Where Your Old Computer Could End Up After You Hand It In For Recycling

Megalith

Megalith

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Apparently, a lot of electronics are ending up in Hong Kong “in possibly illicit fashion.” Environmental watchdogs estimate that as many as 43 shipping containers of e-waste could be illegally leaving American shores every day.

Up to 20% of all U.S. electronic waste may be ending up in Hong Kong. Not in some scrapyard in the developing world, picked over by haggard children and wheezing laborers, but in the backyard of one of the world’s most sophisticated financial capitals. That, at least, is the claim of a new investigation, which says the movement of these items is violating international treaties restricting cross-border transfer of hazardous electronic materials.
 
Yuuuup.

You don't really want less govt. regulation per se, that just leads to more corruption and market distortions as a select few end up trying to rig things in their favor, you want properly written and enforced regs.

Biggest problem right now (and IMO with the 2008 crash, Robosigning scandal, and housing bubble) is a lack of proper regulation due to regulatory capture by industry both in finance and industry.
 
tetris42 said:
Stuff like this is always the first thing I think about when I hear "less regulation." That and the 2008 crash.
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I don't think that's really what people mean.

Don't dump e-waste is a pretty basic law, and there's surely not much bureaucracy or red tape involved in it.

Typically by deregulation, they mean things like the Texas power grid, where instead of having government managed monopolies of a few major players, or allowing those major players deep access into government in order to create a myriad of rules designed to stifle competitors, you have the market open in a fair and flexible way that allows everyone to play by a set of basic rules to keep everyone in check.

Its the difference between say a soccer coach trying to micromanage every single player, and when the player gets the ball he has to wait and wave his arms at the coach and ask for instructions, versus just telling all the players what the goal is and what the rules are. You still have a ref there, just less coaching.

In any case, I don't think there is anyone that would argue that what is happening here is a good thing, and is more of a policing issue, not a "deregulation" problem. Regulations are obviously already in place, but criminals are gunna criminal. So more regulations are not the solution for things like this, but an audit of the police force (who is policing the police) and perhaps improvement of where the police forces effectiveness in stopping this thing is broken. And this can mean deregulating the police a bit, so that they can do their jobs better. Its like in the Vietnam war where at one point there was so much red tape that it was virtually impossible to get air support for the troops, so finally they deregulated that a bit and removed how many people were involved in green-lighting and just told them to use their best judgement.
 
You need regulation and control when you can get away with cheaper and lower quality. Its a simply law of economics.

If it gives more money and there is no or little control. It wins.

Bottom racers is not for the benefit of anyone besides the companies.
 
Shintai said:
You need regulation and control when you can get away with cheaper and lower quality. Its a simply law of economics.

If it gives more money and there is no or little control. It wins.
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The Soviet Union heavily regulated their entire economy, from the top down, and it resulted in masterpieces of engineering like the plastic Trabant car, one of the crappiest lowest quality cars to ever be produced. By contrast, the deregulated auto-industries in Japan were producing top notch quality vehicles because the market was rewarding them for producing them, as people were buying Hondas and Toyotas for their quality control.
 
Ducman69 said:
The Soviet Union heavily regulated their entire economy, from the top down, and it resulted in masterpieces of engineering like the plastic Trabant car, one of the crappiest lowest quality cars to ever be produced. By contrast, the deregulated auto-industries in Japan were producing top notch quality vehicles because the market was rewarding them for producing them, as people were buying Hondas and Toyotas for their quality control.
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Do you really want to talk about American quality? Or why the finance crisis happened? Or why Americans can eat ammonium washed meat and filled with so much meds and hormones that if you got a cold, just eat a pork chop?

Deregulated auto industries in Japan? If you wish to sell your cars world wide, you need to follow the regulation of each of those countries.

The eWaste export is just another show of this. You can get away with it and it does give the company more money. Without regulation and control this always happens. because the companies will always go after the money, that's their entire purpose. They dont have any ethics. Its a company, not a person.
 
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tetris42 said:
Stuff like this is always the first thing I think about when I hear "less regulation." That and the 2008 crash.
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Well, Get used to less regulation. In the new Trumpinian World Order, if isn't making money, it doesn't matter. That applies to people, as well.
 
Shintai, exactly. That explains a lot of things. Anything long term doesn't matter to them. Climate change? They just don't care.
 
Wyodiver said:
Shintai, exactly. That explains a lot of things. Anything long term doesn't matter to them. Climate change? They just don't care.
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Usually, when people start talking about "they" and "the man", they are really just erecting straw men to have a go at, and feel victorious because "they" (whoever that is) can't defend themselves and call BS.

This happened during the 8-years of Obama's shift, so are you arguing that Obama didn't enact sufficient regulation to address this? And what about the Communist Chinese government, are communists not a gold standard on the amount of regulation and red tape?

That's who "they" are in this case, Obama and Communist regulations.
 
mesyn191 said:
Yuuuup.

You don't really want less govt. regulation per se, that just leads to more corruption and market distortions as a select few end up trying to rig things in their favor, you want properly written and enforced regs.

