Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

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So many governments, agencies, orgs, etc, are getting caught with their pants down with changing climate bringing more extreme weather conditions, because capitalism favors maximizing profit and considering tolerances too wide as an expense.

It's cathartic seeing the capitalists lack of foresight burn them time again, but also sad, knowing the response to this will be just buying slightly better HVAC and other systems, which will be globally sourced no doubt and burn carbon to produce and probably damage some ecosystems in the resource gathering process. Then when temperatures get even hotter its time to buy new systems etc.

Once again capitalism favors this outcome, because it allows multiple sales opportunities over time with the potential to increase monetization at every one, versus buying one system that can handle wider temperature swings and being done with it potentially forever if its made to be repairable/upgradeable. Even if you invented such a thing and sold it out of your garage, GE or whoever your competitors would be would ensure you have difficulty sourcing necessary parts or coming to market or getting word out to your potential customer base. Investors you need to afford to grow under these conditions would expect you to play the game and start cutting costs and engage in the rat race, or be replaced.

It's going to be hard to work our way out of climate change with the degenerate, consumptive nature of capitalism mining the planet while sucking resources from the wider economy where this salvation is to be invented, to the top that will always be able to afford to hole up and hide away from whatever disasters befall the working people.

You can blame capitalism all you want, but the issue is deeper. This is a well studied market failure called tragedy of the commons. People and markets have not been paying the true cost of their consumption, which has resulted in overconsumption of fossil fuels.

Your whole premise ignores the billions of people who happily use electricity and fuel everyday and happily ignore the consequences. These same people then (literally) riot when prices go up by a relatively small amount.

People are greedy. They want more for less. We can disagree about the best form of economic association, but it’s disingenuous to ignore the reality that climate change is driven by the masses.

Market failures are a feature of free market capitalism! Most of the solutions to market failures are some kind of regulation, restriction or tax which tend to be opposed by proponents of “pure capitalism”

> but it’s disingenuous to ignore the reality that climate change is driven by the masses.

And the answer to a "tragedy of the commons" scenario is regulation: either intervene directly by banning undesired behaviors (e.g. ban flights on routes that are served by rail, such as France does) or tax it to make undesired behaviors unprofitable.

The problem with the latter is that you will always have people rich enough to simply pay whatever tax is asked and social resentment will grow as a result ("why should the lower classes bear the load of climate change and the rich enjoy three-minute flights to save a 40 minute road trip [1]?").

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniesoteriou/kylie...

> because capitalism favors maximizing profit and considering tolerances too wide as an expense.

Lack of foresight isn't exclusive to capitalism. Would socialist data centres be built to handle temperatures several degrees above the highest ever recorded temperature?

Even in a socialist economy, building systems with an excessively high tolerances would be seen as a poor allocation of resources.

It could be equally argued that capitalism favours private companies like Google ensuring their DCs are as fault tolerant as possible, to ensure they have a competitive advantage. There's also plenty of cases where companies sell unnecessary and excessive goods and services to maximise their own profit.

> and being done with it potentially forever if its made to be repairable/upgradeable

DC cooling systems are repairable and upgradable. They're a far cry from a residential split system AC unit.

Modern capitalism does have a built-in short-term view though. Companies can try planning ahead for decades of use, but if someone comes in and designs for a shorter term, they'll be a lower bidder and thus more likely to get the job. By the time that the short-comings are discovered, the lower bidder is long gone. The stock market also provides an incentive to just aim for short term gains at the expense of the long term.

Socialism can prioritise quick fixes or long term solutions, but it depends on the wisdom of the people involved as to whether they'll build in enough capacity to allow for future climate changes.

Like most people making that commentary about "short-termism", you'd rather buy cheap clothes made in China than pay double for something local that lasts 5 times longer.

You have nothing on which to base that observation and as such, you're not even wrong as your comment is meaningless

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS The book "How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet" linked to in that article discusses many of these topics.

> Even in a socialist economy, building systems with an excessively high tolerances would be seen as a poor allocation of resources.

Huh? GDR and Soviet made machinery, vehicles, even glassware for pubs [1] was made with sometimes ridiculous margins and tolerances to ensure longevity and easy repairability and was famous for it. Even pre-reunification Western made products such as Bosch, AEG, Hilti or Siemens were famous for building stuff that sometimes outlasted the owners (such as my 80s Hilti drill, which served three generations of my family and likely will still work when I have children of my own).

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfest

> Soviet made machinery, vehicles, even glassware for pubs [1] was made with sometimes ridiculous margins and tolerances to ensure longevity

Bollocks. Soviet machinery is simple and crude, typically many decades behind their western counterparts.

Simple and crude is not necessarily in opposition to robustness.

Yes, but that was neither my point nor the point of the person I replied to.

"Keep it simple and stupid" is a tried and true engineering principle. The higher tolerances a design uses, the easier it is to manufacture and to repair, and the less likely it is to fail from wear and tear in the first place.

A socialist economy, where waiting for a new car could take anywhere from five to twenty years (!), definitely has to prioritize simpler, more (fault-)tolerant designs even if that takes a bit more resources to account for said tolerance. For example, a modern car heavily using fibreglass and plastic in the chassis may weigh a good load less than your average Lada or whatever that was made out of metal, but it could easily be repaired by your average farmer using tools they had in their shed.

Random side fact, this is a major cause why farmers are paying record prices for tractors nearly half a century old [1]. Or why the Russians are currently using so much ages-old stuff in the Ukraine war - modern tanks require a lot of logistics for repair and spare parts, but these old Russian clunkers? You can piss into the tank and it will probably drive on it. (Yes, I know, the Russians haven't been maintaining their tanks properly, which is a major factor in why they were not able to take Kyiw)

[1] https://www.startribune.com/for-tech-weary-midwest-farmers-4...

How are non-capitalists countries dealing with extreme temperatures ?

I'd argue there are no non-capitalist countries

No Google data center issues, or melting railways in non-capitalists countries, because Google data centers or railways are the result of capitalist economies.

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