every innocuous idea morphs into some sort of repressive law
Why does it seem that every innocuous idea morphs into some sort of repressive law? Take recycling for instance. A noble idea, that we can keep our local environment clean and tidy, and prevent some littering by recycling bottles and cans. It also lessens the impact of mining materials and manufacturing containers. But how do we get everyone to recycle? Their answer was to create a 5cent deposit (that's the carrot ... the incentive is getting your money back), and impose fines backed by rigorous enforcement (that's the stick they'll beat you with .. for not complying). Those deposits are only on beer and soft drink bottles, not on soup cans or other canned or bottled food items; so there are now two streams of waste that are treated differently.
What are the unintended consequences of seperating and recycling some bottles and cans?
There are hundreds of people in the city who spend their days schlepping the streets, searching garbage cans, ripping bags open, leaving trash all over the sidewalk, all for that nickel that each can is worth. What a terrible way to treat down-and-out people, telling them that the garbage cans are full of nickels! Go, degradate yourself by digging through rubbish to find them. We see them dragging carts full of recyclables down to the markets where they spend hours putting them into machines that grind them up and spit out receipts to be exchanged for nickels. What an utterly inefficient way to collect and process garbage. What a waste of human capital. The sight of people digging through trash as a way of life makes the city look like a third world shithole. Why does the government think that's a noble thing to do?
The other cans and bottles that don't have deposits go into a seperate bin. God forbid you mistakenly throw a deposit can into the regular trash bin.. We've got sanitation police rummaging through people's garbage, looking for that one misplaced empty can that means you don't have 100% compliance, fining you hundreds of dollars for a meaningless oversight that has no effect on the cleanliness of the city or purity of The Environment.
We say:
Get rid of the 5cent deposit, but keep the recycling bins.. that means only one stream of trash instead of two. Most people will voluntarily dump their bottles and cans into a dedicated trash can, because they want to keep their city clean. Fire the trash inspectors ... there will never be 100% compliance, the over the top enforcement fosters hatred and disgust at the city government.