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Because structural problems can not be solved on the individual level. We will not end world hunger by eating less. We will not stop climate change by turning

Because structural problems can not be solved on the individual level. We will not end world hunger by eating less. We will not stop climate change by turning off the light more often. And we will not fix exploitative employment practices by voting with our wallet. The cynic in my thinks that the "vote with your wallet" slogan has been coined by those who want to prevent better regulation. All these things CAN be solved by passing laws and regulation and by building a society that supports and enforces those.

mikestew 9y ago
The cynic in my thinks that the "vote with your wallet" slogan has been coined by those who want to prevent better regulation. Upvoted for that sentence alone. We have government because I can’t build a road by myself. I also can’t individually smack a company upside the head and tell them “cut it out, this isn’t the society I want to live in”.
- DataWorker 9y ago
  Globalization means passing the laws you’re talking about amounts to protectionism. That’s not very popular with anyone but Trump.
  - SapphireSun 9y ago
    I think the bigger idea is that there should be a broader system of international mutual aid. We can't drag down our own labor standards because someone else's is terrible. We need to help raise them up. Only international cooperation can prevent us from accelerating in a race to the bottom.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  We can't build a road by ourselves. We as individuals CAN decide where we spend your money. Two very different scenarios. You very different level of civic duty. Could regulation help? Sure, Uncle Sam gets lucky from time to time :) But it is never as powerful as the market. Until the market says "screw Amazon" Amazon will continue to do what rewards it and its shareholders.
  - SerLava 9y ago
    >We as individuals CAN decide where we spend your money. Yeah, but then most people just don't care. I'm just really glad nobody is asking me to boycott slave-produced southern cotton if I really want slavery to go away.
    - chiefalchemist 9y ago
      > "Yeah, but then most people just don't care." Well, there ya go! :) People don't care about where they spend their money. They don't care about their own people health. But the problem is Amazon, the ACA, etc. If most people don't want to be held responsible for their own decisions, with what logic do they argue holding someone else responsible. To be clear, there certainly are things gov / legislation can do. But that doesn't give individuals a free pass on their civic duties.
- closeparen 9y ago
  "I don't want to live in a society where people have to $thing, so let's ban $thing and punish the companies involved in it" is approximately the most destructive fallacy of our time. Making upper-middle-class the minimum allowable lifestyle doesn't give everyone an upper-middle-class standard of living. It just punishes those who don't already have it. We're going to keep ratcheting up the minimum allowable job, housing, food, etc. until a tiny minority of liberal elites are congratulating each other for having eradicated exploitation and all the liberated victims of exploitation are unemployed, homeless, and starving. I don't want to live in a society where people have to live in RVs and work in Amazon warehouses. But banning Amazon warehouses (or RVs) isn't going to help. We need redistribution, retraining, a real social safety net, healthcare, etc. so that people actually have better options than exploitative employment situations. Then it isn't even necessary to ban them, because no one would want them anyway.
  - pedasmith 9y ago
    More destructive than, "oil companies can spill oil anywhere" (Nigeria) or "let's kill everyone from the 'wrong' ethnic group" (Rwanda) or "let's exploit orphans" (Ireland)?
    - closeparen 9y ago
      Those things are clearly evil and clearly demand a response. The "let's ban symptoms and coping mechanisms" bandwagon, on the other hand, gives citizens who are concerned about a situation the feeling that they're helping, disarming and distracting them from actually constructing a better world. The collective loss to society of the solutions that could be built but aren't is quite large. Imagine if we had single-payer health care instead of more regulation on employer-employee relationships. Imagine if we had public housing instead of regulation stonewalling private development. Imagine if we actually built world-class public transportation systems instead of just starving out the parking. Etc, etc.
      - hiram112 9y ago
        Agree with you. I think the whole ObamaCare fiasco is one of those things that the typical millennial liberals on HN have gotten entirely wrong. For years, the mantra here has been that all those red state deplorables who were wary about government health care were voting against their own interests, and ignorant for not wanting it. Trust us. We know better than you. Well now we've seen what's happening. Premiums have skyrocketed for average workers and everyone has been moved to high deductible plans that pay for nothing. My own insurance had gone from decent to worthless, and it costs twice as much. As a single guy who makes a high income, it's no big deal. For many of my coworkers who have a spouse and 3 kids, it has been devastating. And it's getting worse as more states drop plans.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "We will not end world hunger by eating less. We will not stop climate change by turning off the light more often. And we will not fix exploitative employment practices by voting with our wallet." Voting with your wallet does work, it just works slowly, so it doesn't satisfy those who are waiting for revolution. To give an example, let's say you choose to become a vegetarian. What difference does that make? The more vegetarian food you buy, the more profits go up for vegetarian options, the more options become available. It's a slow change as the impact is minimal at first, but look at what it's lead to. 50 years ago the idea of a food company specialising in vegetarian-only food would've probably seemed quaint, now it's normal. It's also normal to find multiple vegetarian options in restaurants, and even restaurants that specialise in vegetarian food. You may think of this as not noteworthy, but I'd suggest it only seems inconsequential as the change was so gradual. Now imagine if all would-be vegetarians had continued to eat meat, but had lobbied the government to cut down on meat production, are we likely to have seen a quicker change?
- anindha 9y ago
  This is spot on. I've been vegetarian for a long time. I have seen a drastic change in the availability of vegetarian options at restaurants and grocery stores. It makes it easier for someone who isn't vegetarian to choose to have a vegetarian meal. All the people that bought the original Tesla Roadster paved the way for the Model 3. The people that originally created a market for energy efficient bulbs enabled economies of scale to allow those bulbs to become mainstream. I wouldn't diminish the role of early adopters in shaping culture and the economy.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
So Nike (and others) de-swearshop'ed itself because of legislation? More and more food companies are cleaning up their ingredients because of legislation? We all know Uncle Sam's track record: great for wars and the MIC, subpar for just about everything else. If people can give a shit about how Nike makes a pair of kicks, certainly Amazon can be held to the same standards. Uncle Sam can't get the food pyramid right. It's not going to save us from the likes of Amazon. There's little evidence that it's up to the task. Ideally, yes. Realistically? Too doubtful.
- jancsika 9y ago
  > We all know Uncle Sam's track record: great for wars and the MIC, subpar for just about everything else. I'm not everyone does. What's Uncle Sam's track record on: * rural electrification * school lunch program * DARPA's satellite positioning research * law that started Amber Alert * Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 (I'm curious myself about that last one.)
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    Most of those are small acts in comparison with the power that the US government has, and one of those acts was linked to the MIC that GP mentioned (DARPA is part of the MIC). Let's say you were in charge of government spending, would you be spending $584 billion a year on the military? Just think about how much good you could do for your country with 50% of that (the US would still have the biggest military budget even if cutting spending by half). Do you think the best you could do is a school lunch program and paying electric companies to extend the electric grid? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/CBO_Infographic_2016.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/CBO_Info... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/13/barack-obama/obama-us-spends-more-military-next-8-nations-combi/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/...
    - jancsika 9y ago
      > Most of those are small acts in comparison with the power that the US government has, and one of those acts was linked to the MIC that GP mentioned (DARPA is part of the MIC). Thanks. I take back that bullet point. Still, you've shifted the argument. If we take the commenter I responded to seriously, then "food pyramid" must be an example of what they mean by a federal program being "subpar." The food pyramid is a failure-- citizens' tax money went to fund a program that delivered inaccurate and unhelpful information back to them. In response, I enumerated a few federal projects that popped into my head which most reasonably people would deem successful. So I think we both disagree with the commenter's assertion that everything other than military spending is subpar by the measure their own example suggests. Even in your own assertion about gov't spending, you rely on a well-respected agency-- the CBO-- whose success at their role gives further evidence against the commenter's assertion. edit: clarification

