4 ms·

But none of the examples you give move the needle enough with regards to climate change. You're just following what feels like it would be good for the environ

by tticvs 3y ago

But none of the examples you give move the needle enough with regards to climate change. You're just following what feels like it would be good for the environment (and maybe it is good for your local environment) but isn't actually impactful at a large scale. You write eloquently, but futilely.

cutemonster 3y ago
I think it's not meant to be an exhaustive list of things to do. Instead, what if it's a mindset: Doing such things, and 1000 others, some of them vastly more important than others. And you can add to the list (instead of just saying "it won't work"). E.g. high car gas taxes, so there'll be trains, buses and bike lanes instead for everyone.
- tticvs 3y ago
  > Doing such things, and 1000 others, some of them vastly more important than others. That doesn't make any sense why would we make sacrifices that are not important.
- paulmd 3y ago
  Eating less beef will reduce the market price and make it cheaper for everyone else, increasing their consumption accordingly. The whole point of a capitalist economy is to “route around inefficiency”, in the same way the internet is designed to “route around damage”. Any single player or even a large contingent of players, who act inefficiently, are only increasing the alpha available for another player to exploit. “Inefficiency” in this sense is anything that doesn’t maximize personal benefit - profit or other quality of life. Anything that is legal according to the rules of the game (or tolerated by society) is going to happen whether it’s you that does it or someone else. The only long term solution is that if this is what needs to happen, we have to encode that into “the rules” so everyone plays by that rule. Personal recycling or personal consumption reduction does nothing at a social level, and in fact is pushed as a deliberate stalling tactic to avoid and stall those political actions which could have a real impact. This is also the problem with bitcoin - any one player choosing not to participate in mining only increases the reward for the remaining players who will continue to participate. If there is only one person on the planet willing to mine, she gets all the rewards. So simply choosing not to mine does nothing, you’re just transferring profit to someone else. Humanity has already built the first AIs, they are emergent paperclip-maximizers encoded into the bylaws of corporations and market structures. And they will route around any attempt to un-maximize paperclip production according to whatever levers we continue to give them. If you don’t want people to eat as much beef, you have to build that rule into the system, it’ll never happen due to personal-level changes in behavior.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    If people eat less meat because they have a larger tax, then no, capitalism won’t adapt that way. I didn’t mention how those changes should be adopted. As per Adam Smith: capitalism only works in small, well-defined markets. It was never meant as an end-all control system. Governments can alter the rules of the game we play and they are (indirectly) controlled by us, as least in democractic countries.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      taxing meat is what I'm referring to as "changing the rules of the game", it affects everyone. But a personal decision to just eat less meat yourself is not going to affect anything, because all you're doing is making beef cheaper for everyone else, and they'll eat more of it as a result. however, you have to really change the rules of the game for everyone, such that consumption is actually substantially curtailed. even with a country-level tax, you're only making it cheaper for other countries who don't care. We saw this play out with Russian oil last year - banning it from the West didn't make it go away, it just made it cheaper for certain other states to import it. The commodity market is global. (We can certainly enforce these kinds of rules globally when there is political will to do so - Iran sanctions are one example. If you do business with Iran, you won't do business with anyone who uses SWIFT, or anyone who does business with anyone who uses SWIFT. A line is drawn between the "sanctions-compliant" world and the "sanctions-non-compliant" world and it's generally extremely effective such that smuggling incidents are international news.) The fundamental point I'm trying to make here is the "capitalism routes around inefficiency/morality". That's what it's designed to do, in the same way the internet routes around infrastructure damage (or censorship etc, which is fundamentally infrastructure damage). By taking a moral stand, you only increase the alpha available for other players to exploit. These "individual moralistic stand" approaches like personal-scale recycling are inherently less effective than taxing producers, or outright bans. The reason they are pushed is because they are ineffective, and because they stall out the political will to adopt real solutions that would be effective.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies. Me not eating meat might make it cheaper, but people don’t buy based on price alone. Similarly, if the EU won’t buy Russian oil, it does incentivizes more reliance on green energy on the long run and that will be a net decrease in oil consumption for the world. Especially that the EU is a big financial power, and in combination with carbon taxes it could indirectly greenify other countries decisions. (E.g. india did buy up russia’s oil cheaper, but if there would have been a carbon tax in the eu with serious tariffs on products made in a not eco-friendly way, their usage might not have increased as much)
walleeee 3y ago
Futility becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy way too easily to let it persuade one not to do what one thinks is right
- tticvs 3y ago
  Harming yourself, advising others to harm themselves, and advocating for your government to enforce harm is not "right". Further, even if what you advocate isn't exactly harmful, just neutral (ie eating local vegetables instead of imported, nevermind that the carbon footprint difference is negligible) wasting valuable political capital on useless gestures is objectively wrong.

