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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Eating the rich will reduce emissions and feed the poor.
Probably fix a big chunk of the housing issues too
Mmmmmm... rich...
What will you do when the rich are gone, emissions are still high, and your realize the scope of the problem is way bigger than any stupid obvious fix?
Donyou realize that the top 1% is creating around 25% of the pollution with their Jets and yacht etc... and they horde moat of the houses to profit from the fact you need housing. And they create food scarcity to rise the prices etc... so yeah keep thinking you'll become one of them some day. Even if you made 1 million a year you would still need to live a thousand years to make a billion.
This is assinine and doesn't even slightly pass the smell test. 25 percent is a LOT and private jets and such would have to be absolutely nutty to be accounting for that much.
In reality this number is based on a shitty study that counts workplace and investments as your emissions instead of consumption. This is basically saying:
You own a company that produces X, you're responsible for those emissions, not the people who buy them.
At that point your emissions figures aren't a measure of emissions, there a measure of stock ownership. Ending the emissions of the wealthy would also end your access to everything their investments produce, which is like.... everything you buy.
I am just randomly tossing this into y'all's conversation, use it as you wish. Aviation in general contributes 2.5% of the global emissions, (3.5% if you would like to read the fine print). That is ALL aviation, not just a selection of jets held by a few people. The 25% value is a real thing too but I think @VieuxQueb is misquoting it. A single private jet round trip from coast-to-coast of the United States with a party of four aboard (not counting pilots) is 25% the CO₂ value the average American will emit. There's actually a quora that talked about this when whatever news agency said this same thing.
I distinctly remember some news organization saying this, but it was worded so confusingly, I had a feeling someone would put it back together incorrectly. I cannot blame VieuxQueb, some of this stuff that's talked about is metrics that are hard to digest.
So. I just wanted to put that out there for you two. Thank you for your time. Hopefully that helps you all out.
No. You have offended me and I am now very angry at you.
Well now I shall drink my coffee knowing that I have angered some random person on the Internet. Not because that I have completed my task of finding someone randomly to anger, because I had no such task, but because my coffee is getting cold and it is solely what is keeping me alert enough to work and post things that anger people at the same time.
In seriousness, LOL. That does seem to be some people's reaction to people just interjecting randomness into conversations. I think those people just need a good cup of coffee.
Why is the company that produces X responsible and not the company that produces Y, an input to X? That is very arbitrary.
Oh right the rich are rich because they convinced us to consume all kinds of needless stuff through constant advertising and marketing. And the manufacturing, warehousing and selling of those products all cost energy we get from fossil fuels is the issues. So silly. Eat me.
Yeah, they "convinced us" to want to buy things.
Dumbest Marxist conspiracy theory out there. People like having stuff. You can convince them to get different stuff but people aren't going to go all hobbit and live a simple life if given the choice 9 of ten times
When did consumerism become a Marxist conspiracy.
When I grew up, it wasn't. We all understanding that department stores and companies sold us all kinds of things we didn't need and in order to do that they had to create FOMO. Marketers job was to make viewers insecure. Make girls feel ugly without the latest fashion. Make guys feel unmanly without their BBQ or truck.
Without this constant advertising we do not want this stuff. that's why advertising is a billion dollar industry. Life pre department store era , we're talking pre 50s, you'd be considered insane to have the stuff we do and purchase like we do. Its still insane just acceptable to be such a glutton because advertisers made it normal to consume.
The vast majority of this isn't what makes up the economy or fossil fuel emissions and generally the people engaged in random department store shopping are doing it well under their own motivation.
Fantastically wealthy you mean. People in the 50s wanted to have all this crap too. They just couldn't have it because the economy was tiny.
I'm not sure how you arrived at that.
Industry is responsible for more than 20% of all emissions. But there's more to that 20% if you throw in what it takes to create any widget sold.
Products don't simply appear on store shelves; there's no such thing as a free lunch. It involves a complex process: raw resources are mined and extracted, transformed into usable materials, and then shipped to factories across the planet. These materials undergo processing and are transported to other locations, where they are built into widgets and once again shipped to store shelves. These items are often owned for as little time as possible and then discarded, contributing to the ever-growing pile of waste generated by consumer purchases.
Each of these steps requires energy, and in many cases, this energy is produced in countries with lax regulations on energy production. Another issue is known as "supply chain sprawl," where logistics and supply chains are spread out due to globalization. This can result in parts being loaded onto large shipping vessels, which are responsible for emitting more than three percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and then shipped back and forth across the ocean. There are astonishing stories of parts that are shipped across the ocean, attached to a board with just four screws, only to be shipped back to their place of origin before being shipped across the ocean once again for sale. Each of these steps requires electricity and power generation, whether it's for moving ships, manufacturing machinery, transportation, or maintaining the lights. All of these factors add up, some obvious and some less so.