mikestew 9y ago

The cynic in my thinks that the "vote with your wallet" slogan has been coined by those who want to prevent better regulation. Upvoted for that sentence alone. We have government because I can’t build a road by myself. I also can’t individually smack a company upside the head and tell them “cut it out, this isn’t the society I want to live in”.

DataWorker 9y ago
Globalization means passing the laws you’re talking about amounts to protectionism. That’s not very popular with anyone but Trump.
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  I think the bigger idea is that there should be a broader system of international mutual aid. We can't drag down our own labor standards because someone else's is terrible. We need to help raise them up. Only international cooperation can prevent us from accelerating in a race to the bottom.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
We can't build a road by ourselves. We as individuals CAN decide where we spend your money. Two very different scenarios. You very different level of civic duty. Could regulation help? Sure, Uncle Sam gets lucky from time to time :) But it is never as powerful as the market. Until the market says "screw Amazon" Amazon will continue to do what rewards it and its shareholders.
- SerLava 9y ago
  >We as individuals CAN decide where we spend your money. Yeah, but then most people just don't care. I'm just really glad nobody is asking me to boycott slave-produced southern cotton if I really want slavery to go away.
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    > "Yeah, but then most people just don't care." Well, there ya go! :) People don't care about where they spend their money. They don't care about their own people health. But the problem is Amazon, the ACA, etc. If most people don't want to be held responsible for their own decisions, with what logic do they argue holding someone else responsible. To be clear, there certainly are things gov / legislation can do. But that doesn't give individuals a free pass on their civic duties.
closeparen 9y ago
"I don't want to live in a society where people have to $thing, so let's ban $thing and punish the companies involved in it" is approximately the most destructive fallacy of our time. Making upper-middle-class the minimum allowable lifestyle doesn't give everyone an upper-middle-class standard of living. It just punishes those who don't already have it. We're going to keep ratcheting up the minimum allowable job, housing, food, etc. until a tiny minority of liberal elites are congratulating each other for having eradicated exploitation and all the liberated victims of exploitation are unemployed, homeless, and starving. I don't want to live in a society where people have to live in RVs and work in Amazon warehouses. But banning Amazon warehouses (or RVs) isn't going to help. We need redistribution, retraining, a real social safety net, healthcare, etc. so that people actually have better options than exploitative employment situations. Then it isn't even necessary to ban them, because no one would want them anyway.
- pedasmith 9y ago
  More destructive than, "oil companies can spill oil anywhere" (Nigeria) or "let's kill everyone from the 'wrong' ethnic group" (Rwanda) or "let's exploit orphans" (Ireland)?
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Those things are clearly evil and clearly demand a response. The "let's ban symptoms and coping mechanisms" bandwagon, on the other hand, gives citizens who are concerned about a situation the feeling that they're helping, disarming and distracting them from actually constructing a better world. The collective loss to society of the solutions that could be built but aren't is quite large. Imagine if we had single-payer health care instead of more regulation on employer-employee relationships. Imagine if we had public housing instead of regulation stonewalling private development. Imagine if we actually built world-class public transportation systems instead of just starving out the parking. Etc, etc.
    - hiram112 9y ago
      Agree with you. I think the whole ObamaCare fiasco is one of those things that the typical millennial liberals on HN have gotten entirely wrong. For years, the mantra here has been that all those red state deplorables who were wary about government health care were voting against their own interests, and ignorant for not wanting it. Trust us. We know better than you. Well now we've seen what's happening. Premiums have skyrocketed for average workers and everyone has been moved to high deductible plans that pay for nothing. My own insurance had gone from decent to worthless, and it costs twice as much. As a single guy who makes a high income, it's no big deal. For many of my coworkers who have a spouse and 3 kids, it has been devastating. And it's getting worse as more states drop plans.

