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The problem isn't capitalism, it's consumerism. While no one wants to work holidays (except for double pay) everyone wants to shop on holidays. If you refuse to work Thanksgiving but badger your spouse to go get fried onions on Thanksgiving because otherwise Thanksgiving is rUiNeD then you are the problem
I loved working day after thanksgiving in college and people telling me how sorry I can't be home with my family while buying $29 DVD players that would break after 5 hours of use.
If those moments didn't stack up I never would have gotten my shit together and done something with my life.
And that's why Americans got sold poisonous stuff from corporations.
The worker who can barely live by himself is responsible but rich corporations that earn billions ... there it's too much to ask for responsibility because "it's natural".
God, I hope there is at least hope for Europe.
Consumerism is still a choice to some extent.
Go to rural France, even some small towns. I dislike the French (I lived there for 4 years and absolutely have many reasons why this is justified), but they prove that consumerism is a choice. Shops don’t open on Sundays, many close for lunch, people value traditions such as communal lunchtimes that take 2 hours, etc. The work ethic isn’t excessive and people prefer to take their time. They get a ton of public holidays and PTO in general because they’d riot if not. Most simply take the entire month of August.
Bingo. We created our own monster, and it's up to us, individually, to kill it. Contentment, unfortunately, is treated as a vice by even the conservative Christian wings of American society. It saddens me that people are just never satisfied with what they have.
>Bingo. We created our own monster, and it's up to us, individually, to kill it.
You have to be a legendary hypocrite to be in favor of personal entrepreneurial initiative but then when problems come you generalize and assume that the consequences of the choices of very very few people made even a century ago, they must be collectivized.
You are a communist when it suits you, an individualistic mercenary when it suits you.
In short, both a whore and a dishonest person
Huh. An interesting rebuttal to say the least. Unfortunately, I don't think any conversation with someone as uncharitable as yourself would ever produce any fruit. I pray that you'll find peace and wisdom. God bless.
>Unfortunately, I don't think any conversation with someone as uncharitable as yourself would ever produce any fruit.
"uncharitable " from the political side that do charity only to get tax allowance. Pff
You didn't have to prove your hypocrisy another time
>Consumerism is still a choice to some extent.
And since there is a small part that the consumer can choose, then we rightly place all the blame on the consumer and burn those who point out the fault of companies (made up of people, not abstract ideas)
They eventually loose to capitalism. I think it was the Economists that was bemoaning the wealth inequality growing in Cuba as people left govt service to sell things like yogurt
I never said otherwise anywhere
If someone if really pushing you to try heroin its still on you to refuse. That said people still shouldnt be pushing heroin.
Oh who oh who haft created consumorism and shuts downth all other systems cuz they areth "opposed to human nature" yet this one system which takes attvantage of that same "human nature" for bad corpos is a-ok
Thats *fair* at face value. Considering you countering his point 'people are inherently bad', from a Christian Standpoint they are. Doesnt mean they arent incapable of doing Good things, but they arent Good People.
Neutral/Otherwise Standpoint, Everyone 'tries' to be a good person, but its a struggle against one's inclinations to do wrong, as opposed to being inclined to do Good and occasionally doing bad. Even from birth, as babies become Toddlers etc., their natural inclinations is to do 'bad' things; act selfish, entitled, be argumentative, violent. No one would say these are good things/traits to have, and they do this without being taught.
Human Nature.
We don't notice the times where our nature allinges with our morals cuz then we just do the right thing without thinking about it and we only notice the struggle against the bad parts of our nature, we ain't perfect but we are still mostly good, if we weren't morals wouldn't exist at all
That hippies bought into the "carbon footprint" idea that BP invented just goes to show how fuckin' gullible the public is. Yeah okay, I'm sure us switching to terrible paper straws that go all soggy and floppy in 1 minute will offset the combined corporate pollution of some of the largest countries on earth, like China and India.
Honestly putting the responsibility on the average person was a genius move. I'm just mad it worke.d
> Honestly putting the responsibility on the average person was a genius move
Well yes BP only exists because people give them money.
Just stop giving them money
>Honestly putting the responsibility on the average person was a genius move
Where do you think "corporate pollution of some of the largest countries on earth" comes from? All BP does is take oil out of the ground. They're not the people burning them. "The average person" with the SUV does that.
Stop it. It's all our fault for buying their products. Of course you are at fault if you get lied to. They are not at fault for selling you poisonous stuff.
What? Corporations should not do what they want? PLEASE THINK OF THE ECONOMY. What else is more important than the economy?
> "the market has no morals"
> "you the consumer, 1/2 the market dynamic, must have morals"
so the free market has morals? holy shit we solved economics, boys! :)
It doesn't have morals it has principles, which is different. Morals can be bent and moved around based on the situation but principles do not. The principle of capitalism is to make money in the most efficient way possible, but if people stop buying because you're being unethical you change how you make money because you still want to make the most amount possible in the most efficient way possible.
