3 ms·

Buying electric cars, installing solar, and switching to heat pumps are one of the few things you can materially do to screw the powers that be. The the other o

by Gibbon1 3mo ago

Buying electric cars, installing solar, and switching to heat pumps are one of the few things you can materially do to screw the powers that be. The the other one is limiting your family size.

gchamonlive 3mo ago
The only thing you can do to hurt the powers that be is not buying.
- pepperoni_pizza 3mo ago
  Depends on which powers for each specific choice. Electric cars don't run on Saudi-Trump-Putin juice, so they're pretty good step in screwing those, for example.
  - Gibbon1 3mo ago
    The difference between solar+batteries and oil and gas is the former is a durable good and latter are consumables.
- numpad0 3mo ago
  I think producing and consuming like crazy could also work, considering how quickly Twitter turned Elon Musk from most important to least interesting figure on Earth. Wealth and sensory capacity don't appear to be positively correlated at all.
- seba_dos1 3mo ago
  Can be done too. I live in a rather big city, so I don't own a car, as I can perfectly go by using public transport.
  - retired 3mo ago
    Only if you limit your work and social life to that particular city. Not something most people want to do.
    - IneffablePigeon 3mo ago
      There are many places in the world this is not true. I would say about half the people I know who live in London don’t own a car. They travel plenty - probably more than the people I know who don’t live in London. If they really need a car once they get to their destination they will rent one, or use taxis.
      - retired 3mo ago
        For The Netherlands you are really constricted to the city you live in if you don’t own a car. You can forget about going to a concert, a birthday party or catching an early flight without one. Or if you want to do anything fun on a Sunday in the east. Most people I know have a social life or do sports that require a car. If your children play football you really need a car. Last time I used a taxi in The Netherlands it was €210 for a 40 minute ride, that is reserved for the very wealthy. London is a well connected metropole with 15 million people, not really comparable to most cities. Edit, reply to Alex as I am rate limited with my comments: Please tell me how I can cycle the 60 kilometers from the airport to my home at 23:00 with a rolling carry-on suitcase. Renting a car is around €50 for a night out. And you need to reserve way in advance which is not great for spontaneous trips. Car ownership becomes cheaper and more convenient very quickly. I did car renting and after a couple of €1000/month bills I went back to car ownership. Renting a bus for the sports team is a lot more expensive than using the parents cars which are at no cost to the club. Reply to consp: You need the cars for football matches as public transport doesn’t get you there. The fields are outside of cities and matches are in the weekend when public transport is very limited.
        consp 3mo ago
        You don't need a car for football matches. You need a car for convenience because [fill lazy reason]. And if one person rents a van you can take half the team...
        alextingle 3mo ago
        > in The Netherlands it was €210 for a 40 minute ride That's much more than taxis cost in the UK, and pretty expensive even for the Netherlands. You have great cycling infrastructure, and public transport though. Renting a car is an affordable alternative to ownership, if you need to go to occasional concerts or birthday parties, and public transport happens to be inconvenient for your specific destination. I did that for years - the rental company would deliver and collect from my workplace, so it's super-easy. > If your children play football you really need a car. A friend of mine used to ferry his son 1000s of km per year to ice-hockey matches around the country, so I know what you mean. I don't understand it though - if the whole team is travelling, why don't they just rent a bus? Personally, I don't think it's healthy for a child's hobby to consume so much of the parents' time - of course, your choice.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  There are things that could hurt them a lot more than ignoring them.
