3 ms·

Impossible to enforce.

vkou 9y ago
Trivial. Mandate any time >20h/week to be overtime. Mandate overtime rates to be double. For salaried employees, the hourly rate is Annual/1000h. Construct a legal system wherein employees can easily sue employers for wage theft. Most employers will voluntarily cut their hours. Will this cause dramatic economic upheaval? Yes, absolutely. The uncomfortable truth is that we can't cut our carbon emissions without drastically changing our way of life. (And putting your wilted kale in the compost bin isn't it.)
- cheepin 9y ago
  He was almost assuredly talking about enforcing carbon tax. Enforcing working hours limits has already been accomplished in many countries.
  - vkou 9y ago
    Enforcing a carbon tax is trivial, since fossil fuel extraction is centralized. It does, however, require heavy tariffs against goods imported from countries that don't have carbon taxes.
  - xapata 9y ago
    A carbon tax would be very easy to implement in most countries since almost all carbon is extracted from the ground by just a handful of major corporations.
- sintaxi 9y ago
  Consumption wont decrease unless your goal is to just make everyone poor. Employers would simply double their work force and employees would have two jobs. Companies are always going to scale to meet market demands so if the goal is to benefit the environment this wont work. Deficits however are creating consumption despite a lack of market demand. That's why balancing the budget is so beneficial.
  - vkou 9y ago
    My goal is to reduce economic output. Of course that will make everyone poorer. Our climate can't support its entire population living at the level of wealth currently enjoyed by first world countries. It can't even support the population of first world countries living at the level of wealth currently enjoyed by first world countries. Electric sedans and solar panels are fine and all, but the vast majority of the crap we buy comes here on ship, and is hauled across the continent on gasoline trucks. We can either make everyone poorer by taxing goods that require transportation (Which is nearly all of them), or by forcing everyone to do less work. There is no other solution. Stopping deficit spending will slow down economic growth by single percentage points. It will also make everyone poorer - but by a much smaller margin. It also won't be enough. We are currently in a situation where we can't just be happy with stopping the rate of emission growth - if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we have to drastically reduce carbon emissions. Not fifty years from now, not thirty years from now, but within the next decade. [1] We can reduce our GDP, or the climate can reduce it for us. [1] http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/WRI13-IPCCinfographic-FINAL_web.png http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/WRI13-IPCCinfographic...
    - sintaxi 9y ago
      This is far to authoritarian for my taste.

vkou 9y ago

Trivial. Mandate any time >20h/week to be overtime. Mandate overtime rates to be double. For salaried employees, the hourly rate is Annual/1000h. Construct a legal system wherein employees can easily sue employers for wage theft. Most employers will voluntarily cut their hours. Will this cause dramatic economic upheaval? Yes, absolutely. The uncomfortable truth is that we can't cut our carbon emissions without drastically changing our way of life. (And putting your wilted kale in the compost bin isn't it.)

cheepin 9y ago
He was almost assuredly talking about enforcing carbon tax. Enforcing working hours limits has already been accomplished in many countries.
- vkou 9y ago
  Enforcing a carbon tax is trivial, since fossil fuel extraction is centralized. It does, however, require heavy tariffs against goods imported from countries that don't have carbon taxes.
- xapata 9y ago
  A carbon tax would be very easy to implement in most countries since almost all carbon is extracted from the ground by just a handful of major corporations.
sintaxi 9y ago
Consumption wont decrease unless your goal is to just make everyone poor. Employers would simply double their work force and employees would have two jobs. Companies are always going to scale to meet market demands so if the goal is to benefit the environment this wont work. Deficits however are creating consumption despite a lack of market demand. That's why balancing the budget is so beneficial.
- vkou 9y ago
  My goal is to reduce economic output. Of course that will make everyone poorer. Our climate can't support its entire population living at the level of wealth currently enjoyed by first world countries. It can't even support the population of first world countries living at the level of wealth currently enjoyed by first world countries. Electric sedans and solar panels are fine and all, but the vast majority of the crap we buy comes here on ship, and is hauled across the continent on gasoline trucks. We can either make everyone poorer by taxing goods that require transportation (Which is nearly all of them), or by forcing everyone to do less work. There is no other solution. Stopping deficit spending will slow down economic growth by single percentage points. It will also make everyone poorer - but by a much smaller margin. It also won't be enough. We are currently in a situation where we can't just be happy with stopping the rate of emission growth - if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we have to drastically reduce carbon emissions. Not fifty years from now, not thirty years from now, but within the next decade. [1] We can reduce our GDP, or the climate can reduce it for us. [1] http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/WRI13-IPCCinfographic-FINAL_web.png http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/WRI13-IPCCinfographic...
  - sintaxi 9y ago
    This is far to authoritarian for my taste.