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Then humanity is clearly headed off a cliff in that landscape. Which, by the way, has been signaled to everyone for decades now. Just our political processes h

Then humanity is clearly headed off a cliff in that landscape. Which, by the way, has been signaled to everyone for decades now. Just our political processes have not allowed those signals to reach "the economy" and we seem to be unable to act on anything that isn't felt by the economy. Which, I might add, is not a god-given fact, but rather a political choice. Anyway, we will have a cliff. And it will have been announced. And people will suffer when our consensus finding process drives us all over this cliff.

rusk 6y ago
> political processes have not allowed those signals to reach "the economy" This right here is the achilles heal of free market theory.
- baq 6y ago
  the market can and will correct itself. there are two problems however: - actually getting rules implemented and enforced (political suicide by regulators - had an example of that in my own country just a couple months ago, made a mess in the government, the new rules didn't pass in parliament, governing party lost 10 pp in polls anyway) - very irregular period of convergence from old rules to new (societal turmoil guaranteed, political consequences very likely) - see thatcher's closure of British coal mines for a good example
  - black_puppydog 6y ago
    you forgot problem number three: - the market as such will correct itself but is entirely unconcerned with the welfare of human beings in the meantime, and will continue to be unconcerned with it afterwards.
    - baq 6y ago
      actually that was my point in problem 2...
  - rusk 6y ago
    Sounds like no true Scotsman
ryandrake 6y ago
> Which, by the way, has been signaled to everyone for decades now. That's part of the problem. The general public have been hearing it for decades now, and are probably just sick and tired of hearing about it. As far back as I can remember, it's been nothing but "Nuclear weapons are gonna kill us all" "Acid rain is gonna kill us all!" "Smog is gonna kill us all!" "Drugs and crime are gonna kill us all" "The ozone hole is gonna kill us all!" "Global warming is gonna kill us all!" "Terrorism is gonna kill us all" "Climate change is gonna kill us all!" Yet, here we are, still going on towards these various cliffs. I can at least put myself in the general public's shoes for a bit and empathize with their crisis fatigue. Economic crises are felt immediately--you lose your job. It's no surprise that it's politically easier to favor economics over other crises that are perpetually happening Real Soon Now.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the diagnosis of "crisis fatigue" but for the examples you give, here's a breakdown by my own very biased view. I'm leaving out Acid Rain because I never really was part of that discourse (too young) and didn't read about it after the fact either. These four (IMHO) do actually pose clear and present dangers to human health & wellbeing at scale: * Nuclear Weapons * Smog * Ozone * Global Warming / Climate Change They were identified as risks and (except for Ozone, which was actually tackled and is improving to my knowlege) continue to be shown as risks. Or rather, by now, as actually doing harm. On the other hand, these two here were never the big catastrophes that they were made out to be, yet were (and are!) continually overblown. * Drugs & Crime * Terrorism Neither of them ever had the existential threat potential that the other group had. Not-so-incidentally, the proposed "solutions" to these problems were always... * highly profitable for certain industries * useful for conservative re-elections * based in little to no fact * often (predictably) counter-productive. Bottom line: if we had actually put time and money into existing, working solutions to measurable, actual problems, we would have been perfectly capable to do so. We did it for Ozone, we could have done it again. We didn't. Instead, we put countless dollars and lives into "solving" problems that were pretty much caused by their "solutions", and mostly because that was in the best interest of very few people. If people are tired of anything, I hope/suspect that they are tired of a political/economic system that predictably ended up producing this mess.

rusk 6y ago

> political processes have not allowed those signals to reach "the economy" This right here is the achilles heal of free market theory.

baq 6y ago
the market can and will correct itself. there are two problems however: - actually getting rules implemented and enforced (political suicide by regulators - had an example of that in my own country just a couple months ago, made a mess in the government, the new rules didn't pass in parliament, governing party lost 10 pp in polls anyway) - very irregular period of convergence from old rules to new (societal turmoil guaranteed, political consequences very likely) - see thatcher's closure of British coal mines for a good example
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  you forgot problem number three: - the market as such will correct itself but is entirely unconcerned with the welfare of human beings in the meantime, and will continue to be unconcerned with it afterwards.
  - baq 6y ago
    actually that was my point in problem 2...
- rusk 6y ago
  Sounds like no true Scotsman

ryandrake 6y ago

> Which, by the way, has been signaled to everyone for decades now. That's part of the problem. The general public have been hearing it for decades now, and are probably just sick and tired of hearing about it. As far back as I can remember, it's been nothing but "Nuclear weapons are gonna kill us all" "Acid rain is gonna kill us all!" "Smog is gonna kill us all!" "Drugs and crime are gonna kill us all" "The ozone hole is gonna kill us all!" "Global warming is gonna kill us all!" "Terrorism is gonna kill us all" "Climate change is gonna kill us all!" Yet, here we are, still going on towards these various cliffs. I can at least put myself in the general public's shoes for a bit and empathize with their crisis fatigue. Economic crises are felt immediately--you lose your job. It's no surprise that it's politically easier to favor economics over other crises that are perpetually happening Real Soon Now.

black_puppydog 6y ago
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the diagnosis of "crisis fatigue" but for the examples you give, here's a breakdown by my own very biased view. I'm leaving out Acid Rain because I never really was part of that discourse (too young) and didn't read about it after the fact either. These four (IMHO) do actually pose clear and present dangers to human health & wellbeing at scale: * Nuclear Weapons * Smog * Ozone * Global Warming / Climate Change They were identified as risks and (except for Ozone, which was actually tackled and is improving to my knowlege) continue to be shown as risks. Or rather, by now, as actually doing harm. On the other hand, these two here were never the big catastrophes that they were made out to be, yet were (and are!) continually overblown. * Drugs & Crime * Terrorism Neither of them ever had the existential threat potential that the other group had. Not-so-incidentally, the proposed "solutions" to these problems were always... * highly profitable for certain industries * useful for conservative re-elections * based in little to no fact * often (predictably) counter-productive. Bottom line: if we had actually put time and money into existing, working solutions to measurable, actual problems, we would have been perfectly capable to do so. We did it for Ozone, we could have done it again. We didn't. Instead, we put countless dollars and lives into "solving" problems that were pretty much caused by their "solutions", and mostly because that was in the best interest of very few people. If people are tired of anything, I hope/suspect that they are tired of a political/economic system that predictably ended up producing this mess.