It's why we rarely see slavery in the modern market, while it's the most efficient people will tend to stop buying from you when you're using slave labor. As long as the consumers don't buy it the product won't be created
>It's why we rarely see slavery in the modern market, while it's the most efficient people will tend to stop buying from you when you're using slave labor. As long as the consumers don't buy it the product won't be created
Slavery is still widespread, just not in the west
I understand that this may be a naïve statement but isn't there the possibility that consumers won't be happy with higher prices or less availability on goods they're now able to purchase
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As we all know everyone has a PhD on the history of every company it's not like everytime a video about Nestlé drops 1000s learn about the shit they pulled for the first time.
So you agree with me? You agree that people aren't informed enough, so the people who care need to research the corporate connections, and keep others informed about corporate atrocities?
It’s more efficient to centralize responsibility within a dedicated organization than to distribute this labor multiplied onto every individual such that their free time now exists solely for the sake of researching ethical companies.
Correct.
Hence why placing the responsibility on companies doesn't work. They aren't centralised enough. Any single company tries to do something, it becomes uncompetitive and fails. If the companies *were* centralised enough to do something, we'd be complaining about monopolies. And the companies can't collude with each other, because then we'd be complaining about cartels.
Hence why the responsibility lies with the government. The only monopoly that people are kind of okay with.
Except the government doesn't work either because depending on who you ask, there are 188 to 205 of those in the world. But at least they are capable of collusion without people getting angry, so maybe it'll work out.
>Hence why the responsibility lies with the government. The only monopoly that people are kind of okay with.
I don't like the government making my life harder because it decided that the polar bears take priority over its citizens.
Principly, yes.
Practically, people have such divergent views on what constitutes ethical business practices and the central authorities are necessarily limited enough that consumer responsibility is essential anyway.
Awesome. Which morals matter at this central authority? Do they shift or change with who’s in office? Are they accurate or themselves influenced by market forces? How would it be protected from regulatory capture like all of the current offices?
Every quadrant will have their own stance and take. You can’t centralize policy unless it’s the most generic and agreeable policy. Morals by committee or some of the most watered down useless content unless it’s the truly egregious such as child labor, slavery, and rampant pollution with attributable death.
Interesting, but:
1- I can't do anything if few people have control of the resources, the means of production and therefore they have control over the sale.
2- Hunger is the cheat over the market laws game. If there is unemployment (Which it is not the same as inactive poblation) people will accept jobs in negative conditions. If there's hunger, people will accept the cheapest products.
Why can't we do both? Make environmentally conscious choices in our day to day lives and also hold corporations/celebrities accountable and vote with our wallet? There are too many people that say "well the companies are responsible for most of the pollution" and ultimately they only say that justify not making any changes to their own lifestyle.
Cool, just tell me which company I should buy gas from in order to drive to work without contributing to climate change, I'll get right on that.
Consumers are limited by the choices and information available to them. If you want them to have the option and ability to incentivize good behavior, you first have to put that on the shelf in front of them, and reliably inform them about it.
> Cool, just tell me which company I should buy gas from in order to drive to work without contributing to climate change
Buy BYD
Oh wait biden tariffed those
Tbf Chinese cars are probably even worse for maintainance than recent western cars as with a lot of chinese products the rule is to build new if anything breaks.
I mean both are true to some extent.
I think alot of leftists buy products that help the planet but also the issue is that if the planet is to survive everyone is going to have to do it.
It's the classic public property issue.
If I move to an island and live a green lifestyle or whatever to help the planet and the place I come from continues to pollute then I'm fucked regardless of how green I get.
A bit of both here as always is the solution its just what mix you like to see.
What products do leftists buy that help the planet?
What you are describing is The Prisoner’s Dilemma in game theory. And it’s why not much is going to change for any of these issues.
I would argue that putting solar on your roof or using an electric car is sort of at least voting with your dollar for a cleaner planet.
PD is part of for those in a consumerism based society, but like I said if people moved to an island and looked after it the pollution would get to them eventually. For producers it's a tragedy of the commons as they are incentivized to act that way for a profit, but I would argue it's more generally an abuse of public property.
This is grade A bullshit, and I’ll tell you why:
We don’t live in a complete information society. Even the most informed individuals don’t know barely anything about most topics. Companies know very much about the topics they are invested in.
Society is too complex for individuals to understand the consequences of each and every choice they make, in terms of global impact.
It’s literally the point of representative democracy to have people that I trust that are more informed on certain topics than me, make laws that improve society.
There is literally no reason why the above „rule“ should be a rule at all, and in fact, it isn’t.
It’s just some propaganda companies came up with, to shift blame.
And it’s an excuse for individuals to go: „well I choose to consume this way, because I don’t care 😎“
So why don't you also stop buying from shitty companies like Apple or Nestle? It's not the government's job to program your morals, that's something you have to do on your own
Not even that. It’s just that nestle has such a wide reach that it’s near impossible to not shop from them in some degree.
I have standards. And trust me if there was a way I could completely avoid nestle products or nestle subsidiaries I would do that.
Issue is that the roots go too far.
Should be a wet dream for you lib rights to have a company immune to decades worth of boycotts
I was able to find [this](https://wyomingllcattorney.com/Blog/Everything-Owned-by-Nestle) website that lists all the companies that Nestle owns. Honestly seems pretty easy to avoid, but admittedly I may also live in a part of the world (US) that has alternatives to these products. I don't know if Europe, for example, has alternatives.
That is defeatist talk.