ZenoArrow 9y ago

> "We will not end world hunger by eating less. We will not stop climate change by turning off the light more often. And we will not fix exploitative employment practices by voting with our wallet." Voting with your wallet does work, it just works slowly, so it doesn't satisfy those who are waiting for revolution. To give an example, let's say you choose to become a vegetarian. What difference does that make? The more vegetarian food you buy, the more profits go up for vegetarian options, the more options become available. It's a slow change as the impact is minimal at first, but look at what it's lead to. 50 years ago the idea of a food company specialising in vegetarian-only food would've probably seemed quaint, now it's normal. It's also normal to find multiple vegetarian options in restaurants, and even restaurants that specialise in vegetarian food. You may think of this as not noteworthy, but I'd suggest it only seems inconsequential as the change was so gradual. Now imagine if all would-be vegetarians had continued to eat meat, but had lobbied the government to cut down on meat production, are we likely to have seen a quicker change?

anindha 9y ago
This is spot on. I've been vegetarian for a long time. I have seen a drastic change in the availability of vegetarian options at restaurants and grocery stores. It makes it easier for someone who isn't vegetarian to choose to have a vegetarian meal. All the people that bought the original Tesla Roadster paved the way for the Model 3. The people that originally created a market for energy efficient bulbs enabled economies of scale to allow those bulbs to become mainstream. I wouldn't diminish the role of early adopters in shaping culture and the economy.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

So Nike (and others) de-swearshop'ed itself because of legislation? More and more food companies are cleaning up their ingredients because of legislation? We all know Uncle Sam's track record: great for wars and the MIC, subpar for just about everything else. If people can give a shit about how Nike makes a pair of kicks, certainly Amazon can be held to the same standards. Uncle Sam can't get the food pyramid right. It's not going to save us from the likes of Amazon. There's little evidence that it's up to the task. Ideally, yes. Realistically? Too doubtful.

jancsika 9y ago
> We all know Uncle Sam's track record: great for wars and the MIC, subpar for just about everything else. I'm not everyone does. What's Uncle Sam's track record on: * rural electrification * school lunch program * DARPA's satellite positioning research * law that started Amber Alert * Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 (I'm curious myself about that last one.)
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  Most of those are small acts in comparison with the power that the US government has, and one of those acts was linked to the MIC that GP mentioned (DARPA is part of the MIC). Let's say you were in charge of government spending, would you be spending $584 billion a year on the military? Just think about how much good you could do for your country with 50% of that (the US would still have the biggest military budget even if cutting spending by half). Do you think the best you could do is a school lunch program and paying electric companies to extend the electric grid? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/CBO_Infographic_2016.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/CBO_Info... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/13/barack-obama/obama-us-spends-more-military-next-8-nations-combi/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/...
  - jancsika 9y ago
    > Most of those are small acts in comparison with the power that the US government has, and one of those acts was linked to the MIC that GP mentioned (DARPA is part of the MIC). Thanks. I take back that bullet point. Still, you've shifted the argument. If we take the commenter I responded to seriously, then "food pyramid" must be an example of what they mean by a federal program being "subpar." The food pyramid is a failure-- citizens' tax money went to fund a program that delivered inaccurate and unhelpful information back to them. In response, I enumerated a few federal projects that popped into my head which most reasonably people would deem successful. So I think we both disagree with the commenter's assertion that everything other than military spending is subpar by the measure their own example suggests. Even in your own assertion about gov't spending, you rely on a well-respected agency-- the CBO-- whose success at their role gives further evidence against the commenter's assertion. edit: clarification