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Of course, the environment matters enormously and money is not everything, but to dismiss money like this is an oversimplification of the situation. It's charac
by ETH_start 2y ago
Of course, the environment matters enormously and money is not everything, but to dismiss money like this is an oversimplification of the situation. It's characterizing money in a way that really misleads people. When people talk about, let's say, income or economic opportunity or something like that, they're not just talking about dollar bills in people's hands, they're talking about real economic resources that reduces poverty and empowers people to contend with a wide range of challenges, not just environmental degradation, but the plethora of life-threatening dangers that people are exposed to every single day.
Right now we are experiencing the lowest number of deaths from extreme weather in a century, and that's because despite all of the global climate change and other environmental challenges humanity faces, the rise in productivity, which you're dismissing here as merely dollar bills in people's hands, is making people more adaptable and resilient.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65673961 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65673961
- aziaziazi 2y agoNot only does this ignore what he wrote, it is exactly the cliché he describes. Parent: > mocking those who do as "snowflakes" and "anti growth" and "anti progress" You: > the rise in productivity, which you're dismissing What makes people adaptable and resilient is creativity and hard work. Today you can buy that with money but the money itself isn’t doing anything. If all farmers stop farming tomorrow, you die no matter how much money you have. How money is linked to increase of productivity is still to prove, as well as parent dismissal of the rise of productivity.
- ETH_start 2y agoYou completely missed my point. Money itself, of course, doesn't matter. It's just a unit of account we use to quantify the value of economic resources we have. It is the economic resources themselves that matter, and when we find ways to run businesses more profitably or provide products at a lower cost, that results in the long run in more economic resources being generated. That's how it works in a market economy, and a market economy is orders of magnitude more effective at the process of developing capital and raising our productivity than any other way of organizing society.
- aziaziazi 2y agoWith all respect, I think your reflexion is reasoning with economical ressources while ignoring the (finite) material ressources which is exactly KennyBlanken point. If you're increasing today's productivity with actions that will decrease tomorrow productivity, the result for this week productivity may be negative. E.G. most countries regulate pesticide use for that reason.
- ETH_start 2y agoSomething like 99.99% of the energy emitted by the sun every second is wasted forever into space. The faster we can grow the economy and build out machines that can harvest that solar radiation, the less material resources are wasted.