5 ms·

It’s weird they always find a way to blame the average person.

randomdata 3y ago
The large group of average people hold control under democracy, so if a small group of remarkable people want to see change, they have to appeal to the average person.
- askin4it 3y ago
  Appeal = ?
  - randomdata 3y ago
    The math adds up.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Agreed. My old naive self used to think there was some benefit to making the "average person" aware of the issue at large so they would care about it and potentially agitate for a fix (if enough people cared about it), but then I realized it was a total headfake to distract from the real issue. Water conservation is my favorite example. Yeah, let's all worry about not washing our cars when meanwhile agriculture and industry uses orders of magnitude more water and often has 0 incentives to reduce use.
- jagaerglad 3y ago
  An aside but another good reason to not wash your car is leeching harmful stuff in the environment, car washes have to purify the waste water where I'm from at least
  - foobarian 3y ago
    We don't wash our cars much here but being told to shower less while big Ag is growing almonds in the desert is a slap in the face.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Car washes have to purify the water because they are washing dozens of cars a day every day and generating orders of magnitude more runoff waste than you or I could ever from car washing.
    - jagaerglad 3y ago
      if all "you or I" wash at home then that's the actual "orders of magnitude more runoff waste" compared to if everybody did it at the car wash. Car washes have to purify the water since it's actually possible to do it there since all the washes happen at the same place
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        Car washes probably induce demand for washes. After all the fact you are paying $7 to wash in 10 mins is because the good old driveway method is too inconvenient. Once again the dose makes the poison. Whats my runoff relative to the rest of the area? Small. Whats the runoff of a concentrated source like a car wash? Massive relative to what is running off in the rest of the area. Dramatically shifting the contents of that runoff in terms of what they are.
- the_gastropod 3y ago
  As the poster above this beautifully states: > Corporations are extensions of the desires of the average person The agriculture sector is not just wasting water for the fun of it. They're producing food for us, the consumers of food. Some of the food is more efficient with respect to water-use than other food. So you've got basically two, non-mutually-exclusive options: 1. Inform / expect individuals to make better choices (e.g., eat less beef, drink less milk, etc.), so that our aggregate demand for these products decreases, and the supply (production) follows. 2. Government intervention to, e.g., tax inefficient foods and/or subsidize efficient ones to nudge consumers in the right direction. Given our politics in the US, I don't see this as happening anytime soon. I remember the shrieks of "THEY'RE COMING FOR OUR ICE CREAM!!!" as a rallying cry against The Green New Deal a few years ago. There is no "us" and "them" for responsibility of these things. It's everyday people, in aggregate, causing every environmental and social ill. It's complicated, but pretending it's entirely that guy's fault (damn agriculture!) is to shirk your tiny sliver of personal responsibility. You can choose to do better. Or you can wait for government to make you do better. But the end result will be much the same.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    "Vote with your wallet" rarely ever works. "Nudging" consumers won't work either. You're never going to convince an entire population to voluntarily stop eating almonds because their production wastes water. If we learned anything from COVID it should be that you're never going to be able to convince millions of people to take any kind of specific, cooperative, collective action on anything--even if their lives are at stake. Instead of sitting back and hoping that millions will do some inconvenient action, why not instead focus on regulating the few dozens of entities actually causing the problem?
    - the_gastropod 3y ago
