Also given the time frame that we need to decarbonize the grid, we can't really put our hopes in fusion for the near to medium term.
145 karma · joined October 17, 2012
Another key difference in the Netherlands is that 84% of workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement.
Workers coming together to make demands from Capital is the only way to achieve these working conditions.
This is my favorite thing. Whenever someone describes something like "Counterfeit Capitalism" or "Crony Capitalism", it's always just describing capitalism.
The answer to these problems however isn't just saying "everyone stop eating tomatoes in the winter." You know full well that tomatoes grown in the summer are grown using the same shit, they can just source them from somewhere a little bit further north.
Why is it that I can go to the grocery store and see two different types of tomatoes: one type is cheaper and is killing the planet and the other is more expensive but safe for the environment? I have the means and the knowledge to buy the more expensive one but we can't expect that someone living paycheck to paycheck is going to be willing or even able to do the same. They aren't the ones to blame here.
I do agree that we can't expect someone else to solve this problem for us. We need collective action to demand significant regulation and change to the economic system. Scolding individual people for making rational economic decisions when they have a boot on their neck isn't going to fix anything.
Why are people buying this food that is harming the planet??
Trying to flatten all these problems into the failings of individual customer decisions completely obfuscates the actual cause of these problems. Which is generally an economic system that puts private profits above everything else.
Years of tax cuts for corporations and the rich combined with the destruction of Unions and workers ability to collectively bargain has created this problem. Start taxing wealth and corporate profits at post-ww2 levels, increase protections for workers. Encourage co-operatives, profit sharing, and other forms of worker control and ownership.
"Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.
For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society."