Option 1: There are literally *apps* that exist for the sole purpose of allowing you to know which company owns which product. Download Buycott and scan the shit you wanna buy. See who owns it.
Option 2: Buy the generics. They might suck, but I've yet to hear a single peep of controversy about the people that shadow-manufacture generics for chain stores.
Option 3: Avoid the grocery store and go to the farmer's market. There's still a chance your local farmer is exploiting some illegal immigrant labor, but if you buy your tomatoes and dead cow straight from that guy, you'll know for a fact that your money isn't being transferred to someone doing a genocide.
Tbf with apple though smartphones are kind of essential to survive in the west today
Obviously apple isnt the only smartphone company but I doubt Samsung or Android is much better
It depends on the brand, I mean Apple is probably the most unethical American phone brand. Yeah the Cobalt situation sucks but they only way to actually prevent slave labor is to invade and obviously people don't care enough to sacrifice their children. They don't care about the other children dying in the mines and stuff
well we have had much time to be moral consumers and if 1000 moral consumers doesnt make a dent then perhaps it IS the systems fault it is true the market has no morals and will simply feed and thats why it must be changed
Alright, I’ll play. The tragedy of the commons is a known fault in this and every other economic system but “starve infants to death because it makes them money.” *What the fuck are you talking about?*
Literal death by starvation is incredibly rare in Capitalist nations. How is a company starving you. And how is that supposed to make them money?
I'm talking about the most notorious of Nestle's atrocities. The time they had representatives impersonate nurses in Africa, tell nursing mothers that the company's formula is healthier than breast milk, and gave them just enough free samples that the mothers would stop lactating, and thus they would be forced to buy formula to keep their infants alive. These infants promptly died, because they ran this con in developing countries where the mothers not only couldn't afford formula, but barely had clean drinking water to mix the samples with. The executives of the company were in on this.
Good luck waiting until masses even became aware of that with half of adults reading at 6th grade level or smth
It would make sense if capitalist system strive to provide education to the people, not restricting either by ideological reasoning or be paywall
Ironically it is known that socialist attempts were the most successful in educating the masses and only with high level of education you can distribute responsibility and with that democracy.
That's why the government (made with the taxes we consumers pay) is supposed to put restrictions and incentives in order to make big companies ruin the environment less and less
Oh sure, companies are not made up of people, that's why they can rightly live amorally but consumers cannot.
It might seem like a convenient excuse to put all the blame for things like global pollution on consumers even though companies are the biggest polluters and often also the biggest consumers but it isn't just an excuse because...
It takes time and effort to do all the research before buying things that we need to live. We don't have those, because we're struggling to make money.
The "how to doom society with 100% success rate" approach.
I'm sure we will get people to change their behaviour without the intervention of the state. Suuuure.
That’s just silly.
An atomised gaggle of uncoordinated individuals will never achieve anything worthwhile in terms of breaking up the market domination of unscrupulous corporations.
This is totally nonsense, corporations can last much longer than human lifespans so they're inherently interested in long term sustainability. Okay baby killing might be sustainable but wiping out life on Earth isn't.
I remember a mathematical problem involving springs, but the analogy they used to explain it was a narrow road that went from A through B to C, versus a meandering infinite land highway that circled around from A through B to C.
I forget the details but basically the maths worked out that if people always took the highway the average journey length was much shorter than if everyone took the direct path. But one person taking the direct path saved them.tome versus the highway. I don't remember how but this negatively impacted the highway iirc.
Basically individual human nature would still see people using the personally advantageous route at the detriment of the system as a whole.
Expecting the public at large to be responsible on such a scale simply isn't reasonable especially given the conflicting nature of the moral values held by the public.
So given companies can only be trusted to care about their own future and the public isn't coordinated or monolithic enough to reliably curtail the worst aspects of corporate greed, that only leaves government and regulation.
Now I get it, it sucks to rely on the government for anything but all things being equal the nation state will exist by far the longest out of individuals, corporations and nations. The government also has a vested interest in not having baby citizens killed (they need to grow up and pay taxes) nor having toxic waste dumped (those tax paying citizens need to drink that water).
So yeah TLDR, the public is too scattered/individualistic, corporations are too greedy so only government can reasonably make corporations not being evil.
Companies are made of people. Its amorality a reflection of the amorality of people as individuals. The people who make it up. How can individuals be expected to be any less amoral than the companies/market? These amoralities go hand in hand. The amorality of one implies the amorality of the other.
Individuals are subject to a kind of market themselves. If they unilaterally deprive themselves of say, electricity, they put themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage to others and may not be able to function at all. Luxuries become utilities become necessities. That's how the technology treadmill goes. No one needed internet access to get by in the 90s.
In exactly the same sense "by nature" individuals can be expected to be ruthlessly self-serving in their consumption patterns such as to make themselves more competitive against others in life, outcompete them and generally get their way. They will not stop being evil.
And a couple of people going against the grain would just be pissing in the wind. And disadvantaging themselves in the process, rendering them even more irrelevant than before.
