It's not, because when we make decisions with our wallets we're forced to weigh personal tradeoffs. No such constraint exists for preferences expressed at the ballot box.
In many cases selling heroin doesn’t make the world a better place.
Deer are a well studied example of a species that will expand beyond the ecosystem's natural carrying capacity - followed by a season where their population collapses from starvation. But deer do not chase profit.
I like to cut humans a bit of slack here. We are the first species I know of to identify we are exceeding our ecosystems carrying capacity and attempt to modify our own behavior to mitigate the looming bust cycle.
The worst thing I can say about humans is that we are collectively smart enough to identify we are causing damage to the ecosystem on a global scale but - so far - we are not collectively smart enough to effectively stop it. Though I think in time we will find we can curb this, and we will be smart enough to get through whatever damage we cause along the way.
So I'd say that you are also preaching an ideology - one that an objective look at reality shows to be overly simplistic.
Your argument is not with profit but with human nature, which in its infinite ambition always desires more. Removing the profit motive is like shooting the messenger, your fundamental issue remains unaddressed. Easy evidence for this is that communist societies are by no means greener or less rapacious than capitalist ones.
This isn't anything deep. These are just basic facts.
> > Money is the medium of transaction of human needs and desires. Profit causes global warming only in so much as it fulfills human needs and desires for light, heat, transportation, industry, and energy in general.
Vs.
> My argument is with profits and not with human nature because human nature is malleable. People can change their eating habits, they can change their transportation habits
To the extent that people change to not demand things that cause global warming, providers of such things will not be rewarded with profits. So, I don't understand the gymnastics to point at a "profit" motive rather than intrinsic motivations from this "human nature".
100 corporations produce 70% of the pollution, this is the common mantra right? I don’t think there’s any gymnastics here. It’s clear that the unchecked power of corporations - structures entirely dedicated to profit - has lead to unchecked damages against the environment as single men are enabled to take terrible actions and then hide (legally speaking) behind the amorphous profit entity.
Perhaps this is “human nature” in as much as the nature of the most depraved of us is to destroy everything in pursuit of self interest, but it’s, philosophically speaking, an extremely weak and narrow-minded argument you make here to imply the modern man is to blame for the modern problems, and not those powerful in his society
If you don't ascribe any of the pollution to the individuals and industries using their products, and only to the initial production, sure.
E.g. if you blame the company making the gasoline and not the person burning it in their car. Or the company shipping goods to consumers, but not the consumer ordering and receiving them.
I don't view this as a particularly useful way to view things, though.
That is, capitalism is really efficient at delivering on what end-customers want. If that ends up being bad in some way, well-- the only solution is one of:
* Convince people not to want the thing
* Prevent the thing from causing the harm, by regulation or taxing the externality
* Choose a less efficient economic system and hope that the problem goes away by being less efficient
Well you are also happy to ignore the coercive nature of capitalism - i.e. “advertising” - and the fact that it simply externalizes all real costs - i.e. “most efficient” claims that make no sense - so I’m not sure your world view is really cogent.
For example, people want blueberries. The blueberry producer in Vancouver has packaging facilities on Vancouver island. They ship a bunch of blueberries away from where they were grown to put them in plastic containers, wasting energy and generating pollution. How exactly is the consumer at fault for the inefficiencies inherent in capitalist supply chains? (In place of inefficiency, directly swap “duplication” if it is illustrative)
> capitalism is really efficient at delivering what end-customers want
I strongly disagree, and once again find it to be a self fulfilling prophecy because you have been wholly consumed by capitalist propaganda. For example, see my point about duplicated supply chains; generalize it easily to duplicated work, wasted man hours on marketing and doing research identical to that being done at your competitors, etc..
Finally, realize you are subscribing to the capitalist view of “want” and “end customer” with your language, and arguing capitalism is “the most efficient economic system” might as well put you on Fox News. It’s propaganda. No other economic system has ever existed in a time of such geographic stability, technical prowess, and abundant healthy layout as now, so the point is completely facile.
You must understand, your own point acknowledges this huge hole in capitalism wrt externalities and the massive hidden costs of something, and additionally ignores the role of government and regulatory capture. Even with your kid gloves naive treatment of the situation, you STILL are forced to admit capitalism only aligns with consumer interest on specific goods sold at specific prices. If the price was true - i.e. included and covered all costs to keep a steady climate state, for an easy target - I highly doubt capitalism would be delivering value.
In its pure lust for profit, and I do mean pure, it has destroyed our globe, created class inequality greater than seen in monarchies, and completely subverted global power structures. This is efficient, but not as an economic system or a method of creating goods for people.
The answer is simply to capture externalities in a market economy. For example, I wouldn't outlaw smoking, but I would certainly tax the hell out of it to (as precisely as possible) counter-act the effects on nearby people. Same for any type of pollution -- the tax should be exactly what is required to "undo" it. If it cannot be practically undone and it is significantly harmful, then it can be banned outright (such as dumping of certain poisons and toxins into a water supply).
As capitalism and profit on capital only started on the steps to being the prevailing economic system in the fourteenth century, in pockets of Europe, I wonder what year it became "human nature" worldwide exactly - 1350? 1848?
Long distance trade and traveling merchants date back into the Bronze Age at least, and salt was probably traded in Europe during the Stone Age.
These transactions did not use money, but their basics do not differ much from contemporary trade - including the fact that trade centers and highly connected individuals could become very, very rich, almost unfathomably so when compared to their contemporaries.
They do mention "social profit", which I guess is what you are up against?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Separately—but related—please don't take HN threads into flamewar. You can make your substantive points without snark, swipes, or flamebait; on HN, please do so.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: also, please don't cross into personal attack. You did that repeatedly in the thread below.
Visit the blog if you're unclear on that.
The problem, dear Brutus^Wdang, lies not in the comments, but the post.
If you're going to remove something, start with the problem.
User poetically, in the best pg sense, critiqued the core of the argument:
Truly refuting something requires one to refute its central point, or at least one of them. And that means one has to commit explicitly to what the central point is. So a truly effective refutation would look like:
The author's main point seems to be x. As he says: <quotation>
But this is wrong for the following reasons...
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Graham%2...
poetically is practicing pg's highest form of disagreement precisely to specification and form. The post was flagged (groups never admit failure, after all), and you as moderator stepped in and admonished them. You're wrong, dang.
The refutation reads as a "generic ideological tangent" strictly because the article is a generic ideological tangent. The refutation is absolutely on point. The gericism and ideology are in the source, and must be pointed out as such to be an effective refutation.
If a submission cannot be properly refuted without descending into "generic ideological tangent" then the fault lies with the submission.
At the very least, restore poetically's comment and withdraw your admonition.
The issue is comment quality, not ideological whatever. The GP was a tedious, generic ideological rant - it could appear almost anywhere.