Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

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> focus on pivoting to renewables and developing reliable fusion energy...

You know that this would be accomplished through capitalism right?

The more we rail against capitalism and free markets (which every successful country from Denmark to Australia uses) the less likely we'll ever be to solve any problems.

The market is an unwieldy force that can be generally shaped in a direction by the people (purchasing decisions, sacrificing convenience) and the government (regulation, law, market fairness) to massively solve problems through innovation, technology, and other means. Ignoring the market, or restricting its capabilities leaves us with little to no tools to combat problems.

The much greater problem than "capitalist tendencies" is solving for people who absolutely refuse to modify their lifestyles (I must have my SUV and drive it comfortably and quickly to Costco on the 5 lane highway) to which market forces simply respond to, and who deny that humans are having a substantial effect on the global climate and would rather elect charlatans than people of substance.

On the other hand, we're trapped in a prisoner's dilemma with the very countries you mention.

It's a very bad situation we face, but I find that blaming capitalism or markets for failures of government to be counter-productive and in some ways actively hostile to working on addressing climate change.

Baudrillard wrote a while ago that "capital has never been linked by a contract to the society it dominates." It follows no social contract and is not at any moral obligation. He goes on to explain that asking it to follow some rules is laughable and absurd.

This was also Marx's argument, of the "don't blame the player, blame the game," ilk.

Capitalism only responds to market prices, and right now the true cost of carbon is not priced in. This is where government can help.

We should have a large, painful, but revenue neutral carbon tax that replaces income tax. Then you sit back and watch as people cut their carbon emissions to 'dodge taxes', exactly as designed.

I actually think capitalism and free markets are the most viable solution. The problem is "short-sighted" capitalism that focuses on quarterly "hand to mouth" profits as opposed to people seeing the long-term business opportunities that lie in pivoting to renewables. As much as I detest Elon Musk, I think making the eco-friendly option cool and desirable for reasons beyond environmental impact is one of the best ways to encourage growth towards a more eco-friendly society.

BEVs aren't the eco-friendly option. Density, biking, walking, and mass transit are. Those still aren't "cool." Musk made a feel-good option profitable for himself. And don't even get me started on rocket fuel.

I really can't find any substance in this argument. You're just saying "capitalism isn't the problem, it's the solution!" without offering anything that would convince someone who doesn't already believe that.

So what you're saying is that we should tax carbon so that it correctly reflects the externalities and let the market sort it out from there?

Because currently capitalism has no interest in emissions because they don't cost anything. But that is a failure of capitalism, or at least our current incarnation of it. And it needs fixing to be part of the solution. You could blame government for not fixing the flaw, but the flaw is in capitalism none the less.

> So what you're saying is that we should tax carbon so that it correctly reflects the externalities and let the market sort it out from there?

I think carbon pricing is a great idea from what I've learned about it. Though, I disagree with you that the lack of carbon pricing is the fault of capitalism and I feel like you are kind of making that argument by saying that emissions don't cost anything so how would a market account for something with no price? I place that blame solely on governments for that.

1. I wouldn't say that capitalism, at its core is a government construct.

2.capitalism is about valuing things to allow / encourage efficient allocation.

There is a cost to pumping co2 into the atmosphere. Capitalism doesn't take that into account. And as that is what it should be doing, failing to do so is a failure of capitalism.

Now the government could (and should) step in to fix that failure. Their failure to step in is a different failure, the root failure is with capitalism, the governments failure is a failure to step in and fix it.

It's like if my house catches on fire and the fire service turns up without any hoses. That is a failure of the fire service. If this becomes a widespread problem and the fire service shows it isn't capable of fixing itself then the govt should step in to fix it. But any failure by the govt to step in is a failure of oversight not of failing to put my fire out.

I don't know what you mean by construct, but capitalism is an economic system that is regulated and enabled by the government because in order to own private property either you have to defend it yourself or you have the government set rules and act as the enforcement mechanism. Capitalism is one type of economic system that operates with the blessing of the government but there are others. Soviet Russia is an example of a different type of economic system. Capitalism couldn't flourish there because the government decided to not allow it to exist.

> capitalism is about valuing things to allow / encourage efficient allocation.

I think you are confusing a market pricing mechanic which is a feature of capitalism with the core tenet of capitalism which is the existence of the private ownership of the means of production.

> There is a cost to pumping co2 into the atmosphere. Capitalism doesn't take that into account. And as that is what it should be doing, failing to do so is a failure of capitalism.

For me the blame will always go to the government (and people) for failure to regulate because a market in a capitalist economy cannot value something that isn't being bought or sold. You point this out yourself by saying "capitalism is about valuing things...". The value is either 0 (until global warming starts getting nasty) or undiscovered. Nobody is buying or selling carbon (so far), so there's nothing for market economies to do with it. That's part of why a carbon tax in my mind seems like a great idea because we can introduce a pricing mechanic into a market economy and then allow efficient allocation of resources.

Capitalism is not a clear cut binary of "public/private." This is not an essential element of this system, as you have capitalist apparatuses acting in totalitarian/communist states, such as state owned beer companies in China that still act as capitalist entities, i.e. they are invested in in expectations to grow the profits from this company. It is actually speculated by theorists like Althusser that the private/public dynamic doesn't even exist. Maybe you are talking about the definition accepted by market exchange semantics, where anyone can gamble on a company vs. only a specific number of people/one person gambles on it.

I agree that it is not necessarily clear cut, and your example is a good one but we have to start somewhere and I'm not sure that this is material to the conversation at hand anyway except that if the corporations are state-owned then it's just even more the government's fault that they're polluting.

