tripu @tripu@social.cleverlibre.org

> _«La #masculinidad ES UNA CONTRUCCIÓN [sic] SOCIAL QUE DEJA FUERA A LAS MUJERES, ES VIOLENCIA EN CUALQUIERA DE SUS FORMAS»_

Barbijaputa [se supera a sí misma](https://twitter.com/Barbijaputa/status/1732024285194056079)

https://www.elconfidencial.com/alma-corazon-vida/2023-12-05/detenido-guru-paciente-muere-terapia-bofetadas_3787496/

#Family day out in #Madrid

#restaurant #coffee #lunch #drawing

@thesquirrelfish

(Answering it all in a single message, because we're opening too many threads — that's why I'd prefer blog posts or some other format.)

> _“Why do we want to know about the weather if we can't change it?”_

False analogy. We want to know about things we can't control at all (eg, solar flares) to adjust and prepare. But our political organisation and economic system are not like that: we create them. Therefore any criticism is an implicit (or explicit) recipe for change.

You honestly think that [the original post](https://kolektiva.social/@LeftistLawyer/111435265547406276) doesn't contain a prescription for change? If it's not pointing towards some kind of socialism, and “it's in and of itself good to know the state of the world around us” then the original post has the same value as saying, eg, “banknotes are a more efficient way for rich people to stash their money than coins” — ie, not much.

> _“Your view on OP has moved from ‘that's not true’, to ‘it's a statement of fact about the system which can only be avoided by changes which I don't like’.”_

No. OP mentioned _“negative externalities”_ and _“negative impacts”_. There's a definition of “externality” in Economics, and I assumed that. To that I replied that _“if we made more companies pay more for their negative impact, profit margins would shrink. But […] there’s no way we could push all of them entirely out of profit land at once”_, and that _“there would be still some profit to be made”_.

But you mentioned _“added costs for other people of those assets”_, which taken literally would mean that owning _anything_ creates a negative impact because nobody else can own that very thing, and the cost of similar things would increase at the margin. But that's an absurd definition of “externality”, because using that definition everything would cause externalities all the time, and then why use the word at all? To _that_ I replied _“that’s tautological”_ and _“the only way to avoid that is to abolish private property of scarce resources”_.

> _“Markets and trade and businesses before capitalism include everything before the 17th Century”_

Our agreed-upon definition of a “capitalist” is: [_“a person who owns businesses/land/tools that employ other people and who gets the profits while others get set wages”_](https://sfba.social/@thesquirrelfish/111456056081761356), [_“if the majority of their income/wealth is coming from what they own instead of what they do”_](https://sfba.social/@thesquirrelfish/111460747038273056). It's trivial to see that there were capitalists (and therefore capitalism) way before the 17th Century. Anyone who owned way more land that they could work, and who employed a handful labourers or more, was a capitalist: lucky or entrepreneurial individuals, hard-working families, and all the elite (clergy, nobility, etc). The bourgeoisie itself is defined as _“a class of business owners”_ (and merchants) and they emerged before the 17th Century.

You point to ten very old “companies”. Let's examine them in light of our definition. A company _is_ a “business”, and almost all companies _own_ “land/tools”. (Complex enterprises such as wineries, foundries, construction companies and mints _definitely_ own land _and_ tools.) The _only_ way for those companies _not_ to be owned and operated by “capitalists” is that all those assets were the collective property of all their workers; that no-one linked to the company earned more by owning plots of land or machinery and lending them to the company, or by investing their money into the company, than by their manual labour. Do you really think that all the bosses at Nakamura Shaji for more than 700 years earned their living mainly from laying bricks with their own hands, like regular employees? That “the majority of their income/wealth was [not] coming from what they own[ed]”?

> _“Nope! I've owned a car and I lost money on it.”_

Of course you have. That's the norm. Almost every product depreciates with time due to wear and technological progress.

…But that was not the question. You said:

> _“Who is paying for the effects of climate change? Everybody. Who is profiting from causing climate change? Capitalists.”_

Under “paying for the effects” you list things like waste, kids with asthma, and poison fish. ie, we're not paying (only) with money, but also with environmental degradation, sickness, injuries, etc. Yet when you look at the other side of the equation (“profiting”) you can think only of _money_!

Of course you have lost _money_ by owning a car. In a way, everybody does. But then, why do roughly a billion people _choose_ to own cars? Because they reckon they will “profit from [having a car and indirectly contributing to] causing climate change”. Again: it's not just capitalists who benefit. It's virtually everyone — including people who don't own cars themselves.

