The argument is incorrect for slavery and correct for plastic. That is what you don't get.
Slavery is wrong whether or not it benefits people, because it is immoral as such. Plastic use is not immoral and therefore you need to weigh the benefits of plastics against the issues with it. The comparison is just idiotic.
Also, plastics are far more widely used, far more useful and far more beneficial than slavery ever was. Abolishing plastics as a whole means the total collapse of industrial society, every single production process somewhere depends on it. And again plastic use isn't inherently immoral, so the argument is categorically different from slavery as you can not object to the use of plastics on purely moral grounds.
This is not the argument you think it is.
I pointed out that userbinator's perplexity in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41135861 used a reasoning that is not trustworthy, given how slave-holders used similar arguments to express perplexity about abolitionists.
Yes, of course there's a cost-benefit analysis for plastic, which doesn't apply to slavery. But that's a different topic than perplexity.
userbinator then pointed out that there are reasons why single-use plastic was chosen over other methods, and optimism that the future would figure things out. I do not believe that is a valid cost-benefit analysis.
I replied that the historical switch to single-use plastics used a cost model which we now consider incorrect, similar to how most uses of Freon and leaded gas have been made illegal after we learned about their negatives. I also pointed out that long-term optimism should also be used to consider the cost to switching to alternatives.
The linked-to NPR piece specifically deals with single-use plastics ("for seven days, I challenged myself to avoid buying any new single-use plastics") and my comments all included the qualifier "single-use".
That does not mean "abolishing plastics as a whole", as you seem to think my comments concern.
>Yes, of course there's a cost-benefit analysis for plastic, which doesn't apply to slavery.
Which totally invalidates your analogy. Slavery wasn't wrong because the cost benefit analysis came out against it, even if the cost benefit analysis was positive it would have still been wrong.
That is why the argument that you need a cost benefit analysis is valid for plastic, but not for slavery. The analogy totally falls apart at that point.
>That does not mean "abolishing plastics as a whole", as you seem to think my comments concern.
If your analogy had gelt any water it would have. If plastic use was inherently immoral global plastic abolition would be the only moral choice, as has happened with slavery, which is now near universally condemned and outright ceased to exist on much of the globe.
Why do you think userbinator was perplexed?
Instead of the slavery example, consider how a white man in the 1950s could be perplexed that another white man would want to share civil rights equally with women and blacks. After all, both white men were brought up in a system which benefited them over others - why change?
Or how a native born citizen could want to allow more immigration, when another native born citizen could be perplexed about how that can reduce the opportunities for native born citizens (eg, "they will take our jobs").
No idea. I am still perplexed why you don't seem to understand that your argument is totally invalid, since the comparison does not make sense.
My argument concerns the reasoning behind the perplexity. Since you don't understand the perplexity in the first place, you must not understand the reasoning either, which means your comments have no bearing on the topic, why is why you think I'm not making sense.
>Plastic use is not immoral
Given that plastics manufactured today will exist for thousands of years and microplastics have found their way into everyone's blood, you could definitely make the argument that frivolous plastic use is absolutely immoral.
Are you stupid? This is a specific consequence of the overuse of plastics. Not inherent to plastic itself.
If you can not make that distinction please shit up.
We have a moral need to stop using plastic the way we do. Plus, you are very rude.
Yes, I am rude. Because talking to a person who doesn't understand the difference between something being wrong as such and something which has negative consequences.
Eliminating plastic use is impossible 100% of industrial processes depend on it. In fact eliminating plastic use is immoral.
Which is why no one here, not even me, is calling for eliminating plastic use.