[poetically]

This is a common confusion. My argument is with profits and not with human nature because human nature is malleable. People can change their eating habits, they can change their transportation habits, they can change institutional arrangements that favor profits over well-being, they can change the forms of market transactions they find valuable.

This isn't anything deep. These are just basic facts.

[mlyle]

Grandparent said.

> > Money is the medium of transaction of human needs and desires. Profit causes global warming only in so much as it fulfills human needs and desires for light, heat, transportation, industry, and energy in general.

Vs.

> My argument is with profits and not with human nature because human nature is malleable. People can change their eating habits, they can change their transportation habits

To the extent that people change to not demand things that cause global warming, providers of such things will not be rewarded with profits. So, I don't understand the gymnastics to point at a "profit" motive rather than intrinsic motivations from this "human nature".

[nawgz]

> I don’t understand the gymnastics

100 corporations produce 70% of the pollution, this is the common mantra right? I don’t think there’s any gymnastics here. It’s clear that the unchecked power of corporations - structures entirely dedicated to profit - has lead to unchecked damages against the environment as single men are enabled to take terrible actions and then hide (legally speaking) behind the amorphous profit entity.

Perhaps this is “human nature” in as much as the nature of the most depraved of us is to destroy everything in pursuit of self interest, but it’s, philosophically speaking, an extremely weak and narrow-minded argument you make here to imply the modern man is to blame for the modern problems, and not those powerful in his society

[mlyle]

> 100 corporations produce 70% of the pollution, this is the common mantra right?

If you don't ascribe any of the pollution to the individuals and industries using their products, and only to the initial production, sure.

E.g. if you blame the company making the gasoline and not the person burning it in their car. Or the company shipping goods to consumers, but not the consumer ordering and receiving them.

I don't view this as a particularly useful way to view things, though.

That is, capitalism is really efficient at delivering on what end-customers want. If that ends up being bad in some way, well-- the only solution is one of:

* Convince people not to want the thing

* Prevent the thing from causing the harm, by regulation or taxing the externality

* Choose a less efficient economic system and hope that the problem goes away by being less efficient

[nawgz]

> I don't view this as a particularly useful way to view things, though

Well you are also happy to ignore the coercive nature of capitalism - i.e. “advertising” - and the fact that it simply externalizes all real costs - i.e. “most efficient” claims that make no sense - so I’m not sure your world view is really cogent.

For example, people want blueberries. The blueberry producer in Vancouver has packaging facilities on Vancouver island. They ship a bunch of blueberries away from where they were grown to put them in plastic containers, wasting energy and generating pollution. How exactly is the consumer at fault for the inefficiencies inherent in capitalist supply chains? (In place of inefficiency, directly swap “duplication” if it is illustrative)

> capitalism is really efficient at delivering what end-customers want

I strongly disagree, and once again find it to be a self fulfilling prophecy because you have been wholly consumed by capitalist propaganda. For example, see my point about duplicated supply chains; generalize it easily to duplicated work, wasted man hours on marketing and doing research identical to that being done at your competitors, etc..

Finally, realize you are subscribing to the capitalist view of “want” and “end customer” with your language, and arguing capitalism is “the most efficient economic system” might as well put you on Fox News. It’s propaganda. No other economic system has ever existed in a time of such geographic stability, technical prowess, and abundant healthy layout as now, so the point is completely facile.

You must understand, your own point acknowledges this huge hole in capitalism wrt externalities and the massive hidden costs of something, and additionally ignores the role of government and regulatory capture. Even with your kid gloves naive treatment of the situation, you STILL are forced to admit capitalism only aligns with consumer interest on specific goods sold at specific prices. If the price was true - i.e. included and covered all costs to keep a steady climate state, for an easy target - I highly doubt capitalism would be delivering value.

In its pure lust for profit, and I do mean pure, it has destroyed our globe, created class inequality greater than seen in monarchies, and completely subverted global power structures. This is efficient, but not as an economic system or a method of creating goods for people.

[poetically]

What exactly in human nature requires profit?

[mlyle]

No one has said human nature requires profit. You made the claim that profit motive, and not human nature was behind all these ills; others claim that those ills being profitable just represents human nature.

[slibhb]

Far from basic facts. Human nature changes on an evolutionary timescale but not otherwise. Cultures change rapidly but we don't change them.

[AbrahamParangi]

So you believe that you have a way of changing the nature of humanity? This seems like the big claim, rather than the small one.

[poetically]

Read what I said instead of projecting what you think I said. I did not say anything about changing human nature.

[someguydave]

you wrote “human nature is malleable”

[dvtrn]

Saying "I believe humans have the capacity to change certain habits" isn't close the same thing as saying "I have the means to make people change".

[SuoDuanDao]

So you don't have a solution?

[dvtrn]

I'm afraid not. The brevity of my prior statements was never a suggestion that I had one, so if that's where the confusion you have is coming from, my bad.

[poetically]

That's a fact. If you were born somewhere else you would be an entirely different person. You'd be speaking a different language, you'd be involved in different social arrangements and institutions, and you'd think the axioms of your reality were entirely different.

[someguydave]

Where is your evidence for that claim?

[poetically]

That you'd be an entirely different person in another time and place? That's pretty obvious to anyone that has traveled anywhere other than the place they were born.