[triceratops]

> Average citizen preferences have no bearing[1] on the adoption of legislation.

Stated vs revealed preferences. Saying you care and voting like you care are 2 very different things.

> I cannot understate how much I disagree with the idea that politics was somehow more sensible "back then".

How did every country manage to come to an agreement on phasing out CFCs? How did the US set up the EPA? And can you imagine proposing something like a public library system today, if it didn't already exist?

Politicians were equally (or more) corrupt, morally suspect, and duplicitous in the past. I just think that they also managed to pass more legislation about things that really mattered.

[shakezula]

> stated vs revealed preferences

It doesn’t matter what your stated vs. revealed preference is when that preference doesn’t matter to the status quo.

> How did every country manage to come to an agreement on phasing out CFCs?

Every country /didn’t/ come to an agreement on CFCs, that’s how. China is still emitting measurable amounts as recently as 2019[1].

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1193-4

They were not more reasonable, the system and incentives were simply different. A world view where people are more or less reasonable based solely on the year they are being examined is not a world view based in reality.

[triceratops]

> It doesn’t matter what your stated vs. revealed preference is when that preference doesn’t matter to the status quo.

You're saying if every single voter in America had showed up for say, Bernie Sanders and similar minded Congressional candidates in 2016, it would have made 0 difference to the status quo? Barring widespread election fraud, I find that hard to believe. There are so many single-issue voters for stuff like abortion, guns, or religion; where are all the single-issue climate change voters?

> Every country /didn’t/ come to an agreement on CFCs, that’s how

China has signed the Montreal Protocols. Any emitters there are in violation of Chinese law. Presumably these particular emitters are either well-connected or particularly careful to hide their activities (or both). The point is that by and large, collective international action has worked.

> They were not more reasonable, the system and incentives were simply different

Fair enough. Voters were perhaps less single issue and polarized back then than they are now, and there were fewer political consequences to enacting necessary legislation.