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Please Buy Less

pleasebuyless.com

105 pointsanilshanbhag69 comments

The easiest way to get people to buy less is to raise prices.

If we had a carbon tax that correctly priced the environmental impact of goods, it would decrease consumption. Without having to shame people into removing themselves from the economy.

Yes. I've become convinced that Pigovian taxes [0] (connected to a basic dividend) are the answer to climate change, and to ecological externalities in general. (In addition to greasing the wheels of political viability, a dividend ensures that paying the true cost of carbon is not a de-facto regressive tax, as that cost hits the working class the hardest.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

I agree that we will definitely want to do it in a way that minimizes how regressive the outcome is.

Same with smoking cessation:

"Increasing the retail price of tobacco products through higher taxes is the single most effective way to decrease consumption and encourage tobacco users to quit." [0]

https://www.who.int/tobacco/mpower/publications/en_tfi_mpowe...

Carbon taxes could help, but end-of-life taxes on the producer would be more effective at actually driving change. The consumer doesn't have the decision making power to choose lower-impact materials in products or packaging they buy, but the producer does. If we tax them on the disposal cost and other negative externalities resulting from the use and EOL of their products those producers will likely choose different materials.

Raising prices is effective but can have serious side-effects.

E.g. raising gas prices will dramatically hurt citizens living on the country side or outside cities without public transport, and force them to move into the cities, which in turn cause higher demand on housing and rent increase.

Isn’t that the point though, to change behavior? People who live in the countryside and work in the city have only been able to do that because of improperly priced fuel that enables them to do so. Adjusting the price of fuel to reflect the true cost would drive the change in behavior that we need to have. You can’t expect things to change without making actual changes, and it will of course require a transition period as people adjust.

Sure, if you work in the city.

But if you live and work on the country side, higher gas prices will crush you because it impacts not only you personally but the school transport for the kids, the transporting wares from/to rural supermarket, for infrastructure maintenance/development, agriculture/farmers etc etc

There are so many little things that people take for granted that is will have an impact on those living on the country side.

And in the end you just shift the problem to the cities, where the influx of more people cause rising housing costs, higher unemployment, more miserable people and higher prices on foodstuffs because farmers give up.

Living rural areas and farmers are a very important factor for a happy nation IMHO.

The post I replied to specifically mentions people who live in the country who would then have to move closer to cities. That is the profile of a commuter with a city job, not a farmer. Farmers don’t have to commute into the city every day, and thus are not the people who are being discussed here.

Yes, obviously higher fuel prices would affect those who need to drive further due to longer distances between things (i.e. the countryside), but it will also encourage those who only do so by choice to make different choices, which is what we desperately need.

Many people can't live in busy cities, and cities need countryside.

Have you ever heard of a thing called agriculture?

Raising prices does this but the side effect could be putting individuals that really need a product in hard spot. Creating laws on single use non-biodegradable material and/or the amount of it could be beneficial. This will increase prices slightly on those goods.

Carbon taxes should be levied in such a way that most people who are buying the basic necessities would actually see a growth in their income.

Lower middle class should see no change. Middle class should see a net loss if they don't change their habits. And anything beyond would see a substantial loss.

Give each person a carbon ration, if you didn't use it fully you get money back. If you used more than your fair share you have to pay significantly large taxes that go directly to the pockets of people who use less and infrastructure.

"Give each person a carbon ration" agreed. Achieving this with each individual could be the hard part where as enforcing a company to "behave" and/or limit consumers from buying excessively could be quicker win that achieves the same goal.

If it also was used to help the environment, and strictly tied to cost of cleaning up CO2, I would be for it.

Pricing a good out of someone's budget range seems entirely like removing them from the economy. What's more, your tax will hit the most economically vulnerable people in society the hardest. It's hard for me to believe people won't feel ashamed when the things they enjoy are suddenly beyond their reach.

>Without having to shame people into removing themselves from the economy.

No, you'll just remove them from the economy without their consent, by introducing regulation to artificially lower supply. Everyone is against this: the companies who won't make as much profit and the consumers who won't be able to purchase the goods that they want. Good luck with that.

>No, you'll just remove them from the economy without their consent, by introducing regulation to artificially lower supply

A few things:

1. Presumably any carbon tax would have to be secured and defended by our democratic institutions. Thus we would have consent (or as close as you can get to large scale consent in our multi-actor society). While I agree that regulating basic consumption for large swaths of the economy has a bit of an authoritarian bend to it, I'm not sure how else we incentivize ourselves to decrease consumption.

