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Comment by protoman3000 | Hacker News Reader

The profits generated and accumulated in the wealthy class should in the long run not exist - theoretically.

But of course they do, and the answer to that is that somebody else is paying the price for their externalities.

I’m not jealous and wish for everybody to be able to achieve wealth, but please with due calculation of everybody involved. Because the goal of this economic game is not that you win and I lose, but that we both win sufficiently and then I don’t care if you have a nicer boat.

But we didn’t play this game, instead your wealth directly correlates with how much you pollute the commons, we both lose. The credit you own has no legitimation anymore. Why should we continue to act as if does?

Ofc the situation is extremely complicated and we can’t just disown or let the polluters “pay back” immediately, but things evidently have to change for this damage to both of us to stop.

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>But we didn’t play this game, instead your wealth directly correlates with how much you pollute the commons, we both lose. The credit you own has no legitimation anymore. Why should we continue to act as if does?

Doesn't that include index funds in your 401k? Bank funds that you might own that invest in polluting companies? And don't wealthier people have more shares of stocks in general?

I am asking someone to disprove my assertion that the article leans on a self-referential argument about wealth and carbon emissions.

Or are we saying wealthy people (top 10 percent, we're told) invest specifically in these companies and not others?

How would a clean wealthy person store or invest their wealth? Real estate, gold?

I can understand that you think in specifics but think for a second about the general value principles behind e.g. digging oil out of the ground.

The value is the oil, the cost is the work for extraction and the pollution.

Somebody having done the work to get out the oil is attributed credits because they did the work, had the cost in this referential way that you complained about below. How many credits they get is determined by demand and supply, where theoretically everybody looks at all the costs and utility and comes up with their idea of a price and then the market clears.

Now, then problem evidently is: We didn’t consider the costs your extraction put on all of us, the pollution. It was just “nah it’s fine”, but all things considered it’s not. Maybe the calculation is so bad that you now owe us for putting this cost on us - which would incentivize nobody to do that again. But we didn’t do it, and we gave you so many more credits than you deserved on all rational arguments that the whole picture is skewed.

> The profits ... in the long run not exist - theoretically. ... somebody else is paying the price for their externalities.

Externalities like rampant price inflation due in part due to year 2020 government bailouts of cruise lines and rich business owner huge tax rebates. The elite have a moat protecting their government feeding trough. The rest suffer externality of rising prices due to that money printing.

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