Comment by ryandrake
17 hours ago
The concept of "grandfathering" rule breakers has always seemed like naked corruption to me. OK, we think this thing is so bad, that we're passing a law to ban it, BUT everyone who was already doing this bad thing can keep doing it forever because... because... because putting an existing company out of business is apparently the worst thing in the world. If our elected officials think something is bad enough to ban outright, then it should go whole hog and actually ban it. Not just prevent upstart competitors to existing legacy industry.
It's not just for politics but fairness. You can't just one day up and decide to make something illegal that others depending on for livelyhood. It's good enough that it limits growth of the banned thing.
Sure you can. It just takes backbone, which is rarely found in the political class.
If I, as a voter, voted for a politician who promised to ban dumping mercury in the local river, I don't expect them to say "Oh, but any company already dumping mercury in the river can keep doing so, because we don't want to hurt people's livelihood." That's not what I voted for.
Ok, but if you are investing capital in some sort of production line or industrialization you are not going to want to do that in an area where you might just lose your entire investment instantly; instead, you're just going to invest it in Texas or China. Of course with more extreme examples like yours you do have to put some cost on the existing companies to get it fixed, but it would be something with a smaller cost like having to dispose of the mercury properly (whereas in this article's examples they just flat out ban these things, which you can't do to existing factories).
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Putting an existing company out of business means putting thousands of people out of work. That's the kind of thing that gets your party thrown out of office.
It's not great, but it's political and legal reality.
It's not corruption if you lose elections if you don't do it.