      Totally. My point is: one can both take individual action and advocate for regulation. They're not mutually exclusive options. I feel like "nothing will happen until it's regulated" is often used as an excuse for inaction. I know tons of people who think climate change is a huge problem, but drive cars that get under 20mpg, who eat steak dinners multiple times per week, etc. Their stance is basically "I'll put in 0 effort to do better until the government makes everyone do better". And many politicans' takes are: "why should the U.S. put in any effort until everyone (usually relatively poor countries like China, India, etc.) starts improving?" I have little confidence that significant-enough regulation is possible. We need people to do better while also advocating for the government to take actual, meaningful steps. To address a few of your points specifically: > "Nudging" consumers won't work either. You're never going to convince an entire population to voluntarily stop eating almonds because their production wastes water. Yes. It can. See: cigarette use for example. Taxation works. If almonds are heavily taxed, and cost, e.g., 2x what they do today, you can reasonably expect almond consumption to drop. > regulating the few dozens of entities actually causing the problem Again, the "entities actually causing the problem" rounds down to "all of us". Exxon-Mobile isn't just creating CO2 emissions for fun. We're buying gasoline from them because,collectively, a bunch of us want to live in suburbs, drive big comfortable SUV's, etc. Sure, Exxon-Mobile is very interested in maintaining the status-quo, and it's a shame they have the power/cash to do so. But collective individuals as U.S. voters and consumers refuse to change their habits, and generally vote against politicians willing to do anything that'd inflict any inconvenience / change on their lives. Every time gas prices go up even slightly, people lose their minds.
Workaccount2 3y ago
Because there only is the average person. Corporations are extensions of the desires of the average person. If you give people the rundown on helium, of course they will be incredulous that gas drillers are just venting it. But if you tell them that capturing it will increase their energy bill by a few dollars a month, suddenly they will find sources that say the helium shortage is blown out of proportion and not really something to worry about. Everyone wants to do the right thing, but only a handful are willing to sacrifice even an inch for it. Corporations are just the physical manifestations of this behavior.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  “ Corporations are extensions of the desires of the average person” Not true. The people who own and manage corporations only follow the desires of the average person when it’s convenient and profitable for them. They also put in a lot of effort to shape the desires of the average person in a way that’s profitable for them.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    That is support for the point, not contradiction. It is profitable because it what the consumer wants. In general, if people really want guilt free products, and are willing to pay a premium, someone will make and sell them.
    - hnbad 3y ago
      Profitability does not depend on "what the consumer wants". It depends on what you can sell. Usually selling the consumer what they want is the most naive and least profitable way of doing that. If business were only concerned with giving consumers what they want, advertising agencies would go out of business. If you want to maximise profitability, you need to make the consumer want things they don't need, then sell it to them in the most unfulfilling way you can get away with at the least cost to you. This is why the game industry is so desperately moving to subscription models (following the greater trend in software) and why Amazon is full of thousands of nearly indistinguishable brands selling you the same flawed goods. The benefit of this model is that you can also better compete on price (because you don't have to compete on quality) and normalize buying the same damn thing over and over again instead of having it last half a lifetime. If you do need to seem like you compete on quality, just add flashy new features of questionable use and remove old ones - often enough you can just cycle back after a few generations. And if you're really lucky you can frame your product as a lifestyle or fashion good. Like there's now literally a current trend of people buying a specific travel mug as a fashion and lifestyle item. Filling their storage cabinets with dozens of these things in different colors or buying useless accessories for their accessory travel cup. This isn't driven by the consumers wanting travel mugs, this is entirely driven by selling the idea to consumers that they must own this specific travel mug and must have at least one in every color that is necessary to match their outfits. If it wasn't for advertising, nobody would buy them.

