{"id":47872,"date":"2019-04-16T03:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T07:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=47872"},"modified":"2019-04-15T09:02:34","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T13:02:34","slug":"tis-eastertide-and-so-the-professional-miserablists-are-going-after-easter-eggs-of-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/04\/16\/tis-eastertide-and-so-the-professional-miserablists-are-going-after-easter-eggs-of-course\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Tis Eastertide, and so the professional miserablists are going after Easter Eggs, of course"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Continental Telegraph<\/em>, Tim Worstall<\/a> tells the worried environmentalists that no, it does not make sense to ban Easter eggs — for their “wasteful” packaging — on environmental grounds:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the more silly of the current environmental concerns is the worrying about the quantity of packaging that goes into \u2013 or around \u2013 Easter eggs. There\u2019s an underlying mistake being made here, one which none of the proponents of action have bothered to recognise, let alone think about. Which is, well, what\u2019s the purpose? The point of all this human activity we call an economy?<\/p>\n

As any economist could and would tell you we\u2019re after the maximisation of human utility. Given the constraints placed upon us by reality \u2013 the availability of stuff with which to do things, technologies we know about to do things to stuff with \u2013 we want humans to be as happy as they can be. We want, in short to maximise the amount of joy in the world.<\/p>\n

At which point, packaging. Sure, no doubt there\u2019s a certain harm that befalls us all from the creation of packaging and its disposal. Why not? There are costs and benefits to everything of course. But that\u2019s the point, while there may be costs there are also benefits. So, yes, OK, there are costs to packaging.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

At no point is even consideration given to the idea that the packaged egg might produce that joy. Which, given that we do indeed go buy these things each year to give to each other, is odd, isn\u2019t it? Why are we giving each other expensive \u2013 as opposed to cheap \u2013 chocolate? Because, obviously enough, the dressing of the chocolate is something that produces that joy.<\/p>\n

We can even have a stab at quantifying matters.<\/p>\n

The cost is 3,000 tonnes of packaging. We know what that costs us, the value of the landfill tax. Around \u00a380 a tonne. So, call it quarter of a million pounds. Spending upon Easter eggs is some \u00a3400 million a year. The joy produced must be of greater value than that \u00a3400 million otherwise we\u2019d not be spending it in the first place. And yes, \u00a3400 million is more than \u00a3250,000.<\/p>\n

We thus have our answer to the prodnoses worrying about the cost of Easter egg packaging. Piss off matey, you\u2019ve missed the point entirely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall tells the worried environmentalists that no, it does not make sense to ban Easter eggs — for their “wasteful” packaging — on environmental grounds: One of the more silly of the current environmental concerns is the worrying about the quantity of packaging that goes into \u2013 or around \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,831,25,65,74],"tags":[374],"class_list":["post-47872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-business","category-economics","category-environment","category-food","tag-children"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cs8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47874,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47872\/revisions\/47874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}