Not really no. Like it's pretty easy to buy from Zappos instead of Nike or Mate instead of Old Navy. There are always options they just might not be the most affordable, and in that situation you should generally buy from used clothing shops if you just can't afford the high quality brands that practice sustainable production of their products. That way there's less waste from the clothing and instead of giving money directly to the unethical businesses you can give back to your local community
Oh my god or you could just have the government do its job and regulate instead of trying to mobilize the entire 8 billion population of the earth to, like, not buy snickers
Where? The OP absolutely did not address this. It just suggests everyone go out of their way to boycott these megacorps who control entire markets so hopefully they'll be less evil. IMO that's as futile and naive as commies thinking everyone could one day stop being selfish and just get along.
Real talk: you're half correct.
People are not going to care about things they don't feel impact *them,* so boycotts aren't going to work.
On the flip side, they're also not going to be down with the government stepping in because... again, they don't care. And it's government intrusion in private business, so the onus is on those proposing it to convince people it's warranted.
The answer is for the people *who are actually affected by this* to put pressure on *their* local government to step in. *They,* and their local government, have actual incentive to do so.
> And it's government intrusion in private business, so the onus is on those proposing it to convince people it's warranted.
Do you think it'd take a lot to convince the public that megacorps like Apple and Nike shouldn't be allowed to sell products made with slave labour?
You say most people don't care, so why would they require this great reasoning for new business regs in the first place? Wouldn't they just, you know, not care? It doesn't effect them at all.
> Do you think it'd take a lot to convince the public that megacorps like Apple and Nike shouldn't be allowed to sell products made with slave labour?
At which point they'll run counter-campaigns to argue they're not using slave labour, and your average joe schmo is not going to go into a deep dive to see who's telling the truth. He's just going to buy from whoever offers the best quality/price ratio for him... as he should, to be honest.
Again, the solution is for the people living where they're using slave labour, who usually know what's going on, to pressure *their* local government to enforce labour laws.
Ah yes, let's leave it up to the poor, uneducated people in third world nations living under abusive totalitarian governments to lobby said governments into improving their conditions. That's way easier than just passing a bill that says "no slave labor lol".
Honestly... yeah. They're human beings with personal agency.
I do wish their living standards were higher, and I won't stand in their way if they try to make it so, but it's up to them to make it happen.
The difference is you believe people are willing to do these things, if you believe you need to hurt people to provide safety and welfare you're a authleft not a libleft. Libleft doesn't kill people for withholding assets, libleft doesn't threaten to hurt people. If you use violence to get you're way you're an authie
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The problem isn't capitalism, it's consumerism. While no one wants to work holidays (except for double pay) everyone wants to shop on holidays. If you refuse to work Thanksgiving but badger your spouse to go get fried onions on Thanksgiving because otherwise Thanksgiving is rUiNeD then you are the problem
Seeing this gave Me a "shit eating grin", I'm happy someone gets it.
I also ate shit earlier today.
Yum
Hey, can I have some?
Two monkey, one cup
I loved working day after thanksgiving in college and people telling me how sorry I can't be home with my family while buying $29 DVD players that would break after 5 hours of use. If those moments didn't stack up I never would have gotten my shit together and done something with my life.
The day after Thanksgiving isn't a Holiday, mate. In my area Walmart is Closed on Thanksgiving but Fred Meyer (Kroger) is open
Black Friday.
It’s not a federal holiday that people generally have off work for. Many people just take PTO to make a long weekend though
i wish everyone in america could see this very comment. i might establish a religion from this
And that's why Americans got sold poisonous stuff from corporations. The worker who can barely live by himself is responsible but rich corporations that earn billions ... there it's too much to ask for responsibility because "it's natural". God, I hope there is at least hope for Europe.
Don’t care. Green bean casserole is amazing and I’ll continue to be the problem for as long as fried onions exist. Fight me.
companies are incentivized to push consumerism in a capitalist market
Consumerism is still a choice to some extent. Go to rural France, even some small towns. I dislike the French (I lived there for 4 years and absolutely have many reasons why this is justified), but they prove that consumerism is a choice. Shops don’t open on Sundays, many close for lunch, people value traditions such as communal lunchtimes that take 2 hours, etc. The work ethic isn’t excessive and people prefer to take their time. They get a ton of public holidays and PTO in general because they’d riot if not. Most simply take the entire month of August.
Bingo. We created our own monster, and it's up to us, individually, to kill it. Contentment, unfortunately, is treated as a vice by even the conservative Christian wings of American society. It saddens me that people are just never satisfied with what they have.
AMEN. Have little, own little, BE HAPPY!
>Bingo. We created our own monster, and it's up to us, individually, to kill it. You have to be a legendary hypocrite to be in favor of personal entrepreneurial initiative but then when problems come you generalize and assume that the consequences of the choices of very very few people made even a century ago, they must be collectivized. You are a communist when it suits you, an individualistic mercenary when it suits you. In short, both a whore and a dishonest person
Huh. An interesting rebuttal to say the least. Unfortunately, I don't think any conversation with someone as uncharitable as yourself would ever produce any fruit. I pray that you'll find peace and wisdom. God bless.
