grocery store and are precious about plastic bags.

I mean, please do make sure they end up in a properly managed waste stream, but maybe consider what to prioritize.

</comment><comment><USER64> We should charge per unit of garbage generated (per liter or whatever), and have tracking on how much of it was actually recyclable, which would cause some percent of the price to be refunded (billed at a lower rate to encourage recycling). Otherwise we will be constantly drowning in trash. It blows my mind that we allow people to create as much trash as they want for a flat fee when there's such a negative externality affected on our environment and community, especially since it's a much less controversial and nebulous problem than something like climate change. Billing the consumer for trash affects the design of packaging and shipping of everything they consume.

</comment><comment><USER65> My comment is late but it's against the prevailing mood of the top comment -

People are ignoring a very critical factor - "disposable culture" is the brother of cheap and convenient goods.

This means that poor people can get cheap food in cheap packagaging with better safety levels than otherwise.

This means - packets of Singl use detergent - affordable to people in poverty.

It means less paper use - which means less pollution in the creation process.

Mumbai has asked people to not use plastic - meat vendors are asking people to bring tins to carry meat. Those need to be cleaned which means an increase in water use.

This is a much bigger problem than it seems.

</comment><comment><USER66> the last paragraph is key. even if we recycled 100% of the plastic it still inevitably leads to pollution (all this talk about sorting is irrelevant!). we need to be using better materials.

<comment><USER67> It's not helpful to throw up our arms and say nothing can be done just because pollution wasn't eliminated 100%. It is helpful to compare magnitude. If we can reduce pollution by 1% or 10% or 90%... any amount is better than no reduction. If sorting helps 10%, and it takes almost no effort, then it's very relevant.

I agree that better materials is a good idea. Same goes for many other suggestions here, reducing demand, charging producers, new ways to reuse and recycle. It all helps. So don't give up before you start just because it can't be perfect. Nothing's perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The plastics problem must be addressed by standardised, washable, refundable containers that manufacturers can package their products in and put a paper label on.

The packaging industry is creating an infinite flow of garbage and recycling is just the distraction that this industry creates to stop us being enraged at the unstoppable flow of garbage that it creates.

The idea of single use plastic wrappers for food or any other product must end.

Also the idea of destroyable/recyclable non-standard container sizes must end.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'm working with a plastic recycler in Kenya that may be solving issues in a novel way: [https://make-it-initiative.org/africa/cpt_startup/gjenge- ent...](https://make-it-initiative.org/africa/cpt_startup/gjenge-enterprises/)

Contact me if you want an intro to them, they are seeking grant and equity funding to grow their ability to recycle plastic bottles into building blocks

</comment><comment><USER70> Until the issue is fixed, what's wrong with landfills? What's wrong with something taking a long time to decompose? My understanding is landfills done right are ok.

</comment><comment><USER71> How is plastic waste ending up in landfills even a problem? If we don't have the technology to efficiently recycle plastic waste now, we will in 50 years. Future landfill miners will praise us for our foresight. I'm having a hard time understanding the concern given the bigger environmental problems out there. Habitat loss, pollution, and climate change are less visible but more pressing problems.

</comment><comment><USER72> The solution is charging people directly for trash pickup which creates more of an individual incentive to focus on product packaging. Also, you could offer incentives for collecting and (cleanly) burning plastic for energy (given its mostly petroleum based). Recycling programs today are a joke and often can't breakeven

<comment><USER51> Increasing the burden on the consumers is just going to make individuals more opposed to whatever you're making them do. People already burn and dump trash on their own with the relatively light taxation we levy on them to process their garbage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I wonder how bad are the economics of going back to glass for product packaging, eg, like milk bottles. We still do it for beer so it mustn't be atrocious. Could we make inroads that way? I'm envisioning there'd be order 1-2 dozen standard bottle sizes to make recycling easy (cheap) to automate.

</comment><comment><USER74> Caltech used to have a great recycling facility with dumpsters for the various kinds of plastic. It was open to the community and always in use. It required more time and attention to get it right but it certainly wasn't onerous. But then they bulldozed the facility to build more student housing.

</comment><comment><USER75> Thought experiment. Does it actually make any sense to recycle things now that are going to last 100s or 1000s of years? Shouldn't we just landfill them and later, when we need them, and the technology is orders of magnitude better just go dig it up and recycle it then? Why recycle now?

</comment><comment><USER76> Let's not forget that this is also a cultural issue. When I compare living in Europe with living in the States for example I had to say that Americans use a lot more single use plastic than Europeans. Avoidance is possible. Maybe not to the same extent, but it definitely can play a role

</comment><comment><USER77> I've often wondered about some kind of in home melting device for plastics, like a big pressure cooker. So much plastic recycling is actually empty containers. Heating and compressing would greatly reduce the footprint and might make reuse easier too? Would this be viable?

</comment><comment><USER78> This is the result of corporate greed combined with the tragedy of the commons. Corporate greed makes the waste, consumers act primary in self- interest and select for short-term cheapness, and politicians don't want to reign or regulate that greed or consumer selfishness.

