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I'm atheist, yet the behavior of Big Oil over these past decades is strong evidence that demonic possession may in fact be real.
by RGamma 10mo ago
I'm atheist, yet the behavior of Big Oil over these past decades is strong evidence that demonic possession may in fact be real.
- saubeidl 10mo agoThe demon is greed and its false god is the market.
- ap99 10mo agoAre you proposing the abolishment of the market?
- saubeidl 10mo agoYes. A mechanism that rewards the greediest and most ruthless is not a good basis for building a society.
- CalRobert 10mo agoMarkets tend to emerge where there are people who have some things while wanting other things
- saubeidl 10mo agoWhen something emerges, you can either embrace it or you can fight it. When a cancer emerges, one doesn't usually embrace it. I suggest we treat markets the same way.
- orphea 10mo agoWhat is an alternative and why do you think it would work?
- zimza 10mo agoBrother, writing something like this on EnlightenedCentristNews is a dead end, trust me.
- 1718627440 10mo agoFighting that people can decide what and how they want to sell and buy, results in a society I don't want to live. To enforce it you will eventually free the people from a bunch of other decisions, as they strangely refuse to follow your great ideas. What the problem is, is the asymmetry in the market, not the market itself.
- saubeidl 10mo ago> What the problem is, is the asymmetry in the market, not the market itself. Markets are inherently asymmetrical. The problem is a core feature of the system.
- 1718627440 10mo ago> Markets are inherently asymmetrical. Citation needed. A healthy market has so many sellers and buyers that no side can force a price above the other. Think your local bakery or butcher. In a healthy market profits are nearly zero.
- saubeidl 10mo agoAny market inherently results in consolidation. My local bakery is a giant chain. My local butcher has been driven out of business by supermarket chains.
- 1718627440 10mo ago> My local bakery is a giant chain. That's not what I would call a local bakery. Or are they making bread there? > Any market inherently results in consolidation. Only when you can undercut prices through scale. There are of course baking shops here as well, but they just don't have the quality of a real baker.
- saubeidl 10mo agoThat is exactly my point. Local artisan bakers are being priced out by crappier quality baking shops due to their economy of scale. The market optimizes for the cheapest slop made by the biggest conglomerate, the opposite of what I want.
- fnordsensei 10mo agoPlanned economies don’t work great beyond small scopes. The market does work, but it’s a giant paper clip AI and needs regulation in order to not turn everything into paper clips.
- grafmax 10mo agoMoney is power. Markets produce wealth inequality. The richest use their money to buy influence and write the rules. Fundamentally a “regulated market” is an unstable system that eats itself, a fiction.
- mytailorisrich 10mo agoWhat is you definition of "markets"? Markets are nothing more than the aggregate expression of what people do, need, desire. It's an expression of a free society. No market means a Stalinist society. > Markets produce wealth inequality. That always reminds of Margaret Thatcher's famous words in Parliament: "They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich."
- saubeidl 10mo ago> No market means a Stalinist society. It doesn't. That's just ideological propaganda. > They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich. That is an absolutely reasonable stance? Wealth isn't absolute, it's relative. If the rich are less rich, more resources are available for everyone else.
- 1718627440 10mo agoRichness is about available resources. The poor being poorer means that they have even less resources, so it precludes that there would be "more resources available for everyone else". What you propose is the rich getting less rich and the poor getting less poor.
- grafmax 10mo agoMarkets are the expression of an unfree society because they concentrate power in the hands of the few. Those with more money benefit by exploiting those with less - exploiting workers on the one hand and consumers on the other (through rent extraction). Stalinism is one form of planned economy but in your view the choices are Stalinism vs unregulated markets as if no other options exist. Absurd. After decades of neoliberalism (thanks to politicians like Thatcher) we can see what a failure it has been. Wealth inequality is growing, climate change is getting worse, far right movements are spreading, governments are run by oligarchs, industry has declined, the working class is squeezed, labor movements have been crushed, housing shortages.. it’s an ideology of class war by the rich against the working class.
- penguin_booze 10mo agoHey, but greed is good, and market solves everything.
- barney54 10mo agoOr they like staying in business and producing energy that people willingly purchase.
- madeforhnyo 10mo agoIf they're not doing evil work, why all the secrecy? It's not like they're going bankrupt either since, like you mentioned, the demand is not going away
- tomaskafka 10mo agoBecause people are hipocrites - our stated goals (clean environment, fair business) are different from the actual ones (get a lot of stuff and energy cheaply)
- anovikov 10mo agoBut these shouldn't be in contradiction. Oil and gas will end when they will be unprofitable, priced out by much cheaper renewables. Of course this will result in more and cheaper stuff and energy, boost economic growth rates not suppress them.
