One of the issues here is the division between government action, collective action and individual action; while most people group the first two together, the d

One of the issues here is the division between government action, collective action and individual action; while most people group the first two together, the divide is meaningful as soon as the government can be said to be operating independently of the people; for me, this has always been the case in Western liberal democracy. The methods for which the obvious path can be achieved are still confused. One idea frequently suggested is that people as individuals ought to reduce the amount of consumption, but does this address the fundamental qualitative issues in the system of production? Even if the scale can be achieved, what will be the meaningful permanent change? Another response is that reducing the amount of consumption is wrong headed: it's targeting an effect rather than the cause. But in my opinion, the worst solution to this problem is the one which insists on a form of government action. Laws can be changed, but they can also be changed back, and in every country the laws are decided by capital (the structure and abstraction, not "big business"). So this also raises the issue of whether what is profitable is good, but that question has an easy answer: it's not. My ideas are fairly radical (and very radical by HN standards), in the sense that I think there is a fundamental factor in this mode of production, abstract labour to be specific (which Peter Hudis makes a convincing argument for, rather than property, money, "greed" etc. for instance), which is a cause of overproduction, the qualitative aspects of work in industrial capitalism and much misallocation (judged in human standards rather than economic standards).