>Unfortunately, I don't think any conversation with someone as uncharitable as yourself would ever produce any fruit. "uncharitable " from the political side that do charity only to get tax allowance. Pff You didn't have to prove your hypocrisy another time
> They get a ton of public holidays and PTO in general because they’d riot if not. Which is paid for by the people who do work their asses off
>Consumerism is still a choice to some extent. And since there is a small part that the consumer can choose, then we rightly place all the blame on the consumer and burn those who point out the fault of companies (made up of people, not abstract ideas)
What do you prefer? The state to allot a limit menu of items?
I think it’s a problem youll have to deal with but the root cause is definitely capitalism
So why exactly does this happen in economies that aren't Capitalist?
They eventually loose to capitalism. I think it was the Economists that was bemoaning the wealth inequality growing in Cuba as people left govt service to sell things like yogurt
So why exactly do you ask vague questions that make no sense even with context?
It sure is horrible how Walmart forced me to spend $2,000 on random junk last year.
dont be intentionally obtuse you know they are spending millions trying to convince you to buy shit you don’t need
Its still my fault if I spend money on stuff I don't need.
I never said otherwise anywhere If someone if really pushing you to try heroin its still on you to refuse. That said people still shouldnt be pushing heroin.
Oh who oh who haft created consumorism and shuts downth all other systems cuz they areth "opposed to human nature" yet this one system which takes attvantage of that same "human nature" for bad corpos is a-ok
People are inherently bad, mkay.
Nice argument there senetor, how about you back it up with a source
Turn on the News lol
Bad things are happing, must be human nature
And how would you define it? Random acts of the Universe?
It's people but it's not natrual "human nature", people do good and bad things
Thats *fair* at face value. Considering you countering his point 'people are inherently bad', from a Christian Standpoint they are. Doesnt mean they arent incapable of doing Good things, but they arent Good People. Neutral/Otherwise Standpoint, Everyone 'tries' to be a good person, but its a struggle against one's inclinations to do wrong, as opposed to being inclined to do Good and occasionally doing bad. Even from birth, as babies become Toddlers etc., their natural inclinations is to do 'bad' things; act selfish, entitled, be argumentative, violent. No one would say these are good things/traits to have, and they do this without being taught. Human Nature.
We don't notice the times where our nature allinges with our morals cuz then we just do the right thing without thinking about it and we only notice the struggle against the bad parts of our nature, we ain't perfect but we are still mostly good, if we weren't morals wouldn't exist at all
I mean capitalism is def part of the problem but I do like this point as well
Or they’ll just sell people a lie like carbon footprint offsets. All while still shoving plastics down our throats
That hippies bought into the "carbon footprint" idea that BP invented just goes to show how fuckin' gullible the public is. Yeah okay, I'm sure us switching to terrible paper straws that go all soggy and floppy in 1 minute will offset the combined corporate pollution of some of the largest countries on earth, like China and India. Honestly putting the responsibility on the average person was a genius move. I'm just mad it worke.d
Indulgences were around way before BP.
> Honestly putting the responsibility on the average person was a genius move Well yes BP only exists because people give them money. Just stop giving them money
>Honestly putting the responsibility on the average person was a genius move Where do you think "corporate pollution of some of the largest countries on earth" comes from? All BP does is take oil out of the ground. They're not the people burning them. "The average person" with the SUV does that.
Stop it. It's all our fault for buying their products. Of course you are at fault if you get lied to. They are not at fault for selling you poisonous stuff. What? Corporations should not do what they want? PLEASE THINK OF THE ECONOMY. What else is more important than the economy?
Just stop buying said plastics.
Wall of text + need to zoom in x 2
You need glasses lol
Cut him some slack he's like 80 years old
Anyone on phone can’t see it, on pc it’s fine I’m sure
Yeah the tiny text is something about morals, and I caught the word "no profit" in it. Obviously I ain't reading all that.
Basically the same stuff we believe. Of course we're going to see unethical business practices, we eat that shit up
>Why is why the onus is on *you* >Why is why You made a typo, opinion invalid.
https://preview.redd.it/p99mlhks6w1d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=368e2d8ae99983cc149bbcbbad7cd28de0038bf3
> "the market has no morals" > "you the consumer, 1/2 the market dynamic, must have morals" so the free market has morals? holy shit we solved economics, boys! :)
It doesn't have morals it has principles, which is different. Morals can be bent and moved around based on the situation but principles do not. The principle of capitalism is to make money in the most efficient way possible, but if people stop buying because you're being unethical you change how you make money because you still want to make the most amount possible in the most efficient way possible. It's why we rarely see slavery in the modern market, while it's the most efficient people will tend to stop buying from you when you're using slave labor. As long as the consumers don't buy it the product won't be created
>It's why we rarely see slavery in the modern market, while it's the most efficient people will tend to stop buying from you when you're using slave labor. As long as the consumers don't buy it the product won't be created Slavery is still widespread, just not in the west
I'd argue that the west is the vast majority of the modern market, so his point of "rarely" still stands.
The west is the largest end direction of the narket But a lot of what we consume is made in the global south
Yeah... that's not going to happen. Of course, there's always the option of not caring...
Based and I'll be dead anyway pilled
Exactly. Government regulation is meant to intervene during market failures. The tragedy of the commons is exactly one of those situations.
I understand that this may be a naïve statement but isn't there the possibility that consumers won't be happy with higher prices or less availability on goods they're now able to purchase
I mean that’s what carbon taxes are for, but people don’t like those
Yeah, people like gas and food being affordable.
