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Comment by zzgo | Hacker News Reader

> How can this be done peacefully is beyond me

What you're proposing (ending consumerism, tourism) is nothing short of revolutionary. I don't imagine that the future is going to be bloodless with or without a revolution.

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I’m convinced one of the best ways is to make the right choices financially easier, and make the wrong ones (much) more expensive. Fully subsidise trains and tax the crap out of flying. Do the same for cars running on fossil fuels Tax carbon heavy foods like meat. Repeat until this starts changing consumer behaviour

I agree that this is a reasonable place to start. Unfortunately, I don't think that politicians will be able to implement reforms like this without severe backlash from the public. So the ones that do might just get voted out in the next election. But it's what we need to do at a minimum.

Even just taxing jet fuel at the usual rates for other fuels would be a useful start.

I suspect consumerism and tourism would mostly evaporate bloodlessly if advertising were successfully banned.

I'm not sure a successful ban is even possible, given e.g. influencers. However, ending social media may inherently solve this pathway?

Reworking an economy so that wasteful overproduction on gadgets and (specifically: over-engineered) hobby equipment* ceases, without also breaking the supply of industrial capacity that allows a military to ramp up fast in a hot war, is I think completely unsolved?

* see Mrwhosetheboss videos about, well, a lot; but specifically all the things he goes back to after a while and reveals were over-rated and didn't really solve problems despite being shiny at first glance

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