5 ms·

Most people don't have reasonable alternatives or any way to override the instinctual social mechanisms that drive their behavior.

by Retra 8y ago

chessturk 8y ago
Not to mention monopolies/oligopolies prevent real choice with most products. No one can DIY everything.
- npsimons 8y ago
  > No one can DIY everything. Well, technically they can, it's just that that sort of lifestyle is unrecognizable to us today, and would basically take all your time. They would be totally left behind by modern society, ie hermits.
  - chessturk 8y ago
    I mean you're right in a unabomber type sense (i.e. living in a log cabin trapping small animals), but if I wanted to build my own smartphone from scratch, my whole lifetime is spent extracting materials to build the equipment required for making the smartphone. Even if I somehow made the smartphone, I would have immediately violated some patent law. Even if I were a globe trotting immortal, I cannot legally DIY most common electronics because of patent law.
    - code_duck 7y ago
      Sure you can. You just can’t sell the item.
justaguyhere 8y ago
That is true, but it is also true that most people who do have reasonable alternatives still don't take advantage of them. This could be due to laziness, inertia but mostly I'd guess comfort level. We live in a society where people yell at McDonalds employees if their stupid chicken nuggets isn't available one day, out of 5,000 days they've eaten there. Point being, most of us have become too comfortable and expect too much, while not doing enough ourselves at the same time.
- Retra 8y ago
  Most of these things are very hard to analyze. Let me give you a real-life example. This winter, my driveway developed some major cracks from the snow melt. How can I solve this problem responsibly? Not fix it? Then I have to park on the street and drive my car unnecessarily to keep it out of the way of the plow. I will end up with craters and mud slide in my yard, a useless garage, and I'll probably have to fix it anyway if I want to use/resell my property. Move to a warmer climate? Then someone else moves into my house and we've wasted resources just shuffling people about. So what I will probably do is go to a company that does driveway repair and have them fix it, because then the space is usable and I don't have to change my whole life or live with a dangerous/ugly pit in my yard. But I can't tell you if they will do it efficiently. They're the experts, so obviously they know more than I do. What would you do? What would anybody do? How am I supposed to both identify an environmentally-friendly alternative and muster the courage to act on it?
  - justaguyhere 8y ago
    What would you do? What would anybody do? I don't have an answer to this specific scenario that you described. That said, I wasn't saying we should all suddenly become 100% socially responsible overnight - it is just not practical. There are lots of things that are super easy to do, and yet have positive influence on the environment, society etc. We can keep a handful of cloth bags handy, when we go grocery shopping. This isn't hard to do, and will help reduce plastic bags. We don't have to wait for legislation to act on this. We don't have to replace our perfectly working phone, every other year (or every year) and throw it in the landfill. And so on. These are definitely small compared to the pollution caused by corporations. But corporations exist to sell to consumers. Plus, change has to start somewhere. Why not start at home?
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      >We can keep a handful of cloth bags handy, when we go grocery shopping. That probably doesn't help. A cotton bag requires about 130x more resources to produce than a standard HDPE carrier bag. If you re-use a plastic bag three times, you'd need to use your cotton bag nearly 400 times to break even. The cotton bag is likely to wear out substantially sooner than that. The plastic bag can be disposed of responsibly by recycling, incineration or as a container for non-recyclable domestic waste. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Most people don't have reasonable alternatives or any way to override the instinctual social mechanisms that drive their behavior.

by Retra 8y ago

Most people don't have reasonable alternatives or any way to override the instinctual social mechanisms that drive their behavior.

chessturk 8y ago

Not to mention monopolies/oligopolies prevent real choice with most products. No one can DIY everything.

npsimons 8y ago
> No one can DIY everything. Well, technically they can, it's just that that sort of lifestyle is unrecognizable to us today, and would basically take all your time. They would be totally left behind by modern society, ie hermits.
- chessturk 8y ago
  I mean you're right in a unabomber type sense (i.e. living in a log cabin trapping small animals), but if I wanted to build my own smartphone from scratch, my whole lifetime is spent extracting materials to build the equipment required for making the smartphone. Even if I somehow made the smartphone, I would have immediately violated some patent law. Even if I were a globe trotting immortal, I cannot legally DIY most common electronics because of patent law.
  - code_duck 7y ago
    Sure you can. You just can’t sell the item.

justaguyhere 8y ago

That is true, but it is also true that most people who do have reasonable alternatives still don't take advantage of them. This could be due to laziness, inertia but mostly I'd guess comfort level. We live in a society where people yell at McDonalds employees if their stupid chicken nuggets isn't available one day, out of 5,000 days they've eaten there. Point being, most of us have become too comfortable and expect too much, while not doing enough ourselves at the same time.

Retra 8y ago
Most of these things are very hard to analyze. Let me give you a real-life example. This winter, my driveway developed some major cracks from the snow melt. How can I solve this problem responsibly? Not fix it? Then I have to park on the street and drive my car unnecessarily to keep it out of the way of the plow. I will end up with craters and mud slide in my yard, a useless garage, and I'll probably have to fix it anyway if I want to use/resell my property. Move to a warmer climate? Then someone else moves into my house and we've wasted resources just shuffling people about. So what I will probably do is go to a company that does driveway repair and have them fix it, because then the space is usable and I don't have to change my whole life or live with a dangerous/ugly pit in my yard. But I can't tell you if they will do it efficiently. They're the experts, so obviously they know more than I do. What would you do? What would anybody do? How am I supposed to both identify an environmentally-friendly alternative and muster the courage to act on it?
- justaguyhere 8y ago
  What would you do? What would anybody do? I don't have an answer to this specific scenario that you described. That said, I wasn't saying we should all suddenly become 100% socially responsible overnight - it is just not practical. There are lots of things that are super easy to do, and yet have positive influence on the environment, society etc. We can keep a handful of cloth bags handy, when we go grocery shopping. This isn't hard to do, and will help reduce plastic bags. We don't have to wait for legislation to act on this. We don't have to replace our perfectly working phone, every other year (or every year) and throw it in the landfill. And so on. These are definitely small compared to the pollution caused by corporations. But corporations exist to sell to consumers. Plus, change has to start somewhere. Why not start at home?
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    >We can keep a handful of cloth bags handy, when we go grocery shopping. That probably doesn't help. A cotton bag requires about 130x more resources to produce than a standard HDPE carrier bag. If you re-use a plastic bag three times, you'd need to use your cotton bag nearly 400 times to break even. The cotton bag is likely to wear out substantially sooner than that. The plastic bag can be disposed of responsibly by recycling, incineration or as a container for non-recyclable domestic waste. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...