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Comment by nroets | Hacker News Reader

I fail to see how corporations are responsible for the climate crisis: Politicians won't tax gas because they'll get voted out.

We know that Trump is not captured by corporations because his trade policies are terrible.

If anything, social media is the evil that's destroying the political center: Americans are no longer reading mainstream newspapers or watching mainstream TV news.

The EU is saying the elections in Romania was manipulated through manipulation of TikTok accounts and media.

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If you put a knife in someone’s heart, you’re the one who did it and ultimately you’re responsible. If someone told you to do it and you were just following orders… you still did it. If you say there were no rules against putting knives in other people’s hearts, you still did it and you’re still responsible.

If it’s somehow different for corporations, please enlighten me how.

The oil companies are saying their product is vital to the economy and they are not wrong. How else will we get food from the farms to the store ? Ambulances to the hospitals ? And many, many other things.

Taxes are the best way to change behaviour (smaller cars driving less. Less flying etc). So government and the people who vote for them is to blame.

I agree with everything here, we've had a great run of economic expansion for basically two centuries and I like my hot showers as much as anyone - but that doesn't change the CO2 levels.

What if people are manipulated by bot farms and think tanks and talking points supported by those corporations?

I think this view of humans - that they look at all the available information and then make calm decisions in their own interests - is simply wrong. We are manipulated all the damn time. I struggle to go to the supermarket without buying excess sugar. The biggest corporations in the world grew fat off showing us products to impulse buy before our more rational brain functions could stop us. We are not a little pilot in a meat vessel.

Corporations would prefer lower corporate tax.

US corporate tax rates are actually every high. Partly due to the US having almost no consumption tax. EU members have VAT etc.

Did you know that VAT is spelled TARRIF in retard?

There are politicians in multiple states trying to pass laws that slow down the deployment of renewable energy because they’re afraid if they don’t intervene it will be deployed too quickly and harm fossil fuel interests. Trump is promising to bring back coal, while he bans new wind leases. The whole “oil is the only way aw shucks people chose it” shtick is like a time capsule from 1990. That whole package of beliefs served its purpose and has been replaced with a muscular state-sponsored plan to defend fossil fuel interests even as they become economically obsolete and the rest of the world moves on.

The oil companies also knew and lied about global warming for decades. They paid and continue to pay for as science to stall action. I am completely mystified how you can find them blameless for venal politicians and a populace that largely believes their lies.

> Politicians won't tax gas because they'll get voted out.

Have you seen gas tax rates in the EU?

> We know that Trump is not captured by corporations because his trade policies are terrible.

Unless you think it's a long con for some rich people to be able to time the market by getting him to crash it.

> The EU is saying the elections in Romania was manipulated through manipulation of TikTok accounts and media.

More importantly, Romanian courts say that too. And it was all out in the open, so not exactly a secret

Romainan courts say all kinds of things, many of them patently false. It's absurd to claim that since romanian courts say something, it must be true. It's absurd in principle, because there's nothing in the concept of a court that makes it infallible, and it's absurd in this precise case, because we are corrupt as hell.

I'm pretty sure the election was manipulated, but the court only said so because it benefits the incumbents, which control the courts and would lose their power.

It's a struggle between local thieves and putin, that's all. The local thieves will keep us in the EU, which is much better than the alternative, but come on. "More importantly, Romanian courts say so"? Really?

> I'm pretty sure the election was manipulated, but the court only said so because it benefits the incumbents, which control the courts and would lose their power.

Why do you think that's the only reason the court said so? The election law was pretty blatantly violated (he declared campaign funding of 0, yet tons of ads were bought for him and influencers paid to advertise him).

> Politicians won't tax gas because they'll get voted out.

I wonder if that's corporations' fault after all: shitty working conditions and shitty wages, so that Bezos can afford to send penises into space. What poor person would agree to higher tax on gas? And the corps are the ones backing politicians who'll propagandize that "Unions? That's communism! Do you want to be Chaina?!" (and spread by those dickheads on the corporate-owned TV and newspaper, drunk dickheads who end up becoming defense secretary)

When people have more money, they tend to buy larger cars that they drive further. Flying is also a luxury.

So corporations are involved in the sense that they pay people more than a living wage.

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