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I upvoted you, but IMO: - private cars and their usage are too cheap - air travel is too cheap - producing garbage is to cheap - politics is top centered ar

I upvoted you, but IMO: - private cars and their usage are too cheap - air travel is too cheap - producing garbage is to cheap - politics is top centered around providing infinte fuel for "growth" instead of distributing resources rationally Yes, this is a political opinion. The stunt many people do is pretending that climate denialism and politics centered on fueling growth are not a political opinion but "rational" and sustainable.

lr4444lr 3y ago
Agreed, both on the whole and in the details. But if I'm forced into the "either/or" mindset of the OP of a hypothetical choice to shrink GDP by 1% by stopping all vacation car travel or deficit spend 1% GDP as a "Manhattan Project" to get lab grown beef commercially viable, I'm voting for the latter.
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  The latter sounds like fantasy though, and it's not the lab-grown meat per se I'm talking about. Also I wasn't talking about car usage exclusively during vacations, I was explicitly talking about private car usage. People literally get governmental subsidies for building homes in the suburbs, then commute by car and pollute the planet in order to avoid car traffic. Anyone who fails to see the absurdity of this has drank too much Kool-aid for my taste.
concordDance 3y ago
If your issue is global warming you should be campaigning for electric cars rather than against private cars. But I suspect you actually dislike cars in and of themselves, even if they could be grown on trees and powered by banana skins.
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  I like driving cars or being a passenger in them. I also acknowledge their importance for society as a whole. But since you ask: Cars are not a subject but an object, a tool to me. "Suspecting" that I "dislike" this tool does not sound like a coherent argument to me. Yes, I hate cars when being outside them, because they are a major obstruction and source of pollution, noise and overshooting environmental damage. I hate their artifical abundance, for which I am forced to pay. I'm not sure what you are talking about with the hypothetical banana car and why you care about my feelings. Seems like an ideological argument to me. Do EVs grow on trees? I agree that global warming is only the tip of the iceberg of the damage we do. And yes, EVs are marginally better for the nearby environment compared to CEVs. They don't solve the larger problem though and they still impose huge resource costs. Subsidizing EVs (again) is putting more fuel into the fire. In my country, there are and were already so many subsidies and benefits for buying a new car, it isn't funny anymore. It's always being justified by the newer cars ostensively being better for the environment. Even before there were affordable EVs, the government paid people bonuses to buy a new car and trash/sell the previous one with this justification. As a person with a license, but without a car: this is disgusting and reminds me of 1984. One of the many subsidies for buying cars in Germany was called "Umweltprämie" (environment bonus). As early as 2009. It was basically a tax-funded bonus for trashing and buying cars to fund the industry. That being said, cars of course are only one particularly obvious example of insane policies.

lr4444lr 3y ago

Agreed, both on the whole and in the details. But if I'm forced into the "either/or" mindset of the OP of a hypothetical choice to shrink GDP by 1% by stopping all vacation car travel or deficit spend 1% GDP as a "Manhattan Project" to get lab grown beef commercially viable, I'm voting for the latter.

moritzwarhier 3y ago
The latter sounds like fantasy though, and it's not the lab-grown meat per se I'm talking about. Also I wasn't talking about car usage exclusively during vacations, I was explicitly talking about private car usage. People literally get governmental subsidies for building homes in the suburbs, then commute by car and pollute the planet in order to avoid car traffic. Anyone who fails to see the absurdity of this has drank too much Kool-aid for my taste.

concordDance 3y ago

If your issue is global warming you should be campaigning for electric cars rather than against private cars. But I suspect you actually dislike cars in and of themselves, even if they could be grown on trees and powered by banana skins.

moritzwarhier 3y ago
I like driving cars or being a passenger in them. I also acknowledge their importance for society as a whole. But since you ask: Cars are not a subject but an object, a tool to me. "Suspecting" that I "dislike" this tool does not sound like a coherent argument to me. Yes, I hate cars when being outside them, because they are a major obstruction and source of pollution, noise and overshooting environmental damage. I hate their artifical abundance, for which I am forced to pay. I'm not sure what you are talking about with the hypothetical banana car and why you care about my feelings. Seems like an ideological argument to me. Do EVs grow on trees? I agree that global warming is only the tip of the iceberg of the damage we do. And yes, EVs are marginally better for the nearby environment compared to CEVs. They don't solve the larger problem though and they still impose huge resource costs. Subsidizing EVs (again) is putting more fuel into the fire. In my country, there are and were already so many subsidies and benefits for buying a new car, it isn't funny anymore. It's always being justified by the newer cars ostensively being better for the environment. Even before there were affordable EVs, the government paid people bonuses to buy a new car and trash/sell the previous one with this justification. As a person with a license, but without a car: this is disgusting and reminds me of 1984. One of the many subsidies for buying cars in Germany was called "Umweltprämie" (environment bonus). As early as 2009. It was basically a tax-funded bonus for trashing and buying cars to fund the industry. That being said, cars of course are only one particularly obvious example of insane policies.