</comment><comment><USER79> I still don't understand why we don't have a general tax on using certain materials that are hard to recycle or cause waste, if you taxed plastic per gram and made it more expensive to use than cardboard or aluminium we would see a major switch.

</comment><comment><USER80> Doesn't better garbage sorting seem within reach of current machine learning tech and robotics?

</comment><comment><USER72> The solution is charging people directly for trash pickup which creates more of an individual incentive to focus on consumer packaging. Also, you could offer incentives for collecting and (cleanly) burning plastic for energy (given its mostly petroleum based)

</comment><comment><USER81> Why not levy a very substantial tax on this damaging product - like with do for cigarettes? Regulate with economic incentives seems usually to be the right solution. Also, if the US could just get to European levels, that would cut US waste by almost half.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'd like to add. At this point, when possibe buy food in glass. For example, apple sauce.

</comment><comment><USER82> What does this mean? REDUCING and REUSING plastic use is critical. Solutions to the recycling problem are poor at best and innovation takes time. Don't just put it in the better looking bin and expect that someone will "figure it out".

</comment><comment><USER83> If we can't robotically seperate the different types of plastic presently, could we tag new plastics with something machine readable? Bar codes seem impracticle for some uses. So just invent a micro tag, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER84> I get a ton of crap at work and other places for mentioning that consumer recycling is a giant farce and is nothing more than a distraction for the consumer so they can feel like they're 'doing somethkng' while nothing that matters actually changes.

</comment><comment><USER85> Here's an idea, why not collect all the soda bottles and place them in front of respective corporate head quarters? I am sure Coca Cola will get a kick out of it and they might do something about creating a recycling program.

</comment><comment><USER86> In one state in Australia they used to have a pay per container returned so for example 5c per bottle.

If this buyback was paid for by the manufacturer it could incentivize recycling, create jobs and help pay for recycling and sorting.

</comment><comment><USER87> unpopular opinion:

Add a sales tax on everything that has plastic in it.

If not using plastic increases the price then the majority of people just will not choose the more expensive option.

Sure motivated people will see the benefit, but most people will see shrink- wrapped item at $5.99 vs 'better' item at $6.50 and will just pick the cheaper one.

The app store pricing is an example of this. "$5 for a game is outrageous, i'm going to play this terrible one for $1 instead." well actually they are going to pick the free game with advertising, tracking, and all kinds of darkpatterns instead. but the idea is the same

</comment><comment><USER88> What do modern plastic free food containers look like? Are they any good at keeping insects out? My mom tells me stories of how often candy bars had larvae in them back when they were just wrapped in paper.

</comment><comment><USER89> One of the ways to solve this issue is to incentive or give rewards to customers who give back their plastic waste. In Germany and Scandinavia, its been in place for years.

</comment><comment><USER90> I'm always impressed with how Japan handles recycling, despite being a heavy plastic user and producer. Last figure I read was 70% of all plastic recycled.

</comment><comment><USER91> > While there ought to be a fine for the carcasses and Christmas lights...

Maybe, but I can tell you that passers-by put non-recyclable materials in my bins every chance they get.

</comment><comment><USER92> I try to reuse some significant parts of our packaging stream, such as 1Kg yogurt containers, bringing them to the shop to use for mixing epoxy instead of buying mix cups.

Since I thought of recycling as having a high reuse rate (so having the hope that each bit of plastic might get used more than 2x), I used to think that this was a poor substitute and felt a bit bad about it.

Since reading a number of articles like this, I feel much better about it, since this material is at least getting 200% of the original use, which seems considerably greater than the actual recycling re-use rates.

So, reuse > recycling, yay!

</comment><comment><USER93> I preferred the 3 separate ones.. cans, plastic, paper. Made it easy to keep the food/water/residue crap off the paper.

</comment><comment><USER94> I have seen lots of gripes here about corporate America in these comments, but very little in the way of realistic solutions.

</comment><comment><USER95> Real solution is to move the cost up the chain such that there is a "plastic tax" like there is a carbon tax.

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy You could pay per item, so people would not recycle items that they won't get paid for...

</comment><comment><USER90> Why not ban manufacturing certain plastics that end up in consumers' hands?

</comment><comment><USER96> Annie Leonard has a great piece on the history of the "individual accountability" trash movement. TL;DR: it's an accountability avoidance maneuver by the drinks, beverages, and fast-food industries, principally.

[http://www.worldwatch.org/system/files/AlterNet- SOW13-AL-102...](http://www.worldwatch.org/system/files/AlterNet- SOW13-AL-102013.pdf)

(Mostly the same material here: [https://www.salon.com/2014/06/18/big_plastics_pr_disaster_wh...](https://www.salon.com/2014/06/18/big_plastics_pr_disaster_why_it_cant_lie_its_way_around_microbeads_partner/))

Her book and project, The Story of Stuff, are highly recommended.

[https://storyofstuff.org/about/annie- leonard/](https://storyofstuff.org/about/annie-leonard/)

</comment><comment><USER97> Maybe because they are "consumers"

</comment><comment><USER98> TLDR:

> 91 percent of potentially recyclable plastic in the U.S. ended up in > landfills – or worse, in the oceans.

