Unfortunately they're still manually assembled, so not quite readily available yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Ti4GP0ntE <- Adam savage building one for an astronaut cosplay suit.
Once you identify which is easier (to implement and/or to monetize), it makes an unfortunate kind of sense.
There was always a lot of talk about carbon taxes, but since we're somewhat past that point now, what about a carbon capture rebate as well? If you can make money from thin air, I'm sure carbon capture technology and industry would boom. If a company can't avoid carbon tax from it's process, which some products simply can't, it then has to offset that tax with carbon capture rebates to be profitable and exist in society. If the math doesn't make sense, they don't make the money, so sad, tears in the unseasonable rain.
The reason you don't litter, dump used oil down the toilet, buy conflict diamonds and complain when Nike gets caught using sweatshop labor isn't because some jackbooted thug will put you in a cage, it's because you know it's the right thing to do. Sure there might be some laws you begrudgingly put up with because of the risk vs reward but making a lot of people do that at scale that doesn't work well.
Convincing people to voluntarily do what you want is far cheaper than violence or threat of violence and it comes with a much lower risk of you being shot in the hole you just dug.
Funny, the first three are covered by laws and regulations - local and international. I'm less certain about the conflict diamonds, but I believe there are regulations around those too.
> Saying the only lever we have is regulation is just saying the only lever we have is violence but with an extra intermediary steps
That's because there are enough people who value money and power that they will never do the right thing unless forced. The tragedy of the commons, as it is.
The Meditations on Moloch paper covers quite a bit of this.
But even on an individual level, money is still a huge guiding factor for society in general, so taxing certain items even at the individual sale level could influence things. Putting fuel in your car? 10% carbon tax, both you and the corporation paid a tax, that goes into the coffer to pay for other kinds of more active carbon reduction programs.
> The reason you don't litter, dump used oil down the toilet, buy conflict diamonds and complain when Nike gets caught using sweatshop labor isn't because some jackbooted thug will put you in a cage, it's because you know it's the right thing to do.
People do all these things, knowingly ignoring all the externalities of their actions. The world is full of decent human beings, and yet the above is still true. Just look at the roads, we're all thoroughly aware that cars pollute our cities even in the immediate tense, let alone long term, yet the roads are still full.
Let's not blame the individual for industrial pollution anyway, since the majority of emissions are still from industrial activity. People have marginal agency on changing that. What's a consumer going to do about bunker fuel in shipping ships? How am I going to influence the processes used in steel mills?
In the same sense, corporations are committing violence on us also, by destroying the planet that we all live on.
The issue is that there's no guarantee that the 10% extra burden is going to green initiatives. It ends up going to the ever ballooning government budget and pays for pension funds for underperforming government employees.
One of the few things that still works about capitalism is you make an expensive toy, it catches on, and then it gets cost reduced ruthlessly to the point that almost anyone can afford it.
See flat screen TVs and cell phones for two compelling examples of this phenomenon. See Corsi boxes for an example of how to build cheap alternatives to an expensive thing. In Beijing, they got as cheap as buying a $25 fan and strapping a HEPA filter to it in order to filter out small particles.
The outlook that nothing ever gets better and there's nothing we can do about it because the rich control everything is what will get us all killed. The rich will make money where they can even if they have to make it up with volume.
No, no, and no. Capitalism does not fix this. Capitalism exploits this and forwards the profits to the executives and shareholders.
Or if you call capitalism a failure because only rich people can afford MacLarens, you're just being disingenuous. See also cheap perfectly serviceable 60" flat screen TVs versus a 85" Samsung Goliath.
I don't want a society with zero wealth gap. They tried that during the cultural revolution and it sucked every bit as badly as the libertarian dystopia Peter Thiel wants to make happen. We have a really serious inequality problem with fairly simple answers that are politically infeasible until we federalize all campaign funding.
No, they didn't. That was the story the masses were sold, but power and wealth were a function of the hierarchy rooted at Mao Zedong. But also, I don't believe that zero wealth gap is a reasonable goal, so kindly lay off the strawman. Nordic countries show that there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of inequality, without a blush of the totalitarianism that you fear.
And libertarianism is just institutionalized cheating for all. Same result as communism in the long run - a tiny ruling class and a world full of peasants where it's good to be the king. I'll take neither.
But I'd love socialized healthcare, medicare for all even. Spoilers: a country infested with a bunch of temporarily embarrassed millionaires will never let that happen. And even in a global pandemic, if you don't get private money out of campaign financing, you'll never get a shot at convincing those temporarily embarrassed millionaires of anything else. But by all means, you be you.
But I thought we were talking about how if we have to wear stillsuits in the future, no one will be able to afford stillsuits except the rich despite the historical evidence 100% to the contrary. The rich will get them first though, designer stillsuits even, deal with it. Can't have everything.
*But if you had any idea how many weird tricks the $100M+ class employs to avoid paying taxes, 100% legally ATM because our 2500+ page WTF tax code, you'd probably want to storm the Capitol again (or maybe not because you might have convinced yourself those weird tricks might come in handy some even though they probably won't).
Yes, they're called Android phones.
Why can they afford it? Capitalism. Don’t forget they tried the alternative and it failed.
There isn't just one alternative to capitalism, and Leninist state capitalism isn't really an alternative to capitalism.