Although I consider myself to be a small “l” libertarian at heart, when I see something like this, it makes me very happy:
Atlanta could become the first major U.S. city to require businesses to recycle.
Legislation that will be considered Nov. 5 by the Atlanta City Council would create a 16-member task force that would spend nine months studying a mandatory recycling program for businesses operating in the city.
The legislation has the support of a majority of the council and Mayor Shirley Franklin, a proponent of other environmentally friendly initiatives including green building practices and combating global warming.
Normally, I’m very wary of government using its police power, but there are times when things just aren’t happening fast enough. In my opinion, recycling is one of those things. And since I don’ t think anyone’s life, liberty, or property is being affected in any way, I don’t much consider it a violation of anyone’s rights (unless you believe there is a constitutional right to litter.)
In 1998, I lived in a small town just outside of Halifax, NS in Canada. Every resident had 3 bins. Yes, 3. One for regular trash, one for compost, and one for recycling (bottles, cans, paper, etc.) The trash bin was the smallest of the three. I remember thinging that if government is going to use its police power to force anything on the community, then this is one thing I could get behind. You could actually be fined if your trash bin contained items that should have been in the recycle bin.
And seeing the all the recyclable material that is regularly carted away from the buildings where I work, it’s something I would love to see put into action.
paradox
Who is this Michael D? He’s not listed in the right nav. Nothing wrong here, of course not, I just don’t know.
By “police power” I assume a general framework of plain coercion, not the technical implementation of enforcing penalty for misdemeanor and felony.
Coercion of course exists heavily in regulation, or the rules, if you will. Rules for commerce, for labor, for the environment. It’s my observation that libertarians and republicans loathe “police power” in a plain simple immaturity whine: it takes resources away from them (money) that they could have held had the rules not existed. It doesn’t matter how much the deprivation is, they just want all of it, everything, just for them. It’s mine!
You are wary, you say, of government rules yet, laughingly, spend every living second totally bound in thousands of ways by them.
There is no escape–the rules and government and you are so inextricably bound they might as well be considered as one entity. It isn’t the rules or government that makes you wary, it’s an underdeveloped perspective on the how the race exists, laced with an immaturity that the rules will deprive you.
brat
I’m a huge fan of recycling. My partner and I generally have far more materials to be recylced than actual refuse.
It’s easy to do, and with a little foresight, imposes no demands (seriously…it’s no big deal to bundle newspapers).
There are some demands that should be met to provide for the common good. A cleaner environment, clean water and air, (and the reduction is health affects) easily meet the cost-benefit analyses.
paradox
I have my own set of shortcomings and issues, yeah. The ones I ascribed to another above I consider tiny and in no way indicative of general character.
I must state what I consider the truth, but I am not allowed to judge this Michael D in entirety. I’ve go my own fucking problems to work on, it’s none of my business what his development issues are, and my flitting observations mean nothing in a formulation of his character or work.
Of course he’s a good person, John Cole wouldn’t have him otherwise. Judgment is one of those dern spiritual paradoxes: we must not to stay healthy, yet must employ it every minute to survive. Sometimes I’m positive it would be better to keep my mouth shut, but that’s a serious failure of duty in citizenship. [sigh]
Michael D.
paradox: “You are wary, you say, of government rules yet, laughingly, spend every living second totally bound in thousands of ways by them.”
I probably should have explained that better. I’m generaly against the state using its police power to enforce laws that don’t protect peoples’ life, liberty or property. Or something like that.
And I’m not one of those libertarians who believes that I should take what’s mine and damned be the people who have less. Although, I admit, I used to be one of those people. And because I listened to the rational of others, I changed my mind.
Of course, I also used to be one of the people who labeled anti-war people traitors. I’ve spent much of the past two years really regretting that.
El Cid
I’ve lived in a number of places around the country. Nowhere has ever been so slack about recycling as anywhere in Georgia I’ve lived, period, including Atlanta.
jake
Try northern Indiana. Recycling is a foreign concept. When housematey’s family comes to visit I’m always rummaging in the garbage for recyclables they’ve thrown away.
In Bloomington, IN recycling was free and you had to buy stickers for regular garbage removal. It was a pain in the ass if you forgot to buy your stickers but I think it was a great solution because it generated a bit of revenue and made people think about what they were throwing away.
