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this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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I don't know why these discussion are often met with "if you're not ready to lose your car you're the problem" narrative.
I might not be ready to lose my car but I sure as hell am ready to lose coal based electricity, the military complex, single use plastic, billionaire who prefer to let a train derail than spend money on regulations, and a shit ton other things that wouldn't even affect my day to day life other than make it safer.
I don't know why, in these discussions, "it's all the fault of corporations!" is treated as though it was a serious argument.
Corporations do one thing: they give us what we want. What we demand, a lot of the time. The fundamental problem is us, corporations are just the abstraction we use to fulfill our needs and desires. Before there were companies, people fought and scrambled for wealth and then displayed it as lavishly as possible, it's just that the means of acquiring and then using that wealth were different. Read up on Romans hosting banquets where slave boys were fed to eels for entertainment while guests fed on flamingos stuffed with hippo brains with a garnish of tiger testicles or whatever, or the Chinese or Indian or Mesoamerican equivalent, and then explain again how all our problems are due to modern corporations.
Yeah, no. When you go to the grocery store to pick out the lettuce for dinner, did you specifically ask for the single use plastic it’s wrapped in, or was that the only option presented to you?
The idea that we as consumers are choosing the only option available on the market is flawed. This extends to the times another option is available, but is two to three times as expensive, such as milk being available in glass but even after factoring out the deposit the milk itself costs double.
When you hook your house up to the electricity grid, are you given a choice of where your power comes from? No. Hell, the majority of the time you’re not even given a choice of what company you get that electricity from.
And before you go in on the “there are other options” I’m just going to flat out ask you what the cost difference is. If I’m living paycheck to paycheck, there’s no way in fuck I’m buying solar panels, or collecting and processing my own rain water, or buying the expensive foodstuffs wrapped in the sustainable packaging.
Pretending the consumer has a choice is a bullshit narrative pushed by corporations that want to pass the blame down to the people who really have no direct way to effect things beyond recycling what they can. Hell, some communities don’t even have recycling.
I mean, here you go: reusable produce bags for you to bring with you to the store, provided by a corporation.
Yes, milk in glass bottles is more expensive: those bottles are expensive to produce, heavy and delicate to transport, and they need a whole infrastructure to collect and return them to the plant. If we insisted on glass bottles instead of cardboard or plastic, things would be more expensive. The problem is that we, the customers are cheap motherfuckers and will, on aggregate, always go for the cheapest option. So that's what companies offer us. If the government banned single-use plastic or cardboard milk cartons, corporations would shrug their shoulders and offer that: they don't care, they make a profit either way, but as long as plastic is an option, corps know that's what we're going to buy because it's $1 cheaper...so that's what they offer us.
Yeah, I'd be totally fine with the government finding ways to break up monopolies like this--including natural monopolies, like power and internet (where infrastructure requirements limit competition). Here's the thing, though: if hydro, wind and coal were all options, and coal was 20% cheaper, what would people pick? We're the problem. Luckily, we're getting close to solar being more efficient than any fossil fuel for power (thanks to greedy corporations rushing to develop the tech for sale).
Right. And in a world where those were the only options, you'd eat less food or live in a smaller home. Making them the only options doesn't make them cheaper, and in some cases, where supply is limited, it will dramatically increase prices.
You want to main exactly the same quality of life you have now, make no sacrifices, and for that to somehow be totally green and sustainable. That's not realistic.
Blaming companies is lazy and self-serving. We're the problem. We've always been the problem. Corporations can't make minor adjustments, at no cost or inconvenience to us, and save the planet. That's ridiculous, and it's a self-serving myth, making them a scapegoat for our sins.
The irony is, it’s exactly the opposite: https://harvardpolitics.com/climate-change-responsibility/
Yes consumers do in fact add to climate change and pollution, of course they do. They still drive their cars, they still take long showers, they still run the AC with a window cracked because reasons.
But the idea that the corporations are just innocent little victims being forced to do bad things with a gun held to their head by consumers is bloody ridiculous.
I'm not saying corporations are innocent. I'm saying they're doing what we demand.
Corporations are just a bunch of people working together, seeking profit. That's it. They're not more moral than the people who work there--and if they're too moralistic they'll fail, because people aren't willing to buy their more expensive products.
I have a lot of problems with corporations, how they're structured, the laws that apply to them (and more importantly, don't). But they're not the core problem, and blaming them is a cop-out. It stops us from taking responsibility, and in the end we're the program: corporations can't even exist unless we're enthusiastically buying and using their products.
I agree with you up to like 80%. We absolutely are the problem. We want produce you can't get in the winter, we want specialty fruits and crops at nearly impossible times, we want and want and want.
And so yes a lot of this current hell is a misery in our own making that we refuse to put down all the things we have collected and decided makes our existence that much better.
But also corporations are also run by people with wants and not all of those decisions are being made with consideration of what the masses want anymore but what the people at the top want. More money, more of the profit share, more cheap labor.
Yeah. Everyone wants stuff. And the masses won't accept the ideas of less easily. But it doesn't help that the top doesn't want equal or fair rules for what they want to do anymore either. So society does what the people want but it doesn't mean that there isn't also a small group doing specifically what they want with a lot more power and no fucks to give about how they do it.
What the people at the top want is money, and the way to get it is by giving the masses what they want.
I agree it results in weird incentives. But blaming corporations exclusively (which is a popular opinion these days) is beyond stupid. We need to acknowledge that we are the root of the problem. The solution to corporate abuses is just for us to make laws to reign them in. In the end, they're just an abstraction.
I'm very suspicious about the motives of people who act like corporations are the only problem. Either they're incredibly naive, or they're just looking for an easy way to ease their own conscience.
They think they solved the singular truth to problems. We secretly suck at problem solving whole being really good at pattern recognition as the hairless apes we are.
It's just an easy wrong answer to come to when you want it to be an easy answer.
But just assuming you could regulate the companies after getting the people to agree is singular focused too. Things are a complicated mess of everyone wanting something different. And using what they have to do it.
And that's so tough to comprehend. No easy answers.