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People would vote for these price increases once they see that the increases are paltry compared to the opportunity cost, or to the externalities.
by kccqzy 3y ago
People would vote for these price increases once they see that the increases are paltry compared to the opportunity cost, or to the externalities.
- fnimick 3y agoI disagree. Lots of people are perfectly happy to ignore externalities that happen to others. Just try to get a bike lane put in and you'll see it for yourself. Or as a lovely neighbor put it: "if you die, why is that my problem?"
- kccqzy 3y agoI agree. However the key point in climate change messaging is informing people that this affects themselves, their kids, and their grandkids.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoWhich is often a lie, or at least situational simplification . The costs of climat change and mitigation are not evenly distributed.
- whimsicalism 3y agoIn my view, this is largely a lie in terms of the impact on themselves.
- dpe82 3y agoI think you deeply overestimate people's ability to make painful near-term decisions to avoid long-term pain that they can't see, have never personally experienced and also nobody they know or have even heard of has personally experienced. It's human nature; we're extremely bad at making decisions related to seemingly abstract long-term problems.
- r14c 3y agoPeople can make long term plans and execute them, but the systems that control the levers related to climate change are operated by people who don't habitually operate based on long term planning. Calling it "human nature" is a cop-out.
- dpe82 3y agoFor themsleves? Some people can, sometimes. For the commons? If humans were so naturally inclined we wouldn't be having this conversation. Blaming the problem on "people who don't habitually operate based on long term planning" is a likewise a cop-out while also kinda arguing my point.
- r14c 3y agoI think there's a certain cultural movement that has been propagated violently across the world that rewards and requires such behavior. there are many enduring cultural traditions that teach patience and long term planning. "human nature" is complex, we naturally can do both honestly.
- richrichie 3y agoHow about you be the beacon of change and show us by taking the near term pain e.g. cutting down consumption (eat one meal a day of vegetables, stop traveling, stop taking vacations far away, live in a one room apt, no kids, etc.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- defrost 3y agoWinyarn small minded thinking there. Makes more sense to recover energy from moving almost a billion tonnes per annum from plateau to sea level. https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-says-regenerative-infinity-train-may-be-on-tracks-in-two-years/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-says-regenerative-infi... .. but keep up those tiny thoughts, one day they might grow.
- secondcoming 3y agoThere are a lot of people who can't afford these price increases _today_. Being able to worry about the years to come is actually a privilege.
- fnimick 3y agoHaving tried to advocate for better societal support for those people who "can't afford those price increases", I've honestly lost a lot of sympathy. I've had people explicitly tell me they want to see welfare benefits for people poorer than them cut so that they face less competition (and therefore less inflation and lower prices) for purchasing food. As if starving the poor to make your grocery bill better is a justifiable option. "why should you be entitled to food and shelter just because you were born as a human and not some ape? if you are useless and die, it's not my problem" If you have no empathy for anyone poorer than you, sorry, why should I be caring about your misfortune again?
- whimsicalism 3y agoNobody in the US has to starve with the current social system.
- advael 3y agoA bizarre claim given that so many are, in practice, starving. Maybe they're just holding it wrong
- polski-g 3y agoPlease provide evidence that "so many people are starving in the US."
- advael 3y agoHere's what 10 seconds on a search engine provided from a fairly official source https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/107703/err-325_summary.pdf?v=3986.7 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/107703/err-325... Roughly 10% of households being food insecure, defined as having inconsistent or inadequate access to food. That amounts to roughly 30 million people Social programs existing is great, but they are in their present form inadequate to make the claim that was made It's also worth pointing out that most likely "households" excludes all homeless people, which is not an insignificant portion of the population (as many people on HN - especially those living in SF - are quite aware)
- whimsicalism 3y agoHope so! From my lifetime of observing humans though, I don't agree.
- somenameforme 3y agoIf the costs are paltry, and you have a government who even remotely cares about this topic, then why wouldn't they simply pay for the costs? We're $34 trillion in debt, and rapidly growing. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on ever more inane ventures which are frequently unpopular, and probably making the world a worse place. But the only solution, to pay a "paltry" sum to solve climate change, is to raise taxes? For instance they could easily print money, in the normal way, by issue special 'climate bonds' with a promise that all revenue from said bonds would be spent on whatever you see as this affordable solution. Those bonds would certainly sell well, people could get their virtue signaling on on social media showing them off, and - best of all - absolutely 0 divisiveness. Even somebody like me who thinks our debt's become catastrophic would just shrug, since we're probably already way past the point of no return.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]