Biggest problem right now (and IMO with the 2008 crash, Robosigning scandal, and housing bubble) is a lack of proper regulation due to regulatory capture by industry both in finance and industry.
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Democrats blame the housing crisis, which in turn led to the 2008 financial crisis, on inadequate regulation when it was in fact one of their own, Barney Frank, who wrote and promoted such risky regulations.

'We're hearing Republicans in the presidential primary blame the housing crisis on the Clinton-era push to lend more to poor people. In your view, what caused the mortgage crisis and subsequently the financial crash?

Congressman Frank, of course, blamed the financial crisis on the failure adequately to regulate the banks. In this, he is following the traditional Washington practice of blaming others for his own mistakes. For most of his career, Barney Frank was the principal advocate in Congress for using the government's authority to force lower underwriting standards in the business of housing finance. Although he claims to have tried to reverse course as early as 2003, that was the year he made the oft-quoted remark, "I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing." Rather than reversing course, he was pressing on when others were beginning to have doubts.'
 
Ducman69 said:
The Soviet Union heavily regulated their entire economy, from the top down, and it resulted in masterpieces of engineering like the plastic Trabant car, one of the crappiest lowest quality cars to ever be produced. By contrast, the deregulated auto-industries in Japan were producing top notch quality vehicles because the market was rewarding them for producing them, as people were buying Hondas and Toyotas for their quality control.
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Why are you conflating a completely centrally planned economy with some environmental regulations? If we follow that logic to it's conclusion there should just be no laws and everything will be great.

The Soviet Union was an authoritarian dictatorship. With no means to replace their leaders the centrally planned economy was bound to fail as the government became increasingly corrupt and disconnected from the public and their economy. One of the big reasons Clinton just lost our recent election seems to be that the democrats don't have an economic plan that resonates with working class people in a substantial portion of the country. Those reality checks are why our system works. Societies need to be able to set basic rules for how their citizens and corporations behave, and democracy keeps the rules from getting out of hand.
 
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Deadly Ramon said:
Democrats blame the housing crisis, which in turn led to the 2008 financial crisis, on inadequate regulation when it was in fact one of their own, Barney Frank, who wrote and promoted such risky regulations.

'We're hearing Republicans in the presidential primary blame the housing crisis on the Clinton-era push to lend more to poor people. In your view, what caused the mortgage crisis and subsequently the financial crash?

Congressman Frank, of course, blamed the financial crisis on the failure adequately to regulate the banks. In this, he is following the traditional Washington practice of blaming others for his own mistakes. For most of his career, Barney Frank was the principal advocate in Congress for using the government's authority to force lower underwriting standards in the business of housing finance. Although he claims to have tried to reverse course as early as 2003, that was the year he made the oft-quoted remark, "I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing." Rather than reversing course, he was pressing on when others were beginning to have doubts.'
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Please, the gop was pushing deregulation since the 80s at least. Probably so Romney could screw over more companies.
 
Politics aside, I am often frustrated what actually gets dumped.
It's not a proud job, but I know of some people who buy old stuff off our version of ebay and refurbish it.

More often than not, tons of this stuff is seaworthy if not for a single busted mosfet or a capacitor.
 
Deadly Ramon said:
Democrats blame the housing crisis, which in turn led to the 2008 financial crisis, on inadequate regulation when it was in fact one of their own, Barney Frank, who wrote and promoted such risky regulations.
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Promoting affordable housing has nothing do with creating the housing bubble. The housing bubble got formed because the regulators looked the other way while the credit rating agencies were signing off on loans they knew would go bad eventually.

It should be noted too that Bush was the one who pushed for Fannie and Freddie to offer No Money Down loans and increased the loan ceiling so that those agencies were no longer really only helping people get into affordable homes anymore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/21admin.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

There were plenty of warning signs but they were all ignored.
 
your old computer components can end up in your new computer boards lol. Often is caught by companies, but some slip through.
 
From what I gathered of the article, it isn't even illegal to export these items on the US side, it's illegal to receive them on the Chinese side.
If these guys want our electronic waste, more power to them.
 
They act like Hong Kong is only a gleaming metropolis. Go a few blocks from any modern skyscraper and you will find third world slums with subsistence workers. Plenty of workers to abuse in hazardous, low pay jobs.
 
DocSavage said:
From what I gathered of the article, it isn't even illegal to export these items on the US side, it's illegal to receive them on the Chinese side.
If these guys want our electronic waste, more power to them.
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Well, until they process the heavy metals without much regard, the runoff gets into the water, fish consume them and people get brain damage from them well outside of Hong Kong, hell, maybe even back to us. But hey, that's YEARS off.
 
so it is bad for them to sell toxic waste to be recycled into new components but good to dump it on the ground some where? That said I always make sure to run sand in my hard drives before disposing of them so the sand grinds off the top layer of metal on the platters. I used to just pull the platters and magnets but they added too much clutter. But seriously if they are going to recycle components into renewable resources not simply try and get data off them, then we should have an option to send the tech junk to the people selling it overseas or to someone doing that here in the usa... just not your old hard drives.
 
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