> Yes, trash has become complicated

> Even if consumer participation in recycling were 100 percent, we wouldn't be > close to recycling 100 percent of the material [...]

> [...] nearly all current "recyclable" plastics [...] get a second life as a > handbag or lawn chair [...]. They're not really recycled so much as > "downcycled."

</comment><comment><USER99> Comment from a similar recent thread ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17359807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17359807))

Modern dumps are sealed very well and can hold huge amounts. At $50 a ton we will never run out of space. Put everything in the dump. Plastic, green waste, garbage, paper, electronics, etc. Sort out pure metals like steel and aluminum. Do methane recovery on the pile and burn it for power. This will sequester a lot of carbon and at some point these dumps are likely to be mined as ore bodies. People can compost at their home if they like, but moving all this green waste around is costly and causes many plant diseases to spread much more quickly. Not to mention how horrible it is to get a load of chipped wood to put on your yard that has poison oak mixed in. We don't really need this little ritual of recycling to cleanse us of our consumerism sins. If we are really trying to help the environment, reduce, repair, and reuse is much more effective. Buy high quality stuff that lasts a long time.

Edit: Another bonus is that you and your neighbors only have to be woken up early once a week by the one garbage truck that comes by instead of three times with the current separate garbage, recycling, green waste trucks.

<comment><USER100> Please don't recycle comments from previous threads.

It's a fine comment, but HN threads are supposed to be conversations and we're trying to avoid repetition.

<comment><USER11> I think that's an example of reuse, which is better than recycling.

<comment><USER100> Ah yes. I was carried away by the title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Its always just cooperations, solving their tax-worthy public problems by dividing and conquering it as challenge for the individual.

</comment><comment><USER102> I'm not sure I want to live in a world where people are allowed to vote and drive cars and own guns who can't figure out which bin their garbage belongs inside.

I have never lived in a place where the instructions weren't provided and clear.

Here are some instructions from Sweden. There are 10 categories. I think there could be more.

[https://www.affarsverken.se/Documents/Renhallning/Sorterings...](https://www.affarsverken.se/Documents/Renhallning/Sorteringsguiden/Sorteringsguide_engelsk.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I've worked at many tech companies (arguably dealing with the smarter side of humanity), and have had to re-educate many people including software engineers on what's garbage, recycling or trash. The problem isn't that people are too dumb to recycle, it's that they don't care.

<comment><USER17> So someone _still_ has to sort it. Raise taxes. Hire sorters. Save time and money by having software engineers spend more time learning software engineering, not whether a corn-based plastic spoon should go in compost or recycling.</comment></comment></comment>


On Cumulative Advantage and How to Think About Luck - <AUTHOR> https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-winners-keep-winning-4e7f221f5b84 <comment><USER4> There's a similar experience I've seen with YouTube. The first hundred subscribers(assuming you don't ask friends and family to subscribe) is always the hardest, and even if you're putting out higher quality content than the big channels, it's difficult to break that barrier. Once you cross that barrier, getting from 100->1000 usually takes half the time, and it becomes successively easier to get more views and subscribers with less effort. Once you're in the hundred thousands you can earn a decent side-income from just putting out a video a day, and once you're in the millions you can be set for life with little effort assuming you don't have high production costs.

It is a snowballing effect, but most people never cross the initial tough barriers(after 10k, it becomes relatively easy to keep growing). In order to cross it, it either involves luck, or you have to know someone more popular than you who can boost your channel.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, how difficult would it be to "buy" your way in?

I'm thinking you could more or less hire influencers to recommend your channel/content?

<comment><USER4> I doubt the really big ones would do it - and anyone moderately successful is still going to ask for like thousands of dollars. But yeah, if you have money to burn that can probably boost you - but most people don't, so it again favours the people who already have an advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > J.K. Rowling published a book called The Cuckoo's Calling under the pen name > Robert Galbraith only to be outed by someone performing advanced text > analysis with a computer.

That is highly misleading. She was outed by a person with inside knowledge (anonymous tip), which was confirmed by automated text analysis.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did- comput...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did-computers- uncover-jk-rowlings-pseudonym-180949824/)

<comment><USER7> Further, they only compared Rowling to three other authors and Rowling ended up second in at least one of the tests. The analysis likely did not prove anything by itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting exercise to try to design board games that have economy- like systems. You'll notice that it's _very_ easy for rich-get-richer effects to emerge.

Now, rich-get-richer effects can be desirable in a board game in which the starting conditions are perfectly symmetric and luck plays no role, because the more skilled player is going to the one to acquire that snowballing advantage. But in asymmetric games, or games in which luck creates asymmetry, rich-get-richer effects obscure the relative skill of the players.

<comment><USER9> I don't think that rich-get-richer effects are desirable in any game (1) since that makes the game degrade into a lopsided endgame where the poor have no shot at winning the game, leading to frustration. A game should always allow a shot at winning to stay interesting.

(1) unless it's an educational game aimed at demonstrating the effect.

<comment><USER10> _A game should always allow a shot at winning to stay interesting._

While that sounds good in principle, it doesn't always work so well in practice. I have played board games that were designed that way and I began to realize that my choices early on did not matter very much. This had the effect of making the whole game feel pointless until the last turn where somebody would quickly grab the win.

