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Comment by strken | Hacker News Reader

This is an oversimplification. Collective action is driven by a mass of individual beliefs that are strong enough to suppress bad actors. If you are one of the bad actors, it's more difficult to force the other bad actors to stop because they can accuse you of hypocrisy.

See e.g. Al Gore taking flights to speaking engagements about climate change. From one perspective, this is an effective tool and probably even carbon-negative if it leads to effective change. On another level, why is a guy with so many frequent flier miles telling me to fly less? Why is a rich guy who can eat the cost of a carbon tax telling me my plane tickets will cost more? Etc.

I am reminded of the "no ethical consumption under capitalism" refrain, which is sometimes used by people who don't like capitalism to justify taking the absolute least ethical option available.

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> why is a guy with so many frequent flier miles telling me to fly less?

Maybe this is nitpicking but just to satisfy my own record more than anything: that would be individual action and I agree Al gore shouldn’t be telling anyone to fly less.

> Why is a rich guy who can eat the cost of a carbon tax telling me my plane tickets will cost more?

Carbon taxes affect big consumers more than small ones, and I would absolutely support eg a Canadian “carbon price” model where the money is doled out to everyone at the end of the year. And if anyone is still worse off, tax oil companies more until poor people are least-bad-off :)

So far I’m on board with both.

I think you're misunderstanding me: the proposal of a carbon tax is fine, but if you're the person who spearheads it then it's most effective to already be individual acting. That way, you can't be accused of hypocrisy.

You can't support the tax as effectively unless you prove by your actions that you believe in the cause. While individual action won't directly solve the problem, failing to take individual action might jeopardise your ability to support collective action.

No. If you purely advocate for collective action and explicitly against individual action, people won’t hold you up as a personal martyr with higher moral standards. This happens when the conversation turns to blaming the individual. Stay on message, focus on collective action, and people will listen.

Individual blame and responsibility has become inexorably linked with the anti climate change movement unfortunately. It is a Trojan horse for those willing to derail the movement. But if you stay on message, and lead with “no individual action, only collective action”, any counter of “but You!” only serves to reinforce the message: “Yes, Me, because Us or Nobody.”

I agree with your overall point but the messaging is so crucial that even “people downvoted this because individual action, but…” no—no but: that’s the whole point. No but, no individual action. Moloch has nothing to do with an advocate or lack thereof. We need to stay really clearly on message: collective action solves a tragedy of the commons. The end.

Moloch becomes relevant when we fail to take collective action. At that point: yes, shame. On Us.

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