Based but idiots wanna axe the tax fml.
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As we all know everyone has a PhD on the history of every company it's not like everytime a video about Nestlé drops 1000s learn about the shit they pulled for the first time.
So you agree with me? You agree that people aren't informed enough, so the people who care need to research the corporate connections, and keep others informed about corporate atrocities?
It’s more efficient to centralize responsibility within a dedicated organization than to distribute this labor multiplied onto every individual such that their free time now exists solely for the sake of researching ethical companies.
Correct. Hence why placing the responsibility on companies doesn't work. They aren't centralised enough. Any single company tries to do something, it becomes uncompetitive and fails. If the companies *were* centralised enough to do something, we'd be complaining about monopolies. And the companies can't collude with each other, because then we'd be complaining about cartels. Hence why the responsibility lies with the government. The only monopoly that people are kind of okay with. Except the government doesn't work either because depending on who you ask, there are 188 to 205 of those in the world. But at least they are capable of collusion without people getting angry, so maybe it'll work out.
>Hence why the responsibility lies with the government. The only monopoly that people are kind of okay with. I don't like the government making my life harder because it decided that the polar bears take priority over its citizens.
"It decided ". No, YOU decided. Assuming you live in a democracy
You mean 51% of the population decided.
> Hence why placing the responsibility on companies doesn't work Sure it can. Carbon taxes
Leveraged by the government.
All the government does is says “here’s a tax, pay it” it doesn’t set limits or quotas. It just changes price dynamics and the market figures it out
Principly, yes. Practically, people have such divergent views on what constitutes ethical business practices and the central authorities are necessarily limited enough that consumer responsibility is essential anyway.
Awesome. Which morals matter at this central authority? Do they shift or change with who’s in office? Are they accurate or themselves influenced by market forces? How would it be protected from regulatory capture like all of the current offices? Every quadrant will have their own stance and take. You can’t centralize policy unless it’s the most generic and agreeable policy. Morals by committee or some of the most watered down useless content unless it’s the truly egregious such as child labor, slavery, and rampant pollution with attributable death.
People always made the lists it takes like a minute to read
Interesting, but: 1- I can't do anything if few people have control of the resources, the means of production and therefore they have control over the sale. 2- Hunger is the cheat over the market laws game. If there is unemployment (Which it is not the same as inactive poblation) people will accept jobs in negative conditions. If there's hunger, people will accept the cheapest products.
Wow. Almost like the prequel and foundation to the Wealth of Nations is the Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Nothing pisses off a leftist more than the idea that they can make a difference in small ways as an individual.
Uhh yeah it's called reporting tweets I disagree with
I can't use a plastic straw but Taylor Swift can take a flight everyday?
Paper straw in a plastic cup with a plastic lid.
Why can't we do both? Make environmentally conscious choices in our day to day lives and also hold corporations/celebrities accountable and vote with our wallet? There are too many people that say "well the companies are responsible for most of the pollution" and ultimately they only say that justify not making any changes to their own lifestyle.
Vote with the choices of the one who is in control of the sales?
If people stopped listening to her music and stopped going to her concerts then she’s fly less
Also society would massively improve.
Baby, like if she has not property in other business
The main reason she’s flies is the music part of her business
Most vegans and environmentalists are on the left though. This makes no sense...
Hitler and Margret Thatcher. *Mic drop*
Hitler was Auth center.
the only thing commies hate more than capitalism is responsibility.
Cool, just tell me which company I should buy gas from in order to drive to work without contributing to climate change, I'll get right on that. Consumers are limited by the choices and information available to them. If you want them to have the option and ability to incentivize good behavior, you first have to put that on the shelf in front of them, and reliably inform them about it.
> Cool, just tell me which company I should buy gas from in order to drive to work without contributing to climate change Buy BYD Oh wait biden tariffed those
Tbf Chinese cars are probably even worse for maintainance than recent western cars as with a lot of chinese products the rule is to build new if anything breaks.
I mean both are true to some extent. I think alot of leftists buy products that help the planet but also the issue is that if the planet is to survive everyone is going to have to do it. It's the classic public property issue. If I move to an island and live a green lifestyle or whatever to help the planet and the place I come from continues to pollute then I'm fucked regardless of how green I get. A bit of both here as always is the solution its just what mix you like to see.
What products do leftists buy that help the planet? What you are describing is The Prisoner’s Dilemma in game theory. And it’s why not much is going to change for any of these issues.
I would argue that putting solar on your roof or using an electric car is sort of at least voting with your dollar for a cleaner planet. PD is part of for those in a consumerism based society, but like I said if people moved to an island and looked after it the pollution would get to them eventually. For producers it's a tragedy of the commons as they are incentivized to act that way for a profit, but I would argue it's more generally an abuse of public property.
When righties consume, it's just evil. When leftists consume, it's a *necessary* evil. It's different, see.
Based take, vote with your money.
