The whole and entire point is that darn near everyone will waste free stuff. Many people won’t bother asking for free stuff they need to ask for, rather than be given it automatically. Darn near everyone will economize on stuff they have to pay for. A teeny annoyance-level charge is surprisingly effective at changing the behavior of lots of people at the margin. And that’s the goal. Don’t eliminate consumption; just minimize the worst of the wasted consumption.
A co-pay at the doctor is exactly such a nuisance fee. It’s to make you (the generic you) think, just for a moment: “Is this trip really necessary?”
No, there was a big stink to get rid of paper grocery sacks first. And, that’s what happened, to be replaced by the execrable “single use” plastic sacks. Admittedly they have some utility, they are perfect for picking up doggy-doo on morning walks.
“Reusable” bags were a much later virtue signaling affectation, they showed up decades later, after it was determined the plastic sacks were making the baby Gaia cry, or something. Then even later, it became obvious out the cloth sacks were unsanitary.
If the grocery bags were free, maybe you’d have a point. I never wasted them, I bought ten bags worth of groceries, I got ten bags. An elegant solution don’t you think? They aren’t “free”, the grocery stores were pretty good about that. Their profit margins are tight, but they figured it out somehow, for the last 100 years.
Maybe the ancient lore has been lost, and thus must charge for individual bags.
Many people ask for double bags unnecessarily. Or ask that their stuff be bagged in far more bags than are “necessary” for whatever reason. And people who could use reusable bags, such as myself, don’t bother to bother until / unless somebody hits me with a whopping $0.95 charge for my 6 flimsy one-time-use bags to carry my groc.
Now I’ve been “nudged” to develop the habit of remembering to bring my reusable bags. It’s entirely a matter of “social engineering” by government to elicit a behavior change in some certain fraction of the populace.
Profit, loss, cost of bags has zero to do with this. It’s a government imposed “fine” on avoidable wasteful behavior that is collected, just like sales tax, by retailers acting on the government’s behalf.
Whether that’s a wise use of government power is certainly a legit topic for debate. But appearing to fail to understand what is being done and to what goal seems counterproductive.
That’s true, and hard to argue against that basic principle. The arguments I would make instead (yes, I have two of them! ) are the following. First, many of us have learned to be deeply suspicious of the real motives for the fees, and related issues like who gets them and how they’re used. For instance, around here, long before the plastic bag ban, some stores were charging for them, others were not. This seemed to have no correlation with the chains’ environmental record but it did seem to correlate with an interest in profiteering. Around here the going price for a plastic bag was 5¢ but elsewhere it was reported to be 10¢ or even more. Meanwhile friendly smaller neighbourhood grocers were still giving them away for free (and often much better quality bags). And now, out in Edmonton it seems you have to pay McD’s a whopping 15¢ for a shitty little paper bag.
Is there any chance in hell that the shitty little paper bag either costs more to make than a decent grocery bag, or that paper by any measure is environmentally more costly than plastic? The vast inconsistency in pricing and overall policies suggests a combination of both profiteering and incompetence by retailers and regulators.
My other argument against the fee system is that for many items, it just isn’t an option. As you said yourself, in fast food and mass-market retailing simplicity is key. So, for instance, you can’t get plastic straws any more, at any price. You can’t get plastic grocery bags, either, even though that fee transaction was pretty simple, for a different reason – they’ve been outlawed. And our ever sanctimonious liquor board went from plastic bags to paper bags to no bags at all.
BTW, I refer to them as “sanctimonious” because they have a standard mantra for justifying their outrageous markups by saying that it’s all to prevent alcohol abuse. It’s similar logic – a “fee” or “sin tax” to discourage Bad Things. Sure, boys, that’s why a decent California Merlot is four times the cost at our friendly gubbermint liquor store as it is in much of the US – it’s to prevent deadbeat winos from staggering in off the alley, buying a Sullivan Vineyards James O’Neil Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 for $457, getting drunk, and beating their wives. Yet another example of a “fee to discourage abuse”, yet the liquor board applies the same outrageous markup to high-end items as they do to low-end swill; it’s no surprise that last year it paid dividends of $2.39 billion to its sole owner, the Government of Ontario.
As I said, the wisdom of these various government nudges are highly debatable.
And from your description of bag fees in Ontario, apparently that started out as some sort of green virtue signalling that, oh by the way, was profitable to boot. I’m not impressed with any of that sort of crap.
As usual, we are much in agreement. The way I’d summarize the issue is that all three of the following can be true at once, leading to conundrums:
Fees as a general rule tend to create a disincentive to use a particular product or service, which can be an important tool in making public policy;
Regulators can be very susceptible to passing bad-faith policies, meaning policies whose real purpose is not the one stated, often things like political virtue-signaling and grandstanding;
Private enterprise can be very susceptible to passing bad-faith policies, meaning policies whose real purpose is not the one stated, usually pure profiteering but sometimes just public relations, which is often self-serving and deceptive.
I was referring to the options available at fast-food outlets, but I often bring stuff home, so I’d be happy to buy such straws. I’d be concerned with how they compare to the diameter of the usual fast-food straws – the consumer ones have typically tended to be a bit thinner. The “fancy” one you cite claim a diameter of “60 mm”, which would be approximately the diameter of a large fire hose!
I assume they meant “6 mm”, as the other ones do. This seems to be about the size of fast-food straws, but the old box of consumer plastic straws I have looks to measure about 5 mm in diameter – it’s hard to tell the difference without a micrometer, but I can sure tell the difference when using them! I’d be happy to stock up on a box of them with my next Amazon order!
) are the following. First, many of us have learned to be deeply suspicious of the real motives for the fees, and related issues like who gets them and how they’re used. For instance, around here, long before the plastic bag ban, some stores were charging for them, others were not. This seemed to have no correlation with the chains’ environmental record but it did seem to correlate with an interest in profiteering. Around here the going price for a plastic bag was 5¢ but elsewhere it was reported to be 10¢ or even more. Meanwhile friendly smaller neighbourhood grocers were still giving them away for free (and often much better quality bags). And now, out in Edmonton it seems you have to pay McD’s a whopping 15¢ for a shitty little paper bag.
Yet another example of a “fee to discourage abuse”, yet the liquor board applies the same outrageous markup to high-end items as they do to low-end swill; it’s no surprise that last year it paid dividends of $2.39 billion to its sole owner, the Government of Ontario.