[andonisus]

I believe the fundamental difference between paying for air versus food, education, medical care is that air is abundantly free. Someone could try to charge you for it, but you could just open your lungs and consume all of the air which they haven't bottled.

Food requires land, plants, and animals. It requires labor. It requires you to either produce it yourself or interact with someone who does. Air does not.

[lucas_membrane]

Read _The_Air_Trust_, a sci-fi novel about a century old. Then consider that human intelligence declines when CO2 reaches levels that might occur within the next century or two. If levels of inequality do not decline, we can reasonably expect that the wealthy will be polluting the planet with even more CO2 in their efforts to protect the brains of the dominant class.

[n-exploit]

This is already starting to happen in China. The upper class are able to utilize air cleaning technologies to eliminate any external pollution within their living spaces, while the lower and middle classes can't afford such luxuries.

[andonisus]

Is the decline in intelligence with respect to CO2 correlation or causation? Obviously, we should make real efforts to protect our air quality, as we all benefit from this. And we should make efforts to prevent people from polluting the air to their benefit (creating capital or profit from some action which pollutes the air -- an action which otherwise would be unprofitable if we were to make it illegal).

[hliyan]

But what if food was similarly abundant? Either because of natural abundance or massive AI/robot labor?

[andonisus]

Then I would have to reevaluate my position!