  - JKCalhoun 3mo ago
    You're being coy. Perhaps someone should clarify though that most of us are looking for legal means to rattle the shackles of our (Tr/B)illionaire overlords.
    - badpun 3mo ago
      Legally, you can do a lot more than ignoring. If you have any talent for it, becoming an activist (say a youtuber) rallying people against whatever you believe is bad, can be pretty powerful. A single person (again, with some talent for public speaking etc.) has a real chance of making meaningful change this way.
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        Rallying people to do what? Boycotts? They have some effect, but never enough. The most influential YouTuber I can think of is Louis Rossmann, and you know, he's not a YouTuber, he's a MacBook repair guy who took up YouTube.
        badpun 3mo ago
        No, not boycotts. The influencial youtubers I think of actually can shape political debate and thus policy - what they say, if it gains enough popularity, sometimes seeps into the political agenda of the ruling party (which is always looking to "score points" with the voters and has its ears to the ground listening which issues and points people are currently responding to). It's basically like being a columnist of an influential newspaper, except you don't need to have the right connections to become one.
        inigyou 3mo ago
        The political establishment is savvy enough to score points on things they don't care about and ignore voters on things they do care about. That's why one party supports LGBTQ pride and the other opposes it, but they both support the genocide. LGBTQ pride doesn't really affect politicians' power, genocide does.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
tirant 3mo ago
Limiting your family size is a lazy, short term solution. Having a bigger family and teaching them the right values is a much stronger and long term approach.
- onion2k 3mo ago
  In a world where the brightest minds are paid to intentionally develop tools to make people betray their values (advertising, propaganda, rolling news, etc), I'm not sure anyone should feel safe about what they teach their kids. Many industries, but especially tech, will do everything possible to make them do whatever makes a few dozen people richer.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    The best thing an individual can do against, say, the advertising industry, is to become an important person in an advertising marketplace and then destroy it. You spend 30 years to become CTO at Google and then you set the billing system to charge every customer $1,000,000, right before you drop an EMP in the biggest DC.
- venzaspa 3mo ago
  Limiting your family size has concrete outcomes, having a big family and hoping you can impart the right values so they go onto have an positive impact is no guaranteed. You can hope your child goes onto develop a fusion reactor that fits in a storage container but the likelyhood is they won't be. In my opinion it's a way to justify your own (perfectly fine) selfish desire to have a child.
  - Gibbon1 3mo ago
    Large family sizes dilute family wealth and leave children at a disadvantage to their better capitalized peers.
kjkjadksj 3mo ago
The real eco hippies were fueling a 40 year old mercedes on fry oil. Powers that be want you to replace all sources of oil dependent product with another oil dependent product (after all, EVs depend on oil making plastic and grease a cheap commodity). They don’t want you to buy something they already sold to the unwashed masses decades ago. They want you to buy new thing. Never mind old thing still works.
- amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
  Buy a used EV, best of both worlds.

