6 ms·

Please Buy Less

105 points by anilshanbhag 7y ago

ydb 7y ago
I think this is some serious Marxist agitprop. It is absolutely appalling that people think we ought to buy less as if that's what the problem is. The problem is not unethical consumption! The difficulty is not in alienating labor from capital! These posadist fools think we will be saved by aliens. Look fellas, buy your girl that Gucci bag if she wants it. The gal may as well looks fashionable while we descent into collapse.
- lukifer 7y ago
  > buy your girl that Gucci bag if she wants it Veblen goods [0] arguably create a real problem for the concept of markets being efficient. Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. (Curiously, luxury goods share some DNA with Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining.) Don't get me wrong, markets beat communism and mercantilism by a country mile; but as economists like to remind us, economic models are fundamentally agnostic to what people want, and people are often incentivized to treat inefficiency as a feature rather than a bug. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
  - hirundo 7y ago
    > Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. Since this is about status rather than the goods, it can flip on a dime to asceticism when that becomes a high status good. Monk habits, Mao suits and military uniforms are also status goods, and all broadcast the expenditure of great energy that often produces nothing, or less. Buying less can be a status symbol almost as easily as buying more.
    - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
      Only if and while the proles glut themselves on cheap stuff. As soon as unwashed masses start to copy that, the balance will flip and reverse. To act as a status symbol an action must be hard or costly to reproduce. If everybody can do it, it becomes worthless. I think similar dynamics plays out with currency, we could all still be using sea shells otherwise.
    - lukifer 7y ago
      Scott Alexander wrote a great piece about counter-signaling; for instance, when expensive clothes become too accessible to the middle class, the wealthy can swerve by wearing cheap clothes as a counter-signal: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectual-hipsters-and-meta-contrarianism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectu... Signaling comes in many forms, and not all of it is bad; arguably, signaling eco-consciousness with a Prius or a Tesla can be a net win, even if it's just a proxy for socioeconomics. Rather, I would posit that extremes of Veblen goods (where cost and/or effort are abnormally high and positive social externalities are low) are more akin to market failure, or the Dutch tulip craze.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  I don't think there is any respectable belief system or religion in the world where "buying more" is a general solution to any sort of problem. (Unless you're an economist trying to optimize for a particular variable like market liquidity, or unless you're a biased market participant -- like a company selling something.) If you want to encourage someone to do something more to solve problems, how about suggesting people give to the poor in their immediate locale -- like donating to a local shelter or poverty relief organization.
  - prepend 7y ago
    Aren’t charitable donations a form of buying? Lots of religions have penance as part of their tradition and most will encourage donating to fund church building and whatnot. I’ve lived in rural America and if you want to help the poor, open a Walmart. Their prices were lower than the dime store and they hired people of all races and you could work there without being groped by the old owner. Of course it wasn’t perfect as there are flaws with Walmart too. But as far as utilitarian impact on the poor buying stuff can be very helpful.
    - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
      Your pastor needs a personal jet to do the gods work. So partially yes.
      - prepend 7y ago
        I drive home past a very popular church where the pastor received national fame for preaching that he needed a new jet because God wants him to. And he got it.
        TimTheTinker 7y ago
        Wow. That’s spiritual abuse and nothing less. It boggles the mind that people pay attention to such people when scripture clearly warns against them (like 1 Timothy chapter 6).
- paganel 7y ago
  > your girl This is so wrong on so many levels. I pity your female work colleagues. Unless you were talking about a dad purchasing some luxury stuff for his daughter, but I guess you didn't have that in mind.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    > your female work colleagues Disgusting. They are not his. Is this really how you talk about women?
  - dang 7y ago
    Would you please not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It leads to nasty and stupid discussions that we neither need nor want. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - paganel 7y ago
      That’s nothing ideological about telling someone that their way of seeing other human beings as inferior is wrong, as talking about a different person as belonging to someone else (the “your” part) means seeing the other person as being inferior. Yeah, as members of this community we could maybe ignore when other users talk about such views out loud, but that won’t really solve anything, would it?, it would just mean hiding everything under the rug, even empowering said user in his/her views.
      - dang 7y ago
        That's vastly overinterpreting what the commenter wrote. Please follow the site guidelines when commenting here. They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
      - hombre_fatal 7y ago