You can choose to ignore it, but you can't deny that it all comes at a cost. One of the most significant reductions we could make in the fight against climate change is by reducing our consumerist habits, as they have been ingrained into our culture by advertisers like Edward Bernays and other psychologists from the Mad Men era, who figured out how to influence the masses and promote consumerism." Think of the dent we could make immediately by just not buying shit and if we have to, buying shit that lasts a lifetime or as long as possible.
You have never been under your own motivation. Motivation is a hodge podge of multiple contributing factors where many are out of your control. Which is why there is big money in convincing you that you are in control. Its the information age now. They know you better than you know yourself.
When you start out with such a massively misleading statement like:
When industry is literally stuff like cars, industrial equipment, oil production, basically all chemical production, and so on and so forth.
Cheap disposable plastic mall trinkets are not a major industrial sector. The vast majority of industrial spend is stuff that actually improves people's lives.
If you're going to start criticizing "products" then again you're talking about stuff that for the most part people just want. And stuff for the most part that people would want regardless of advertisements.
This:
Is what I'm talking about when I say it's conspiracy thinking.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
People are able to think for themselves.
It's extra hilarious that you link a study on subliminal messaging, which is one of the fields in psychology that have been embroiled in reproducibility issues and fraud.
All things required for manufacturing goods. Its in the link.
That's a narrow constraint you put on this, it isn't mine.
Improve lives how? That's a broad statement. My life can be improved by getting a new car every week. Doesn't mean it didn't cost a large amount or energy to produce and dispose of.
If that were true, how does a lawyer convince someone to divulge information in a deposition of a person that did not want to divulge information. You make a choice, but your choices are influenced by more than ourselves.
I provided one link for support. That does not mean its the only thing. Its used to show there is evidence and you are suppose to read between the lines that there is a whole field with much more. Its a stepping stone, not a destination. But you said this:
"I believe this only underscores my point. I don't think you are a psychologist. But this is something we all have heard online lots in these arguments. We all have been influenced by this refuting sentence and often repeat it. I've done it in the past. It's something that affects our choices because at some point it has left a memorable impact on us. If you search for 'reproducibility,' you'll find headline after headline on the topic. Oftentimes, it's used in internet arguments by people like us to dismiss things. It's a learned behavior in our culture war discourse. It has been ingrained as a way to reject an argument and to disregard the 'other side.' You didn't engage with the study itself. You didn't demonstrate that the article I shared was incorrect. Instead, you simply rejected it by citing 'reproducibility problems.' That's a learned behavior. You didn't independently pore over academic studies to come to this conclusion; rather, you were influenced by someone else to use this argument in these instances.
I was caught peddling bunk folk psychology to peddle my conspiracy theory about we are all getting manipulated to serve the evil overlords and that only makes my point stronger
I don't engage with flat earth bullshit or other conspiracy theories either. I engage with things that are worth engaging with. An Amazon pundit piece peddling crap about your free will being taken away subliminal messages goes into the instant trash with the other garbage.
Honestly, if I was guaranteed high speed internet access and my electronics with solar panels, I'd absolutely live a solarpunk hobbit lifestyle
Yes, we have a societal shift that's required in order to address this issue. It's going to have to be as massive if not larger in scope than the entire industrial revolution and on a timescale more accelerated than the industrial revolution. I would posit, that the rich have the most incentive to maintain the current societal paradigm and have the most access to institute policy that maintains such. And thus, in general, in order to effect such a social shift that is required to address the issues, the rich must either begin supporting policies that put their vast wealth at risk or that the rich must be eliminated.
The latter of that I would draw a parallel to a blocked river to farm fields. Removing the blockage doesn't instantly irrigate the fields. There's still lots of work to be done once the flow of the river is restored. BUT digging all those irrigation ditches does nothing unless flow is returned to the river. In my parallel, the rich are our blockage to the river and removing them doesn't technically fix everything, but it's a step required in order to get flow back.
You greatly underestimate the incentives at play here. In France it wasn't the wealthy who rioted over the gas tax. It was the average person.
The rich for the most part can afford and handle a transition, but the guy who is just barely making it now with the supercharged fossil fuel economy? They will not give up what they have in a million years. Not willingly.
