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Comment by malchow | Hacker News Reader

Token HN conservative here. If you ever get curious about the conservative moment please don't hesitate to email me. There's a lot of interesting debate going on in the Bay Area, but it's sort of subterranean for obvious reasons.

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I’m less liberal than many, but I’m curious how the conservative movement feels issues like climate change and clean oceans and clean air, or even net neutrality ought to be dealt with, if not by govt regulation. Or is the line of thinking that only those rich enough to buy face masks, and have climate controlled mansions with private beaches may enjoy those things.. Maybe this is entirely orthogonal to this thread, so maybe there could be a separate HN thread just for this discussion? I welcome your suggestion and am wholly on board but I really don’t think individually emailing you is the most productive method to have, what is in fact, a wide ranging discussion with multiple participants.

>I’m less liberal than many, but I’m curious how the conservative movement feels issues like climate change and clean oceans and clean air

Generally, via Pigovian taxes that internalize the externality consistently without creating additional distortions or utilizing arbitrary ad-hoc regulation — ideally in a revenue-neutral way via dividends.

See, for example, the Trent Lott-John Breaux group announced this week to push for the Baker-Shultz carbon dividend plan (supported by economists including former CEA chairs Greg Mankiw and Martin Feldstein and Fed chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen).

(It should be noted that the Clean Air Act and the formation of the EPA came under Richard Nixon, of all people.)

[0] Americans for Carbon Dividends (new group, political): http://www.afcd.org

[1] Climate Leadership Council (old group, academic): https://www.clcouncil.org

[2] AFCD Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/carbon-tax-climat...

[3] This year's op-ed on AFCD: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/opinion/climate-change-fe...

[4] Last year's op-ed on CLC (economists): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opinion/a-conservative-ca...

[5] Last year's op-ed on CLC (politicians): https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-conservative-answer-to-climat...

If that approach truly had broad support among conservatives, it likely would have been implemented by now. (I consider myself very liberal and am a strong supporter of such an approach.) But the reality is that a plurality of US conservatives still (as of 2015) believe that the impacts of climate change will never materialize. https://news.gallup.com/poll/182807/conservative-republicans...

Right. That covers how to solve them, not that they should be solved. (But I suspect Bay Area conservatives aren't heavily represented in the climate change denialism group.)

Sure - but it’s important to distinguish that that’s a mainstream view among a relatively small subset of conservatives, not a mainstream view among conservatives in general (though I agree that the split is probably different in Silicon Valley). Liberals support a broader range of solutions, some of which would create harmful economic distortions, but my impression is that few liberals would choose the status quo over the approach you’re suggesting.

To put it another way, if you’re a single-issue voter in favor of Pigouvian taxes on greenhouse gas emissions, you’re probably better off voting straight-line Democrat than straight-line Republican. If it were a question of whether to implement a Pigouvian tax or, say, subsidies for wind and solar, that would be a different story (and there’s a decent chance that I’d vote Republican).

The Baker-Shultz plan was written in February 2018 so it's going to take some time until it is finally implemented. Also, a lot of hard-core party line Republicans are old and hold the same beliefs from decades ago. These are the conservatives who believe that climate change is all a hoax. When they die, their voices and beliefs will phase out and the voices of the new evolving GOP will phase in. Just my two cents.

Older Americans are overrepresented among climate change deniers, but not overwhelmingly so. As of 2014, 44% of climate change deniers are under 50, and 77% are under 65 [0]. So most will still be around for several decades. More concerning to me are those who will acknowledge the impacts of climate change but balk at the costs of addressing it, further delaying action. And of course, even if and when a global consensus is reached that significant action is needed, that action will take years or decades to take effect.

In the meantime, how many trillions of dollars will we spend to address relatively immediate impacts such as flooding in coastal regions and changes in growth patterns for crops? And how many trillions of dollars will we add to the cost of reversing climate change's effects - if it's even possible to reverse them at all? Not to mention non-economic consequences like the disruption of marine ecosystems.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/168620/one-four-solidly-skeptic...

The plan was actually written in February 2017. Pardon my mistake.