Montgomery County (Maryland) provides a trash bin sized container for paper because they’ll take anything that might remotely be considered paper and two knee-high sized containers for glass/plastic/metal. Businesses have been required to recycle for a while. Right next door in Prince George’s County they’re still at the two small bins for everything.
I don’t know what Maine is doing now but they were light-years ahead of the rest of the country 20 years ago.
I think mandatory recycling as a way to protect citizens can be presented in a very straight forward manner that anyone can easily understand:
1. Do you want a garbage dump in your back yard?
If no, then recycle.
slippytoad
While they’re at it, they should give Denver a call and ask someone — anyone — about how to properly manage water.
Michael D.
“about how to properly manage water.”
Lord, don’t get me started…
RSA
Recycling really isn’t as hard as it looks, if managed properly. When I was living in Germany, I’d see in almost every neighborhood of even the smallest towns a set of large recycling bins: brown, green, and white for glass, and one or two others for paper and such. It helps when recycling is seen as the default behavior, and things are set up so that it can be done conveniently.
jcricket
This pretty much puts you heads and shoulders above every other libertarian blogger out there. I’m being serious.
Most libertarians, especially the “randy-ians” (Rand-ites?), seem to live in libertarian utopia, completely divorced from how people actually react to things in the real world.
I am a pragmatist. I think the right solution for each situation depends on who can prove themselves capable of doing the right thing, without causing too many actual (not theoretical/ideological) negative consequences.
Recycling? As you’ve shown, needs government intervention.
Healthcare? Every single statistic I’ve seen shows that government/tax provided healthcare is cheaper (per person & total), provides universal coverage and provides better outcomes. Plus it provides economic mobility (you can switch jobs, become a small business owner, etc. without losing your insurance) and frees big businesses from legacy healthcare costs. Let’s debate the right funding mechanism (should we be Taiwan? Canada? France? Switzerland? Israel?)
Air travel? Should be provided by private industry. I don’t want the American equivalent of Aeroflot.
And so on with other issues.
I wish we could have rational debates, but instead it’s reduced to “government is always the problem” and “tax cuts raise revenue all the time” by the right.
There might have been a time when Democrats were similarly bound to the idea that there was nothing government couldn’t do, but that has long since passed. In my opinion there’s only one side these days that’s at least capable of having a serious debate about what the government should/not do and how to fund it.
Mary
One reason I was so enthusiastic about moving from my Toronto apartment to a townhouse was that I could finally be in the green bin program. In addition to two knee-high bins for paper, metal, glass, etc., I have a tall green bin for all sorts of biodegradable waste, including veggie and meat kitchen waste, pet waste and diapers. They have ways of separating the organic waste from the plastic in the diapers. (Not a job I’d like to have, but I’m glad it’s there.)
I typically put out one standard green garbage bag every two weeks. My green bin goes out at least half-full every week, and the two recycling bins are picked up every two weeks.
IanY77
“In 1998, I live in a small town just outside of Halifax, NS in Canada.”
Enfield?
Michael D.
Eastern Passage
Krista
The funny thing is how quickly one gets used to it. When I go visit the folks in N.B., it just feels….wrong to throw away those compostables and recyclables. It took a bit of getting used to, particularly with plastics (#6 is the only stuff that can be thrown away, all else can be recycled), but they give you a handy-dandy guide, and after awhile, it’s second nature.
I am glad that they smartened up with the compostables and started picking them up every week instead of every second week, though. I don’t know about you, but in July….man, it got pretty nasty. Where I live now, everybody just does backyard composting, so that solves that problem.
frankdawg81
BUT . . . BUT . . . slippery slooowww-p
my main complaint with small l libertarians is that they always have some pet project that they will make exceptions for. Wouldn’t it be more realistic to admit that there are some areas we need to all work together on, particularly given how many of us are jammed into the space we have?
Instead of ‘all government bad except what I like’ we could discuss what the government can do and how to get the best ROI from it.
capelza
We have two containers..one small for garbage and one large for recycling. Everything goes into the big recycling container, except glass which has to be recycled separately.
I’ve self recycled for years, so it’s easy.
