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> Oil companies are the ones who get their hands dirty, but society as a whole benefits and encourages the oil extraction. Take factory farming as another examp

by voisin 2y ago

> Oil companies are the ones who get their hands dirty, but society as a whole benefits and encourages the oil extraction. Take factory farming as another example - you can blame the factory farms, but good luck telling the average American they'll have to pay 3x as much for chicken and hamburgers because the animals were treated well. The argument “we’re just doing the dirty work to give you what you want” is horse shit. They actively hid information about climate change for decades, they work to ensure continued subsidies to avoid actual competition, they work to add regulations to competing technologies and run disinformation campaigns. They work to entrench themselves so that “giving you what you want” is really “you’ll take what we give since we’ve undermined the alternatives”. Same with factory farming. The only reason people think chicken and burgers should be 1/3 the true cost is because the four big ag companies have worked the government into subsidizing things and reducing labour laws, etc etc etc. Honestly, when your argument starts with being an apologist for big corporations with a profit rather than social motive, I think you should check what first principles you are working with. Our society is a hunger games hellscape and it is because of whatever first principles you are using.

therobots927 2y ago
I'm sure they did everything you describe and more. I'm well aware of how corporations externalize costs to increase profit margins, and I'm a huge proponent of stronger regulation and government involvement in corporate day-to-day. It's likely that we would agree on quite a bit. Where we disagree is on the solution to the problems society faces. The solution is not forcing the global economy to grind to a halt by abruptly forcing oil companies to stop extracting oil. This would have profound geo-political implications and would significantly weaken America's standing. Saudi Arabia and Russia will never stop drilling for oil. Like it or not the only way out of this mess is further investment in technologoy and access to energetic resources. The government needs to be subsidizing construction of nuclear power plants in every state of the nation. It needs to be building solar farms all over the western US and hanging high voltage cables from coast to coast. It needs a train network like China. I could go on and on.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > The solution is not forcing the global economy to grind to a halt by abruptly forcing oil companies to stop extracting oil > Saudi Arabia and Russia will never stop You are contradicting yourself - either the global economy won’t grind to a halt, because activist is ineffective, or activism is too effective? The west should be cleaning up its own house and leading by example - instead it has spent decades pointing fingers at China and other countries shouting ‘you first’. Well, guess what, China is now worlds leading user and producer of eclectic cars, has electric busses and most of USA doesn’t. We are the ones behind now, and in fact neither you nor the media have realised it yet. In the next 2 years it will become clear that the king is banked, and that the leadership is no longer with the west, and I am afraid the consequences for us will be significant. The Sputnik moment has already happened, you just aren’t watching.
  - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
    [dead]
  - no_exit 2y ago
    > Well, guess what, China is now worlds leading user and producer of eclectic cars, has electric busses and most of USA doesn’t. We are the ones behind now, and in fact neither you nor the media have realised it yet. The media has realized, unfortunately, hence the latest barrage of complaints about overproduction/dumping. Blinken and Yellen's speeches about that were pathetic.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    The US hardly screams at China at all, but China is completely fixated on the US (if media is anything to go by). The US will do things at its own pace like China does, picking at it as a competition is merely a saving face thing that doesn't really exist in the west. Its only been a decade or so since China had all of those things. You would see multiple obviously imported Tesla Model S's in Beijing way before you saw even one BYD EV taxi. Then China invested in a short period of time and now they have much more than the US. But the time period was so short that China hardly has a moat in these areas. > In the next 2 years it will become clear that the king is banked, and that the leadership is no longer with the west, and I am afraid the consequences for us will be significant. We heard this before in the 1980s and that didn't pan out at all. This is just the 1980s again with China in place of Japan; China even has a much bigger real estate bubble than Japan ever did, the consequences will be similar if not worse. The same demographic crash is also coming to China, history is just a broken record.

by voisin 2y ago

therobots927 2y ago

I'm sure they did everything you describe and more. I'm well aware of how corporations externalize costs to increase profit margins, and I'm a huge proponent of stronger regulation and government involvement in corporate day-to-day. It's likely that we would agree on quite a bit. Where we disagree is on the solution to the problems society faces. The solution is not forcing the global economy to grind to a halt by abruptly forcing oil companies to stop extracting oil. This would have profound geo-political implications and would significantly weaken America's standing. Saudi Arabia and Russia will never stop drilling for oil. Like it or not the only way out of this mess is further investment in technologoy and access to energetic resources. The government needs to be subsidizing construction of nuclear power plants in every state of the nation. It needs to be building solar farms all over the western US and hanging high voltage cables from coast to coast. It needs a train network like China. I could go on and on.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> The solution is not forcing the global economy to grind to a halt by abruptly forcing oil companies to stop extracting oil > Saudi Arabia and Russia will never stop You are contradicting yourself - either the global economy won’t grind to a halt, because activist is ineffective, or activism is too effective? The west should be cleaning up its own house and leading by example - instead it has spent decades pointing fingers at China and other countries shouting ‘you first’. Well, guess what, China is now worlds leading user and producer of eclectic cars, has electric busses and most of USA doesn’t. We are the ones behind now, and in fact neither you nor the media have realised it yet. In the next 2 years it will become clear that the king is banked, and that the leadership is no longer with the west, and I am afraid the consequences for us will be significant. The Sputnik moment has already happened, you just aren’t watching.
- Slava_Propanei 2y ago
  [dead]
- no_exit 2y ago
  > Well, guess what, China is now worlds leading user and producer of eclectic cars, has electric busses and most of USA doesn’t. We are the ones behind now, and in fact neither you nor the media have realised it yet. The media has realized, unfortunately, hence the latest barrage of complaints about overproduction/dumping. Blinken and Yellen's speeches about that were pathetic.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  The US hardly screams at China at all, but China is completely fixated on the US (if media is anything to go by). The US will do things at its own pace like China does, picking at it as a competition is merely a saving face thing that doesn't really exist in the west. Its only been a decade or so since China had all of those things. You would see multiple obviously imported Tesla Model S's in Beijing way before you saw even one BYD EV taxi. Then China invested in a short period of time and now they have much more than the US. But the time period was so short that China hardly has a moat in these areas. > In the next 2 years it will become clear that the king is banked, and that the leadership is no longer with the west, and I am afraid the consequences for us will be significant. We heard this before in the 1980s and that didn't pan out at all. This is just the 1980s again with China in place of Japan; China even has a much bigger real estate bubble than Japan ever did, the consequences will be similar if not worse. The same demographic crash is also coming to China, history is just a broken record.