As an example look at waste sorting and recycling. Its a very important thing in fact. But people don’t want to so this. And we need govt to force people to do at least something. And its extremely inefficient but at least something. Is it feasible to get there without govt stimulus as a human kind?
Discussion
Recycling is far more common in a non debt ridden environment because the real cost of both the goods and the trash is paid for by the customer. We are currently disconnected from *both* sides of this equation specifically because of the govt exporting our currency and subsidizing our trash.
There is an interesting example in southern China actually because they are so far from the political center, that there is a sort of “hands off” approach because the area is too large and the population to sparse to keep them under direct control. The “recycling” system is a truly fascinating social experiment because factories and suppliers interact directly with consumers. There is a very little retail market because they are still growing out of poverty. But because of this the poor will literally sort through the trash em masse, pull out the usable fabrics, plastics, glass, and other recyclable material, and then take it right back to the manufacturer who pays them for it. The truly poor/homeless literally have a built in “job,” and the businesses get pre-sorted, lower cost production materials that allow them to save money in certain areas.
It’s not a perfect (or even formally defined) system and the country is obviously a mess in a lot of ways, but it’s a great example of how natural organization almost always fills in the gap where our individual ignorance or assumptions suppose that the only “fix” is to violently force someone to do something.
There are a plethora of reasons we can have this here, of course the monetary and debt incentives I mentioned above, but also because it’s literally illegal almost anywhere you go in the US. The regulations have put such strict rules and standards to literally protect a grifting *industry* of recycling that survives purely on subsidies and using city, state, and federal law to essentially grant a loose monopoly on “the way” we are supposed to recycle.
If you dig deep enough, the biggest source of the problem is almost *always* government. Which makes sense, because ultimately everything they do is by violent force.
Good ideas don’t require force.