Hacker News Reader

> consider that the whole "big oil lobbies governments" thing flies right in the face of the "democracy is the voice of the people" argument

I don't think it does. An important part of the lobbying is that we know oil companies are attempting to intentionally deceive politicians and the public about the negative effects of their industry and the positive effects of competitors. That deception is the point at play, the voice of the people can be misinformed.

> If people collectively don't care to fight back at a legislative level against socialized costs, wouldn't that logically mean they're the ones ultimately responsible for their own predicament?

This reads a lot to me like blaming the victim of a scam for being scammed. I've met quite a few climate skeptics in my day regurgitating oil lobbying talking points that were known to be false when published. I don't blame them for not fully comprehending the science behind climate change, I blame those oil companies are knowingly misinforming them.

Of course big oil has its share of immorality, but it's not like we never knew that poisonous smoke comes out of the back of our cars, right?

Again, going back to forests and trees, one could also say the sugar industry is deceptive, or that big tech is, or that big telecom is, etc. So clearly there's a pattern, and companies are all run by people, who are motivated by accumulation of wealth. In other words, the negative factors of the system are intrinsically a part of the system, because greed is, for better or for worse, built into it (it's quite literally the driving force for capitalist economic activity).

What I'm saying is that it doesn't really matter whether "companies lying" or "blaming the victim" is the "correct" position, the crude reality is simply that dishonest things happen as a direct negative side effect of a core principle that we as a society agreed to adopt. Pragmatically speaking, the question then becomes one of: a) what can I personally do to "surgically remove" the negative side effects of this core principle, b) if I can't, to what extent do I "care" in the dilemma between participating in a rotten system vs selfishly enjoying my life or, c) when all hope is lost, how do I take cover when shit inevitably hits the fan

It's my impression that most people have lost hope on a), are in denial about b)[0] and have no clue about c).

[0] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/upton_sinclair_138285

> Or more philosophically speaking, whose fault is it that people living under democratic rules don't challenge the efficacy of their governments? Or, perhaps more importantly, why?

Because, in the US at least, average people have very little actual influence over government policy relative to the influence enjoyed by business interests and the capital class.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

There's nothing preventing us from living in a similarly 1-2% growing economy but with net zero GHG emissions. Yes, free resources lying around was amazing, but since then our economic surplus is abso-fucking-lutely enormous.

We merely opt to allocate that on other things instead of decarbonizing. Eg. we spend it on silly things like paving half the world, giving everyone their own car, building small (actually gigantic) cookie cutter houses in suburbs, building new fabs every few years to get more transistors on chips, cramming even more photo gadgets into phones, producing more and more Netflix Prime content, etc.

Building a ton of wind turbines and PV farms, spending years (and billions of USD) reviewing nuclear power plant permits, instead of building more efficient power plants.

as far as I know, "we" are not paving the world. The average person is not spending millions and millions on a marketing plan to bring these ideas into the american and then global imagination.

It's certainly not funded by those who can't afford things.

This could be asteroid that kills us

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action

Concentrated interests (oil companies) tend to win in battles against diffuse interests (individuals and their descendants who are threatened by climate change.)

An interesting corollary is that a "majority" oppressing a "minority" is not a going concern, but the opposite is. That is, black vs white in the United States vs. South Africa are entirely different things. (Think, 90% of the population can steal everything from 10% of the population and raise it's standard of living by about 10%. 10% of the population can steal 10% of the standard of living from the other 90% and double its own standard of living.)

I mostly agree with what you said here. I'm constantly reminding people I know that its called the petrochemical industry because its about far more than just fossil fuels, you can't unwind the need for advanced chemicals in modern society, the population is just too big for us to realistically unwind our need for e.g. the Haber-Bosch process without major advances, and both the pharmaceuticals industry and high tech are completely dependent on extremely complicated oil-based supply chains. Many people will at this juncture reply that we just need less people, but thats not really an ethical solution by any modern standard.

>susceptible to being wiped out globally by a single unforeseen threat

I'm actually pretty optimistic about this, I think that we have enough people and growing standards of education, that assuming the technological solutions are out there, we will probably find them. The only threat that we aren't taking seriously that would really screw us up is some sort of cosmic event (I am very frustrated that with all the talks of creating a more flexible grid for renewables we aren't taking on the added burden of hardening against a solar storm, which seems inevitable. I'm pretty sure we would be pretty screwed if another Carrington Event happened today.[1])

>"democracy is the voice of the people" argument.

Serious question, is this really a point of view that people have in serious circles? I don't know a single person who believes that the US doesn't suffer from a burgeoning plutocracy. I've been calling this the second guilded age for years now, and it only seems to be getting worse. There is no Teddy Roosevelt figure rising that I see. I can only hope that the next generation of politicians will take reigning in this monster more seriously, but I'm skeptical.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event I feel like something of this magnitude would be enough of a setback on science, in many ways, that all hope might be lost of escaping the terminal state we have put the earth into.

I think there are two reasons.

Capitalism rests on the promise that inequality maximizes economic growth and economic growth in itself will sweep all other social problems including inequality away. Once there is a prolonged period without (high enough) growth, the promise becomes worthless. People see the inequality for what it is.

However, since there is no growth, they are barely scraping by. They have no spare resources to throw into caring about the environment. So they will all do the thing that hurts them the least today. Meaning they will prefer cheap and destructive products and services over sustainable but expensive ones. Mandating sustainability essentially forces expensive products down the throat of people but since inequality is high they can't afford them.

What truly perplexes me though is that even in Germany people will keep voting for parties that basically double "dip", they promise to ensure the availability of cheap unsustainable products but also enact policies that make inequality worse. Cheap meat and oil have basically become a form of welfare to bribe the population.

> Mandating X essentially forces expensive products down the throat of people but since inequality is high they can't afford them.

This is true for anything. For example on classic argument is about consumer safety. If the state puts up barriers to trade (eg. I can't sell my cheap lead painted toys and maybe fake generic medicine and maybe rancid meat), then things will be much more expensive.

Of course the slippery slope is many times just the continuum fallacy in disguise.

In these cases the real problem is manifold, on one part it's a serious lack of social solidarity and social safety net, and the other component is whatever the actual other part is (eg. unsafe toys that babies can swallow, health concerns about food, drugs, etc.).

Real solutions have to address both. Eg. carbon taxes with direct social dividend. (Or other variations, where the raised money goes to directly address those same issues that arise due to climate change.)

The democracy is more of an illusion, because the biggest factor in a particular policy being implemented is whether or not the wealth class supports it. If a bill has 70% support from the poor/middle class but 70% of the upper class oppose it...it's pretty likely to never pass. Reverse the numbers where 70% of the commoners don't support the bill, but 70% of the upper class do...well it's pretty likely to pass.

https://represent.us/action/no-the-problem/