by tticvs 3y ago

cutemonster 3y ago

I think it's not meant to be an exhaustive list of things to do. Instead, what if it's a mindset: Doing such things, and 1000 others, some of them vastly more important than others. And you can add to the list (instead of just saying "it won't work"). E.g. high car gas taxes, so there'll be trains, buses and bike lanes instead for everyone.

tticvs 3y ago
> Doing such things, and 1000 others, some of them vastly more important than others. That doesn't make any sense why would we make sacrifices that are not important.
paulmd 3y ago
Eating less beef will reduce the market price and make it cheaper for everyone else, increasing their consumption accordingly. The whole point of a capitalist economy is to “route around inefficiency”, in the same way the internet is designed to “route around damage”. Any single player or even a large contingent of players, who act inefficiently, are only increasing the alpha available for another player to exploit. “Inefficiency” in this sense is anything that doesn’t maximize personal benefit - profit or other quality of life. Anything that is legal according to the rules of the game (or tolerated by society) is going to happen whether it’s you that does it or someone else. The only long term solution is that if this is what needs to happen, we have to encode that into “the rules” so everyone plays by that rule. Personal recycling or personal consumption reduction does nothing at a social level, and in fact is pushed as a deliberate stalling tactic to avoid and stall those political actions which could have a real impact. This is also the problem with bitcoin - any one player choosing not to participate in mining only increases the reward for the remaining players who will continue to participate. If there is only one person on the planet willing to mine, she gets all the rewards. So simply choosing not to mine does nothing, you’re just transferring profit to someone else. Humanity has already built the first AIs, they are emergent paperclip-maximizers encoded into the bylaws of corporations and market structures. And they will route around any attempt to un-maximize paperclip production according to whatever levers we continue to give them. If you don’t want people to eat as much beef, you have to build that rule into the system, it’ll never happen due to personal-level changes in behavior.
- kaba0 3y ago
  If people eat less meat because they have a larger tax, then no, capitalism won’t adapt that way. I didn’t mention how those changes should be adopted. As per Adam Smith: capitalism only works in small, well-defined markets. It was never meant as an end-all control system. Governments can alter the rules of the game we play and they are (indirectly) controlled by us, as least in democractic countries.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    taxing meat is what I'm referring to as "changing the rules of the game", it affects everyone. But a personal decision to just eat less meat yourself is not going to affect anything, because all you're doing is making beef cheaper for everyone else, and they'll eat more of it as a result. however, you have to really change the rules of the game for everyone, such that consumption is actually substantially curtailed. even with a country-level tax, you're only making it cheaper for other countries who don't care. We saw this play out with Russian oil last year - banning it from the West didn't make it go away, it just made it cheaper for certain other states to import it. The commodity market is global. (We can certainly enforce these kinds of rules globally when there is political will to do so - Iran sanctions are one example. If you do business with Iran, you won't do business with anyone who uses SWIFT, or anyone who does business with anyone who uses SWIFT. A line is drawn between the "sanctions-compliant" world and the "sanctions-non-compliant" world and it's generally extremely effective such that smuggling incidents are international news.) The fundamental point I'm trying to make here is the "capitalism routes around inefficiency/morality". That's what it's designed to do, in the same way the internet routes around infrastructure damage (or censorship etc, which is fundamentally infrastructure damage). By taking a moral stand, you only increase the alpha available for other players to exploit. These "individual moralistic stand" approaches like personal-scale recycling are inherently less effective than taxing producers, or outright bans. The reason they are pushed is because they are ineffective, and because they stall out the political will to adopt real solutions that would be effective.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies. Me not eating meat might make it cheaper, but people don’t buy based on price alone. Similarly, if the EU won’t buy Russian oil, it does incentivizes more reliance on green energy on the long run and that will be a net decrease in oil consumption for the world. Especially that the EU is a big financial power, and in combination with carbon taxes it could indirectly greenify other countries decisions. (E.g. india did buy up russia’s oil cheaper, but if there would have been a carbon tax in the eu with serious tariffs on products made in a not eco-friendly way, their usage might not have increased as much)

walleeee 3y ago

Futility becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy way too easily to let it persuade one not to do what one thinks is right

tticvs 3y ago
Harming yourself, advising others to harm themselves, and advocating for your government to enforce harm is not "right". Further, even if what you advocate isn't exactly harmful, just neutral (ie eating local vegetables instead of imported, nevermind that the carbon footprint difference is negligible) wasting valuable political capital on useless gestures is objectively wrong.