Was at Hit & Run (the Libertarian site) a few weeks ago and someone with a straight face posted “Mandatory recycling is slavery”… really? Poor baby.
Another person elsewhere, in regards to the Atlanta water shortage and recycling thought they had an “ace”..they’d have to use all this water to clean the recyclables, hence it is a bad idea. Another poster thoughtfully pointed out the obvious..you do them last in the already used dishwater…it’s not lke you are going to be eating off of the stuff.
Andrew
Except for something trivial like recycling?
The simplest explanation is that you’re not at all a libertarian.
glasnost
I have mixed feelings about this. An idea that will achieve a commendable goal in the long run – that I personally am not sure I would like to live under.
I think positive incentives are best for positive deeds.
Jess
Here’s a thought on the small government theory that I had during my usual bout of insomnia last night: are libertarians really for a small government if they want that small government to function to allow (in practical terms, not through police action) only a code of personal behavior that they approve of? I’m a libertarian by nature, but for me a small government is one that allows (within reasonable limits) people with different codes and values to live together as peacefully as possible, without one group screwing over another–economically, ideologically, etc. To do this, that government has to make practical compromises, which means deviating from the purity of the libertarian ideal. So, paradoxically, to be a true libertarian in a real world sense (an oxymoron, perhaps), one needs to be able to compromise the vision of the ideal libertarian model of society when small government theory is put into practice.
Don’t know if that’s clear–it’s the first time I’ve tried to articulate this. What do you all think? I’m sure someone out there has already said this much more eloquently, with footnotes and everything.
garyb50
5 worm bins can do wonders.
lee
I’m all for recycling (if you can reuse something, why not). If there is a market and the process of recycling is not more toxic than the original process.
Penn & Teller had a pretty good episode to Bullshit about recycling. They were their typical assholes about it, but it did drive a couple points home pretty well.
jcricket
Have you ever seen the stories about recycling in Japan – people with 36 page (not kidding) manuals for how to separate your various bits of refuse into different containers. Yet everyone does it.
Here in Seattle we’ve been recycling for quite some time, but are just now doing the whole compost thing (you can put non-meat/dairy foods scraps and food-soiled paper in with your yard waste). I’m trying to figure out how to do the composting thing without a too stinky container in my kitchen.
I just don’t get why the wingers object to recycling. “God given right to litter”? General objection on principle to anything that might force one to admit that humans can’t just run roughshod over the environment forever with no consequences?
jcricket
Yep. The danger of ideology and labels, right?
It’s like claiming you’re not gay, that you just like to get blowjobs from strangers in restrooms to relieve stress.
To be fair, Michael clearly has some libertarian ideals. I’d describe him as a personal freedom-minded government skeptic more than anything else. Doesn’t outright reject the possibility government intervention is helpful/right thing to do, but doesn’t automatically believe in the need for said intervention either. If that was libertarianism (rather than disdain for the poor, anti-tax hysteria, government is all bad all the time, private sector will come up with magic unicorns/ponies for everyone) I could be ok with it.
But Michael also likes to say he’s a Republican (IIRC). So he enjoys the idea that there’s a “platonic ideal” for these words divorced from how they’re used in all practical purposes for the last 20 to 30 years :-)
Katherine Hunter
here on my family property we poop in buckets and make Humanure / the resulting compost is rich and nutritious prolly due to our fine organic diet
you can get a book on making Humanure at Amazon
lee
TMI ;)
Andrew
Everyone has some libertarian ideals, in particular those things they don’t want the government to be involved in. Abortion. Guns. Whatever.
But you’re only a libertarian if you think that the government should stay out of stuff that you’d actually like it to fix.
Katherine Hunter
TMI ? LOL
otoh few people are even aware of this most basic form of recycling and some other people are downright inspired by our example
Michael D.
You’ve summed me up perfectly. I mean that seriously! :-)
ImJohnGalt
The other great thing about Toronto is that pretty much every street corner in the downtown core has rubbish bins with 3 holes: Garbage, cans * bottles, and newspapers/magazines. They’ve made it so ridiculously easy to do the right thing that, like Krista, it just feels *wrong* when I go down to visit relatives in the States who tell me they don’t recycle, or when I’m in NYC and have nowhere to dump my soda can but in a trash bin.