        You used "your" in your comment to refer to women (colleagues) and clearly weren't talking about women as owned livestock. Why not grant them the same usage of possessive pronouns?
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. We don't want that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20ideolog&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
behringer 7y ago
Demanding politely to a command I'm going to obviously say no to is rude and obnoxious.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago
  That's possibly the least "rude and obnoxious" message about rampant consumerism I've ever come across. Your response speaks volumes about yourself as opposed to the message on the site.
  - behringer 7y ago
    After deciding to read the message at all after being put upon by an author who doesn't know me, I found the message to be a bit of a cliche nowadays. Who's his audience? Hungry consumers aren't busy reading and following commandments handed down by domain names.
reubens 7y ago
Wow, getting some negative responses here. Personally, I'm rapt to see a message like this (especially on front page of HN)
eduren 7y ago
The easiest way to get people to buy less is to raise prices. If we had a carbon tax that correctly priced the environmental impact of goods, it would decrease consumption. Without having to shame people into removing themselves from the economy.
- prepend 7y ago
  A carbon tax will shift shift purchases to government. So unless the goal is to have one group buying less, a carbon tax won’t matter too much. Since any drops in consumption will be offset by using that new tax revenue to do and buy stuff. If we want to buy less we need to shrink the economy, including government spend. Personally, I’m just trying to build more things and gather more things myself. Buys less and saves money.
  - bognition 7y ago
    The money collected from the carbon tax would have to be earmarked for things that improve our ecological situation: carbon sequestration, replanting forests, buying and protecting land, etc...
    - prepend 7y ago
      That’s buying things no? Sequestration systems. Tree nurseries and all the stuff to service forests. Buying land gives money to someone who buys stuff.
- lukifer 7y ago
  Yes. I've become convinced that Pigovian taxes [0] (connected to a basic dividend) are the answer to climate change, and to ecological externalities in general. (In addition to greasing the wheels of political viability, a dividend ensures that paying the true cost of carbon is not a de-facto regressive tax, as that cost hits the working class the hardest.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
  - 7y ago
kingbirdy 7y ago
We've been advocating "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" for over 40 years, and yet emissions and consumption have gone up every year. You will never be able to convince enough people to voluntarily reduce their lifestyle. To cut waste & emissions we need legislation, not shaming of consumers.
- paganel 7y ago
  > not shaming of consumers. No need for that, some of consumers themselves have begun shaming their fellow consumers who buy way more stuff than they need. I know I've started doing that in the last couple of years, since I've realized that no amount of recycling or legislation is going to stop climate change, it has to start from us. Yeah, people who buy a lot of stuff are to blame, if you buy a lot of stuff you're to blame for all the bad things that happen to our climate.
  - prepend 7y ago
    While shaming consumers certainly makes me feel good, it’s a poor way to change behavior. [0] [1] [0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/201705/why-shaming-doesnt-work https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/20... [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306624X11418916?journalCode=ijoe https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306624X1141891...
    - paganel 7y ago
      Around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) shaming has had its pretty good effects during the last 25-30 years. We used to litter a lot more just after communism fell, I remember that even I, as a kid, had no remorse at throwing some piece of paper or whatever at the side of the road. Nowadays I wouldn't even dream of doing that, and generally speaking people throw stuff by the roadside a lot less. The same discussion goes for smoking in public places, we even managed to have that outlawed a few years ago, a feat unimaginable a couple of decades ago when I used to have high-school teachers who were smoking in class.
anilshanbhag 7y ago
I was not sure about posting this. The world is weird in that you are a single person in a sea of 7+ billion people, it is very hard to get your message across and even harder to make a change that will actually make a dent. Hope you think twice before buying and save some money too - have a nice extended weekend :)
- abvdasker 7y ago
  I'm glad you did. It's an important message and Americans -- at least the ones on the internet -- seem now to be more receptive to critiques of capitalism than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ChuckMcM 7y ago
I would, I use it all the time, but it's open source[1]. :-) [1] http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/ http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/
Bizarro 7y ago
Political bullshit that has no place on Hacker News.
4ntonius8lock 7y ago