<comment><USER11> Many games handle it poorly. The idea is to disincentivize poor planning and poor decisions such that winning becomes more difficult, but never so much that it becomes impossible. No matter what the situation is, a player should ideally be able to see a path to victory, or at least a spiteful form of failure, it just might involve rather significant gambles. The player on top should also ideally feel that their position is constantly one poor decision and some really bad luck away from being taken from them. Hidden information is frequently employed to this end, allowing players to imagine that their opponents are in a better or worse situation than they actually are, as well as providing the opportunity to intentionally deceive others about one's position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stephen King vs Richard Bachman is a wonderful illustration of _market_ vs _merit_.

Does merit have similar increasing characteristics?

Does it apply in non-competitive contexts?

Market success, notoriously, has non-merit factors: a comment on reddit has to have merit to get a few votes. But to go from a few to thousands, it has to be early, visible in the thread, the thread has to be visible, the story has to be visible on the front page, it has to stay there a long time. ("karma train")

One of the sub-factors is people like to read what others read - regardless of quality - in order to be on the same page, get the same jokes and references etc. To know what's going on - like the news.

<comment><USER13> Like Stephen King himself said, the experiment did not have enough time to reach maturity. I don't think it's contradictory to suggest that reputation is a component of merit. Most people do not succeed, yet those who do have a habit of succeeding over and over again. And so when you view something with an unknown track record it's expected value is going to be much lower than something from an author with a track record of dozens of successes.

In today's era where reviews and award often consider many factors besides just the book quality alone, they've become quite useless. So how are people supposed to find new books? You end up going from a handful of reviewers who tend to like the material you like, or by going to the same author over and over. In either case, it takes new entrants some significant amount of time to reach their full potential. I don't think this inherently means the market is broken.

<comment><USER12> To suggest that reputation is a component of merit is a category error. Reputation isn't part of merit; it doesn't cause merit. Merit may cause reputation.

You probably mean reputation has some positive correlation with merit, so that reputation can be used as a predictor of merit. And of course, you're right.

However, I wasn't addressing how consumers can ascertain merit, but whether merit has similar increasing chacteristics to market success, as described in the article.

That is, if someone starts with a little extra merit than someone else, does it also compound as they practice?

I wanted to exclude competitive factors. For example, Gladwell's _Outliers_ claims that Canadian hockey players have birthdays biased to part of the year, and that this was because the slight age difference makes child players more successful against their sub-year younger opponents in the same age-group. They get more practice and confidence, and get selected for extra training. But, this competitive aspect gives an artificial advantage to players who are slightly _relatively_ better. And also, this advantage is not present just once, but every time they play, for years.

BTW both the points you and I made regarding the merit-market relationship are mentioned in the literature posted by gwern [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17052074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17052074) (last link):

> in part because people use the popularity of products as a signal of > quality—a phenomenon that is sometimes referred to as "social" or > "observational learning" (Hedström 1998)—and in part because people may > benefit from coordinating their choices; that is, listening to, reading, and > watching the same things as others (Adler 1985). \- > [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does this happen in software too? Would Git be languishing unknown on SourceForge if it hadn't been written by Torvalds?

Edit: I'm sure it's a big factor in app stores.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure it does. But it goes both ways. Because if you're famous people will start using it based on trust and if it turns out to be crap people will feel betrayed and be angry and you'll lose the trust.

<comment><USER16> It does indeed. Think Peter Molyneux and Godus.

<comment><USER14> If they are famous they can probably withstand the occasional flop, although I suppose writers, actors etc., have been known to fall out of fashion entirely.

<comment><USER16> The manner of the flop is important as well. The reason Peter Molyneux's reputation has taken such a pummelling over Godus is the way he handled - <USER2> mishandled - the crowdfunding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was wondering about this in the context of the 80-20 rule, and believe I have a simple answer. Basically you need two things: 1) Some slight advantage 2) The network effect, that is, the probability of competing depends on the current winnings.

If you have these two things, you get 80-20 like distributions, you get the explanation for why winners keep winning. If you are interested, you can find my simulation and analysis at

[http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~arnold/research/80-20/](http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~arnold/research/80-20/)

Kind of shocking how well this works. The intuition is, why has coke won, well they had some initial advantage, and so they won a bit. Now that they have won a bit, they can finance themselves into more competition. For example, they can place themselves into more stores, into more restaurants etc. Now they get a chance to compete more.

<comment><USER18> Your rules are basically "the winner takes it all in the long run". This is similar to reality but real actors can disappear. Individuals have a limited lifespan. Their offspring have slightly different abilities. Corporations/Nations/Organizations are run by individuals (chosen not randomly) and may face technological/political challenges but here it's not clear that these structures need to disappear.

Do you see a good way to factor in these things?

<comment><USER17> Interesting that you see it as 'winner takes all'. Wondering why you say that. The simulation can be run in various ways. When I run with rules:

r1) Actors have normally distributed abilities,

r2) Actors are chosen randomly based on current winnings, the more you have won, the more you compete,

r3) Winner of competition wins one point from the loser,

You get interesting results, for example, in the two columns below, the left is Household income in 1970 broken into quintiles. The right column is simulation results.

