If we had a carbon tax that correctly priced the environmental impact of goods, it would decrease consumption. Without having to shame people into removing themselves from the economy.
"Increasing the retail price of tobacco products through higher taxes is the single most effective way to decrease consumption and encourage tobacco users to quit." [0]
https://www.who.int/tobacco/mpower/publications/en_tfi_mpowe...
E.g. raising gas prices will dramatically hurt citizens living on the country side or outside cities without public transport, and force them to move into the cities, which in turn cause higher demand on housing and rent increase.
Lower middle class should see no change. Middle class should see a net loss if they don't change their habits. And anything beyond would see a substantial loss.
Give each person a carbon ration, if you didn't use it fully you get money back. If you used more than your fair share you have to pay significantly large taxes that go directly to the pockets of people who use less and infrastructure.
No, you'll just remove them from the economy without their consent, by introducing regulation to artificially lower supply. Everyone is against this: the companies who won't make as much profit and the consumers who won't be able to purchase the goods that they want. Good luck with that.
A few things:
1. Presumably any carbon tax would have to be secured and defended by our democratic institutions. Thus we would have consent (or as close as you can get to large scale consent in our multi-actor society). While I agree that regulating basic consumption for large swaths of the economy has a bit of an authoritarian bend to it, I'm not sure how else we incentivize ourselves to decrease consumption.
2. Lowered supply is not a given. Companies would be incentivized to find production chains, energy sources, and materials that had a lower impact (and thus a lower tax). Less impactful products would be able to price themselves under the high-impact products and satiate the demand.
EDIT Added 3. Consumption itself is not the enemy. The thing we want to minimize is negative externalities. It just so happens that under our current system, manipulating levels of consumption is the only lever our society has for affecting industrial emissions.
If we want to buy less we need to shrink the economy, including government spend.
Personally, I’m just trying to build more things and gather more things myself. Buys less and saves money.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
If you want to encourage someone to do something more to solve problems, how about suggesting people give to the poor in their immediate locale -- like donating to a local shelter or poverty relief organization.
I’ve lived in rural America and if you want to help the poor, open a Walmart. Their prices were lower than the dime store and they hired people of all races and you could work there without being groped by the old owner. Of course it wasn’t perfect as there are flaws with Walmart too. But as far as utilitarian impact on the poor buying stuff can be very helpful.
Veblen goods [0] arguably create a real problem for the concept of markets being efficient. Essentially, the market signals feed on themselves, converting to hard-to-fake status signals, expending great energy at producing nothing: not as a byproduct, but as a primary effect. (Curiously, luxury goods share some DNA with Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining.)
Don't get me wrong, markets beat communism and mercantilism by a country mile; but as economists like to remind us, economic models are fundamentally agnostic to what people want, and people are often incentivized to treat inefficiency as a feature rather than a bug.
Since this is about status rather than the goods, it can flip on a dime to asceticism when that becomes a high status good. Monk habits, Mao suits and military uniforms are also status goods, and all broadcast the expenditure of great energy that often produces nothing, or less. Buying less can be a status symbol almost as easily as buying more.
This is so wrong on so many levels. I pity your female work colleagues. Unless you were talking about a dad purchasing some luxury stuff for his daughter, but I guess you didn't have that in mind.
Disgusting. They are not his. Is this really how you talk about women?
That said, I have personally stopped profligate purchases on Amazon/Express - promised the wife we'd clean out the garage before buying new non-essentials and have reduced online spending to 1/5th of last year (YMMV our garage was chock full of stuff).
If people were actually following the program, we would be in a much different place.
No need for that, some of consumers themselves have begun shaming their fellow consumers who buy way more stuff than they need. I know I've started doing that in the last couple of years, since I've realized that no amount of recycling or legislation is going to stop climate change, it has to start from us. Yeah, people who buy a lot of stuff are to blame, if you buy a lot of stuff you're to blame for all the bad things that happen to our climate.
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/longing-nostalgia/20... [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306624X1141891...
Running lightbulbs in an average home for a year uses more resources than travel.
Lighting is 17% of global carbon emissions, I think [0]. And air travel is 2.5% or so.
Many people don’t even have the option not to travel, but everyone can choose not to use electric lights.
[0] https://www.ledonecorp.com/using-led-lighting-to-reduce-your...
[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/778692814/choosing-not-to-fly...
Electricity comes out at 50% only when the category is "Electricity and heating" [1], usually it comes in at 20-30% depending on country. A lobby group promoting adoption of LED lighting in 2006 while all domestic use was still tungsten claims 6% is lighting[2]. Post LED adoption, perhaps 0.5-1%. Does anyone still use tungsten aside from some specialised use given LED bulbs are down to tungsten prices?
It appears to be a small enough percentage I can't find anywhere picking out lighting individually.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-co2-emissi...
Sorry, but you are dead wrong. Together and family is just what we need.
Easy, right? However, I am not sure it is correct. For instance, if you produce less than 2 kids (e.g., 0) AND it was your decision, would not it mean that all the carbon footprint went to adapt/improve your genetic material (including your grand-grand-parents) is a waste in some sense? You are the last one of your branch. Wasn't you fooled to believe you should have no kids? Makes a lot of sense for other branches to fool you and gain a greater ratio of the entire genetic material (this is basically the definition of fitness function in evolutionary biology - to have more offspring / a greater ratio of genetic material). Evolutionary processes at play.
>> Think of all the fossil fuel infrastructure, wouldn't it be a waste to stop using it?
Most likely, it would be a waste to stop using it right now.
>> Your goals and goals of your genes are not the same. You should care about as much about your genes as your genes care for you (not at all)
Living organisms are genetically wired to care about their genes, e.g., to express them (e.g., to write posts on HN and publish scientific papers) and spread them (to have kids).
:-)
The term 'retail therapy' is a very real thing.
I think a lot of our consumerism is connected to our disconnection and lifestyle, and this is related to how we set up our cities and communities. From population density, to walk-ability of cities, etc.
When I lived in the third world, in an area with pretty high population density, mixed use zoning, and high walk-ability I would consume less 'stuff' and more experiences. For instance, instead of driving to TJ max to buy some new clothes as I would here, I might take a walk and buy some pastry... which I'd be hungry for from walking. It was from a small producer, who used less materials for packaging than a large one would. I'd also get to know people who I'd regularly see, and that also reduced consumption of good I think as I would stop and connect with other people. We are pleasure seekers, and if consumerism is the easiest way to satiate that desire, it will be done in a consumerist way.
I'm not saying our consumerism is ONLY about lifestyle, but I think going into what causes consumption is more effective at reducing it than simply saying 'hey you, don't do that'. I think it's why in some parts of Europe people seem to buy less junk and more quality, artisanal made items.
