Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Analog24 799 days ago
I think the expectation that the entire consumer market (or even just a majority) is going to collectively become universally informed about all their purchases and shift the market for the better is far less likely then a government intervention being successful.

If you go to countries where there was never any government intervention relating to cigarettes do you know what you'll find? A lot more people smoking cigarettes.
1 comments
_heimdall 799 days ago
I don't think it has to mean everyone becomes informed and makes educated decisions. We can get to the same end by people simply choosing not to buy products that they don't know much about how they were made.

In other words, the solution can be additive where we only bring in products we're confident in rather than having to learn everything and remove items from there.

link
Analog24 799 days ago
As someone else mentioned in this thread, it is not possible to understand how everything you purchase works. That is also incredibly infeasible. What you are asking is to effectively revert back two hundred years of technological progress (a rough estimate for the last time people were actually self sufficient at a local level).
link
_heimdall 799 days ago
I can't count how many studies I've seen referenced that claim the environment is effectively doomed by 2030 if we don't change course. The same goes for other areas, whether its concerns raised over the risk of chemical exposure or the fragility of our toilet paper and baby formula infrastructure when a pandemic is declared.

If you think that many of the inventions over the last couple centuries are the culprit and would have to be rolled back, that sounds miserable but it also sounds like we at least would have a better chance being proactive rather then waiting for everything to come crumbling down.

I don't personally expect climate change or chemical exposure to destroy us all, life finds a way. But if we can't expect consumers to make purchasing decisions that generally align with what they think is important, why do we even bother with markets or capitalism at all?

link