        4.1%                         6.7%

       10.8%                        11.5%

       17.4%                        16.0%

       24.5%                        23.3%

       43.3%                        45.6%

Interesting how well the top 3 or 4 quintiles match between the simulation and the real world data.

If you run the simulation with different rules, the real world quintiles do not match the simulation quintiles nearly as well. You can tweak the simulation to see this as well.

The simulation can be tweaked to handle cases such as inheritance, so an actor with different ability inherits the wealth of a past actor. It would be interesting to see how many generations it takes to loose the wealth to test the adage that wealthy families loose their wealth in 3 generations.

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/globe- wealth/...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/globe- wealth/eroding-family-fortunes-how-the-cycle-can-be-broken/article33757468/)

Ill try it and get back to you.

<comment><USER17> I modified the simulation as follows:

I allowed it to evolve for a single generation, enough time for the top 20% of the population to have 80% of the wealth. I now choose a random sample from the top 20% of the population to follow, lets call them T20.

I now repeatedly

1) pass the wealth of all actors to actors with new, random abilities

2) let the new actors compete for a generation (the same number of competitions we used above)

Result: After 3 generations of steps 1 and 2 above, 80% of T20 has lost almost all their wealth, 10% has lost 75% of their wealth, 10% has done really well, growing it by a factor of 8, due to capable ancestors for three generations.

Amazing, it matches the statistics in [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe- investor/globe-wealth/...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe- investor/globe-wealth/eroding-family-fortunes-how-the-cycle-can-be- broken/article33757468/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Winning and losing have a lot to do with confidence and ability to take risks. Winning reinforces confidence which allows one to take more risks if they have a growth mindset(also equally important).

PS: The add-on[1] I use to avoid redirects doesn't like these medium hosted blogs. These links redirect to medium[2] which redirects to original link and I am stuck in an infinite loop.

[1]:[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip- redirect...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip-redirect/)

[2]:[https://medium.com/m/global- identity?redirectUrl=https://ofd...](https://medium.com/m/global- identity?redirectUrl=https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-winners-keep- winning-4e7f221f5b84)

</comment><comment><USER20> Examples like King/Bachman are the sorts of things that to me debunk the notion of meritocracy and support things like wealth redistribution and affirmative action. If success is largely a product of randomized path- dependent effects and feedback loops, then success is not really earned. It's basically lottery winnings.

That being said I'm not sure I accept that premise universally. It seems like this is true in domains that are popularity contests: pop culture, politics, etc., but I have no proof of that and have never seen anyone do any kind of comprehensive analysis of it. Maybe I just don't want to believe that success beyond a certain point is random.

<comment><USER21> > [King/Bachman] debunk the notion of meritocracy

Not sure that is correct, because (if you agree that King is good), you do need to be good to be successful, and I think that is what meritocracy wants to accomplish for society: that those who are successful are good, rather than bad. For society, it is not necessary that everyone that's good is also successful, just that the bad doesn't rise to the top (too much).

What it debunks is the (incorrect) corollary that if you are not successful, you must be bad/lazy (or that if you are good you are guaranteed to have success). Which of course does not follow (A→B does not imply not(A)→not(B)), particularly if there are multiple necessary factors for success, such as for example quality AND luck/path dependencies. If it is quality AND luck, then it's not the same as lotto, though the random part does play a role.

And yes, wealth redistribution makes a lot of sense for societies, and yes, the "no success → bad/lazy" fallacy is often used to justify not having such mechanisms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not from the article, but this makes me think of something that we learned back in my college probability course: "wealth gravitates towards the wealthy." Even in fair games and situations, it is much harder to come out ahead when you start out behind. Think of how the house always wins in Vegas, or how a random walk can experience heavy drift.

<comment><USER23> I would argue that wealth gravitates toward those who are better at accumulating wealth (Warren Buffet, George Soros, Peter Lynch). There may be a correlation between those who are good at accumulating wealth and those who have accumulated a large amount of wealth.

<comment><USER24> That's a bit tautological. Also, what do you mean by "good"?

Also many things cost less for wealthy people. They literally spend less as a fraction of their wealth than anyone else for credit, for example. Wealth will naturally gravitate towards them even if they do nothing more than act like anyone else because of that kind of thing.

<comment><USER25> People who are good at making money make more money. Yes, it's tautological, which doesn't make it untrue. People who are good at scoring the basketball get a lot of points. People who are good at cooking make delicious food. I think you're questioning whether someone can really be good at "making money", and the answer is yes. Money follows rules and laws that appear random to those who are not skilled. Just like some people might not understand the laws of electricity, making electricians seem like wizards. That doesn't mean the laws don't exist. And those who understand the forces behind money are able to take advantage of them, like a surfer uses the force of a wave to propel himself. Effortless. The wealth just seems to find you.

Your second point is accurate, but not really a rebuttal.

<comment><USER26> You miss the point. It's vastly easier to be successful at making money if you start with a lot of it, and vastly harder if you start with nothing.

A few very unusual people in each generation start with nothing and become billionaires, but for most of the population a running start will get them much further towards a comfortable life than almost any combination of luck and talent.