Now, if only Ontario would implement returnable soda cans (they *finally* just implemented deposits on wine bottles , which has been hugely successful – we’re just cheap bastards at heart – must be our Gaelic heritage).
I wish there was more transparency around what the economics of the recycling look like, though. However, much like people who buy hybrids or wind power (see Bullfrog Power here in Canada), I don’t care if it costs a little extra to do the right thing.
The Other Steve
I don’t recycle. I’m setting up our nations landfills for a boon in mining for paper and metal in decades future.
ImJohnGalt
So, given that, why do you insist on calling yourself a libertarian and a Republican? I really don’t understand playing both sides of the fence.
I could see calling yourself a paleoconservative or “Reagan Republican”, maybe, but calling yourself a Republican based on a pipe dream of what you wish the party was is nonsensical.
jcricket
Do I get an award? Bonus commentor points? Something? Otherwise why do I continue. Certainly not for the off chance a right-winger will do something sillier than the “My Sharia” video (or the 1/32nd scale Bradlee model hilarity). That’s not enough humor for me to get out of bed in the morning
Michael actually reminds me of Andrew Sullivan (seriously). For some reaosn they both feel it nobler to cling to a word that means X to them and 5 other people than admit that it means Y, Z and not X (in both practice and theory) to everyone else who uses it.
Me, I believe Wittgenstein’s theory of meaning as use. Conservativism, Republicanism, Libertarianism are so far from any small government, stay out of your business, rational-minded world that it’s just silly to believe the words mean anything different. Not to mention the majority (or more) of the adherents/proponents of said philosophies are increasingly moving away from whatever ideals Michael and Andrew cling to.
douglasfactors
I’m not against mandatory recycling, but it does affect property interests. Extra bins require extra space, and time is money.
Johnny Pez
First they came for the polluters, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a polluter.
Then they came for the litterers, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a litterer.
Then they came for the people who urinate in public, and I didn’t speak up because I don’t urinate in public.
Then they came for the people who get drunk and knock over garbage cans for fun, and I didn’t speak up because I don’t get drunk and knock over garbage cans for fun.
Then they came for the people who don’t pick up after their dogs, and I didn’t speak up because I pick up after my dog.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up.
Cyrus
Aaargh. Until I read the comments, I thought this was John posting. I was even surprised to read that he had lived in Canada for a while in the 1990s ā wouldn’t that have come up in conversations with Krista or something?
Everyone got Tim F. and John confused when Tim first started posting, but I got over it relatively quickly and checked the names and usually recognized a difference in writing styles and topics anyway and laughed at the people who didn’t… and here we have a proud but moderate right-winger, socially liberal, prone to splitting hairs, pissed off at the current Republicans even though he identifies with them and constantly mocked by commenters. It’s John from 18 months ago with a slight Canadian flavor. This could be a problem.
John/Tim/Michael, if you ever add anyone else, please make them a zealous partisan or ideologue, just so it doesn’t get more confusing than it already is. Maybe Richard Bottoms?
Bombadil
Our town has mandatory recycling. Trash pickup is weekly, recyclable pickup every other week. We have a very good compliance rate.
My concern is where all that stuff goes once it’s carted off. How much of what we slot for recycling is actually recycled? I can guess/hope that the paper, glass and mettals are, but I wonder how much of the plastic actually is reused.
Now that recycling is pretty widespread and the norm in many places, the next target should be the source of all the waste. Back in the “olden days” when environmental awareness was a Big Thing (particularly in the ’70s after the birth of Earth Day), there was more demand for environmentally friendly packaging. This should be revisited — particularly those ridiculous sealed-plastic monstrosities. Think of the waste that comes from one Costco-sized package of razor blades — the huge plastic shell that requires industrial-grade cutting tools to open, the large cardboard piece sandwiched in the plastic, and the individual blade holders, all made of plastic. The only value-add in this packaging is visibility on the shelf — a big honking package that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Much of what we recycle should never be “cycled” in the first place.
jenniebee
Michael, hon, as long as you’re basing your politics on this kind of pure fantasy, why don’t you go ahead and wish for a pony too?
BIRDZILLA
aND LETS START BY RECYCLING THE atlanta city council i mean this sounds to me like big brother now sticking his fat green nose into your dumpster