Comment by olieidel
7 hours ago
Berlin is a great place to observe policies with good intentions, yet negative second-order effects.
Distributing free potatoes will likely cause waste somewhere else, as e.g. people will buy less potatoes in supermarkets. The waste just becomes less visible as supermarkets dispose of food every day.
Another current exhibit is the prohibition of using salt for removing snow and ice from the pavements because it's "bad for plants and the ground water". While that is true to some degree, the Berlin policy conveniently ignores all second-order effects: Sidewalks are more slippery, more people get hurt. I see people slipping on snow-compacted ice almost every day. How many trees have to be saved to make it worthwhile for more people breaking their bones?
You can apply for an exemption though, e.g. if you plan to use salt on a driveway to a hospital. Processing fees for such an exemption are up to 1.4k€ [1].
The rent cap is another one. But let's go there another day..
[1] https://www.berlin.de/umwelt/themen/natur-pflanzen-artenschu...
> While that is true to some degree, the Berlin policy conveniently ignores all second-order effects: Sidewalks are more slippery, more people get hurt
I seriously doubt they did not know that. The whole point of salt is to prevent people from falling. Of course they knew more people will fall.
Salting your ground water is also a second-order effect. The way you put that statement into quotes shows that you value human well being over everything else. Personally I don't. Life on earth is a co-op and we don't win by being the last ones standing, as we are desperately trying right now.
When I hear people like you, I pray that natural selection will remove people like you from the population faster than mutations create them.
It isn’t genetic, it’s moral programming.
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> Another current exhibit is the prohibition of using salt for removing snow and ice from the pavements because it's "bad for plants and the ground water". While that is true to some degree, the Berlin policy conveniently ignores all second-order effects: Sidewalks are more slippery, more people get hurt.
Rigorously considering second-order (and greater) effects is a massive undertaking, though. Like: how do you even know how many more people will slip and get hurt without salting sidewalks and how much the damage the salt does to "plants and ground water," without many careful and expensive research projects? And then there's the challenge of weighing such completely disparate things: how many injuries are healthier plants worth?
Basically is seems easier said than done.
The problem is not salting or not - the problem is that the house owners are liable for cleaning the sidewalk and they all outsourced it to the same companies. And the companies unsurprisingly all fail to deliver on their obligations because they take on way more customers they could possibly handle. The result is as expected - nothing gets done. A shovel and broom, maybe some grit would have been enough.
But there’s no shred of enforcement and instead of calling for enforcement, politicians now call for relaxing the rules on salting.
Is the concept of someone who usually doesn't eat potatoes getting a bag and spending the next week making some potato dishes really that inconceivable? I don't doubt that this will lead to some waste - I've thrown out more half empty potato bags than I would like to admit - but that's a very negative outlook.
Also how do you choose between negative second order effects? Salting roads creates negative effects for groundwater and plants which are really hard to mitigate. On the other hand the second order effect of people slipping could at least be dealt with on an individual level by putting spikes on your shoes.
> how do you choose between negative second order effects?
First off you have to identify them. Until you frame the costs and benefits of salting, it isn't clear that the real question is how can we improve pedestrian and vehicular traction without poisoning our plants and water supply. (I'd argue it's frequent ploughing, gravelling and dynamic signs for signalling when chains/snowies/AWD are required.)
As someone who just went outside to buy groceries in Berlin and watched them salt the road on my way to Kaufland, I am confused. Is it just for sidewalks?
Are you sure they weren't using sand or gravel instead?
Hmm, I mean it was a lot of white stuff coming out. Again, on the street, so maybe it's different rules compared to sidewalks. Possibly sand, but I'm pretty sure it's salt.
EDIT: Seems that some roads are allowed to be salted! It's a pretty main thoroughfare, so likely the case. https://www.bsr.de/bsr-winterdienst-gut-geruestet-fuer-die-k...
Roads are salted, everything else is not.
> How many trees have to be saved to make it worthwhile for more people breaking their bones?
That has a specific answer, like "twenty". But calculating it would be a hopeless task.
Surely if you can consider the second order effects of giving away these extra potatoes for free, then you can also consider the second order effects of not giving them away? And maybe even thinking more about it, consider that they may be going to different markets/people/causes?
Given this example is about 1T batches of potatoes, it could be used by a business that depends on cheap potatoes like a food kitchen, or a business that can absorb the input surge and convert it into a product that can be stored longer term like frozen foods.
I mean it sounds sort of if you know what the second order effect of damage to plants and ground water will be if people salt their driveways? I would think you sort of need to run the test in production to see which way is more beneficial.
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>How many trees have to be saved to make it worthwhile for more people breaking their bones?
The **** is a death cult. They are very very happy to see you become an invalid if it avoids the death of a sapling. I know that this sounds hyperbolic to the point of being derisive, but it's the observable truth.
Who specifically are you talking about?
You could always just clean the snow instead of salting it. It's not rocket science.
Most Berlin sidewalks are uneven cobblestone, not a flat uniform concrete, so the cleaning is probably a lot more difficult than you're envisioning :)
The neighbors snow response contractor had an electric brush on a broom handle, that looked pretty nifty and took like 15 minutes for the whole front to be spotless clean. Then they added a bit of grit, done. The contractor for our block didn’t even show up. Not sure allowing salt would have changed anything.
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> are you suggesting to use a mop when it rains to clean the water before it freezes
Wyoming here. We don't generally salt our roads. Instead, a combination of ploughs (to clear it) and gravel (to increase traction) are used.
More broadly: if you're "astonished with some people not having a grasp," consider that astonishment signals encountering something new.
The gall to complain about "not having a grasp on reality" while writing hypersimplistic reactionary comments. The evidence for Dead Internet Theory grows by the day.
With properly graded streets and sidewalks, liquid water runs off. When the bulk of snow is cleared, the small bits that remain melt, flow off, and/or evaporate during melting days. I can't comment on the specific climate of Berlin, but it certainly doesn't seem poised to be an arctic encampment.