Recognising the import of the individual in a collectivised world
Foreword
In the early 20th century, many economic and political philosophers and thinkers began to see with aghast how collectivist philosophies and movements began to pave their way into power. The most prominent example was for sure the Большевики movement in Russia that would eventually bear the Soviet Union. Ayn Rand would thus be its most famous dissident who also contributed greatly to a political philosophy. (Even though many would perhaps disparage her or the Libertarian philosphy as a non-philosophy or apology for misanthropic instrument to smother the poor, and her as a spiteful bully mocking the same for their state of impoverishment; I have since offered a more sober and constructive critique of her thinking¹) Other dissidents, like Александр Солженицын or Жорес Медведев, instead decided to stay within their country and oppose against the Stalinist régime from the inside, undergoing several kinds of mistreatment, documenting the terror from the inside and exhibiting it for the rest of the world to see, even though knowledge about the reign of terror remains awfully low within post-Soviet Russia² as well as in the Western world. (For which I ironically didn't find any relatable articles; if you have got any, let me know through the known means of communication so that I will add them in a separate footnote)
I
In times of crises, people oftentimes feel drawn to simple solutions to complex problems, and for many, the solution lies within a higher authority that were able to isngle-handedly scold and punish those who the masses feel responsible for their misery; for all maladies their world begets. Without sliding into the netherworld of conspiracy theories, we shall pick an example that will accompany us unto the end of this short text: Climate change. For beginners, there is little to nothing that could be questioned about its existence, and what could be questioned about it would be its overall severity. Its presence is indisputable⁸, and to deny it were either a sign of tomfoolery or being a conspiracy theorist who denied its existence for the sake of preserving existing comfort without any catches⁹.
Having cleared that question, the next one to propose is: How do we stop it from worsening? The study in footnote number nine has already pointed out the obvious, as well as the authors of the annual IPCC study did: CO₂ emissions need to be curbed drastically, which either means a stark reduction in traffic, or a quick transformation from fossil-fueld transportation to electric one. At the moment, the industrialised world is making tremendous efforts for the latter, while during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, traffic of goods distribution and private travelling have decreased thanks to strict lockdown restrictions on central and federal levels across the world¹⁰. Expectedly, things returned to normal once the restrictions were lifted as sunnier days waited ahead¹¹. As if climate change had taken a break, people didn't consider that their decreased travelling were a welcome relief for the global climate. The reason for that abrupt ignorance was obvious: The restrictions and consequential abstinence were not followed voluntarily but were a sign of obedience to imposures. It doesn't require a wave of education for the people to realise that a pollution-heavy lifestyle is not sustainable long-term as the evidence of a deterioration are already noticeable¹². What we can learn from this in conclusion are, technically speaking, two things:
(1) Imposing restrictions on the people in such a way as that they would gradually lose those little comforts in life, or that they were indirectly coerced into making costly changes to comply with the recent restrictions—think, for example, of a ban on fossil-fuelled vehicles that ordered those who had such vehicles to sell their old vehicle in return for an electronic vehicle—is highly unpopular on the one hand and unsustainable on the other hand as that would lead to a great amount of scrap parts and metal on the one hand and a suddenly increased demand in goods that are comprise of, inter alia, rare earths, whose rarity is unrelated to their name but still represents it precisely¹³. Nudging people into a more sustainable lifestyle, on the other hand, could be a politically bearable and helpful policy, as it has also been proven in surveys.
(2) In order to combat climate change, and forgive me my loaded language at this point, it will take every single person's individual effort to achieve the ultimate outcome, that is a planet that while increasingly uninhabitable, remains overall habitable. Firstly, what this contradictory phrasing means is that the planet certainly becomes more uninhabitable because of a higher frequency of natural catastrophes such as wildfires or destructive thunderstorms, he still remains habitable on the largest parts of land. But in order to not lose more habitable land, actions must be drawn—as I said: By each person individually, even though that may raise some questions concerning the truth of this statement. This is what we are going to examine in the next chapter.