> _“Have you had a car go up in value as you used it?”_

No. But I have had _my quality of life_ go up in value when I owned a car. Like a billion other people.

None of this is to say that today we account correctly for all the negative externalities of cars, or that current regulation is perfect. But we can't be binary in our assessment of pros and cons, or divide up benefit and cost neatly among people.

> _“Modifying our environment is an intrinsic part of being human. It's up to us whether we do that in positive or negative ways.”_

I personally think it's impossible for humans to modify the environment in a way that is net positive. Humans having never existed in the first place would be a better outcome than whatever we can come up with to “improve” the environment. To me, our collective externalities are necessarily net negative for the planet (that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to keep them as low as possible, of course).

I can't find much information about “the Karuk of Northern California” or “the Chumash of Southern California”. Do you have any information? I bet they rank lower in objective metrics of well-being (life expectancy, physical health, mental health, pain and stress levels, rates of violence, democratic quality, etc) than we do in the developed world.

> _“If you give your money to a dude who promises certain profits but doesn't give info, you have less responsibility than if you knowingly invest in Chevron?”_

I guess I didn't explain myself well. I think there must always be due diligence. Blindly investing in a company or a fund is permissible to the extent we trust regulators and the law, I guess. By “your responsibility in proportion to the information you could reasonably have” I just meant that if you invested honestly and ethically, but were lied to by the managers, you're exonerated from responsibility.

> _“If people have died and species have gone extinct from my investment choices…”_

Man, you're so black-and-white in your analysis. Is something like Chevron, a 144-year-old company with 44K employees, an absolute evil? Didn't they do anything well nor saved any lives?

As I hinted earlier in our conversation: what is the realistic alternative? _Of course_ we have to move to clean energy and to zero violence in the world. In the meantime, Chevron, Exxon, and arms manufacturers are absolutely necessary. If those companies vanished tonight, the world would _not_ be a better place (do I need to convince you of that?). We can perhaps have _less_ of those companies, and we can definitely have them behave better. But right now we _need_ companies like those. Which means _someone_ has to own (a whole lot of tiny pieces of) them. Yes, even if species go extinct and people die. Owning part of a company is one way to steer its course (the other three are working at the company, regulation, and consumer action).

> _“Yes. I quit the startup/tech world because… […] I try to consume less in general.”_

I commend you for acting on your beliefs!

In the #amnesty situation in 🇪🇸 #Spain, both “sides” have embarrassing individuals in their ranks:

https://twitter.com/AMADSDEGAULA2/status/1728841977037455730

https://twitter.com/catholicarena/status/1729636895141794108

#amnistía #Catalonia #Cataluña #PSOE #PedroSánchez

@thesquirrelfish

> _“We're as responsible as the proportion of capital we have”_

I agree. It's just that I think we all have way more capital than we think, through indirect means if nothing else.

> _“Should we hold the richest people in the world responsible for the negative impacts of the investments that made them rich?”_

For what is worth, I've been thinking for a while that a cap on _extreme_ wealth would be morally justified.

> _“I honestly waver on whether we should hold everyone who got an Exxon or Chevron dividend in the last few decades responsible, or just the largest shareholders and executives.”_

My solution: First, prosecute the people who had the power to make decisions, and make them pay with their own wealth and freedom (the CEO, the board, the other executives). Then, fine the company to make things right (to the extent that's possible, of course). That would hurt _all_ shareholders, but only in proportion to the shares they own. After that, a humble investor should feel OK: the administrators who created the mess (unknowingly to the investor) were punished, and because market cap has depreciated after fines etc, the investor has already taken a hit financially. It doesn't make sense to feel “guilty” after that, I think.

> _“It's the real moral quandary of our times - if I invested with Exxon, and Exxon helped get Trump elected, how much is Trump my fault even if I voted for someone else?”_

It's your responsibility in proportion to the information you could reasonably have, and to the power you had to affect things at the company. But you are also responsible for 62K people having jobs, and for millions of people having electricity, being able to go visit their parents, not dying of cold…

> _“I think about this way too much. Trying to be a pacifist even in my 401k is hard.”_

I feel your pain. I don't call myself a pacifist, but I'd say that “trying to be a moral person is hard” :)

@thesquirrelfish

> _“The claim is not a policy proposal about what we can do re: socialism, but a statement of the conditions of the world”_

If there's no specific proposal of change, what's the value of the claim? I could make all sorts of claims about reality, all factually true, describing how it seems sub-optimal — but there's little merit in that unless I also point in a specific direction and advocate concrete changes.