2. Lowered supply is not a given. Companies would be incentivized to find production chains, energy sources, and materials that had a lower impact (and thus a lower tax). Less impactful products would be able to price themselves under the high-impact products and satiate the demand.

EDIT Added 3. Consumption itself is not the enemy. The thing we want to minimize is negative externalities. It just so happens that under our current system, manipulating levels of consumption is the only lever our society has for affecting industrial emissions.

A carbon tax will shift shift purchases to government. So unless the goal is to have one group buying less, a carbon tax won’t matter too much. Since any drops in consumption will be offset by using that new tax revenue to do and buy stuff.

If we want to buy less we need to shrink the economy, including government spend.

Personally, I’m just trying to build more things and gather more things myself. Buys less and saves money.

The money collected from the carbon tax would have to be earmarked for things that improve our ecological situation: carbon sequestration, replanting forests, buying and protecting land, etc...

That’s buying things no? Sequestration systems. Tree nurseries and all the stuff to service forests.

Buying land gives money to someone who buys stuff.

We've been advocating "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" for over 40 years, and yet emissions and consumption have gone up every year. You will never be able to convince enough people to voluntarily reduce their lifestyle. To cut waste & emissions we need legislation, not shaming of consumers.

Yes, proper incentives need to be in place. Taxes & regulation (and in some cases simply staffing up to enforce existing laws) are what are needed.

That said, I have personally stopped profligate purchases on Amazon/Express - promised the wife we'd clean out the garage before buying new non-essentials and have reduced online spending to 1/5th of last year (YMMV our garage was chock full of stuff).

Most of the times when people realize what you realized and go for a change of habits - less buying and doing the same with less/minimal lifestyle - the first step they take is to throw stuff away. I've done it myself. Now I really stress the reuse and the repurpose before throwing anything away. Otherwise sell. At the end of the day is one crap less that ends up in some landfill.

Not really. When that campaign came out, consumer focused companies immediately latched on the the “recycle” message and pushed it really hard, because they knew the first two represented a big impact on them. Almost everyone internalized “recycling” and promptly forgot about reducing and reusing, so most of the past 40 years have been spent with people patting themselves on the back for drinking nothing but bottled water, as long as they disposed of the bottle in the right bin.

If people were actually following the program, we would be in a much different place.

This has to be looked with global economic context, f.e. how many people join middle class by consumer standards per year. I feel like this "shaming" has different target audience - people who have been in this category for some time and not so hungry for new things/more things anymore.

> not shaming of consumers.

No need for that, some of consumers themselves have begun shaming their fellow consumers who buy way more stuff than they need. I know I've started doing that in the last couple of years, since I've realized that no amount of recycling or legislation is going to stop climate change, it has to start from us. Yeah, people who buy a lot of stuff are to blame, if you buy a lot of stuff you're to blame for all the bad things that happen to our climate.

While shaming consumers certainly makes me feel good, it’s a poor way to change behavior. [0] [1]

[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/20... [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306624X1141891...

Time for "Hoarding is Beautiful" campaigns?

Around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) shaming has had its pretty good effects during the last 25-30 years. We used to litter a lot more just after communism fell, I remember that even I, as a kid, had no remorse at throwing some piece of paper or whatever at the side of the road. Nowadays I wouldn't even dream of doing that, and generally speaking people throw stuff by the roadside a lot less. The same discussion goes for smoking in public places, we even managed to have that outlawed a few years ago, a feat unimaginable a couple of decades ago when I used to have high-school teachers who were smoking in class.

But you now consume much more.

Better behaviour follows from imoroved standards of living and education.

On that I agree, which is why I’ve become a strong supporter of “de-schooling society” [1] ever since I’ve first read about the concept. But unfortunately this concept won’t have that much success in a society like ours that values efficiency so much, and said efficiency can only be achieved through “schooling”.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society

I was not sure about posting this. The world is weird in that you are a single person in a sea of 7+ billion people, it is very hard to get your message across and even harder to make a change that will actually make a dent. Hope you think twice before buying and save some money too - have a nice extended weekend :)

I'm glad you did. It's an important message and Americans -- at least the ones on the internet -- seem now to be more receptive to critiques of capitalism than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.

Wow, getting some negative responses here. Personally, I'm rapt to see a message like this (especially on front page of HN)

I would, I use it all the time, but it's open source[1].