II
During my studies, I attended a couple of seminars in philosophy, and in one of them, we were asked to argue some theses in groups, and while one of them was the question of the legality of child labour, one of the others was whether the individual person's carbon footprint mattered when all the rest of the world's populace had an equally average carbon footprint and wouldn't bother to change that for the better. When we discussed this question, an apparent study didn't examine the question yet, A couple of months later, an apparent paper was published¹⁵. The outline, while ending on a positive note stating that policymakers should go ahead and introduce legislation that ordered the average Jane and Joe to change their behaviour, its results were far less decisive. Au contraire, it ended on the same aperçu that we saw during our seminar as well: That it is nearly impossible to argue that the single man had to change their behaviour to make a good instance. There are also more arguments, although some of them questionable in terms of merit as we shall see later, that the average Joe's efforts to curb overall CO₂ emissions were worth zilch compared to others', particularly of those who felt even less inclined to change their behaviour. The talk is of course about the rich. Now, it is known that they have got a naturally large footprint¹⁶, and they are themselves aware of it and seek apologies and excuses to defend themselves¹⁷, next to the industry¹⁸. The latter is of particular importance for another argument to which we will come back in a minute, but first, we should have a brief talk about the argument that the rich bore a disproportionately high responsibility to curb their emissions to such a degree that they alone could save the planet; according to that argument, no-one had to change their lifestyle except for the rich. The idea itself is not far-fetched, as the rich create a good part of the global pollution—presumably!¹⁹ We'll come back to that in the third chapter of this text. For the moment, we should ask ourselves whether it can be proven that all the millionaires and billionaires of the world could take up more than 50 percent of the world's pollution. The ›International Energy Agency‹ (see footnote no. 16) has already made the argument but provided few resources, which means that one had to believe their own intelligence. Academic journal articles²⁰ on the subject are rare and those that exist, as the one shared hereunder have to confess to insufficient available data to provide a just comparison between the mere mortals and the rich. Other studies²¹ have at least provided sources for the data they presented, the one shared in footnote no. 21 alleging the rich of up to two thirds referred to the Global Carbon Project, yet another think tank, although of greater credibility than Oxfam. The problem is the large discrepancy between the three sources'—Oxfam, the Nature Sustainability article, and the IEA—alleged shareholdership in carbon dioxide emissions on the wealthiest's behalf. The best-faith argument one could technically believe when speaking of individuals were likely something between a third and half of all emissions. Because in the end, we must remember that there is not only contagious individual travel across the globe, but also the shipment of goods by ship and aeroplane²², as well as the production of waste, especially plastic waste. It should be common sense why plastic is a terrible product when it comes to sustainability, and so, alternatives are in dire need, particularly an alternative with the same benefits as plastic, and at best without the side-effects such as PFAS and phthalates²³. Needless to say, plastic has got its benefits, but what good are all the benefits of plastic in the world when it means that we thenceforth had to filter our groundwater²⁴ because it was no longer naturally safe for consumption, despite being the purest water one could find in the world. (Since mountainous springs are already infested as well²⁵).
III
We could go on for some more time, but the question is where this is ought to lead us. Technically we could say that it makes little sense to allege those (such) companies of being crucially irresponsible while they still work at the behest of a government or a governmental agency. We must level the state ownership of such companies, of course, as few may actually receive orders concerning their performance. Since this is not the point of this text, though, we won't, and instead focus on companies that are entirely dependent on themselves and their agency; companies like RWE in Germany, British Petroleum (BP) in England, Shell plc in England too, ExxonMobil in the US, &c. According to the vox populi³³, they had to pay more taxes on the one hand, and instantaneously discontinue their climate-disrupting business³⁴. Assuming that they did: What would happen? Good parts of the industry came to a sudden standstill as there are only insufficient alternatives available in an instance. For example, as it has been pointed out a couple of times in debates so far, the heavy industry such as ships need different fuels from personal vehicles. Hydrogen has been in negotiations a couple of times, but there is no infrastructure to supply enough of it to wharfs. Did we have a chance to build that already? Technically, yes, but uncertain and flip-flopping policies have made it impossible to plan ahead for such herculean construction projects. As long as we have gotten companies and corporations in the classical style of today, the government remains necessary to concert wide-ranging changes on the market, such as the pathway to carbon neutrality. Lorries can be rebuilt retroactively to be charged in depots and at stations, or even while driving on the streets via trolley systems when they exist. (Which they seldom do because it likened another gargantuan infrastructure project; creating depots at the vehicle fleet hall would be better, combined with charging stations for buses whenever they stop to drop out and pick up passengers) and the expansion or replacement at petrol stations to allow quick-charging for vehicles of every size) The problem is that this takes time. I have worked at a company that builds rooftop pantographs and have seen how long it takes to build one suitable pantograph for just one of them; thinking about how long it may take to rebuild an entire vehicle fleet shows that it is a yearslong gradual process for whose success there must be clear political signals. A definitive withdrawal from the fossil-fuels industry may be the clearest imaginable example. So far, a couple of countries, especially amongst Scandinavia, but the lack of guidance urges many producers to instead seek ways to justify the usage of fossil fuels³⁵.
