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0 pointsrakoo1y ago0 comments

> Serving websites is an area where capitalism’s promise of achieving efficiency of resource utilization through economic incentives probably actually works, via shared hardware.

Most of the environmental impact happens at the building of hardware, so putting even more websites in datacenter only increases environmental impact. All Capitalism has done here is completely forget that impact by telling you it's ok to do always more.

What we collectively need to do is not find a better tech, it's reduce the total amount of tech we use, and that starts with questioning our actual uses. We don't need 24/7 available websites, 90% availability is more than enough. In fact, more sites should only target 90% availability, and if we were serious about tackling this we'd look towards 1. using old computers to the death because they still can and 2. doing more offline-first. Putting your website in a datacenter is exactly what the Jevons Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) warns about. Its environmental impact keeps exploding year after year and it's not with that mindset that we'll make a dent in it.

(Remember, the environment is not a resource, so Capitalism doesn't care about it)

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Vegenoid1y ago

Agreed, that's a fair criticism. The whole mindset needs to shift to actually become sustainable, and the mindset shift is more likely to happen by self-hosting with used hardware than abstracting away hardware to a datacenter.

I think a more likely way of changing usage patterns is by actually pricing carbon cost into energy production and manufacturing via taxes. The costs of things are only so low because we are borrowing from the future. I don't think a mindset shift will happen under capitalism without the monetary cost of things increasing. And I don't think capitalism will change unless by collapsing, at which point we're too late anyway, and would come with much human suffering. I don't believe that capitalism is fundamentally broken, but I do believe that unchecked capitalism is. Regulation and taxes are required to manage its negative tendencies.

rakooOP1y ago

I still don't think capitalism will help in solving this issue, if only because putting a cost on the environment will always be fought against and never integrated: there is no interest in this. And I also don't think that a strong State will implement strong checks on capitalism, if only because States are inherently dominated by capitalist powers.

If we want to take it into consideration, we have to take the matter in our own hands, away from the State, away from capitalistic interests.

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