:-)

[1] http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/

I like the message, but it seems to complain more than it actually provides solutions.

The term 'retail therapy' is a very real thing.

I think a lot of our consumerism is connected to our disconnection and lifestyle, and this is related to how we set up our cities and communities. From population density, to walk-ability of cities, etc.

When I lived in the third world, in an area with pretty high population density, mixed use zoning, and high walk-ability I would consume less 'stuff' and more experiences. For instance, instead of driving to TJ max to buy some new clothes as I would here, I might take a walk and buy some pastry... which I'd be hungry for from walking. It was from a small producer, who used less materials for packaging than a large one would. I'd also get to know people who I'd regularly see, and that also reduced consumption of good I think as I would stop and connect with other people. We are pleasure seekers, and if consumerism is the easiest way to satiate that desire, it will be done in a consumerist way.

I'm not saying our consumerism is ONLY about lifestyle, but I think going into what causes consumption is more effective at reducing it than simply saying 'hey you, don't do that'. I think it's why in some parts of Europe people seem to buy less junk and more quality, artisanal made items.

"have one fewer child" is the most efficient way to decrease your carbon footprint (see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/best-way-reduce-your... )

Easy, right? However, I am not sure it is correct. For instance, if you produce less than 2 kids (e.g., 0) AND it was your decision, would not it mean that all the carbon footprint went to adapt/improve your genetic material (including your grand-grand-parents) is a waste in some sense? You are the last one of your branch. Wasn't you fooled to believe you should have no kids? Makes a lot of sense for other branches to fool you and gain a greater ratio of the entire genetic material (this is basically the definition of fitness function in evolutionary biology - to have more offspring / a greater ratio of genetic material). Evolutionary processes at play.

1) This is a sunk cost fallacy. Think of all the fossil fuel infrastructure, wouldn't it be a waste to stop using it? 2) Your goals and goals of your genes are not the same. You should care about as much about your genes as your genes care for you (not at all)

To truly answer such questions you should have a (set of) metrics to measure what is better and run parallel universes for a significant amount of time to check which version is better according to your metrics.

>> Think of all the fossil fuel infrastructure, wouldn't it be a waste to stop using it?

Most likely, it would be a waste to stop using it right now.

>> Your goals and goals of your genes are not the same. You should care about as much about your genes as your genes care for you (not at all)

Living organisms are genetically wired to care about their genes, e.g., to express them (e.g., to write posts on HN and publish scientific papers) and spread them (to have kids).

Wired, but not directly. We don't have an explicit urge to have as many kids as possible, we just like having sex. It kinda leads to the same outcome. Or it did, before we invented contraceptives.

Writing posts on HN is not expressing your genes, it is an entirely accidental effect of intelligence, which is another mechanism we have solely to better propagate our genes, but it kinda runaway.

>> Writing posts on HN is not expressing your genes, it is an entirely accidental effect of intelligence

Your opinion is a function of your genes (sex, race, physical conditions, etc). Your HN post does not have to be imprinted in your genes but our genes affect our opinion whether we want it or not. It is rarely about which sorting procedure you will peak but when discussing things relevant to genes (again, racial and sexual stuff) they will inject their biases.

We must enable and provide technology to countries that are on there way to western worlds living standard to get there with low co2 emission. Because they want it with or without co2 emission.

FYI: https://www.history.com/news/whats-the-real-history-of-black...

Please do not travel, either. Togetherness and family are idols at least as wasteful and environmentally damaging as consumerism.

Certainly electric night at light are a waste, right?

Running lightbulbs in an average home for a year uses more resources than travel.

Lighting is 17% of global carbon emissions, I think [0]. And air travel is 2.5% or so.

Many people don’t even have the option not to travel, but everyone can choose not to use electric lights.

[0] https://www.ledonecorp.com/using-led-lighting-to-reduce-your...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/778692814/choosing-not-to-fly...

I simply do not believe LED One's claim lighting is 17%, apparently based on an all tungsten world, nor that electricity is 50% of emissions.

Electricity comes out at 50% only when the category is "Electricity and heating" [1], usually it comes in at 20-30% depending on country. A lobby group promoting adoption of LED lighting in 2006 while all domestic use was still tungsten claims 6% is lighting[2]. Post LED adoption, perhaps 0.5-1%. Does anyone still use tungsten aside from some specialised use given LED bulbs are down to tungsten prices?