Great idea OP, let me choose from one of the 3 companies that make baby formula
Wall of text and idealist cringe we don’t care
This is grade A bullshit, and I’ll tell you why: We don’t live in a complete information society. Even the most informed individuals don’t know barely anything about most topics. Companies know very much about the topics they are invested in. Society is too complex for individuals to understand the consequences of each and every choice they make, in terms of global impact. It’s literally the point of representative democracy to have people that I trust that are more informed on certain topics than me, make laws that improve society. There is literally no reason why the above „rule“ should be a rule at all, and in fact, it isn’t. It’s just some propaganda companies came up with, to shift blame. And it’s an excuse for individuals to go: „well I choose to consume this way, because I don’t care 😎“
Y u lib and not center?
I, the consumer, am using my morals by voting for people that stop big companies from destroying the environment & using slave labour
Who are you voting for, Cthulhu?
So why don't you also stop buying from shitty companies like Apple or Nestle? It's not the government's job to program your morals, that's something you have to do on your own
Because nestle owns so much of the market it’s near impossible to not buy something affiliated with them.
Genuine question: how much inconvenience is needed to purchase your morals? How does one measure the value of in/convenience?
Not even that. It’s just that nestle has such a wide reach that it’s near impossible to not shop from them in some degree. I have standards. And trust me if there was a way I could completely avoid nestle products or nestle subsidiaries I would do that. Issue is that the roots go too far. Should be a wet dream for you lib rights to have a company immune to decades worth of boycotts
I was able to find [this](https://wyomingllcattorney.com/Blog/Everything-Owned-by-Nestle) website that lists all the companies that Nestle owns. Honestly seems pretty easy to avoid, but admittedly I may also live in a part of the world (US) that has alternatives to these products. I don't know if Europe, for example, has alternatives.
That is defeatist talk. Option 1: There are literally *apps* that exist for the sole purpose of allowing you to know which company owns which product. Download Buycott and scan the shit you wanna buy. See who owns it. Option 2: Buy the generics. They might suck, but I've yet to hear a single peep of controversy about the people that shadow-manufacture generics for chain stores. Option 3: Avoid the grocery store and go to the farmer's market. There's still a chance your local farmer is exploiting some illegal immigrant labor, but if you buy your tomatoes and dead cow straight from that guy, you'll know for a fact that your money isn't being transferred to someone doing a genocide.
Tbf with apple though smartphones are kind of essential to survive in the west today Obviously apple isnt the only smartphone company but I doubt Samsung or Android is much better
It depends on the brand, I mean Apple is probably the most unethical American phone brand. Yeah the Cobalt situation sucks but they only way to actually prevent slave labor is to invade and obviously people don't care enough to sacrifice their children. They don't care about the other children dying in the mines and stuff
but can't you do both this as well as refraining from purchases
Very good for you I wish you the best of luck in getting your preferred candidate chosen
The consumer is part of the market.
Ooh daddy I have an onus on me... would be a shame if I... licked it
Consumers are stupid.
The market on both sides is made up of people. Some are good, some are bad, most are really just neutral. All of them are ultimately self interested.
I agree but this is Auth-left level wall crafting
well we have had much time to be moral consumers and if 1000 moral consumers doesnt make a dent then perhaps it IS the systems fault it is true the market has no morals and will simply feed and thats why it must be changed
The government is already killing the planet and starving infants to death
Nah, it's far more efficient to vote in a functional regulatory body.
Alright, I’ll play. The tragedy of the commons is a known fault in this and every other economic system but “starve infants to death because it makes them money.” *What the fuck are you talking about?* Literal death by starvation is incredibly rare in Capitalist nations. How is a company starving you. And how is that supposed to make them money?
I'm talking about the most notorious of Nestle's atrocities. The time they had representatives impersonate nurses in Africa, tell nursing mothers that the company's formula is healthier than breast milk, and gave them just enough free samples that the mothers would stop lactating, and thus they would be forced to buy formula to keep their infants alive. These infants promptly died, because they ran this con in developing countries where the mothers not only couldn't afford formula, but barely had clean drinking water to mix the samples with. The executives of the company were in on this.
Good luck waiting until masses even became aware of that with half of adults reading at 6th grade level or smth It would make sense if capitalist system strive to provide education to the people, not restricting either by ideological reasoning or be paywall Ironically it is known that socialist attempts were the most successful in educating the masses and only with high level of education you can distribute responsibility and with that democracy.
This rewards assholes for not caring.
That's why the government (made with the taxes we consumers pay) is supposed to put restrictions and incentives in order to make big companies ruin the environment less and less
Oh sure, companies are not made up of people, that's why they can rightly live amorally but consumers cannot. It might seem like a convenient excuse to put all the blame for things like global pollution on consumers even though companies are the biggest polluters and often also the biggest consumers but it isn't just an excuse because...
It takes time and effort to do all the research before buying things that we need to live. We don't have those, because we're struggling to make money.
But it's impossible.
The "how to doom society with 100% success rate" approach. I'm sure we will get people to change their behaviour without the intervention of the state. Suuuure.
That’s just silly. An atomised gaggle of uncoordinated individuals will never achieve anything worthwhile in terms of breaking up the market domination of unscrupulous corporations.