Of course new configurations of so-called private and public entities can and will occur and it's more of a shades of gray kind of thing. But to the extent that they become closer to the government (like US defense contractors for example which are publicly traded entities which are privately owned) it just, as in the case with China, becomes more of the government's fault that they're allowed to pollute.

In my mind there's no way to escape that the fault of climate change rests squarely on the shoulders of the government and the people. People just don't want to look in the mirror or accept responsibility so it's easy to blame everything on ephemeral billionaires and corporations and then nothing gets done because we can just complain instead of no longer flying, or having to use paper straws or whatever pisses people off these days.

Well, I agree that it's people's fault. But "the government" is also an ephemeral entity, as you put it. It is not a monolith, but a sometimes loosely connected collection of organs of power and ideology. Is the president "government?" Are teachers or cops who are government employees "government?" Are the contractors, or air force pilots "government?" If so, how could all these individuals collectively be held responsible for pollution? The discussion on what government actually is is completely outside the scope here, but the lines between whatever government is and capitalist urges, goals and methodologies are usually blurred. Louis Althusser mentioned above explained that state power cannot be had, it can only be used. And it is used in liberal democracies by capitalist agents, just as in totalitarian states by totalitarian agents. But always there is a coalescence of ideologies and apparatuses.

I think you're trying to have your cake and eat it too here where you are tossing up government and government employees as ephemeral but not giving the same consideration to corporate entities. Is a janitor at Exxon Mobile responsible for climate change? How long do they have to work there before they're at fault? A day? A year? If they're not at fault and it's just the executives, why would we also not place the same blame at the feet of government leadership?

My main issue here is that I don't believe blaming "billionaires" or "corporations" actually helps address climate change. Regulation and reduction of personal consumption does, but since we have been unable to regulate and we refuse to reduce personal consumption, we instead lay blame at the feet of corporations who get confused. Do you want to fly or not? You say no but you keep buying tickets. Funny enough I think out of all three of these entities, corporations are doing the most to address climate change, typically in spite of what people demand.

I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) Nor did I not blame any janitors, as they are not usually capitalists. They usually do not have any capital, nor do they make any decision on how to increase profits, etc. And besides, this is a false analogy - janitors that work at office buildings are different from government employees, such as teachers who disseminate state ideology and cops who enforce state laws with threat of violence.

What you're saying is capitalist entities are blameless because there is no moral obligation for them to stop polluting, and as long as someone pays them and consumes their products/services this is ok. This falls completely within theory - as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates.

> I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :)

But as you know I’m not speaking about you specifically so your preferences are irrelevant at the individual level here. Most people want to fly and so they demand corporations serve their need.

> janitors

Eh they just disseminate corporate ideology so no difference there. Does the janitor that works for the government not disseminate ideology?

> as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates.

If you deprive capital of agency such that it has no moral or social obligations the idea that it subjugates anything doesn’t make sense either. It’s a force so you have to treat it like one. Do rocks, and air, and grass subjugate society too? If not, well. If so, then I’m not going to be outraged by that because it’s just physics.

This hospitality toward capitalism results in no progress toward climate change because even if you sat down one day and made the case that climate change is 100% attributable to corporate actions you’d still have to regulate them and keep a capitalist system and so the failure of regulation would continue to rest with the government.

No, a janitor doesn't disseminate ideology. This is.. ridiculous. Anyway, obviously this has spiraled into a farce, so all the best!

>I think you are confusing a market pricing mechanic which is a feature of capitalism with the core tenet of capitalism which is the existence of the private ownership of the means of production.

Well you could argue that one means nothing without the other. But anyway, what bearing does private ownership have this context? I accept I used loose words but in this context the relevant part of capitalism is its pricing mechanism. So no I'm not confusing the 2.

If I buy a piece of a company, or land or whatever the government has no hand in deciding that value. Sure government policy could impact the value but if the government didn't have anything to do with it, it would have value, if the government is deciding the value it probably isn't capitalism (yes i know there are counter examples in 'capitalist' societies) .

What is the market value of not releasing a kg of co2? Yes people will pay to have trees planted, but who's going to pay Amazon to electrify its fleet to not emit co2? A kg of not co2 is worthless under capitalism, which isn't reflective of its value. That is a failure of capitalism. The fact that we are discussing having the govt step in to correct that failure doesn't negate the failure. A carbon tax (note taxes aren't inherent to capitalism) or carbon trading scheme will be synthetic govt constructs. Sure they harness capitalism and capitalistic mechanisms to work, but capitalism can't/hasn't got there on its own.

Part of the reason I mention the private ownership of the means of production here is because you wouldn't get very far suggesting that people shouldn't be able to start businesses or give money to startups or anything like that. That's what capitalism is. I don't recall how we got onto that tangent (sorry).

But I think as I'm reading your comment again we get back to this core idea of "responsibility" or perhaps expectations. I do not have an expectation for a capitalist market to price something that nobody is buying or selling.

To your point, I don't think capitalism has gotten there on its own. But the fault does not lie with corporations and this economic model, but in our failure to mitigate its flaws through regulation. Emissions are strictly a regulatory problem that needs to be addressed and if you continue to blame corporations and capitalism you'll just never make any progress on climate change. In my mind it's just a crutch people use to avoid changing their lifestyle or demanding that their government take action. It's much easier to just blame corporations for anything bad instead of reducing consumption. Certainly they bare responsibility and need to be contributors and all, but we need to change our government and our own habits too. A model where you buy Ford F-150 trucks, then protest outside of a Ford factory for selling you the truck is simply not a model that will address climate change.

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