I like the message, but it seems to complain more than it actually provides solutions. The term 'retail therapy' is a very real thing. I think a lot of our consumerism is connected to our disconnection and lifestyle, and this is related to how we set up our cities and communities. From population density, to walk-ability of cities, etc. When I lived in the third world, in an area with pretty high population density, mixed use zoning, and high walk-ability I would consume less 'stuff' and more experiences. For instance, instead of driving to TJ max to buy some new clothes as I would here, I might take a walk and buy some pastry... which I'd be hungry for from walking. It was from a small producer, who used less materials for packaging than a large one would. I'd also get to know people who I'd regularly see, and that also reduced consumption of good I think as I would stop and connect with other people. We are pleasure seekers, and if consumerism is the easiest way to satiate that desire, it will be done in a consumerist way. I'm not saying our consumerism is ONLY about lifestyle, but I think going into what causes consumption is more effective at reducing it than simply saying 'hey you, don't do that'. I think it's why in some parts of Europe people seem to buy less junk and more quality, artisanal made items.
closeparen 7y ago
Please do not travel, either. Togetherness and family are idols at least as wasteful and environmentally damaging as consumerism.
- prepend 7y ago
  Certainly electric night at light are a waste, right? Running lightbulbs in an average home for a year uses more resources than travel. Lighting is 17% of global carbon emissions, I think [0]. And air travel is 2.5% or so. Many people don’t even have the option not to travel, but everyone can choose not to use electric lights. [0] https://www.ledonecorp.com/using-led-lighting-to-reduce-your-carbon-footprint/ https://www.ledonecorp.com/using-led-lighting-to-reduce-your... [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/778692814/choosing-not-to-fly-home-for-the-holidays-for-the-climates-sake https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/778692814/choosing-not-to-fly...
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    I simply do not believe LED One's claim lighting is 17%, apparently based on an all tungsten world, nor that electricity is 50% of emissions. Electricity comes out at 50% only when the category is "Electricity and heating" [1], usually it comes in at 20-30% depending on country. A lobby group promoting adoption of LED lighting in 2006 while all domestic use was still tungsten claims 6% is lighting[2]. Post LED adoption, perhaps 0.5-1%. Does anyone still use tungsten aside from some specialised use given LED bulbs are down to tungsten prices? It appears to be a small enough percentage I can't find anywhere picking out lighting individually. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissions-by-sector-or-source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissi... [2] https://www.theclimategroup.org/project/led-scale https://www.theclimategroup.org/project/led-scale
- loco5niner 7y ago
  > Togetherness and family are idols at least as wasteful and environmentally damaging Sorry, but you are dead wrong. Together and family is just what we need.
economyballoon 7y ago
We must enable and provide technology to countries that are on there way to western worlds living standard to get there with low co2 emission. Because they want it with or without co2 emission.
account73466 7y ago
"have one fewer child" is the most efficient way to decrease your carbon footprint (see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/best-way-reduce-your-carbon-footprint-one-government-isn-t-telling-you-about https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/best-way-reduce-your... ) Easy, right? However, I am not sure it is correct. For instance, if you produce less than 2 kids (e.g., 0) AND it was your decision, would not it mean that all the carbon footprint went to adapt/improve your genetic material (including your grand-grand-parents) is a waste in some sense? You are the last one of your branch. Wasn't you fooled to believe you should have no kids? Makes a lot of sense for other branches to fool you and gain a greater ratio of the entire genetic material (this is basically the definition of fitness function in evolutionary biology - to have more offspring / a greater ratio of genetic material). Evolutionary processes at play.
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  1) This is a sunk cost fallacy. Think of all the fossil fuel infrastructure, wouldn't it be a waste to stop using it? 2) Your goals and goals of your genes are not the same. You should care about as much about your genes as your genes care for you (not at all)
  - account73466 7y ago
    To truly answer such questions you should have a (set of) metrics to measure what is better and run parallel universes for a significant amount of time to check which version is better according to your metrics. >> Think of all the fossil fuel infrastructure, wouldn't it be a waste to stop using it? Most likely, it would be a waste to stop using it right now. >> Your goals and goals of your genes are not the same. You should care about as much about your genes as your genes care for you (not at all) Living organisms are genetically wired to care about their genes, e.g., to express them (e.g., to write posts on HN and publish scientific papers) and spread them (to have kids).
    - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
      Wired, but not directly. We don't have an explicit urge to have as many kids as possible, we just like having sex. It kinda leads to the same outcome. Or it did, before we invented contraceptives. Writing posts on HN is not expressing your genes, it is an entirely accidental effect of intelligence, which is another mechanism we have solely to better propagate our genes, but it kinda runaway.
mirimir 7y ago
FYI: https://www.history.com/news/whats-the-real-history-of-black-friday https://www.history.com/news/whats-the-real-history-of-black...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