There's some issue with like big companies wanting to keep their business model and lobbying for it, which is a real concern, but that's going to be a concern even with public companies with no "one percent" making the decisions.
Oh absolutely. Changes in society are going to affect the marginal the most. No disagreement there.
But I would indicate that we must look at the core issue on why the guy who is just barely making it now is in such a position. The monetary resources of this planet are finite and there is a group who is holding onto the vast majority of it. If that bulk of wealth was better distributed the guy who is just barely making it would have more at their disposal to absorb the impact of the change. That isn't to say that the change would not still be felt, but they would be better to navigate such change.
I would say that this undervalues the amount of consolidation that has happened in most industries. Where many industries are reduced to say a few players who dictate the direction the industry goes into. We need to diversify the mixture of players in many core industries in order to find those who take risks that could benefit solutions to climate change. That or we mitigate the risks at a governmental level in order to foster those changes.
It's no one fix and done kind of issue for sure. But the rich do hold an outsize grasp on the levers of change in government policy and industry direction. But I think we cannot just simply dismiss that they have such a position that is adverse to risk that comes with new initiatives that seek to reduce climate changing emissions and that they have incentive to be adverse to those risks. Removing them completely would absolve governments from implementing policies that cost taxpayers to mitigate those risks and free up capital locked into the hands of a few who would be adverse to take those risks.
There's also ways we can do all of the above without removing any players from any given industry, but there (at least to me so do understand this is solely my take on the matter) seems to be too many bad faith actors within these various industries that would be so affable to such changes and would seek to shift the winds more in their favor.
And that, I think, is the point I'm trying to make here. While they would absolutely be the ones better at handling the change, they are also the group that would seek to prevent the change in the first place. Because why have the change and potentially receive less when they can have no change and continue to receive their current amount? The road that they are on is proven to yield a known value and changing that brings about risks that can modify that yield in unknown ways. Why change to something unknown, when what is currently working has known values? It's a kind of profit inertia that grips a lot of industries.
The general public is just mostly struggling to get by, that profit inertia is less a factor in their day-to-day life. If there is a change, that via the liquidation of one who held large amounts of locked capital, we can mitigate the impact on those struggling; there is still an impact but by an avenue that does not require taxpayer dollars we can minimize it.
It's much like how in third world nations we were resource dumping onto these countries and preventing small players from gaining footholds. And by basically removing the ability for these rich companies to dump resources heavily subsidized onto the people of these nations we allowed smaller players to gain some traction. Yes, the cheap resources are gone and people are struggling, but allowing domestic production of these goods eventually allows for products that can be afforded by all, because the domestic production grants more liquidity to those who work the jobs, increases demand, and in turn requires expansion of those domestic industries to include even more workers. We, rich first world nations with industries that are outsized, just needed to stop dumping onto these countries to allow that to foster. A parallel of that to the rich, I believe can be made and is the point of my argument.
But that's not to detract from what you have here as well, in that the solution is much more complex than just a single issue. Eating the rich isn't the panacea folks believe it to be. Once those rich companies dumping on the poorer nations was gone, there still needed to be development of domestic production, that's a non-zero cost and risk.
Yeah, but I will say we have seen a move away from fossil fuels for home heating by the common person all across Canada the past few years. So it's also not impossible, there just needs to be some sort of program or incentive to push those to move or aid the cost burden of those who can't.
We did it with heat pumps and shit, might as well put more of that carbon tax money into other sectors affected by it.
People don't organize unless there is a wealthy benefactor behind them that can fund it. I would bet good money that behind the French riots was a Steve Bannon, RFK Jr or whatever Europe's version of those are. Its impossible to grass roots anything in today's world. It's like thinking you can walk into a chess tournament and clean house. You're competing with people for attention in a space where you're out gunned. The internet only looks like it's fuelled by grassroots movements. It's all bullshit. The vast majority of it is controlled by powerful people with lots of money competing for their interests
Eat the middle class!
Basically eat everyone more wealthy than an income of like 2 dollars a day.
Or invest heavily in nuclear power, implement work from home like in the COVID days for all workers that can do it and force companies to adapt to reduce car use, continue to incentivize solar and other green energy, and institute a hefty carbon tax.
Invest heavily in insulation for old homes and apartments, require landlords pay half of tenant electricity use.
We could cut emotions like in half if we were sufficiently motivated.
Could we really? The entire purpose of public education is to remove emotions so that one can reason about the world logically. I am not sure it has proven to be all that successful. At best in limited circumstances, but not without frequent regression.
Emissions. It's a typo
We could store the nuclear waste beside the plastic we dump in the poorer countries