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Comment by redm | Hacker News Reader

“It's super obvious that this is structured as a compromise with business interests. Infuriating.”

I'm not sure why "business" is always the big bad wolf, I guess it’s an easy target. Businesses are a vehicle for people, like a commune with unified set of goals. YC itself is designed to start businesses. Business create jobs, wealth, improve our lifestyles, and grow our economy.

I think any plans moving forward to address global warming have to include business and economic interests. I think what you need more of is incentives to drive innovation in the areas where government wants to push businesses and taxes and/or more regulation in areas government is trying to avoid. Businesses will always follow the money.

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Because "business" has been ignoring external costs at an unprecedented scale for decades, and that's what's gotten us into this mess to begin with.

Of course, you could argue that business wouldn't do this if people didn't demand it, which is true. But I'm much more comfortable with regulating business than people's desires.

> But I'm much more comfortable with regulating business than people's desires

What's the difference?

People have their own interests at heart, and of those they care about (their family, friends, community, city, region, country...).

Corporations are interested in their bottom line, and keeping their large shareholders happy.

So what do you do when the interests of the people are driving cars, building highways and suburbs, and buying cheap, disposable plastics instead and other things?

Are we regulating "business" or "people" when we ban plastic straws when the people want plastic straws and the business is providing them because we want them?

I guess I'm just not sure in this instances I see a meaningful difference. I'm not saying we shouldn't take action and that businesses should be responsible, but it seems like we're saying that we'll just regulate the business and that the people are like somehow hopeless and unable to take action. People can do things like not use plastic bags, turn the A/C off, and buy locally made products that are more expensive (just examples). If you care about your community or country why wouldn't you be doing these things? Maybe people don't care about anything except their bottom line too? Idk.

So here's a regulation we could play with - you can't buy any produce that is grown outside of 50 miles of where you live. Now what? Who are we regulating?

I don't think it's super useful to make a distinction here between businesses and people. Regulating people is like:

- Don't spoil common resources

- Don't commit violence against others

- Don't gobble up resources and hoard them for yourself

- Don't mislead others

These apply to businesses too, and when you think about it, it covers a lot:

Plastic bags/straws: spoiling common resources, no one can use them

A/C: uses a lot of energy, only use it when you must

Buy local: when you factor in externalities like atmospheric carbon production, road construction and maintenance, and human suffering (road accidents, lost wages and political power due to corporate agglomeration and financial draining of communities), it falls under "don't spoil common resources" and "don't gobble up resources".

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But more broadly, I always find the "let's rely on individual action" option odd. Besides much of pollution being industrial and not addressable by individual action, it's also obviously not working. So is your position that we deserve what we get? That seems super unsatisfying to me.

Keeping in mind I’m always exploring…

I think my position is that regulating businesses should probably be done, but they don’t come out of nowhere. They fill demands that people have. So people need to start caring and change their habits, and business will follow suit. Not that business shouldn’t or couldn’t be regulated in tandem, but as a reply to the person who was saying businesses care about their bottom line, but people don’t - I find that to be a bit naive. I don’t see a distinction in “care” here. Plenty of companies do the right thing, even better sometimes on a per-capita basis (if you could compare their employees to another group of people).

TBH we are fucked so none of this matters. People think electric cars will save us when cars themselves are the issue. Or that we shouldn’t ban plastic straws because it doesn’t do enough when the whole point is we shouldn’t have single use items (except obvious cases like medicine).

> Or that we shouldn’t ban plastic straws because it doesn’t do enough when the whole point is we shouldn’t have single use items

I think this gets at what I--and maybe you're with me--really think: these problems are cultural. People don't hold businesses accountable, so it's a race to the bottom in all kinds of ways: worker pay, labor conditions, pesticide use, fossil fuel use, carcinogen use, taxes, single use items, etc. etc. etc.

And you're right that many businesses do in fact at least try to do the right thing. But if you're like, a florist or some SBO who needs a van or two, can you even buy an EV? Should it really be up to you to push automakers to build EVs to suit your purpose?