- nsoqm 10mo agoThat’s the theory. What’s happening is the complete opposite. Thank the government for it.
- anovikov 10mo agoWell, regardless of what government does, renewables will eventually price out oil and gas. And the government and the megacorps will be on their side because that way they will be making more money. Not before. No one is trying to limit renewables just for the sake of it. They are trying to do so because so far renewables don't allow to make much money while oil and gas does. There won't be any reason for the powers that be, to resist them once this situation reverses.
- tedggh 10mo agoWelp, it has worked ok for most of us. It’s below zero outside my house is at 22C and I have strawberries and avocados on the kitchen counter. This weekend I’ll drive with my family to a wedding 500km away and will spend $40 in transportation. With all I hate O&G can’t deny it has made my life easier in many ways.
- wohoef 10mo ago“Im part of the shrinking privileged minority”
- nsoqm 10mo agoActually this was (and still is) commonplace these last decades, for poor and rich people alike. Even the poorest could afford to have a car and put petrol in it. It's becoming untenable for the younger generations because of government intervention and mishandling of the economy.
- array_key_first 10mo agoPetroleum is subsidized so heavily globally. Most oil actually comes from nation companies. That's, like, the maximum amount of government intervention you can get. The people who think oil are or were a "free market" are beyond delusional. No, that was never the case - all the big players are governments, all of it is centrally planned, and all of it is subsidized by the population. That's why it's so cheap. The reason it's going up in price is BECAUSE we're doing this less, as renewables become more competitive.
- Wololooo 10mo agoThis is the most "I've got mine" statement that I have seen these past months. It's not because it was "OK" so far that it is going to be OK moving forward, it's just kicking the can down the road and hope for a miracle, and they have done this since people have wondered about greenhouse gases (and this happened very early on). Note that most of the issues we will be facing was not because of all the conveniences, but just because doing things in a way that was sustainable and/or more regulated would have hit the bottom line of big oil... At the end of the day, it will not matter whose pockets were lined when there is no more food to feed people...
- 0dayz 10mo agoThe bible uses demons more as metaphors of the saying: power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely. (evil spirit however is a real thing). So you're not wrong.
- astrobe_ 10mo agoNope. That's the divine invisible hand of the market.
- thiagoeh 10mo agoIf you want an humourous take based on this notion, read the Laundry Files book series by Charles Stross
- RGamma 10mo agoHeh, I think that notion came from watching Nefarious, the 2023 movie by Solomon and Konzelman, where a psychiatrist tries to clarify whether an insane (or possessed?) death row inmate is fit to be executed (they talk about how humanity thinks they've won, while evil is quietly everywhere). The middling review scores don't do it justice. Yet another thing on my reading list, I guess.
- juujian 10mo agoFunny enough, the video game Doom is actually making this exact point I discovered somewhat recently.
- nahuel0x 10mo agoThere’s something profound behind that funny observation. God is a creation of the human mind, yet humanity forgets that it created God. The idea then appears as something external, becoming an independent power that shapes and controls human consciousness. Humans become alienated from what they themselves produced. This was Feuerbach’s insight, and Marx extended it: just as humanity creates God and then treats him as an autonomous force, it also creates Capital. But Capital comes to operate as if it were an external, self-moving—almost “demonic”—power. People end up acting not according to human needs, but according to the logic of Capital itself. From this perspective, the Marxist project is not merely a struggle against the bourgeoisie; it is an effort to overcome humanity’s alienation from its own creations—to reclaim power from the human-made “demon” that has come to dominate social life.
- hopelite 10mo ago“Big oil” is not demonic it is your God as much as it is everyone’s God that uses electricity and all the things you have that are only possible through oil. You are likely not even remotely aware of just how many things you have and do that are only possible because of oil. Hint: it’s basically 100% of things you have and do. Even your minor deities, Renewable Energy are all a creation and possible due to your God, Big Oil.
- RGamma 10mo agoHow about these companies go from "fuck your democracy lol" to "okay this is bad, this is how we can attempt to fix it". They are among the richest corporations humanity has ever seen. The dependence on oil is physically plausible, the constant political or public subversion is not.
- triceratops 10mo agoIs there a rule that you get to be an asshole as long as your products are useful? When people demonize "Big Oil" they don't mean the product. They mean how the people who run it behave.
- marcosdumay 10mo agoIt's amazing how as soon as fast communication became available, how cartoonish villainous the powerful people turned out to be. Cartoon villains are that way for absurdist comedy purposes, they weren't supposed to reflect reality.
- rolandog 10mo agoOr worse, they weren't meant to be portrayed as edgy and misunderstood to lure lonely people into cults of hate. NB: from what I understand, some cult members joined because they felt part of a community; so, to them, it has a high cost of leaving it because they feel like the other members are friends (kind of like FB/Meta).