by Gibbon1 3mo ago

Buying electric cars, installing solar, and switching to heat pumps are one of the few things you can materially do to screw the powers that be. The the other one is limiting your family size.

gchamonlive 3mo ago

The only thing you can do to hurt the powers that be is not buying.

pepperoni_pizza 3mo ago
Depends on which powers for each specific choice. Electric cars don't run on Saudi-Trump-Putin juice, so they're pretty good step in screwing those, for example.
- Gibbon1 3mo ago
  The difference between solar+batteries and oil and gas is the former is a durable good and latter are consumables.
numpad0 3mo ago
I think producing and consuming like crazy could also work, considering how quickly Twitter turned Elon Musk from most important to least interesting figure on Earth. Wealth and sensory capacity don't appear to be positively correlated at all.
seba_dos1 3mo ago
Can be done too. I live in a rather big city, so I don't own a car, as I can perfectly go by using public transport.
- retired 3mo ago
  Only if you limit your work and social life to that particular city. Not something most people want to do.
  - IneffablePigeon 3mo ago
    There are many places in the world this is not true. I would say about half the people I know who live in London don’t own a car. They travel plenty - probably more than the people I know who don’t live in London. If they really need a car once they get to their destination they will rent one, or use taxis.
    - retired 3mo ago
      For The Netherlands you are really constricted to the city you live in if you don’t own a car. You can forget about going to a concert, a birthday party or catching an early flight without one. Or if you want to do anything fun on a Sunday in the east. Most people I know have a social life or do sports that require a car. If your children play football you really need a car. Last time I used a taxi in The Netherlands it was €210 for a 40 minute ride, that is reserved for the very wealthy. London is a well connected metropole with 15 million people, not really comparable to most cities. Edit, reply to Alex as I am rate limited with my comments: Please tell me how I can cycle the 60 kilometers from the airport to my home at 23:00 with a rolling carry-on suitcase. Renting a car is around €50 for a night out. And you need to reserve way in advance which is not great for spontaneous trips. Car ownership becomes cheaper and more convenient very quickly. I did car renting and after a couple of €1000/month bills I went back to car ownership. Renting a bus for the sports team is a lot more expensive than using the parents cars which are at no cost to the club. Reply to consp: You need the cars for football matches as public transport doesn’t get you there. The fields are outside of cities and matches are in the weekend when public transport is very limited.
      - consp 3mo ago
        You don't need a car for football matches. You need a car for convenience because [fill lazy reason]. And if one person rents a van you can take half the team...
      - alextingle 3mo ago
        > in The Netherlands it was €210 for a 40 minute ride That's much more than taxis cost in the UK, and pretty expensive even for the Netherlands. You have great cycling infrastructure, and public transport though. Renting a car is an affordable alternative to ownership, if you need to go to occasional concerts or birthday parties, and public transport happens to be inconvenient for your specific destination. I did that for years - the rental company would deliver and collect from my workplace, so it's super-easy. > If your children play football you really need a car. A friend of mine used to ferry his son 1000s of km per year to ice-hockey matches around the country, so I know what you mean. I don't understand it though - if the whole team is travelling, why don't they just rent a bus? Personally, I don't think it's healthy for a child's hobby to consume so much of the parents' time - of course, your choice.
inigyou 3mo ago
There are things that could hurt them a lot more than ignoring them.
- JKCalhoun 3mo ago
  You're being coy. Perhaps someone should clarify though that most of us are looking for legal means to rattle the shackles of our (Tr/B)illionaire overlords.
  - badpun 3mo ago
    Legally, you can do a lot more than ignoring. If you have any talent for it, becoming an activist (say a youtuber) rallying people against whatever you believe is bad, can be pretty powerful. A single person (again, with some talent for public speaking etc.) has a real chance of making meaningful change this way.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      Rallying people to do what? Boycotts? They have some effect, but never enough. The most influential YouTuber I can think of is Louis Rossmann, and you know, he's not a YouTuber, he's a MacBook repair guy who took up YouTube.
      - badpun 3mo ago
        No, not boycotts. The influencial youtubers I think of actually can shape political debate and thus policy - what they say, if it gains enough popularity, sometimes seeps into the political agenda of the ruling party (which is always looking to "score points" with the voters and has its ears to the ground listening which issues and points people are currently responding to). It's basically like being a columnist of an influential newspaper, except you don't need to have the right connections to become one.
        inigyou 3mo ago
        The political establishment is savvy enough to score points on things they don't care about and ignore voters on things they do care about. That's why one party supports LGBTQ pride and the other opposes it, but they both support the genocide. LGBTQ pride doesn't really affect politicians' power, genocide does.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

tirant 3mo ago

Limiting your family size is a lazy, short term solution. Having a bigger family and teaching them the right values is a much stronger and long term approach.

onion2k 3mo ago
In a world where the brightest minds are paid to intentionally develop tools to make people betray their values (advertising, propaganda, rolling news, etc), I'm not sure anyone should feel safe about what they teach their kids. Many industries, but especially tech, will do everything possible to make them do whatever makes a few dozen people richer.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  The best thing an individual can do against, say, the advertising industry, is to become an important person in an advertising marketplace and then destroy it. You spend 30 years to become CTO at Google and then you set the billing system to charge every customer $1,000,000, right before you drop an EMP in the biggest DC.
venzaspa 3mo ago
Limiting your family size has concrete outcomes, having a big family and hoping you can impart the right values so they go onto have an positive impact is no guaranteed. You can hope your child goes onto develop a fusion reactor that fits in a storage container but the likelyhood is they won't be. In my opinion it's a way to justify your own (perfectly fine) selfish desire to have a child.
- Gibbon1 3mo ago
  Large family sizes dilute family wealth and leave children at a disadvantage to their better capitalized peers.

kjkjadksj 3mo ago

The real eco hippies were fueling a 40 year old mercedes on fry oil. Powers that be want you to replace all sources of oil dependent product with another oil dependent product (after all, EVs depend on oil making plastic and grease a cheap commodity). They don’t want you to buy something they already sold to the unwashed masses decades ago. They want you to buy new thing. Never mind old thing still works.

amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
Buy a used EV, best of both worlds.