(Besides: how is the original claim not implicitly pointing to socialism, broadly defined?)

This is the most common flaw of anti-capitalist discourse, I think. As [Peter Singer says](https://www.goodreads.com/questions/389696-is-capitalism-unethical), _“I'm waiting for someone to, first, describe a better system than capitalism, and second, set out a realistic path for getting from here to there. When that happens, it will be worth thinking harder about the ethical flaws in capitalism. Until then, […] there is a huge amount we can all do, within the current economic system, to make the world a much better place.”_

> _“If we force [the non-working beneficiaries of owning assets] to [pay for] the the negative impacts [environmental degradation, social harms, added costs for other people of those assets] they would not make a profit from those assets”_

Yes, I think that's tautological. If assets are scarce (land, raw materials), just by owning some I am indirectly “adding costs for other people of those assets” because supply shrinks and/or the price raises. But the only way to avoid that is to abolish private property of scarce resources.

Again, it's either socialism (where there's no profit, but also no incentives, slower innovation, and we know how things end up in practice), or the abolition of private property altogether.

> _“There were markets and trade and businesses before there was capitalism”_

Can you mention some concrete examples of what you have in mind, exactly?

@thesquirrelfish

> _“We don't even begin to account for the negative impacts through current policy!”_

As I said: there's a _quantitative_ argument to be made for (even) higher Pigouvian taxes and (even) more tight regulation. I am probably there with you. But I wouldn't say that “we don't even begin to account” for all that.

> _“Cars produce tons of waste every year and give kids asthma and force people to clean windows, and poison fish, and literally kill and disable people. Those costs are in no way limited to those who own cars. All of those costs plus highway maintenance etc should be included in car registration and gas taxes.”_

Aren't many of those costs included in fuel taxes, carbon taxes, vehicle taxes, road tolls, parking costs, VAT, insurance costs, fines to the industry, etc? In developed countries, we literally treat asthmatic kids, compensate injured pedestrians and dispose of waste with all that public money. Again, I'm not saying the balance is perfect now; probably it isn't. But there is _a lot_ of “accounting for negative impacts” already.

> _“Who is profiting from causing climate change? Capitalists.”_

_…and literally everyone who owns a car, rents cars, or indirectly benefits from their family or their plumber or their kid's teachers using cars all the time to get to places and move goods around._ That's not just “capitalists” — it's everyone.

> _“The problem of the quantitative case is that half of the population would lose wealth equivalent to their responsibility - because there would not be excess profits anymore.”_

Not sure I understand that. Can you elaborate?

@thesquirrelfish

> _“We as humans can create negative externalities, but that's not an intrinsic part of being human”_

I disagree. Modifying our environment is an intrinsic part of being human. Progress and civilisation are impossible without those externalities.

> _“There's biodiverse sustainable places where people live without negative externalities”_

Name one (that is not a re-enactment of the Stone Age where life is miserable).

> _“I am a capitalist in this view in as much as I own stock and take responsibility for that ownership”_

Personal question, no obligation to answer: where is your wealth, how do you save? Stocks are one way to preserve wealth and move it to the future. But lots of other products and assets work similarly, and are ultimately underpinned by private enterprises and the profit motive. My suspicion is you are more of a capitalist than you think.

> _“I am also allowed to be self-critical. I am in on the scam, I'm getting profits from it, it doesn't make the statement less true. I would like to change the world to make it less true.”_

I am on it too. Only I don't think it's a “scam”.

Again, I can't help getting personal, to better understand your view: what are you doing, specifically, to “change the world” in that way? Moving to one of those “biodiverse sustainable places”? Not having a bank account (so no bank can invest with your money)? Not working for any private company (so your labour doesn't contribute to their profit)? Not consuming any products or services provided by private-capital firms (ie, all of them, save the few produced by a handful of non-profits and cooperatives)…?

I like #Enya.

There. I said it.

This evening I was taking my #kids home from school, after #MissEntropy's swimming lesson, holding them by their little hands, the three of us chatting as dusk fell — and I thought that was the most important thing I'd done all day. That might be the most important thing I do in my life, too.

@fidel Sounds like a great internet handle, too

Oh my god

https://dalle.party/?party=vws_EEK0

My god

https://twitter.com/jfcarpio/status/1729030353376153817

@thesquirrelfish

Lots of interesting points, I'll reply soon.

Do you happen to have a blog? At this point I'd rather answer with a blog post to avoid splitting the conversation in so many little threads that are difficult to keep track of (Mastodon isn't great at displaying a tree of sub-conversations).