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points by throwaway27448 1 day ago | 0 comments

There is little utility in blaming consumers for the crimes of capital. Consumers are going to consume. Capital is the entity with directable responsibility (if only via state violence). Why not just shake your fist at the tide coming in for all the good this "blame" does?

[–] Ericson2314 1 day ago

If the farmer didn't buy electric tractors, it's not really your fault. But if you drive a gas vehicle yes it's your fault.

[–] throwaway27448 1 day ago

> But if you drive a gas vehicle yes it's your fault.

Ok well people are obviously going to keep doing it, so what is the point of caring about fault to begin with if you can't do anything about it? We at least have legal control over capital.

Anyway you can blame basically anything on the masses of people; it's just a fucking stupid train of thought with (again) zero utility. It's the nonreligious liberal version of praying to stop school shootings.

[–] Ericson2314 9 hours ago

- More public transit (I am personally working on it)

- Cheep Chinese EVs

- Another attempt (ugh) at getting Detroit to cooperate

- Denser housing

- Higher gas/carbon taxes

should all contribute to people driving with gas less in the relatively near future.

[–] thenewnewguy 1 day ago

It matters because to actually improve things in society we need to identify the true root causes.

Blaming the owners of oil companies doesn't help fix emissions problems, becuse oil companies are going to pollute a ton essentially regardless of who owns them. The real solution to that problem is to reduce the global consumption and demand for oil.

[–] danaris 1 day ago

But when the owners of oil companies collude to deceive the public about the dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels; when the refuse to start working on a transition to green energy when it is absolutely 100% certain that one is needed; when they spend billions of dollars lobbying the government both to ensure they retain their massive subsidies, and to stifle efforts to decarbonize...

Yeah, you can totally blame them, hold them accountable, and it will help fix emissions problems.

[–] throwaway27448 1 day ago

> The real solution to that problem is to reduce the global consumption and demand for oil.

Blindly hoping humans choose to behave differently without removing the pressures that cause them to act such a way is fucked up. The way you reduce demand in a capitalist society is by beating board members to death until society "decides" to improve.

Or we could figure out a collectively rational way to manage the economy, the blood flow of all humanity. Just a thought. Or we could stick to hope and drive humanity off a cliff

[–] thenewnewguy 1 day ago

I'm not sure why you think my solution would be blindly hoping? We change things in modern society with laws (and enforcement for those laws).

For example, many countries are already passing laws to limit the sale of new ICE vehicles and/or to provide incentives to own electric vehicles. And these laws are effective - we can track new vehicle sales and see that we are tending in a positive direction.

[–] upboundspiral 12 hours ago

Laws are laughable in the face of capital. The only reason we have electric cars in the first place is because persons and countries with capital massively invested in new technology.

Laws are the end of the political process, not the beginning.

Case in point, gas taxes just make people grumble and not necessarily switch to electric cars.

You know what doesn't make people grumble? Cheap solar panels / cheap cars that are the result of planned investment on a continent scale, funded by the government through both research and investment grants.

Money is power, and power is political. Passing laws without changing economic policies is how a country goes to irrelevance.

In the modern age one needs a long term investment plan. Without it, the entrenched powers (big oil, etc) exert their enormous influence to keep a country backwards. You need to fight capital power with capital power.

[–] throwaway27448 1 day ago

Well pretending like capital isn't the root cause seems pretty confusing

[–] rcxdude 22 hours ago

You can blame capitalism perhaps (slightly debatable, TBH), but capital is just a component of that whole system (also, on the whole, not actually situated within board members of large companies. Those people are generally the representatives of capital).

[–] throwaway27448 21 hours ago

Capital is a monosemous term. Capitalism is polysemous. I used precisely the word I intended to.

[–] throw310822 23 hours ago

> The way you reduce demand in a capitalist society is by beating board members to death until society "decides" to improve

I can't imagine how someone can believe something so stupid. So if we kill the owners or board members of an oil company, the company ceases to produce and the total oil consumption decreases by the amount that company used to produce? Is this really what you believe?

[–] throwaway27448 22 hours ago

Do you have any better ideas? Can you think of a way to sufficiently motivate capital to make rational decisions short of overthrowing the government?

[–] upboundspiral 13 hours ago

You need a planned economy. It is ironic that in the West we no longer have any competition, just monopolies, thanks to the free hand of the market.

You need a government willing to invest and spend trillions on their policy agendas (clean energy, etc). You need a government that recognizes the enormous power that capital and finance have, and moves to curtail them.

FDR did this, and Wall Street hated him. Post WW2, during Bretton Woods, the conference that would decide the economic fate of the world for 2-3 decades, no banker was allowed to attend.

People have forgotten but Bretton Woods was a planned economy. Fixed exchange rates, fatories told what not to and what to produce. The government intervening to keep the costs of goods to a certain level.

The post war boom was a highly controlled experiment by New Dealers that had lived through the Great Depression and wanted to avoid such a scenario at all costs.

[–] throw310822 22 hours ago

The existence and quality of other ideas doesn't make this one better or worse. This is just plain dumb.

Besides, yes I have better ideas- the ones we are currently implementing now, reducing the demand of fossil fuels by providing alternatives. The problem is that energy is what keeps 8 billion people alive. Cut the flow of energy or substantially increase its price, and billions will die.

[–] throwaway27448 21 hours ago

Well good luck doing that without beating capitalists to death

> billions will die

That's going to happen regardless. We can't produce sufficient fertilizer.

[–] throw310822 21 hours ago

LOL

[–] d3vnull 21 hours ago

"It's not my fault, it's everyone else's fault!"