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They are doing both. Cigarettes are a luxury item. Petroleum products are a requirement for modern life. You could fire all of the corporate PR propagandists

They are doing both. Cigarettes are a luxury item. Petroleum products are a requirement for modern life. You could fire all of the corporate PR propagandists and lobbyists on the planet and I doubt it would make a dramatic dent in oil consumption. Couldn’t possibly hurt though!

mindslight 5y ago
If you want to frame this in terms of the demand side, then downsizing all of the PR propagandists would be a great start, along with all the other zero sum jobs. Instead of efficiency gains causing people to work less and consume less resources for the same output, central banks insist on "full employment" stimulus that creates make-work jobs to compensate. And despite their utility being zero-sum, these workers are churning hard in the rat race - buying new cars, fancy clothes, big houses, and other wasteful spending as they're time strapped. If instead of churning these people were allowed to just retire, they would use much less resources. But it seems like we can't insist on financial reform to slow down the economy, because every crisis becomes an excuse for the central banks to pump the gas while scaring people with the deflation bogeyman. And so we're stuck focusing on direct intervention to prevent the ever growing throng of antiproductive labor from doing as much damage.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I’ve never heard a complete argument as to how central bank policy makes people want new cars, fancy clothes, or big houses (or tropical and ski vacations)… I think people want those luxuries and (many) are willing to work for them entirely independent of central bank policy.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Isn't it basic that if there's no point to saving and investing is a rigged casino, you might as well spend it on something fun? Consume consume consume! It's good for the economy (if you don't grow exponentially at any environmental cost then you can't keep up with inflation and our economy collapses)
    - luckylion 5y ago
      > Isn't it basic that if there's no point to saving and investing is a rigged casino, you might as well spend it on something fun? I don't think it works that way. I know a few people who are very financially conservative, and I am as well. None of them have responded to interest rates of 0% by consuming more. Everyone has shifted their accepted risk a little bit, but that's about it, they're still putting aside money. On the other hand, the people I know that are spending every available coin for vacation and consumption already did so 20 years ago.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Have you, or someone you know, ever alternated between having a high-compensation low-free-time (eg high paid tech job), and low/no-compensation high-free-time (ie funemployment) ? They're two completely different operating modes. In the first mode, every minute of time is valuable so you pay more for convenience (eg restaurant food, same-day shipping), and when you're not working you're willing to spend a lot of money to "relax harder". You also tend to buy new gadgets for the dopamine release and hope of doing something with them, and then never quite get around to actually using them. In the second mode, you're willing to spend more time to get routine things done, engage in hobbies that take patience, cook your own meals, and generally try to keep your burn rate lower. The financial treadmill pushes people towards the first mode, as one's burn rate always includes housing rent that demands a significant base level of income.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I see the multiple modes, but I think it’s human nature and not central bank policy as being the prime driver of that behavior or of the overall financial treadmill. On average: People want nice things more than crappy things. Nice things cost money. Getting money requires doing something to create value. Creating value for most people means working at a job. If you want nicer/more things than last year or than your neighbor, you need to increase your income. The beauty of this system is that individuals can choose to live frugally and opt-out of the race to a significant extent, taking advantage of the equity market’s consistent long-run returns to setup a system where they can work hard for 10-15 years and bank enough to live a frugal life for their lifetime. In that regard central bank’s current easy money policy is very much supportive of the choice of people consuming less than 100% of what they could rather than encouraging 100+% consumption.
      - mindslight 5y ago