It appears to be a small enough percentage I can't find anywhere picking out lighting individually.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissi...

[2] https://www.theclimategroup.org/project/led-scale

> Togetherness and family are idols at least as wasteful and environmentally damaging

Sorry, but you are dead wrong. Together and family is just what we need.

Political bullshit that has no place on Hacker News.

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. We don't want that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I don't think there is any respectable belief system or religion in the world where "buying more" is a general solution to any sort of problem. (Unless you're an economist trying to optimize for a particular variable like market liquidity, or unless you're a biased market participant -- like a company selling something.)

If you want to encourage someone to do something more to solve problems, how about suggesting people give to the poor in their immediate locale -- like donating to a local shelter or poverty relief organization.

Aren’t charitable donations a form of buying? Lots of religions have penance as part of their tradition and most will encourage donating to fund church building and whatnot.

I’ve lived in rural America and if you want to help the poor, open a Walmart. Their prices were lower than the dime store and they hired people of all races and you could work there without being groped by the old owner. Of course it wasn’t perfect as there are flaws with Walmart too. But as far as utilitarian impact on the poor buying stuff can be very helpful.

Your pastor needs a personal jet to do the gods work. So partially yes.

I drive home past a very popular church where the pastor received national fame for preaching that he needed a new jet because God wants him to. And he got it.

Wow. That’s spiritual abuse and nothing less. It boggles the mind that people pay attention to such people when scripture clearly warns against them (like 1 Timothy chapter 6).

> buy your girl that Gucci bag if she wants it

Veblen goods [0] arguably create a real problem for the concept of markets being efficient. Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. (Curiously, luxury goods share some DNA with Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining.)

Don't get me wrong, markets beat communism and mercantilism by a country mile; but as economists like to remind us, economic models are fundamentally agnostic to what people want, and people are often incentivized to treat inefficiency as a feature rather than a bug.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

> Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect.

Since this is about status rather than the goods, it can flip on a dime to asceticism when that becomes a high status good. Monk habits, Mao suits and military uniforms are also status goods, and all broadcast the expenditure of great energy that often produces nothing, or less. Buying less can be a status symbol almost as easily as buying more.

Scott Alexander wrote a great piece about counter-signaling; for instance, when expensive clothes become too accessible to the middle class, the wealthy can swerve by wearing cheap clothes as a counter-signal: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9kcTNWopvXFncXgPy/intellectu...

Signaling comes in many forms, and not all of it is bad; arguably, signaling eco-consciousness with a Prius or a Tesla can be a net win, even if it's just a proxy for socioeconomics. Rather, I would posit that extremes of Veblen goods (where cost and/or effort are abnormally high and positive social externalities are low) are more akin to market failure, or the Dutch tulip craze.

Only if and while the proles glut themselves on cheap stuff. As soon as unwashed masses start to copy that, the balance will flip and reverse. To act as a status symbol an action must be hard or costly to reproduce. If everybody can do it, it becomes worthless.

I think similar dynamics plays out with currency, we could all still be using sea shells otherwise.

> your girl

This is so wrong on so many levels. I pity your female work colleagues. Unless you were talking about a dad purchasing some luxury stuff for his daughter, but I guess you didn't have that in mind.

Would you please not take HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It leads to nasty and stupid discussions that we neither need nor want.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That’s nothing ideological about telling someone that their way of seeing other human beings as inferior is wrong, as talking about a different person as belonging to someone else (the “your” part) means seeing the other person as being inferior. Yeah, as members of this community we could maybe ignore when other users talk about such views out loud, but that won’t really solve anything, would it?, it would just mean hiding everything under the rug, even empowering said user in his/her views.

That's vastly overinterpreting what the commenter wrote. Please follow the site guidelines when commenting here. They include:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

You used "your" in your comment to refer to women (colleagues) and clearly weren't talking about women as owned livestock. Why not grant them the same usage of possessive pronouns?

> your female work colleagues

Disgusting. They are not his. Is this really how you talk about women?

Demanding politely to a command I'm going to obviously say no to is rude and obnoxious.

That's possibly the least "rude and obnoxious" message about rampant consumerism I've ever come across. Your response speaks volumes about yourself as opposed to the message on the site.

After deciding to read the message at all after being put upon by an author who doesn't know me, I found the message to be a bit of a cliche nowadays. Who's his audience? Hungry consumers aren't busy reading and following commandments handed down by domain names.

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