I find myself of two minds:

1. we're (the US) a democracy and our society should reflect our will--it currently doesn't and that's the problem, whether it's apathy or corruption or whatever.

2. we're a republic because it's unreasonable that every citizen become a change agent; we elect representatives to do that--they currently don't and that's the problem.

> TBH we are fucked so none of this matters.

Yeah I mean, I hear people on podcasts railing against this kind of fatalism. I get what they're saying, we could in fact take action right now to address the worst parts of climate change. I think it's really, painfully obvious we won't do that though. Humans just aren't wired to deal with this kind of problem. The effects are too abstract and distant. Even in this thread, with people way higher than average intelligence you have people scoffing at climate activists, saying they're demanding the impossible. Totally insane.

I agree or at least sympathize with everything you’re saying.

And I am a hopeful person at heart, so it’s like I think we are fucked but I’ll try anyway and think we should. :)

Businesses provide the means to the ends people desire.

At heart, people (in general) don't desire leaded gasoline. People desire smooth engine operation. There's nothing wrong with that desire.

Companies see that desire and substitute a solution that seem cheap only because the costs are external: leaded gasoline. That is a problematic means to an innocent end.

This is how business in general operates: it sees an innocent desire, comes up with a concrete solution, and sometimes that solution has great external costs attached to it, but business proceeds to ignore that.

In all of that process, the external costs are very rarely attached to the desire, and almost always specific to the solution provided by the business.

>> Business create jobs, wealth, improve our lifestyles, and grow our economy.

To some extent, sure, but we have gotten into a nasty habit of allowing businesses to privatize profits while socializing losses. And the losses have been absolutely massive.

Business interests as they are currently structured are the big bad wolf and justifiably so. Left unchecked they would wreak havoc. Nobody is saying business per se is bad.

> I'm not sure why "business" is always the big bad wolf, I guess it’s an easy target.

Because in this case, business--specifically the fossil fuel "energy" industry--has corrupted democratic governments for their own profit, at the expense of literally every human alive now and for the foreseeable future.

> Businesses are a vehicle for people, like a commune with unified set of goals.

Businesses are not a vehicle for people. They are not democracies. They are the opposite of a commune. If they were democracies, we'd have a direct way to hold them accountable and control their behavior. We obviously don't have that.

> I think any plans moving forward to address global warming have to include business and economic interests.

Pick any counterargument you like here:

1. Only kooks are talking about things like degrowth. It's a strawman to suggest otherwise. Of course plans will include business and economic interests. The question is what is prioritized, and that's why I said:

> It's super obvious that this is structured as a compromise with business interests. Infuriating.

2. The only way this works is by forcing markets to factor in externalities like atmospheric carbon production (or waste, etc.) into their pricing, which we've clearly failed to do.

> Business create jobs, wealth, improve our lifestyles, and grow our economy.

None of these good things are beneficial to the environment or climate. 'Economic activity' done by businesses is the main driver of climate change.

No. It's way easier to set completely unrealizable goals (that your proponents think are compromise because they are completely out of touch with what is actually possible) then blame 'business' when they don't get met.

> they are completely out of touch with what is actually possible

I think it's the opposite, actually.

It's like we're trying to find solutions to this and I'm like, "well, what if much of Texas just had a power outage for weeks during the coldest part of the year; sure some people would die but we'd save a lot of carbon emissions". You'd rightly balk and say "that is INSANE". And then climate change would do it to us anyway.

So it seems to me that the ones who are "out of touch with what is actually possible" are the climate change skeptics and the incrementalists. How can you ignore what's already happening?

> Businesses are a vehicle for people, like a commune with unified set of goals.

It would, if it weren't for the core feature (and problem) of Capitalism: the disconnect between those who work and those who own.

As it stands there are people with power so disproportional that to talk of democracy or a "common interest" is simply disingenuous. In this case in particular: the interests of a few people to maximise their own profits trump the interests of the entire public to have clean air, not suffer from 100,000s of deaths per year due to pollution, not have to endure climate change and the catastrophically expensive cleanup processes we'll have to implement sooner or later (i.e. they save 1$ now so we'll have to spend 10$ in a few decades), etc.

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