        I'd call that choosing to consume less despite the central bank's policy. Pulling back to coast doesn't work when you're "in it". To get to that point, you've got to churn hard in a city (economic center), avoid hedonistic temptations as much as you can, and then at some point decide to pull the ripcord and leave to a low cost of living area. At which point you know that it will be really hard to get back on if your projections don't hold. That's also to say nothing of the (inherently majority of) people who can't sock away enough surplus to do that, and end up on the treadmill their entire life. Tech gives us an outsized perspective here once again, by giving us more than urban-subsistence wages such that we can save up in the first place. As to people's want of ever-more "nice things" driving their need to work so much, I just don't buy it. Rather, I see an extreme social pressure to keep working as much as possible (try negotiating less than 5 days a week, or every third week off), and then they fill in "nice things" as a rationalization. The same sentiment is repeated in many different areas (spend more time with your kids, etc), but yet few can individually move in that direction without totally eschewing the system ("pulling the ripcord"). And while it's possible for some people to escape the treadmill, it's not a possibility for most people and therefore not sustainable for society. There's a reason people doing it get labels like retired, FIRE, startup lottery, trust fund kid, etc. As for central bank policy, it's reflected in malinvestments like much of Surveillance Valley. One of the most glaring examples was those startups buying electric scooters in bulk, under the hope that if they filled the sidewalk that money would eventually fall in. That's misproduction (and environmental pollution) driven directly by too much capital sloshing around, seeking any sort of return.
- lupire 5y ago
  "full employment" is everyone who is willing and is able to work, not everyone. Also, "full" is defined as something like 96% of people who are willing and able.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    I don't see how spelling out their technical definition addresses what I said. Current central bank policy guarantees that most everyone will "want" to be working to keep paying for their dwelling. Sure, technically if they changed the stimulus to basic income that was high enough to make fewer people "want" to work, then "full employment" could be achieved with less human labor. But in practice that's not how the term is used at all, because of the underlying protestant work ethic asserting that work is good for work's sake.
thinkcontext 5y ago
> You could fire all of the corporate PR propagandists and lobbyists on the planet and I doubt it would make a dramatic dent in oil consumption. There's a good chance we could have had a carbon price or other real measures 10 or more years ago without the malignant denialism seed planted by their propagandists.
epistasis 5y ago
> Petroleum products are a requirement for modern life. This is the most insidious and false lie that is spread. Right now we are going through a technological revolution in humanity, maybe on the level of the development of agriculture, in how we generate energy. Renewables and storage are often cheaper than fossil fuels at the moment, and they are getting cheaper just like Moore's law describes the densification of transistors on chips. HN is full of technologists. We, of all people, should recognize the capacity for technology change. And that technology change is actual work, that needs actual funding and labor, in order to happen. We do not need fossil fuels for modern life, if we develop the technology. Dedicated technologists and entrepreneurs over the past 50 years have made solar power the cheapest energy out there, despite massive political power and the all the money of fossil fuel companies fighting against them. If we had prioritized solar and storage, could we have accelerated the tech's development by 10 years? 20 years? We don't have every single aspect of technology for decarbonization solved yet. Aviation fuel, for example. But that doesn't mean we can't, it just means that we haven't tried hard enough.
- relax88 5y ago
  When I say petroleum products are a requirement for modern life, what I mean is that more than 80% of the energy driving modern society comes from fossil fuels. It probably doesn’t have to be that way, but it is. You definitely can’t say that for cigarettes. I think that you raise a valid point, but also that you’re far too optimistic about renewables. The people of HN are indeed very tech focused, and I believe that such optimism about energy transformation with renewables may be more difficult to foster if this forum were called “Engineering and physics news” simply because technologists tend to suffer from the “Law of the hammer” problem. There are very real engineering challenges with renewables that may very well preclude the kind of dramatic progress you’re referring to. Solar and Wind for example require huge amounts of land, and have a fairly high materials throughput as their lifespan is typically only 15-20 years. All of that effort is spent gathering a diffuse source of energy. There are very real physical limits to how much energy you can gather per square foot, per kg of silica, concrete, or steel. I think your sentiment is correct about nuclear though, which makes me wonder how much big oil has been funding groups like the Sierra Club et al. who have spent nearly half a decade campaigning against nuclear energy.

