Unlike commercial and industrial recycling — a thriving voluntary market that annually salvages tens of millions of tons of metal, paper, glass, and plastic — mandatory household recycling is a money loser. Cost studies show that curbside recycling can cost, on average, 60 percent more per ton than conventional garbage disposal. In 2004, an analysis by New York’s Independent Budget Office concluded, according to The New York Times, that “it cost anywhere from $34 to $48 a ton more to recycle material, than to send it off to landfills or incinerators.”
“There is not a community curbside recycling program in the United States that covers its cost,” says Jay Lehr, science director at the Heartland Institute and author of a handbook on environmental science and technology. They exist primarily to make people “feel warm and fuzzy about what they are doing for the environment.”
But if recycling household trash makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy, why does it have to be compulsory? Why the fines and computer chips? Mandatory recycling programs “force people to squander valuable resources in a quixotic quest to save what they would sensibly discard,” writes Clemson University economist Daniel K. Benjamin. “On balance, recycling programs lower our wealth.”
Most of the stuff we throw out — aluminum cans are an exception — is cheaper to replace from scratch than to recycle. “Cheaper” is another way of saying “requires fewer resources.” Green evangelists believe that recycling our trash is “good for the planet” — that it conserves resources and is more environmentally friendly. But recycling household waste consumes resources, too.
Extra trucks are required to pick up recyclables, and extra gas to fuel those trucks, and extra drivers to operate them. Collected recyclables have to be sorted, cleaned, and stored in facilities that consume still more fuel and manpower; then they have to be transported somewhere for post-consumer processing and manufacturing. Add up all the energy, time, emissions, supplies, water, space, and mental and physical labor involved, and mandatory recycling turns out to be largely unsustainable — an environmental burden, not a boon.
“Far from saving resources,” Benjamin writes, “curbside recycling typically wastes resources — resources that could be used productively elsewhere in society.”
Popular impressions to the contrary notwithstanding, we are not running out of places to dispose of garbage. Not only is US landfill capacity at an all-time high, but all of the country’s rubbish for the next 100 years could comfortably fit into a landfill measuring 10 miles square. Benjamin puts that in perspective: “Ted Turner’s Flying D ranch outside Bozeman, Mont., could handle all of America’s trash for the next century — with 50,000 acres left over for his bison.”
I think people recycling because they want to feel good about themselves, and maybe show off to their neighbors. It’s not done because it makes any sense. For the record, I don’t recycle.
The results presented in this article replicate findings from previous research: Women who cohabit prior to marriage or who have premarital sex have an increased likelihood of marital disruption. Considering the joint effects of premarital cohabitation and premarital sex, as well as histories of premarital relationships, extends previous research. The most salient finding from this analysis is that women whose intimate premarital relationships are limited to their husbands—either premarital sex alone or premarital cohabitation—do not experience an increased risk of divorce. It is only women who have more than one intimate premarital relationship who have an elevated risk of marital disruption. This effect is strongest for women who have multiple premarital coresidental unions. These findings are consistent with the notion that premarital sex and cohabitation have become part of the normal courtship pattern in the United States. They do not indicate selectivity on characteristics linked to the risk of divorce and do not provide couples with experiences that lessen the stability of marriage.
[…]This limitation notwithstanding, the results presented here should shift attention away from research that focuses on the selection of individuals into cohabitation and premarital sex to a focus on the selection of individuals who do not marry the individuals with whom they first cohabit or initiate first sex. It may well be the case that, irrespective of the legal status of the relationship, the relevant distinction to make is between people who form multiple relationships and people who form a single, longer lasting relationship.
The graph:
Published in the Journal of Marriage and Family
(Click for larger image)
The Teachman study was not done by a conservative.
What is the point of a man being a virgin?
OK, I just wrote this part out in one fell swoop, and I am not sure if it is all relevant, but…
I wanted to consider the question of whether women should value the property of virginity in men from a Biblical perspective. Men have specific things they are supposed to do based on the Bible’s specifications. First, they have to be able to provide for the family financially. Second, they have to be able to protect the family from threats, including threats from false worldviews that lead to damage and destruction. Third, they have to be moral and spiritual leaders, nurturing their wives and children in moral values, moral duties, and their relationships with God.
