3 ms·
Unfortunately, some people just love to count their neighbor’s expenses instead of minding their own business.
by apetrov 2y ago
Unfortunately, some people just love to count their neighbor’s expenses instead of minding their own business.
- bumby 2y agoAre you claiming externalities are unimportant?
- apetrov 2y agoYes, especially when effect is marginal like in this case.
- bumby 2y agoYou seem to be missing the collective action aspect. You’re saying the equivalent of “it doesn’t matter if I dump my car oil in the river, because it’s a negligible impact on the environment.” It can be marginal at the individual level but very important if it scales to the societal level.
- apetrov 2y agoYou're mixing two things together: * something that's illegal (dumping used oil into a river) * and something that's perfectly legal (buying oil) You buy electricity and it's yours to decide how to use it. i.e. heat up your house or mine crypto.
- bumby 2y agoThat's a fair critique of a bad analogy. But it still misses the point of the collective action problem. Consider a different analogy: you are free to burn as much fuel as you want, and individually it doesn't make much difference. But if everyone collectively takes that same stance, it leads to large negative externalities. IMO the extreme libertarian view works fine for small groups but does not do a good job of managing collective action problems in large societies when the scope exceeds our psychological bandwidth.
- apetrov 2y agoYou’re not free to burn as much fuel as you want, as there are economic and physical limits in place. What you are free to do is choose how to allocate resources—heat up or cool down your apartment, train/run a neural network, watch a plasma TV, etc. Telling people what to do with their resources is central planning, and it has never worked.
- bumby 2y agoIgnoring the fact that “central” planning is a nebulous and uninformative term, what do you propose when those “economic and physical” constraints are insufficient to mitigate the negative externalities of a collective action problem?
- ArnoVW 2y agoI'm by no means a communist or ecology maniac. And it is true that if they sequester the CO2 that they generate, it's their entirely their business. The problem is, the actions of others have an effect on me, my kids, and the rest of the world. One person's freedom ends where another's begins. So whilst I generally feel people should mind their own business, I can't really see how we can just let people do whatever they want without at least having a public debate.
- apetrov 2y agoSorry, mate, but it sounds like one. Such lectures are better to conduct somewhere in ultra-luxury resorts, (flying in private jet of course), to decide what "plebs" are allowed to. Just a couple examples of hypocrisy. 1. COP28 in Dubai (2023): The 28th UN Climate Change Conference saw approximately 644 private flights associated with the event, resulting in around 4,800 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. 2. World Economic Forum in Davos (2022): During this annual meeting, 1,040 private jets flew in and out of airports serving Davos, leading to a significant increase in emissions compared to previous years. 3. COP29 in Baku (2024): The 29th UN Climate Change Conference in Baku experienced a notable rise in private jet arrivals, with 65 private jets landing in the week leading up to the event, doubling the number from the previous year.
- ArnoVW 2y agoYes I agree that is definitely bad optics. I get it. Other people are worse than me, so I have no responsibility and do not have to change anything. Same thing my kids say about their scholastic results. Very appealing, I get it. Unfortunately it is not very constructive or responsible. It means only the very worst person has to do something while the other 8b of us can point fingers and sit back.
- apetrov 2y agoSure, you can do. You can question wtf policy-makers are doing. instead, you question individuals decision (aka "how dare you") that are well within current laws.