105 points by anilshanbhag 7y ago

ydb 7y ago

I think this is some serious Marxist agitprop. It is absolutely appalling that people think we ought to buy less as if that's what the problem is. The problem is not unethical consumption! The difficulty is not in alienating labor from capital! These posadist fools think we will be saved by aliens. Look fellas, buy your girl that Gucci bag if she wants it. The gal may as well looks fashionable while we descent into collapse.

lukifer 7y ago
> buy your girl that Gucci bag if she wants it Veblen goods [0] arguably create a real problem for the concept of markets being efficient. Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. (Curiously, luxury goods share some DNA with Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining.) Don't get me wrong, markets beat communism and mercantilism by a country mile; but as economists like to remind us, economic models are fundamentally agnostic to what people want, and people are often incentivized to treat inefficiency as a feature rather than a bug. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
- hirundo 7y ago
  > Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. Since this is about status rather than the goods, it can flip on a dime to asceticism when that becomes a high status good. Monk habits, Mao suits and military uniforms are also status goods, and all broadcast the expenditure of great energy that often produces nothing, or less. Buying less can be a status symbol almost as easily as buying more.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Only if and while the proles glut themselves on cheap stuff. As soon as unwashed masses start to copy that, the balance will flip and reverse. To act as a status symbol an action must be hard or costly to reproduce. If everybody can do it, it becomes worthless. I think similar dynamics plays out with currency, we could all still be using sea shells otherwise.
  - lukifer 7y ago
    Scott Alexander wrote a great piece about counter-signaling; for instance, when expensive clothes become too accessible to the middle class, the wealthy can swerve by wearing cheap clothes as a counter-signal: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectual-hipsters-and-meta-contrarianism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectu... Signaling comes in many forms, and not all of it is bad; arguably, signaling eco-consciousness with a Prius or a Tesla can be a net win, even if it's just a proxy for socioeconomics. Rather, I would posit that extremes of Veblen goods (where cost and/or effort are abnormally high and positive social externalities are low) are more akin to market failure, or the Dutch tulip craze.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
I don't think there is any respectable belief system or religion in the world where "buying more" is a general solution to any sort of problem. (Unless you're an economist trying to optimize for a particular variable like market liquidity, or unless you're a biased market participant -- like a company selling something.) If you want to encourage someone to do something more to solve problems, how about suggesting people give to the poor in their immediate locale -- like donating to a local shelter or poverty relief organization.
- prepend 7y ago
  Aren’t charitable donations a form of buying? Lots of religions have penance as part of their tradition and most will encourage donating to fund church building and whatnot. I’ve lived in rural America and if you want to help the poor, open a Walmart. Their prices were lower than the dime store and they hired people of all races and you could work there without being groped by the old owner. Of course it wasn’t perfect as there are flaws with Walmart too. But as far as utilitarian impact on the poor buying stuff can be very helpful.
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Your pastor needs a personal jet to do the gods work. So partially yes.
    - prepend 7y ago
      I drive home past a very popular church where the pastor received national fame for preaching that he needed a new jet because God wants him to. And he got it.
      - TimTheTinker 7y ago
        Wow. That’s spiritual abuse and nothing less. It boggles the mind that people pay attention to such people when scripture clearly warns against them (like 1 Timothy chapter 6).
paganel 7y ago
> your girl This is so wrong on so many levels. I pity your female work colleagues. Unless you were talking about a dad purchasing some luxury stuff for his daughter, but I guess you didn't have that in mind.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  > your female work colleagues Disgusting. They are not his. Is this really how you talk about women?
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It leads to nasty and stupid discussions that we neither need nor want. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - paganel 7y ago
    That’s nothing ideological about telling someone that their way of seeing other human beings as inferior is wrong, as talking about a different person as belonging to someone else (the “your” part) means seeing the other person as being inferior. Yeah, as members of this community we could maybe ignore when other users talk about such views out loud, but that won’t really solve anything, would it?, it would just mean hiding everything under the rug, even empowering said user in his/her views.
    - dang 7y ago
      That's vastly overinterpreting what the commenter wrote. Please follow the site guidelines when commenting here. They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      You used "your" in your comment to refer to women (colleagues) and clearly weren't talking about women as owned livestock. Why not grant them the same usage of possessive pronouns?
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. We don't want that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20ideolog&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

behringer 7y ago

Demanding politely to a command I'm going to obviously say no to is rude and obnoxious.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago
That's possibly the least "rude and obnoxious" message about rampant consumerism I've ever come across. Your response speaks volumes about yourself as opposed to the message on the site.
- behringer 7y ago
  After deciding to read the message at all after being put upon by an author who doesn't know me, I found the message to be a bit of a cliche nowadays. Who's his audience? Hungry consumers aren't busy reading and following commandments handed down by domain names.