This is a problem, because many of our social myths suggests that the most reliable and predictable way to become richer is through hard work - <USER3> therefore rich people are more socially valuable than the poor, who stay poor because of laziness.

Both of those beliefs are absolutely untrue.

<comment><USER25> When you say that I miss the point, that usually means the true disagreement is over what we're talking about. Like I said, you're talking about the power of compound interest, economies of scale that encourage pooled investing, and other systemic effects. And you're not wrong.

What the OP was pointing out was that, there are people who understand money and people who don't, and that plays just as big a role as having wealth (see lottery ticket example cited in sister comment). I think I've demonstrated I understand your point; do you think you really understand that one?

Also, > the most reliable and predictable way to become richer is through hard work

Do you know a more reliable and predictable way to become richer? It may not be fast and it may not be fair, but in a capitalist society, I believe it to be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article didn't even mention the field where the effect seems to be biggest: visual arts. The value of a painting depends almost entirely on the fame of the artist, as I understand it.

<comment><USER11> That's because the value of this kind of art, in this context, is as a form of social signaling. The actual talent of the artist, and the meaning the work communicates to the owner, these are not really considerations for this metric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I really dislike when people focus on luck this much. If you have in your mind the notion that luck is real and that it affects the outcome of your efforts in any way, sooner or later (and often times without really noticing that you're doing it) you will use that notion to excuse your failures and to explain away other people's successes, and that will prevent you from achieving your goals as fast as you would have otherwise.

While it is useful to understand the nature of how markets operate and the role of luck in them, I find that worrying too much about this is harmful for my personal development and that taking a stance that is something like "luck doesn't exist" is more useful. [http://ssygen.com/posts/luck](http://ssygen.com/posts/luck)

<comment><USER28> You can't lump together all forms of luck into a single "objectively true, pragmatically false" category without considering the magnitude of impact luck has on what you intend to do. In the extreme, playing the lottery is almost entirely luck, and it's very much pragmatic to believe that it is so.

It's not a binary choice between 0% luck / 100% power, and 100% luck / 0% power. There's a whole continuum in between, and the exact luck/power breakdown for any given action is a matter of objective fact. Where we run into trouble is when our perception of the breakdown does not match the objective reality, and we waste our time on impossible tasks or don't bother to try tasks that could have benefited us.

And the breakdown of luck/power is objectively skewed in favor of power for those who are white, and skewed in favor of luck for those who are minorities. So while white privilege and white supremacy might both be wrong, they are certainly not wrong to the same degree. While privilege is a view closer to the objective reality and is thus probably overall beneficial as long as you don't take it too far. Likewise for feminism/incel.

<comment><USER27> As I've stated in the article, it's about the mindset you take and not what is objectively true. You're not helping minorities by pointing out that their success in life will be mostly due to luck, you're just giving them excuses to not try harder.

<comment><USER29> > You're not helping minorities by pointing out that their success in life > will be mostly due to luck, you're just giving them excuses to not try > harder.

You really think they're not trying hard enough? What is trying hard to you?

I don't know if you're American but it's not unusual for black Americans to work twice as hard as their white counterparts to receive equal recognition, or success.

<comment><USER27> There are minority groups in America that do well despite all their minority status, like asians. This happens because they have the correct mindset with which to approach the world. Everything I see from other minority groups in America, especially blacks, is that they have the main mindset of blaming others instead of themselves for their misfortunes. This kind of mindset won't really get you anywhere in life.

I'm from Brazil if that matters.

<comment><USER30> What evidence do you have that "mindset" is the cause of the difference and not simple selection bias?

Black Americans are mostly native born. Asian Americans are mostly immigrants or just one or two generations removed from immigrants.

Immigrants from Asia can pretty much only get a visa through some kind of work visa. That means they are pre-selected for having a highly-demanded skill set before they can even enter the country. It also takes decades for them to qualify for permanent residence, so they need to be employed in that field for the entire time. It is almost guaranteed that these people will be financially successful because someone who is employed for decades in a field that can qualify for one of these visas will be financially successful. Anyone who isn't will not legally be allowed in the country.

US law pretty much guarantees that Asians on average will be more financially successful than average because they are much more likely to be here on a visa that requires financial success.

<comment><USER27> Doesn't immigration law in America apply equally to immigrants from everywhere? Why would Asians require one set of rules while Hispanics require another? And if they do play by the same rules then that still doesn't explain the success of Asians over other immigration heavy groups like Hispanics.

I think you can't discount the fact that Asians simply have a better mindset that focuses on hard work more than other groups, which explains at least part of their success. And it's really not a surprise to think that if you value hard work and you act on that value by working hard, you will be rewarded. There's no need to make up excuses by blaming systemic racism or any other sort of external influence that doesn't play as much of a role in your life as your own effort will.

<comment><USER30> Immigrants are a very large portion of Asian Americans. Immigrants are a very small portion of black Americans.

Black immigrants in the US have roughly the same level of financial success as Asian immigrants, they are just a much smaller portion of black Americans than Asian immigrants are of Asian Americans. The real difference is between immigrants and non-immigrants, not between black and Asian people.