Biblical men make good decisions all along their lives in order to satisfy these Biblical goals. In order to be a good provider, they study math and become engineers, which is hard and requires self-sacrifice. In order to be a good protector, they study science apologetics, philosophy of religion and the historical Jesus, which is hard and requires self-sacrifice. In order to be a good moral and spiritual leader, they guard their chastity and learn how to behave chivalrously, which is hard and requires self-sacrifice.
What women need to do is to do the research on everything including marriage/divorce/parenting, just like the research I talked about above, and generate a seriously Biblical set of criteria for choosing men that seriously satisfies the requirements for Biblical manhood. Women cannot expect good behavior from bad men. And they should actually affirm, approve, and encourage good behaviors in men – and not be resentful about having the obligation to build good men up with words and gifts.
What women need to do is to understand the behaviors that lead to stability and fidelity in a marriage – and that means studying research. Saying “I already know about the damage caused by divorce” is useless – it’s the knowledge of the evidence that changes how a woman makes decisions about men. Personal preferences can be changed at any time, but knowledge doesn’t vary depending on how you feel at any given moment.
For example, to test men for apologetics knowledge, it’s really easy – just ask them what the significance of cosmic microwave background radiation is, what chirality is, what the significance of 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 is, and what is the difference between the deductive and inductive problem of evil. If they can’t answer all four of those then you can’t marry them. Biblical manhood concerns are not check-boxes on the marriage application form – they’re long-form essay questions. Judging the man’s ability to do silly stuff, like get a tattoo or clown around in a bar, is just not relevant to making the marriage serve God. A woman’s personal preferences don’t decide here – evidence decides. (So long as the goal of marriage is to serve God, instead of to make women happy)
Men have a very specific role in marriages. They have to be able to teach the children about theology, apologetics and morality. When it comes to morality, women should not just believe what a man says. Instead, women need to look at what a man does. Specifically, she should look at what a man does representing his worldview, faith and morality to people who disagree with him. Go to his non-Christian co-workers and ask them what the man has told them about theology, apologetics and morality. Ask them for the reasons and evidences that were used in debates with them. That’s how you know what a man really thinks – it’s about what he is willing to say to people who he would rather not upset. Where standing up for the truth is really going to hurt his career and make him less popular. That is the true measure of his faithfulness. Not how well he speaks, sings and prays in church. What matters is whether he puts God above his own selfish needs for advancement and popularity. Is he willing to choose Christ over his own selfish desires? What is number one in his heart?
And finally, if a women chooses a bad man because she knows nothing about how to choose a good one, and hasn’t done any research about what a man has to be able to do to make a marriage stable, then she needs to stop blaming men and taking responsibility for her own poor decision-making. Choosing a man just because he makes you feel happy is not the best way to have achieve a stable marriage. You need to have better criteria than that, because you are going to answer for it later, especially if things go awry.
Evidence creates knowledge and knowledge binds the will
OK now back to the real topic of the post: the use of evidence to support Biblical moral values.
I like having evidence. I hate having to take stands for Biblical morality without evidence. If I can use the evidence for the Big Bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of biological information, the Cambrian explosion, the habitability fine-tuning and irreducible complexity to argue for theism, and then argue for the resurrection based on early sources and minimal facts, then I should have the exact same quality of data when defending moral values. If the Bible says something, I should be able to look at the best research and find that the Bible is correct.
You have to persuade a person during courtship by making them read and write about things, and dump them if they won’t do it. People can say anything during a courtship – make all kinds of promises and then suddenly just turn selfish and break them all. If they haven’t studied and tested these things out, because they think they know everything already, then you really can’t expect good behavior. It’s a crapshoot unless they’ve seen the evidence.
Here, then, is where matters stand thus far. It would be good to prevent the vast suffering and countless violent deaths caused by predation. There is therefore one reason to think that it would be instrumentally good if predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species, provided that this could occur without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation. The claim that existing animal species are sacred or irreplaceable is subverted by the moral irrelevance of the criteria for individuating animal species. I am therefore inclined to embrace the heretical conclusion that we have reason to desire the extinction of all carnivorous species, and I await the usual fate of heretics when this article is opened to comment.
Here is his bio:
Jeff McMahan is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University and a visiting research collaborator at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University.
Ah yes. The Center for Human Values. That’s the same group that is headed up by famous ethicist Peter Singer, who advocates infanticide. One can only assume that this loon is an atheist and a secular humanist.
WINTERY KNIGHT 