reubens 7y ago

Wow, getting some negative responses here. Personally, I'm rapt to see a message like this (especially on front page of HN)

eduren 7y ago

The easiest way to get people to buy less is to raise prices. If we had a carbon tax that correctly priced the environmental impact of goods, it would decrease consumption. Without having to shame people into removing themselves from the economy.

prepend 7y ago
A carbon tax will shift shift purchases to government. So unless the goal is to have one group buying less, a carbon tax won’t matter too much. Since any drops in consumption will be offset by using that new tax revenue to do and buy stuff. If we want to buy less we need to shrink the economy, including government spend. Personally, I’m just trying to build more things and gather more things myself. Buys less and saves money.
- bognition 7y ago
  The money collected from the carbon tax would have to be earmarked for things that improve our ecological situation: carbon sequestration, replanting forests, buying and protecting land, etc...
  - prepend 7y ago
    That’s buying things no? Sequestration systems. Tree nurseries and all the stuff to service forests. Buying land gives money to someone who buys stuff.
lukifer 7y ago
Yes. I've become convinced that Pigovian taxes [0] (connected to a basic dividend) are the answer to climate change, and to ecological externalities in general. (In addition to greasing the wheels of political viability, a dividend ensures that paying the true cost of carbon is not a de-facto regressive tax, as that cost hits the working class the hardest.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
- 7y ago

kingbirdy 7y ago

We've been advocating "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" for over 40 years, and yet emissions and consumption have gone up every year. You will never be able to convince enough people to voluntarily reduce their lifestyle. To cut waste & emissions we need legislation, not shaming of consumers.

paganel 7y ago
> not shaming of consumers. No need for that, some of consumers themselves have begun shaming their fellow consumers who buy way more stuff than they need. I know I've started doing that in the last couple of years, since I've realized that no amount of recycling or legislation is going to stop climate change, it has to start from us. Yeah, people who buy a lot of stuff are to blame, if you buy a lot of stuff you're to blame for all the bad things that happen to our climate.
- prepend 7y ago
  While shaming consumers certainly makes me feel good, it’s a poor way to change behavior. [0] [1] [0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/201705/why-shaming-doesnt-work https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/20... [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306624X11418916?journalCode=ijoe https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306624X1141891...
  - paganel 7y ago
    Around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) shaming has had its pretty good effects during the last 25-30 years. We used to litter a lot more just after communism fell, I remember that even I, as a kid, had no remorse at throwing some piece of paper or whatever at the side of the road. Nowadays I wouldn't even dream of doing that, and generally speaking people throw stuff by the roadside a lot less. The same discussion goes for smoking in public places, we even managed to have that outlawed a few years ago, a feat unimaginable a couple of decades ago when I used to have high-school teachers who were smoking in class.

anilshanbhag 7y ago

I was not sure about posting this. The world is weird in that you are a single person in a sea of 7+ billion people, it is very hard to get your message across and even harder to make a change that will actually make a dent. Hope you think twice before buying and save some money too - have a nice extended weekend :)

abvdasker 7y ago
I'm glad you did. It's an important message and Americans -- at least the ones on the internet -- seem now to be more receptive to critiques of capitalism than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ChuckMcM 7y ago

I would, I use it all the time, but it's open source[1]. :-) [1] http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/ http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/

Bizarro 7y ago

Political bullshit that has no place on Hacker News.

