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Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. Communism is a system, consumer responsibility is individual. Every individual changing their behavior changes the outcome.

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Both require people to care enough about others they’ll never meet enough to significantly self-sacrifice to be successful.

I can cut my carbon footprint to the bone, and my neighbor will run their two-stroke leaf blower all day because they like the noise it makes.

I am not sure you are familiar with what the term consumer responsibility means in this context. It doesnt mean to rely on consumer's "good hearts" and conscience. Its a mechanism to attribute impact to final consumption, so that the costs of that impact are also priced to influence these consumers. So your neighbor would somehow pay for their mindless blowing (rather than the manufacturer or the fuel provider).

The comment to which I responded implied that this is unfair, that the corporate beneficiaries / polluters should "pay".

Totally.

> I can cut my carbon footprint to the bone, and my neighbor will run their two-stroke leaf blower all day because they like the noise it makes.

Personally I reduced our currently measurable monthly CO2 emissions from ~350kg/month to ~15kg/month. They need a lot of (gas powered) leaf blowers to offset that. If thousands or millions of people do it, it'll make a difference. I'm aware of course that not everyone is in the financial position to do what we did. For a lot of people though it's a choice they could make if they're open to changing their lifestyle a little bit.

(I'm not saying our emissions are down to 15kg/month, but that's based on what I can currently measure, transportation, LNG, electricity, etc. Likely they are much higher of course but I gotta start somewhere)

> Personally I reduced our currently measurable monthly CO2 emissions from ~350kg/month to ~15kg/month.

How?

By switching to low carbon fuels mostly, e.g. from LNG to RNG (renewable natural gas) and from gas to electricity by getting a (used) EV.

Individuals are capable of altering their behavior. Groups behave in accordance with incentive structures.

Hoping for and/or expecting societal change through mass application of willpower is wishful thinking.

That sounds like an argument against democracy.

It's not difficult to argue against democracy, but it's very difficult to find an alternative that isn't much worse.

I genuinely don’t follow.

> Hoping for and/or expecting societal change through mass application of willpower

This sounds like the same mechanism for democracy, educating a broad populace and hoping they make the right (best?) choices.

Educating a person is materially different from getting them to act against their incentives. Doing so with a population is even more so.

The average American is overweight and doesn’t exercise. They are almost certainly aware they need to reduce their calorie intake and spend at least a couple of hours a week engaging in physical activity. Knowing you ought to change you behavior and actually doing it are completely different issues.

I actually happen to think that both are basically losing battles these days, but the underlying reasons aren’t the same.

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