The large group of average people hold control under democracy, so if a small group of remarkable people want to see change, they have to appeal to the average person.

askin4it 3y ago
Appeal = ?
- randomdata 3y ago
  The math adds up.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Agreed. My old naive self used to think there was some benefit to making the "average person" aware of the issue at large so they would care about it and potentially agitate for a fix (if enough people cared about it), but then I realized it was a total headfake to distract from the real issue. Water conservation is my favorite example. Yeah, let's all worry about not washing our cars when meanwhile agriculture and industry uses orders of magnitude more water and often has 0 incentives to reduce use.

jagaerglad 3y ago
An aside but another good reason to not wash your car is leeching harmful stuff in the environment, car washes have to purify the waste water where I'm from at least
- foobarian 3y ago
  We don't wash our cars much here but being told to shower less while big Ag is growing almonds in the desert is a slap in the face.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Car washes have to purify the water because they are washing dozens of cars a day every day and generating orders of magnitude more runoff waste than you or I could ever from car washing.
  - jagaerglad 3y ago
    if all "you or I" wash at home then that's the actual "orders of magnitude more runoff waste" compared to if everybody did it at the car wash. Car washes have to purify the water since it's actually possible to do it there since all the washes happen at the same place
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Car washes probably induce demand for washes. After all the fact you are paying $7 to wash in 10 mins is because the good old driveway method is too inconvenient. Once again the dose makes the poison. Whats my runoff relative to the rest of the area? Small. Whats the runoff of a concentrated source like a car wash? Massive relative to what is running off in the rest of the area. Dramatically shifting the contents of that runoff in terms of what they are.
the_gastropod 3y ago
As the poster above this beautifully states: > Corporations are extensions of the desires of the average person The agriculture sector is not just wasting water for the fun of it. They're producing food for us, the consumers of food. Some of the food is more efficient with respect to water-use than other food. So you've got basically two, non-mutually-exclusive options: 1. Inform / expect individuals to make better choices (e.g., eat less beef, drink less milk, etc.), so that our aggregate demand for these products decreases, and the supply (production) follows. 2. Government intervention to, e.g., tax inefficient foods and/or subsidize efficient ones to nudge consumers in the right direction. Given our politics in the US, I don't see this as happening anytime soon. I remember the shrieks of "THEY'RE COMING FOR OUR ICE CREAM!!!" as a rallying cry against The Green New Deal a few years ago. There is no "us" and "them" for responsibility of these things. It's everyday people, in aggregate, causing every environmental and social ill. It's complicated, but pretending it's entirely that guy's fault (damn agriculture!) is to shirk your tiny sliver of personal responsibility. You can choose to do better. Or you can wait for government to make you do better. But the end result will be much the same.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  "Vote with your wallet" rarely ever works. "Nudging" consumers won't work either. You're never going to convince an entire population to voluntarily stop eating almonds because their production wastes water. If we learned anything from COVID it should be that you're never going to be able to convince millions of people to take any kind of specific, cooperative, collective action on anything--even if their lives are at stake. Instead of sitting back and hoping that millions will do some inconvenient action, why not instead focus on regulating the few dozens of entities actually causing the problem?
  - the_gastropod 3y ago
    Totally. My point is: one can both take individual action and advocate for regulation. They're not mutually exclusive options. I feel like "nothing will happen until it's regulated" is often used as an excuse for inaction. I know tons of people who think climate change is a huge problem, but drive cars that get under 20mpg, who eat steak dinners multiple times per week, etc. Their stance is basically "I'll put in 0 effort to do better until the government makes everyone do better". And many politicans' takes are: "why should the U.S. put in any effort until everyone (usually relatively poor countries like China, India, etc.) starts improving?" I have little confidence that significant-enough regulation is possible. We need people to do better while also advocating for the government to take actual, meaningful steps. To address a few of your points specifically: > "Nudging" consumers won't work either. You're never going to convince an entire population to voluntarily stop eating almonds because their production wastes water. Yes. It can. See: cigarette use for example. Taxation works. If almonds are heavily taxed, and cost, e.g., 2x what they do today, you can reasonably expect almond consumption to drop. > regulating the few dozens of entities actually causing the problem Again, the "entities actually causing the problem" rounds down to "all of us". Exxon-Mobile isn't just creating CO2 emissions for fun. We're buying gasoline from them because,collectively, a bunch of us want to live in suburbs, drive big comfortable SUV's, etc. Sure, Exxon-Mobile is very interested in maintaining the status-quo, and it's a shame they have the power/cash to do so. But collective individuals as U.S. voters and consumers refuse to change their habits, and generally vote against politicians willing to do anything that'd inflict any inconvenience / change on their lives. Every time gas prices go up even slightly, people lose their minds.

Workaccount2 3y ago

Because there only is the average person. Corporations are extensions of the desires of the average person. If you give people the rundown on helium, of course they will be incredulous that gas drillers are just venting it. But if you tell them that capturing it will increase their energy bill by a few dollars a month, suddenly they will find sources that say the helium shortage is blown out of proportion and not really something to worry about. Everyone wants to do the right thing, but only a handful are willing to sacrifice even an inch for it. Corporations are just the physical manifestations of this behavior.

rqtwteye 3y ago
“ Corporations are extensions of the desires of the average person” Not true. The people who own and manage corporations only follow the desires of the average person when it’s convenient and profitable for them. They also put in a lot of effort to shape the desires of the average person in a way that’s profitable for them.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  That is support for the point, not contradiction. It is profitable because it what the consumer wants. In general, if people really want guilt free products, and are willing to pay a premium, someone will make and sell them.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    Profitability does not depend on "what the consumer wants". It depends on what you can sell. Usually selling the consumer what they want is the most naive and least profitable way of doing that. If business were only concerned with giving consumers what they want, advertising agencies would go out of business. If you want to maximise profitability, you need to make the consumer want things they don't need, then sell it to them in the most unfulfilling way you can get away with at the least cost to you. This is why the game industry is so desperately moving to subscription models (following the greater trend in software) and why Amazon is full of thousands of nearly indistinguishable brands selling you the same flawed goods. The benefit of this model is that you can also better compete on price (because you don't have to compete on quality) and normalize buying the same damn thing over and over again instead of having it last half a lifetime. If you do need to seem like you compete on quality, just add flashy new features of questionable use and remove old ones - often enough you can just cycle back after a few generations. And if you're really lucky you can frame your product as a lifestyle or fashion good. Like there's now literally a current trend of people buying a specific travel mug as a fashion and lifestyle item. Filling their storage cabinets with dozens of these things in different colors or buying useless accessories for their accessory travel cup. This isn't driven by the consumers wanting travel mugs, this is entirely driven by selling the idea to consumers that they must own this specific travel mug and must have at least one in every color that is necessary to match their outfits. If it wasn't for advertising, nobody would buy them.