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I understand commerce makes the world go around, but why is anything and everything always measured in terms of profit and loss? We know plastic sucks and we kn
by akudha 8y ago
I understand commerce makes the world go around, but why is anything and everything always measured in terms of profit and loss? We know plastic sucks and we know we need to reduce its usage, and yet we are still primarily talking about these things in terms of profit and loss, instead of talking about these problems in terms of welfare/sustainability/survival of this planet?
- Pristina 8y agoWhy don't we just sit around a campfire and sing koombayah and hopefully everybody's problems will go away? If you don't care about money, then just give it all to me. If you do, then these people do too, which is why it's about profit and loss.
- akudha 8y agoI never said I didn't care about money. All I did was ask why we are looking at every problem in terms of money. There are some problems that have become so big (global warming, pollution, loss of top soil...) that looking at these only through the lens of profit/loss makes no sense. Not sure why the outburst/snark, I started my comment with "I understand commerce makes the world go around" ...
- Pristina 8y agoName the way to create incentives that doesn't involve money then. Many have tried, non is successful. Pricing, supply, demand, are ways consumers indicate their interest in products and services, and recycling is very low value, because nobody cares.
- PaulHoule 8y agoIt is not low value, it is just variable value. In the late 1970s there was a a panic over energy and Aluminum prices were sky high. With no bottle deposit at all my dad and I picked Aluminum can out of dumpsters all over Manchester, NH and made enough money in a few weeks to buy a new Aluminum bicycle. Later on the price collapsed and it was not worth doing.
- ovi256 8y ago>we are looking at every problem in terms of money Because making money by doing an activity is one well known way to do it long term, in a self-sustainable fashion. The other way is by force, which has many issues. Furthermore, in an open society (like most Western democracies), force use is very limited and cannot be sustained. Either we find a way to make money out of fixing climate change or it won't happen, unless you're OK with global dictatorship.
- Kaiyou 8y agoIt's because money is something that can persuade people to do things they don't actually want to do. Persuasion has a better track record of sustainability than force. The easiest way to facilitate change is to make that change profitable.