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0 pointspaulmd2y ago0 comments

taxing meat is what I'm referring to as "changing the rules of the game", it affects everyone. But a personal decision to just eat less meat yourself is not going to affect anything, because all you're doing is making beef cheaper for everyone else, and they'll eat more of it as a result.

however, you have to really change the rules of the game for everyone, such that consumption is actually substantially curtailed. even with a country-level tax, you're only making it cheaper for other countries who don't care. We saw this play out with Russian oil last year - banning it from the West didn't make it go away, it just made it cheaper for certain other states to import it. The commodity market is global.

(We can certainly enforce these kinds of rules globally when there is political will to do so - Iran sanctions are one example. If you do business with Iran, you won't do business with anyone who uses SWIFT, or anyone who does business with anyone who uses SWIFT. A line is drawn between the "sanctions-compliant" world and the "sanctions-non-compliant" world and it's generally extremely effective such that smuggling incidents are international news.)

The fundamental point I'm trying to make here is the "capitalism routes around inefficiency/morality". That's what it's designed to do, in the same way the internet routes around infrastructure damage (or censorship etc, which is fundamentally infrastructure damage). By taking a moral stand, you only increase the alpha available for other players to exploit.

These "individual moralistic stand" approaches like personal-scale recycling are inherently less effective than taxing producers, or outright bans. The reason they are pushed is because they are ineffective, and because they stall out the political will to adopt real solutions that would be effective.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

kaba02y ago· 2 in thread

No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies. Me not eating meat might make it cheaper, but people don’t buy based on price alone. Similarly, if the EU won’t buy Russian oil, it does incentivizes more reliance on green energy on the long run and that will be a net decrease in oil consumption for the world. Especially that the EU is a big financial power, and in combination with carbon taxes it could indirectly greenify other countries decisions.

(E.g. india did buy up russia’s oil cheaper, but if there would have been a carbon tax in the eu with serious tariffs on products made in a not eco-friendly way, their usage might not have increased as much)

paulmdOP2y ago

> No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies

that is the observable impact though. perhaps the bitcoin example is more straightforward - if only one person on the entire planet is willing to mine, they get the entire block rewards of the entire network.

this is an extreme example, but if you have a small number of corporations who don't give a shit about environmentalism and pursue maximum profit within whatever the law allows, you get to pretty much the same result. People doing good in one area only increases the alpha available for another player to exploit.

capitalism literally is the removal of morality from economic planning - by making it about personal interests and profit, you ensure that if one player has those uncomfortable morals, that other players will take care of the problem and ensure maximum profit is pursued regardless. It's an Autonomous System designed to eliminate morality from the field of economic activity.

cutemonster2y ago

I think you have some good points, at the same time, here where I live, in the food store, a part of the freezer is filled with plant based food - if people hadn't voluntarily decided to be vegetarians, then, there would have been meat instead.

When enough people change their behavior, that can have an effect. And I suppose you're right that that effect is smaller than what one would hope (for the reasons you mentioned), and laws or taxes would have more effect

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