Also, it's untrue that immigration law applies equally to all races. There are many aspects of immigration law that are different based on national origin. People from India and China are excluded from many ways of immigrating except for work visas.

<comment><USER27> I'll grant you this point given that evidently I don't know much about immigration in America, however this is somewhat removed from my initial claim and we sort of went on an unrelated discussion.

Do you agree that it's best to promote a message of "don't blame others for your failures" over a message of "your life is mostly dictated by luck"? I don't see how you could argue that the latter is better than the former.

<comment><USER30> I agree that is a better mindset for individuals, but it is worse for society as a whole. That idea is frequently used as an excuse to do nothing about the factors that keep people trapped in cycles of poverty.

<comment><USER27> I think this is where we disagree. In my view, individuals becoming more responsible and productive will always be better for society as a whole, because society is made up of individuals. The main idea that keeps people trapped in cycles of poverty is the idea that their problems are a result of society and not of their own actions.

And I really won't change my mind on this notion, given that my parents started up poor in Brazil and worked their way up to provide me with a reasonably good life, way better than the ones they had. And the main thing that enabled them to do that was their own mindset about life and just a lot of hard work.

The same applies to many other people I know, and the opposite also applies to many other people I know. There are people who simply don't work as hard, or don't pay enough attention to spot opportunities, or aren't financially responsible, or are alcoholics, or any other number of problems that are self- made. Those people keep themselves trapped in a cycle of poverty through their own actions, not anyone else's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Theoretically, the wide availably of user-reviews on sites like Amazon and GoodReads, should allow unknown writers to gain visibility and reach the full market of readers who would enjoy that book. The fact that JK Rowling has failed in her anonymous writings, points towards the great opportunity that still exists for platforms/apps that can surface great books from unknown authors.

On a tangential note, it would be amazing if the guild/union of authors collectively agreed that all books will be published anonymously for the first year, with the author's name only revealed after the first year anniversary. This would allow newer authors to step out from the shadow of the established ones. I doubt this will ever happen of course, but I think we would see so much more dynamism in the industry if it ever did.

<comment><USER32> Solving the visibility problem is only a problem for uneatablished authors, not readers. I would guess that most people are happy to read something from an author hey know rather than taking a chance on another author who is "better".

<comment><USER31> The visibility problem affects the readers as well. Consider the ~million readers who enjoyed reading the Bachman/King books after the author's identity was revealed. There are probably a 100 other "Bachmans" out there whose books they would have enjoyed reading as well, possibly even more than their favorite King books. Except that because of the author's lack of visibility, they never discovered these works.

Yes, the readers aren't "losing" anything. But nevertheless, they have still missed out on something they would have enjoyed.

<comment><USER32> I'm sure that there is a bit of "wine tasting" effect. Knowing that a brand- name author wrote a book probably makes it more seem better to many readers. But even outside of that, the reader isn't really missing out by not experiencing the best author. Many light reading experiences are fungible, even if there are some quality differences.

I read the "Robert Galbraith" books. I would have never read it if I hadn't known that J. K. Rowling wrote the book. But I wouldn't have felt like I was missing out, I would have just read some other detective novel instead and been equally as satisfied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The story about name recognition is perhaps more important. A publisher was giving advice to would be authors and their advice was until you had at least one and possibly two best sellers it was always more valuable to give away your books than sell them. This was because the barrier to reading a new book is so much higher for an author the reader doesn't yet "know" than one that is a known quantity.

<comment><USER34> So don't sell any books until I have a best seller?

<comment><USER33> That wasn't what I took away from that publisher's statement. I heard it to mean that in the beginning getting your name out was very important. And while the Oatmeal famously lampooned "exposure" as something that might be valuable, building one's "brand" is a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Instead of his vague recommendation to "accept luck as a primary determinant in your life," I recommend reminding yourself that although luck may be a necessary condition for success, it is not a sufficient one.

<comment><USER36> For a literal take on the role of luck in life, read "The Dice Man".

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The article is mathematically unsound and provides no proof or model whatsoever of what they claim.

<comment><USER38> I am a little surprised that it just provides a simulated model; Yahoo ran a famous experiment which does _exactly_ what demonstrates his point about randomness and media success being only weakly correlated with success: "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market" [http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.p...](http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.pdf), Salganik et al 2006; Salganik & Watts 2009, [http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_watts09.pdf](http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_watts09.pdf) "Web-Based Experiments for the Study of Collective Social Dynamics in Cultural Markets"; [http://cultural- science.org/FeastPapers2008/AlexBentley1Bp.p...](http://cultural- science.org/FeastPapers2008/AlexBentley1Bp.pdf) ; "Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market" [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/) , Salganik & Watts 2008.

<comment><USER37> Great links! I agree with the general truth of the phenomenon described & your references do a much better job demonstrating this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There's too much noise out there. I don't think it's purely market advantage. People are buying from authors they already like because they can't read all the books, so they look for books that are from an author they already like or ones that manage to breach their noise filter. Same with music, there's probably thousands of bands you would love and songs you would list among your favourites, if only you would give them an equal chance of listening, but that's not how we usually behave.

