[renewiltord]

It's just a distributed market problem, right?

As an agent in the market, if you correctly model tail risk you will still be out-competed by someone who does not model tail risk, since they can allocate resources somewhere other than tail risk mitigation. Given non-catastrophic events, this ends up being okay for the market system. After all, society doesn't care if Google is the search engine or Bing so long as they provide similar functionality.

For catastrophic events, though, we'd like to keep things operational rather than have someone else pop in. But that's okay. I think the right model is that the state steps in for true catastrophes and mitigates the effects (like we did in the pandemic).

And, to be honest, I don't see climate change as an extinction level risk. A few hundred million will die in the top end of what we expect, but that's acceptable. And this is clearly the position of most people, so I'm comfortably in the majority here.

[lapcat]

> A few hundred million will die in the top end of what we expect, but that's acceptable. And this is clearly the position of most people, so I'm comfortably in the majority here.

Citation, please? I'd love to see the polls saying that several hundred million deaths are ok with most people.

From what I've seen, increased government action on climate change polls very well among the public, e.g., https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of...

[renewiltord]

Oh, I’m sorry. I misspoke. I meant to say “I care very much, like hundreds of millions of people, that the government act on climate change”.

By the way, I’ll vote you out if gas becomes expensive, but make sure you do something about the climate change. I won’t vote you out over Climate Change or anything. But it is very important. Gas prices, in comparison, are not at all important. I’ll vote you out over them, but they’re not important.

Just make sure you get the climate change thing right. Won’t win you my vote or anything but it is the most important thing in the world. Nothing is more important.

[lapcat]

1) Do you have any evidence that the price of gas affects who people vote for? (And what about the prices of other things that are vastly more expensive, like health care, education, and housing?)

2) Do you actually believe that in a privately financed duopoly, elected politicians are responsive to voter preferences as opposed to donor preferences? For example, voters overwhelming favor campaign finance reform. Whereas campaign donors and elected politicians overwhelmingly disfavor campaign finance reform.

3) Does most of the public actually understand and believe in the consequences of climate change, in the stark terms that you've stated? Whether the public favors a particular course of action at the present, and whether the public favors the ultimate consequences of that course of action, are two entirely separate questions. The fact that you, by your own admission, are perfectly willing to participate in killing hundreds of millions of people, with foreknowledge and eyes wide open, doesn't imply that everyone else feels the same way.

[renewiltord]

1. Fair enough. No evidence. Just conventional wisdom that inflation is bad for votes. But no evidence.

2. What voters “favor” is rather irrelevant, isn’t it? When the total linear combination of their preferences is laid out, these things end up being low-coefficient terms. After all, what’s the evidence that they actually favour campaign finance reform? It’s one thing to say it. It’s another to act in a sense where it’s a priority.

3. Ah, my mistake, I have now forgotten this part. I am now absolved of the situation through my ignorance. Now that I think about it, I can’t recall the evidence for climate change being bad. Davon haben wir nichts gewusst.

[lapcat]

> Just conventional wisdom that inflation is bad for votes.

This was my point in mentioning the prices of health care, education, and housing. You switched the argument from gas inflation to general inflation. High gas prices are annoying to anyone who buys gas, but there's no reason to think that gas prices in particular drive votes, or that voters would prioritize gas prices over global warming.

> what’s the evidence that they actually favour campaign finance reform? It’s one thing to say it. It’s another to act in a sense where it’s a priority.

If the only options are vanilla and sherbet, how do I express my preference for chocolate? Voters don't get to vote on policies, they only get to vote on individual politicians, on one day every 2 to 4 years. It's not much of choice, very hard to express your individual policy preferences that way. A politician is a collection of a number of different policy positions, although the connection between what the politician says and what the politician does is tenuous at best. In general, politicians of both parties are held in very low esteem by voters. Voters often plug their noses and reluctantly choose the lesser of evils, rarely getting exactly what they want.

I didn't say that campaign finance reform is a higher priority to voters than "bread and butter" issues. All I'm saying is that it's very widely favored among voters, and very widely disfavored among wealthy campaign donors, because of course the latter greatly benefit from the system of legalized bribery. The only reason not to pass campaign finance reform is if you benefit from this system of bribery.

What are the "revealed preferences" of people who don't vote? How can you tell whether (1) they don't care, (2) they feel powerless and disillusioned by politics, or (3) some other reason. That's actually not revealed in the mere (in)action.

> Now that I think about it, I can’t recall the evidence for climate change being bad.

Please don't pretend that consequences of climate change aren't a matter of great public controversy, with literally millions of people claiming it's not a problem or no big deal. Maybe you and I accept what most scientists say, but not everyone does. And it's taken decades of scientists trying to hammer their points home to have a significant effect on the non-scientific public. It's always difficult to try to peer into the future and evaluate possible consequences of current actions.

[renewiltord]

> This was my point in mentioning the prices of health care, education, and housing...

I'll ignore the rest of what you're saying to that because that sentence by me was intended to concede the point. No need to argue.

> In general, politicians of both parties are held in very low esteem by voters. Voters often plug their noses and reluctantly choose the lesser of evils, rarely getting exactly what they want.

Ah! This I have evidence against. Senators have high approval ratings! https://morningconsult.com/senator-rankings/

As for the rest, inaction is action to not act. Keine Antwort ist auch eine Antwort. Everyone is free to believe they want and be powerless or whatever, but I don't have to believe that they're innocent for inaction.

Besides, it's okay, I have a risk-free path to moral outcomes now. All I have to do is avoid finding out about moral situations and I am automatically doing the right thing. Hear screams? Airpods in. It could have been screams of laughter and now that I am unable to find out more, I am automatically moral.