4ntonius8lock 7y ago

I like the message, but it seems to complain more than it actually provides solutions. The term 'retail therapy' is a very real thing. I think a lot of our consumerism is connected to our disconnection and lifestyle, and this is related to how we set up our cities and communities. From population density, to walk-ability of cities, etc. When I lived in the third world, in an area with pretty high population density, mixed use zoning, and high walk-ability I would consume less 'stuff' and more experiences. For instance, instead of driving to TJ max to buy some new clothes as I would here, I might take a walk and buy some pastry... which I'd be hungry for from walking. It was from a small producer, who used less materials for packaging than a large one would. I'd also get to know people who I'd regularly see, and that also reduced consumption of good I think as I would stop and connect with other people. We are pleasure seekers, and if consumerism is the easiest way to satiate that desire, it will be done in a consumerist way. I'm not saying our consumerism is ONLY about lifestyle, but I think going into what causes consumption is more effective at reducing it than simply saying 'hey you, don't do that'. I think it's why in some parts of Europe people seem to buy less junk and more quality, artisanal made items.

closeparen 7y ago

Please do not travel, either. Togetherness and family are idols at least as wasteful and environmentally damaging as consumerism.

prepend 7y ago
Certainly electric night at light are a waste, right? Running lightbulbs in an average home for a year uses more resources than travel. Lighting is 17% of global carbon emissions, I think [0]. And air travel is 2.5% or so. Many people don’t even have the option not to travel, but everyone can choose not to use electric lights. [0] https://www.ledonecorp.com/using-led-lighting-to-reduce-your-carbon-footprint/ https://www.ledonecorp.com/using-led-lighting-to-reduce-your... [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/778692814/choosing-not-to-fly-home-for-the-holidays-for-the-climates-sake https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/778692814/choosing-not-to-fly...
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  I simply do not believe LED One's claim lighting is 17%, apparently based on an all tungsten world, nor that electricity is 50% of emissions. Electricity comes out at 50% only when the category is "Electricity and heating" [1], usually it comes in at 20-30% depending on country. A lobby group promoting adoption of LED lighting in 2006 while all domestic use was still tungsten claims 6% is lighting[2]. Post LED adoption, perhaps 0.5-1%. Does anyone still use tungsten aside from some specialised use given LED bulbs are down to tungsten prices? It appears to be a small enough percentage I can't find anywhere picking out lighting individually. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissions-by-sector-or-source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissi... [2] https://www.theclimategroup.org/project/led-scale https://www.theclimategroup.org/project/led-scale
loco5niner 7y ago
> Togetherness and family are idols at least as wasteful and environmentally damaging Sorry, but you are dead wrong. Together and family is just what we need.

economyballoon 7y ago

We must enable and provide technology to countries that are on there way to western worlds living standard to get there with low co2 emission. Because they want it with or without co2 emission.

account73466 7y ago

"have one fewer child" is the most efficient way to decrease your carbon footprint (see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/best-way-reduce-your-carbon-footprint-one-government-isn-t-telling-you-about https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/best-way-reduce-your... ) Easy, right? However, I am not sure it is correct. For instance, if you produce less than 2 kids (e.g., 0) AND it was your decision, would not it mean that all the carbon footprint went to adapt/improve your genetic material (including your grand-grand-parents) is a waste in some sense? You are the last one of your branch. Wasn't you fooled to believe you should have no kids? Makes a lot of sense for other branches to fool you and gain a greater ratio of the entire genetic material (this is basically the definition of fitness function in evolutionary biology - to have more offspring / a greater ratio of genetic material). Evolutionary processes at play.

UnFleshedOne 7y ago
1) This is a sunk cost fallacy. Think of all the fossil fuel infrastructure, wouldn't it be a waste to stop using it? 2) Your goals and goals of your genes are not the same. You should care about as much about your genes as your genes care for you (not at all)
- account73466 7y ago
  To truly answer such questions you should have a (set of) metrics to measure what is better and run parallel universes for a significant amount of time to check which version is better according to your metrics. >> Think of all the fossil fuel infrastructure, wouldn't it be a waste to stop using it? Most likely, it would be a waste to stop using it right now. >> Your goals and goals of your genes are not the same. You should care about as much about your genes as your genes care for you (not at all) Living organisms are genetically wired to care about their genes, e.g., to express them (e.g., to write posts on HN and publish scientific papers) and spread them (to have kids).
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Wired, but not directly. We don't have an explicit urge to have as many kids as possible, we just like having sex. It kinda leads to the same outcome. Or it did, before we invented contraceptives. Writing posts on HN is not expressing your genes, it is an entirely accidental effect of intelligence, which is another mechanism we have solely to better propagate our genes, but it kinda runaway.

mirimir 7y ago

FYI: https://www.history.com/news/whats-the-real-history-of-black-friday https://www.history.com/news/whats-the-real-history-of-black...

deleted 7y ago

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