Hacker News
points by lostlogin 1 day ago | 0 comments
> While shareholders obviously hold a greater degree of control over a company's emissions than a random consumer, assigning 100% of the blame for oil company emissions to the owners and 0% to people buying oil seems insane.

But what’s the appropriate allocation? I don’t think it’s zero. It shouldn’t be a larger percentage than their shareholding.

There are other examples. Eg someone who manufactures or sells dangerous items. Drugs, alcohol, guns.

They have some degree of liability in many jurisdictions. They aren't entirely responsible for what their products do. But are they zero percent responsible?

[–] Ericson2314 1 day ago
There is no right answer re blaming the customer or owner. This is push vs pull.
[–] slopinthebag 1 day ago
one question we could ask is, how much carbon emissions would these allocations represent if there were no consumers?

that answer might be a more accurate number than the percentage of their shareholding.

[–] lostlogin 1 day ago
Is this an argument about free markets and regulation?

Eg should the responsibility be on tobacco smokers to look after themselves, or governments to regulate/restrict/ban.

[–] slopinthebag 16 hours ago
right, same as if the responsibility be on drinkers vs breweries and sellers.

like should we say that a brewer is morally culpable for deaths due to alcoholism and assign them a percentage of this blame based on market cap or something?

[–] milch 1 day ago
It would be a bit of a dishonest question in my opinion. Take the oil and car industry in the US for example. They've spent the past 70 years or so dismantling alternative transport infrastructure (among other things...). So how are we now going to assign the blame to the guy driving his car to work, instead of taking the bus that takes 4x as long, requires 3 transfers, and has people openly taking drugs on it? In the ideal world, sure, there would be a fair and even playing field of alternatives and the blame would 100% lie with the consumers who choose from this totally even field of possibilities. But we don't live in that ideal world.
[–] thenewnewguy 1 day ago
What if the guy in the car voted for pro-oil politicians whose campaign explicitly included expanding fossil fuel consumption and cutting budgets to trains and other public transit?

Because ultimately the way we organize society is we have a democracy and we vote on representatives to make the laws. Companies actually don't get to directly cut public transit, they have to convince voters to do that.

[–] milch 1 day ago
Most people weren't voting age 70-50 years ago when public transit systems collapsed, so mostly they didn't vote on this. Even in places that have consistently voted pro transit for decades at this point, they quite literally still have decades of baggage to get rid of in the form of antiquated or hostile laws that were designed to slow them down, require workarounds or blow through their budget. You can't undo all of that even over multiple terms in-office.

And there's the whole thing about the US political system, which discourages any more than 2 parties, which disincentivizes members of those parties from actually following through on campaign promises vis a vis lobbying money for their reelection campaign and future positions on the boards of companies whose laws they decide on. Then the information who to vote for comes from media companies owned by...

Plus, some people's votes are simply more equal than others’. And sometimes we can ignore some people's votes by cheating just a little bit (see Bush vs Gore).

There are simply so many factors at play here that I still think twisting this as an "individual choice" problem is disingenuous at best. There are people who have the power to make changes, but it's not your average Joe on an average salary.

[–] thenewnewguy 17 hours ago
This is a massive dodge of the question - do voters not bear some level of culpability for the candidate they choose to vote for?

I'm not talking about candidates reneging on their promises, places that are voting in favor of public transit but got messed up by their ancestors, etc. - I'm talking about people voting today for politicians that are clearly pro-oil and follow through on that.

[–] milch 16 hours ago
Sure, if the guy voted for a pro oil candidate and drives a massive 10mpg lifted diesel truck some of that is surely on him. But there's still the massive media machine owned largely by billionaires, decades and billions of dollars of lobbying and propaganda by the oil and car companies, and foreign interests (some of which sell oil, some of which just want to see the US fail) that influenced him along the way. If we turn it around, how many people would still vote for pro oil candidates if these weren't there?