mindslight 5y ago

If you want to frame this in terms of the demand side, then downsizing all of the PR propagandists would be a great start, along with all the other zero sum jobs. Instead of efficiency gains causing people to work less and consume less resources for the same output, central banks insist on "full employment" stimulus that creates make-work jobs to compensate. And despite their utility being zero-sum, these workers are churning hard in the rat race - buying new cars, fancy clothes, big houses, and other wasteful spending as they're time strapped. If instead of churning these people were allowed to just retire, they would use much less resources. But it seems like we can't insist on financial reform to slow down the economy, because every crisis becomes an excuse for the central banks to pump the gas while scaring people with the deflation bogeyman. And so we're stuck focusing on direct intervention to prevent the ever growing throng of antiproductive labor from doing as much damage.

sokoloff 5y ago
I’ve never heard a complete argument as to how central bank policy makes people want new cars, fancy clothes, or big houses (or tropical and ski vacations)… I think people want those luxuries and (many) are willing to work for them entirely independent of central bank policy.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Isn't it basic that if there's no point to saving and investing is a rigged casino, you might as well spend it on something fun? Consume consume consume! It's good for the economy (if you don't grow exponentially at any environmental cost then you can't keep up with inflation and our economy collapses)
  - luckylion 5y ago
    > Isn't it basic that if there's no point to saving and investing is a rigged casino, you might as well spend it on something fun? I don't think it works that way. I know a few people who are very financially conservative, and I am as well. None of them have responded to interest rates of 0% by consuming more. Everyone has shifted their accepted risk a little bit, but that's about it, they're still putting aside money. On the other hand, the people I know that are spending every available coin for vacation and consumption already did so 20 years ago.
- mindslight 5y ago
  Have you, or someone you know, ever alternated between having a high-compensation low-free-time (eg high paid tech job), and low/no-compensation high-free-time (ie funemployment) ? They're two completely different operating modes. In the first mode, every minute of time is valuable so you pay more for convenience (eg restaurant food, same-day shipping), and when you're not working you're willing to spend a lot of money to "relax harder". You also tend to buy new gadgets for the dopamine release and hope of doing something with them, and then never quite get around to actually using them. In the second mode, you're willing to spend more time to get routine things done, engage in hobbies that take patience, cook your own meals, and generally try to keep your burn rate lower. The financial treadmill pushes people towards the first mode, as one's burn rate always includes housing rent that demands a significant base level of income.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I see the multiple modes, but I think it’s human nature and not central bank policy as being the prime driver of that behavior or of the overall financial treadmill. On average: People want nice things more than crappy things. Nice things cost money. Getting money requires doing something to create value. Creating value for most people means working at a job. If you want nicer/more things than last year or than your neighbor, you need to increase your income. The beauty of this system is that individuals can choose to live frugally and opt-out of the race to a significant extent, taking advantage of the equity market’s consistent long-run returns to setup a system where they can work hard for 10-15 years and bank enough to live a frugal life for their lifetime. In that regard central bank’s current easy money policy is very much supportive of the choice of people consuming less than 100% of what they could rather than encouraging 100+% consumption.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      I'd call that choosing to consume less despite the central bank's policy. Pulling back to coast doesn't work when you're "in it". To get to that point, you've got to churn hard in a city (economic center), avoid hedonistic temptations as much as you can, and then at some point decide to pull the ripcord and leave to a low cost of living area. At which point you know that it will be really hard to get back on if your projections don't hold. That's also to say nothing of the (inherently majority of) people who can't sock away enough surplus to do that, and end up on the treadmill their entire life. Tech gives us an outsized perspective here once again, by giving us more than urban-subsistence wages such that we can save up in the first place. As to people's want of ever-more "nice things" driving their need to work so much, I just don't buy it. Rather, I see an extreme social pressure to keep working as much as possible (try negotiating less than 5 days a week, or every third week off), and then they fill in "nice things" as a rationalization. The same sentiment is repeated in many different areas (spend more time with your kids, etc), but yet few can individually move in that direction without totally eschewing the system ("pulling the ripcord"). And while it's possible for some people to escape the treadmill, it's not a possibility for most people and therefore not sustainable for society. There's a reason people doing it get labels like retired, FIRE, startup lottery, trust fund kid, etc. As for central bank policy, it's reflected in malinvestments like much of Surveillance Valley. One of the most glaring examples was those startups buying electric scooters in bulk, under the hope that if they filled the sidewalk that money would eventually fall in. That's misproduction (and environmental pollution) driven directly by too much capital sloshing around, seeking any sort of return.
lupire 5y ago
"full employment" is everyone who is willing and is able to work, not everyone. Also, "full" is defined as something like 96% of people who are willing and able.
- mindslight 5y ago
  I don't see how spelling out their technical definition addresses what I said. Current central bank policy guarantees that most everyone will "want" to be working to keep paying for their dwelling. Sure, technically if they changed the stimulus to basic income that was high enough to make fewer people "want" to work, then "full employment" could be achieved with less human labor. But in practice that's not how the term is used at all, because of the underlying protestant work ethic asserting that work is good for work's sake.

thinkcontext 5y ago

> You could fire all of the corporate PR propagandists and lobbyists on the planet and I doubt it would make a dramatic dent in oil consumption. There's a good chance we could have had a carbon price or other real measures 10 or more years ago without the malignant denialism seed planted by their propagandists.

epistasis 5y ago

> Petroleum products are a requirement for modern life. This is the most insidious and false lie that is spread. Right now we are going through a technological revolution in humanity, maybe on the level of the development of agriculture, in how we generate energy. Renewables and storage are often cheaper than fossil fuels at the moment, and they are getting cheaper just like Moore's law describes the densification of transistors on chips. HN is full of technologists. We, of all people, should recognize the capacity for technology change. And that technology change is actual work, that needs actual funding and labor, in order to happen. We do not need fossil fuels for modern life, if we develop the technology. Dedicated technologists and entrepreneurs over the past 50 years have made solar power the cheapest energy out there, despite massive political power and the all the money of fossil fuel companies fighting against them. If we had prioritized solar and storage, could we have accelerated the tech's development by 10 years? 20 years? We don't have every single aspect of technology for decarbonization solved yet. Aviation fuel, for example. But that doesn't mean we can't, it just means that we haven't tried hard enough.

relax88 5y ago
When I say petroleum products are a requirement for modern life, what I mean is that more than 80% of the energy driving modern society comes from fossil fuels. It probably doesn’t have to be that way, but it is. You definitely can’t say that for cigarettes. I think that you raise a valid point, but also that you’re far too optimistic about renewables. The people of HN are indeed very tech focused, and I believe that such optimism about energy transformation with renewables may be more difficult to foster if this forum were called “Engineering and physics news” simply because technologists tend to suffer from the “Law of the hammer” problem. There are very real engineering challenges with renewables that may very well preclude the kind of dramatic progress you’re referring to. Solar and Wind for example require huge amounts of land, and have a fairly high materials throughput as their lifespan is typically only 15-20 years. All of that effort is spent gathering a diffuse source of energy. There are very real physical limits to how much energy you can gather per square foot, per kg of silica, concrete, or steel. I think your sentiment is correct about nuclear though, which makes me wonder how much big oil has been funding groups like the Sierra Club et al. who have spent nearly half a decade campaigning against nuclear energy.