Is it just money that motivates these people? Is that all? At this point, they must just want to watch civilization collapse for short-term gains.
In other words, this is a cynical lament about how other people suck that's not descriptive enough to be useful or falsifiable. I believe in acknowledging harsh realities for the sake of dealing with them, but there's just no substance here to even acknowledge.
Nobody benefits from this sort of thinking.
The psychological mechanism seems to be [social] media psychosis. It's been slowly festering through decades of reactionary talk radio, but really went into overdrive when the attention-surveillance industry went to town promoting the dumbest least common denominator memetic reactions to outrage bait.
signed, a libertarian who actually believes in a strong natural right to free speech, the right to keep and bear arms, fiscal responsibility, individualism, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and many more unenumerated personal liberties.
for example:
1) more expensive energy of any kind is extremely harmful to society
EDIT: more expensive energy reduces prosperity for everyone. Renewable energy can and should be competitive and cost effective.
2) automatic filing of taxes is more harmful long-term than individuals filing taxes manually
EDIT: automatic filing will lead to silent frictionless automatic tax increases, forever.
3) government funding of internet/broadband/etc is harmful
EDIT: picking winners is more harmful that makeing good public policies.
it's just hard to reason though the details, though it is worth the effort.
My point is that there could be valid viewpoints that are not self-serving/greed-based.
Part of it is that there is more than one opponent. So for example:
> automatic filing will lead to silent frictionless automatic tax increases, forever.
There are presumably real people with this concern, and it's not completely ridiculous. But then there should be ways to mitigate it. Let's compromise by requiring tax withholding to show up on bank statements. Instead of your bank statement just showing that you got a +$1100 deposit from your employer, it's required to show the full +$1800 they paid you and then separate the -$700 in transfers to the state and federal governments for the various tax withholdings.
That should satisfy the people concerned about making taxes invisible because then you're actually giving them what they want. But then there are the other opponents, and that compromise is obviously not going to satisfy the politicians taking bribes from the TurboTax company.
But it's still useful to distinguish them, because you may not need both. You only need 51 votes, not 100. If you started with 45, maybe that sort of compromise can get you 6 more.
The point of argument is when people have to be reminded of the contradictions: if you file a tax claim and claim allowances you acknowledge tax exists. If your health fund demands you also exploit state or federal subsidy you're exploiting the benefits. If your company receives industry offsets or assistance...
But that's just a straw man. To hold that belief you would have to e.g. actually want to "defund the police" to avoid the need for tax revenue to pay them. Is that supposed to be a common position among Republicans?
The real contention is how much. There is a large difference between the government taking 5% of your salary and 65%, even if taxes exist in both cases. And then if you think ordinary people should be paying less than they are now rather than more, you'll reasonably want to oppose things that conceal tax collection from the constituents who are paying them, because then those constituents will be less likely to notice and object to excessive spending.
For fossil-fuel companies, it's about control and extending the world's dependency on their products as far into the future as possible. The others are on their dole to one degree or another, when you consider that many of the edges in the graph in the article represent not only relationships, but also flows of money.
This is playing out like the hubris film companies had towards digital sensors. Seems they don’t teach history in MBA programs I guess.
Btw, I looked up Juul from your other comment and saw they're 35% owned by Altria (formerly Philip Morris) who are "one of the world's largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes, and medical products in the treatment of illnesses caused by tobacco." [1]
You couldn't hope for a more tragically hilarious summation of the cynicism in this industry than that combination of businesses to be in
Control and relevance. These things matter to them as much as profit.
The barrier to entry to produce renewables is lower than fossil fuels - there is no natural oligopoly.
If you own your house, you can put solar on your roof and a battery on your house, and dramatically cut back on your fossil fuel derived energy needs. Communities can do the same, as can utilities and independent businesses.
That's a future where fossil fuel companies are far less relevant. Not irrelevant, but nothing like what they were. That future may be unavoidable, but they are trying to delay its arrival as much as they can. While that may seem like an anathema to many (including me), put yourself in the shoes of a major investor in or executive at a fossil-fuel company, and you might do the same.
Those initiatives failed due to short-termism, infighting, failure to commit sufficient resources, et cetera.
That's a very different skill set than gaining access to scarce mineral resources and monopolising them to extract maximum profit.
Some subcontractors may have transferrable skills e.g. offshore boat crews but at a high level the two industries are fairly incompatible.
It doesn't help that the fossil companies have succeeded in using politics to salt the ground of their potential new ventures at home. A real burn the boats moment for them.
The US looked at that and said "let's tax raw material imports" and half the population is too stupid to realize that they're the ones paying those taxes.
EDIT: it should be noted this is hardly a criticism of China's strategy here- they wanted an industry they saw potential in, subsidized it and bought IP which other countries offered up, and reaped the rewards. They just literally played capitalism better.
> The tobacco industry undermines tobacco control efforts in low-income countries and targets vulnerable populations through aggressive marketing and lobbying for less tobacco control and lower taxes.
Unfortunately for fossil fuels most of the world are importers of their products which makes them a tough sell as other options become cheaper.
If what you know is how to pull oil out of the ground, and build multi billion dollar rigs to do it, that's your sector.
Plus you'll never find a better multiplier then software and consumer spending.
I'm not saying it's true - I have no idea. But it's at least a rational reason for opposing renewables, which otherwise seems to be very irrational.
Is oil really that profitable to ignore the havoc it wreaks and will wreak on virtually every other industry, including itself when there is less money moving around to spend on oil and oil products?
I just don’t get it how being so objectively shortsighted is actually the corrupt greedy money position instead of ensuring the world as we know it doesn’t collapse and that the money printing machine doesn’t fall apart. But what do I know I guess.
It's really unfortunate that such glaring cognitive defects appear to have doomed the human race smothering itself to death on this planet instead of reaching out to the stars.
But that is uncomfortable. We like certainty more. We prefer an easily identified enemy.
The difference (in many things) is not the motivation but the beliefs about what to do about it. Political opponents are more similar than different. By understanding the other you can reach them and effectively change them.
If you are puzzled by a group of people the issue is not that group - it is the puzzlement!
However one effective political tactic is to outgroup and other an opponent. It strengthens your sense of belonging to the right group. The danger is that it is inward facing and lowers inclusiveness. Empathy generally weakens ones own political passions but brings more peace. Restricting empathy increases enthusiasm and energy and action.
Moreover, there are academic studies and popular schools of thought that say empathy is dangerous, that people should be entitled to their rage and emotions and that people shouldn't be forced to understand. That empathy itself is a tool of power.
Now solar is a quicker way to decarbonize, so similar efforts are anti-solar, pro-nuclear.
There’s several competing flavors of it like the ones who think “the good” communist revolution will happen after society collapses vs the ones who want democracy to fall apart because they think monarchical societies are morally superior, but they all have the same line of thinking that “the collapse” is coming any day now and they want to accelerate when they say occurs
The former RCP members who joined the tory party in the UK, people like Dominic Cummings are interesting of course. And Steve Bannon is fond of posturing as a Maoist in style if not in substance. His oilskin coat is a performance Mao jacket.
University student?