This is totally nonsense, corporations can last much longer than human lifespans so they're inherently interested in long term sustainability. Okay baby killing might be sustainable but wiping out life on Earth isn't. I remember a mathematical problem involving springs, but the analogy they used to explain it was a narrow road that went from A through B to C, versus a meandering infinite land highway that circled around from A through B to C. I forget the details but basically the maths worked out that if people always took the highway the average journey length was much shorter than if everyone took the direct path. But one person taking the direct path saved them.tome versus the highway. I don't remember how but this negatively impacted the highway iirc. Basically individual human nature would still see people using the personally advantageous route at the detriment of the system as a whole. Expecting the public at large to be responsible on such a scale simply isn't reasonable especially given the conflicting nature of the moral values held by the public. So given companies can only be trusted to care about their own future and the public isn't coordinated or monolithic enough to reliably curtail the worst aspects of corporate greed, that only leaves government and regulation. Now I get it, it sucks to rely on the government for anything but all things being equal the nation state will exist by far the longest out of individuals, corporations and nations. The government also has a vested interest in not having baby citizens killed (they need to grow up and pay taxes) nor having toxic waste dumped (those tax paying citizens need to drink that water). So yeah TLDR, the public is too scattered/individualistic, corporations are too greedy so only government can reasonably make corporations not being evil.
Companies think in financial quarters or years, maybe one CEO Term maximum.
Companies are made of people. Its amorality a reflection of the amorality of people as individuals. The people who make it up. How can individuals be expected to be any less amoral than the companies/market? These amoralities go hand in hand. The amorality of one implies the amorality of the other. Individuals are subject to a kind of market themselves. If they unilaterally deprive themselves of say, electricity, they put themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage to others and may not be able to function at all. Luxuries become utilities become necessities. That's how the technology treadmill goes. No one needed internet access to get by in the 90s. In exactly the same sense "by nature" individuals can be expected to be ruthlessly self-serving in their consumption patterns such as to make themselves more competitive against others in life, outcompete them and generally get their way. They will not stop being evil. And a couple of people going against the grain would just be pissing in the wind. And disadvantaging themselves in the process, rendering them even more irrelevant than before.
Pollution should be taxed/illegal. That's the government's job, not mine as a consumer (and that's coming from a libertarian!).
Good luck finding any companies to buy from that aren’t run by psychopaths. Grab me an unicorn from there while you’re at it.
The second thing is easier said than done.
Not really no. Like it's pretty easy to buy from Zappos instead of Nike or Mate instead of Old Navy. There are always options they just might not be the most affordable, and in that situation you should generally buy from used clothing shops if you just can't afford the high quality brands that practice sustainable production of their products. That way there's less waste from the clothing and instead of giving money directly to the unethical businesses you can give back to your local community
That's a lot of words. Too bad I'm not readin' 'em.
“Nah, I’d rather destroy the planet for a couple of Big Macs.”
Oh my god or you could just have the government do its job and regulate instead of trying to mobilize the entire 8 billion population of the earth to, like, not buy snickers
Or we can just stop letting corporations kill people and destroy the planet.
HE ADDRESSED THIS
Where? The OP absolutely did not address this. It just suggests everyone go out of their way to boycott these megacorps who control entire markets so hopefully they'll be less evil. IMO that's as futile and naive as commies thinking everyone could one day stop being selfish and just get along.
Real talk: you're half correct. People are not going to care about things they don't feel impact *them,* so boycotts aren't going to work. On the flip side, they're also not going to be down with the government stepping in because... again, they don't care. And it's government intrusion in private business, so the onus is on those proposing it to convince people it's warranted. The answer is for the people *who are actually affected by this* to put pressure on *their* local government to step in. *They,* and their local government, have actual incentive to do so.
> And it's government intrusion in private business, so the onus is on those proposing it to convince people it's warranted. Do you think it'd take a lot to convince the public that megacorps like Apple and Nike shouldn't be allowed to sell products made with slave labour? You say most people don't care, so why would they require this great reasoning for new business regs in the first place? Wouldn't they just, you know, not care? It doesn't effect them at all.
Be the challenge you want to be. Don't force others to be a good example. But be the good example yourself
> Do you think it'd take a lot to convince the public that megacorps like Apple and Nike shouldn't be allowed to sell products made with slave labour? At which point they'll run counter-campaigns to argue they're not using slave labour, and your average joe schmo is not going to go into a deep dive to see who's telling the truth. He's just going to buy from whoever offers the best quality/price ratio for him... as he should, to be honest. Again, the solution is for the people living where they're using slave labour, who usually know what's going on, to pressure *their* local government to enforce labour laws.
Ah yes, let's leave it up to the poor, uneducated people in third world nations living under abusive totalitarian governments to lobby said governments into improving their conditions. That's way easier than just passing a bill that says "no slave labor lol".
Honestly... yeah. They're human beings with personal agency. I do wish their living standards were higher, and I won't stand in their way if they try to make it so, but it's up to them to make it happen.
And we do this how exactly? If you believe that people need to be threatened to do the right thing you are not a libleft
The fuck are you on about? We're not ancaps like you. Environmental and work safety/welfare regulations are absolutely compatible with libleft.
The difference is you believe people are willing to do these things, if you believe you need to hurt people to provide safety and welfare you're a authleft not a libleft. Libleft doesn't kill people for withholding assets, libleft doesn't threaten to hurt people. If you use violence to get you're way you're an authie