Yes the market recognises this behaviour and tries to push past success because they get a great return, but familiarity and noise floor are powerful.

<comment><USER40> Yes, this seems more like a demonstration of how strong branding is in crowded fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Cumulative advantage has always seemed obvious to me and not terribly intereeting. I'm more interested in why it doesn't dominate in a completely out-of-control way.

For instance, we know small companies often win against much larger ones.

<comment><USER42> > we know small companies often win against much larger ones

We do? They do?

It seems to me that this statement requires context in order to say much of anything. I don't know what to do with it as a standalone general statement.

Do they win when the far larger business actually cares, in head-to-head competition? I doubt that happens very often. When counting the successes there also is significant danger of survivorship and selection bias because the David vs. Goliath story resonates so deeply with human listeners.

Or do they win when the larger business doesn't even know it is in the race, like an ant screaming at an elephant oblivious to its existence "this pebble is _mine_ "? I'm sure the chances of success here are pretty good.

<comment><USER41> Why does the large company not understand the race when it has such great cumulative advantage?

How did the giants of today get to be giant in a 20-year span when they started out tiny? And why didn't the giants of 20 years ago use their cumulative advantage to get even larger?

<comment><USER42> I don't see what your reply has to do with anything I wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wholeheartedly agree with the article that success ultimately boils down to luck and not much else. Not even kidding, the harder I work, the luckier I get!

<comment><USER42> So if not everyone, then at least the majority of all people worldwide who work very hard will be successful. I think reality shows this not to be true, hundreds of millions of very hard workers who even exhaust their bodies towards an early and broken death would probably disagree. You _are_ already lucky by birth. Even apart from one's own family, we are placed into environments consisting of culture, institutions and tools developed over millennia. How much the place of one's family within one's own society plays a part depends, some countries are better at letting people from all kinds of families develop, in many others there is a large inheritance factor within families, where family income has a high correlation with one's own lifetime income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is this surprising? My first criteria for choosing a restaurant is, are there people already there? Unless I'm passionate anout the domain and am willing to give up substaintial personal time, I'm not interested in discovering new talent or being a guini pig.

<comment><USER45> It's interesting to watch how seating is arranged by staff, particularly early in the night. Early customers or ones that they want to be seen are seated near the front or by the window.

<comment><USER46> > or ones that they want to be seen are seated near the front or by the window

This will piss me off now whenever they offer a table in the corner.

<comment><USER45> It's funny when you get a window first time, but turn up with a kid the next time and get the overflow room upstairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This explains a similar phenomenon with paper clips

[https://youtu.be/F-I-BVqMiNI](https://youtu.be/F-I-BVqMiNI)

</comment><comment><USER48> This is also a very good reminder of why discrimination takes a long time to defeat. The moment we legislate that we shouldn't discriminate by race, gender or religion the capital gained from all the advantages is skewed towards to the oppressors and the playing field is not leveled yet.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think that instead of adding one marble at each step, it's better to add a fixed percentage of existing marbles, e.g,, 0.25%. This will better approximate the processes that are being modeled. But then the effect shown in the article will disappear.

</comment><comment><USER50> 天之道,损有余以补不足;人之道,损不足以奉有余。

It is the way of heaven to diminish superabundance, and to supplement deficiency. it is not so with the way of man. he takes away from those who have not enough to add to his own superabundance.

</comment><comment><USER51> Reminds me of this post:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16618385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16618385)

</comment><comment><USER52> Is one of things they lack a solid moral fiber and will do whatever to win(lie, cheat, steal, exaggerate, fake things.. fake a reality that doesn't exist, etc)?

<comment><USER53> It may not be something covered by the article, but this is not false. And those who don't do it, are not virtuous paragons or whatever- they either haven't done it, didn't think of it, or got caught.</comment></comment>


Release Open Source HTML5 Games on the Windows Store - <AUTHOR> http://coryg89.github.io/experiences/2013/06/11/release-open-source-html5-games-on-the-windows-store <comment><USER2> Curious ... why would you write Free Software, then release it to a walled- garden app store? If you're going to all that effort, why not support a truly open platform?</comment>


Needed a State Machine for a project. Ended up porting my 6 years old lib to JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cassiozen/State-Machine <comment><USER2> I did exactly the same thing several weeks ago, for my own state machine implementation.

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/mistic](https://www.npmjs.com/package/mistic)</comment>


Show HN: Gimuby – genetic algorithms and island model for Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://frantzmiccoli.github.io/Gimuby/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN,

First post of my work here.

I have been experimenting aroung genetic algorithms and their distributed version (the island model). Aside this main objective, I was willing to learn Ruby and to try to abstract my production to make something reusable. Since I already had implemented genetic algorithm in a few different languages and looked at various libraries, I already had good basis for how to design the whole thing.

The presented code is not as simple as I would have like to be at the first place, but the composition pattern and the strategy pattern used in the project make the whole thing quite reusable to my opinion.

To my opinion, this code is unit tested and much more complete than what is present in the other gems. The main drawback being that right now the code is only compatible with Ruby 1.8.7.

Any comments and opinions are welcome. I'm curious to have external feedback on this.</comment>