As a conservative from the SF Bay Area, I support putting a price on carbon. I see this as an opportunity for Republicans to take a seat at the climate table and make sure that our voices are being heard. The gradual increasing tax that the Baker-Shultz plan proposes would incentivize companies to innovate and transition toward greener energy. Because this revenue-neutral tax would be passed on to consumers in the form of a monthly dividend, the economy would benefit because there will be more consumer spending. This Pigovian/correctional tax would help the free market in accounting for unforeseen individual costs/benefits. Additionally, about 70% of Americans would be net financial winners. Plus, the plan would make a lot of current regulations unnecessary, reducing the size of government. What's interesting to note is the fact that a lot of young conservative Republicans are supporting this (like the group Students for Carbon Dividends) revenue-neutral carbon tax. I think that as time goes on, the GOP will evolve and it won't be unusual for conservatives to address climate instability.

The result of the conservativism and libertarian things you mention are not properly considered. It results in what is known as the Tragedy of the Commons.

As personal profit and selfishness takes a greater precedence than the wellbeing of the public, the commons must suffer tragedy.

It is indeed true that selfish motives take precedence - in the minds/deliberations of those that stand to profit. But isn’t a govt formed of the elected representatives, who are in office just to represent the interests of the commons?

I think an argument is that at some point the government becomes an entity of its own e.g. thousands of faceless bureaucrats so they are not fighting for the commons but for their own existence.

This is getting OT, but I think there is a mimetic and performative nature to any discussion larger than, say, four people that means you can never get serious as a group (or on a web forum). In any event would love to hear from you.

Yes, this is both generally relevant, but specifically OT.

Hope the mods split it off.

There is indeed a performative aspect to a broad discussion, but it offers the advantage of raising broad based issues that just might not occur to an individual in a limited closed session.

While HN is not immune to the cons of online communities, I feel a generally civil tone, free of political snark, or heavy biases can be maintained.

This is basically totally unrelated to the comment it's replying to.

I think it's quite related to the curiosity about the decision mix in this Sup Ct case. But congratulations for Interneting today. You were needlessly crass from a safe distance. Hooray!

Your comment could have included a bit more of a logical segue. It came across fairly off-topic to me, too. HN generally downvotes or splits off OT discussions, which might be the reason someone thought to mention it.

I'm not in the bay area, but I'm curious about the conservative movement.

I'm in the bay area, where the "anti-conservative" movement is prevalent which means not considering anything that is against the "anti-conservative" party line.

many things aren't considered on their merits simply because the conservative face has done or said things they disagree with even though it is completely unrelated to lawmaking or anything congress would even consider.

any dissent is seen as support for the current administration.

any dissent is seen as TACIT consent for race-based discrimination, xenophobia, and gender based assault and inequality.

any dissent elevates you to being the spokesperson of everything they hate.

I understand why. Everyone's entire political party needs to operate as a unit to swing power in their favor.

but it is so one dimensional that many people reject it, since there always is a gradient for each separate issue.

conservative in this context doesn't mean anti-progressive, or risk averse, or traditional. it is just a political grouping, but in the bay area it means even slightly considering the merit behind a not-democrat party proposal.

I agree that it's ridiculous, since even considering a "conservative" idea makes you the enemy.

But if you vote republican, I do very much agree with the first 2 points.

> But if you vote republican, I do very much agree with the first 2 points.

which is funny because now all sides, of two, think each other as fascists.

democrats think republicans are fascist because the lack of reprimanding against insensitive ideas, while the republicans continue to promote bigotry with no focus on civil rights

republicans think democrats are fascist because democrats want to reprimand any voters that don't vote democrat and didn't waste their vote on a non-republican party

all while nobody actually does what fascists actually did

How does conservative not mean anti-progressive? They're opposites by definition, aren't they?

I'm not just talking about a colloquial US usage. This is also how history books divide political forces when describing past societies.

Because in reality, people and politics are a complex matrix of thousands of issues and not a simple left-or-right slider.

Language doesn't always capture complexity, but we're arguing about definitions, not about whether they apply wholly to any one person.

They do certainly apply wholly to ideas, though.

> I'm not just talking about a colloquial US usage.

but thats what we are talking about, thats what context means

its as fluid as any variable name you add to a program, in this case that variable's name is conservative.

I meant that in all contexts, conservative and progressive are antonyms, not just in colloquial usage.

right, we got that and that's wrong.

if your observation became "hey that party self-identifies with the wrong word and maybe there is a historical reason for this" then yes, that is correct

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