In order to stop beating around the bush, one decisive statement msut be felled: That the corporations are not solely guilty of what they are doing, even if their business may appear unethical under today's circumstances. One other perpetrator are the average Jack and Jill. Everyone who continues purchasing petrol or other products deemed unethical are at least complicit in the unsustainable exploitation of the planet. Those who exclaim the loudest that the sole perpetrators were the corporations and their supposedly greedy managers are coincidentally people who often frequent dense urban areas with sprawling city centres and reliable public transportation which makes personal vehicles unnecessary for daily life. For people living in rural areas, this comes close to a pipe dream: Because of unreliable public transportation beyond the ubiquitous school bus and shops often far away, even a bicycle is only a limited alternative³⁶. The debate between inhabitants of the two regions is fairly unequal and is led from starkly different standpoints. What is thus overseen is the win-win situation that particularly the urbanites could benefit from: Rents are often lower in the rural areas³⁷, so that urbanites who were sick and tired of having to pay monthly rents to their landlord could also move to the land and purchase a house. Of course this happened on a credit, but down the line, they could still live freer and with more space than they could even wish for in a city. The rural areas could benefit from the influx of city dwellers insofar as that they could boost their region's development, which in turn made public transportation more attractive, so that congestion and pollution decreased gradually. As I have stated outside of my blog in discussions from time to time, one cannot achieve one's goals when other people are involved unless one gets in touch with the people who had to contribute to the achievement in question. Humans are not universally rational, not all of them are simply persuaded by convincing arguments as long as the actions they were enquired to perform were perceived as a trade-off for the performers. It is technically the same mindset that is otherwise observed with managers of corporations of fossil-fuel producers and proves that this is not something exclusive to certain groups of people—it is an all-human behaviour. To quote from David Hume's ›Treatise on Human Nature‹ (Courier Corporation, page 296):
“`Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. `Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. `Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledge'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation.”
Having assessed that pollution is at least a duo's act between the corporations as the provider of the scourge of humanity and the consumers who make use of said scourge, we should ask ourselves the question what can thus be the responsibility and duty of the corporations. Before we examine the question, we should also propose an expansion of the scope of corporations from just those who produce fossil fuels to those who generally practise their business unsustainably. Without pernickety scrutinisation we could assume that up to 95 percent of all businesses of alternate sizes fall under this term. We meet the same problem we see in those unsustainable producers with those who still operate businesses in Russia despite the ongoing war in Ukraine: The revenue still stays in the green and black numbers. Their products are still bought, in Russia as well as in the Western world and beyond. Only a fraction of all companies running operations in Russia have withdrawn therefrom, and while well-known names like McDonald's, IKEA and Domino's Pizza have ceased their operations in Russia, other names like Bosch are still in situ. This did not stop any automotive manufacturer or handyman to boycott their products. Looking in the other direction, the fewest people have sold their fossil-fuelled engine or started being more on the lookout about where their products come from, or how they are produced. Of course those who expect companies to be more Catholic than the Pope are those who have it the easiest in living sustainably. Again, those are the people who (1) live in cities that are either walkable or with a thickly webbed public transportation system, and (2) have an above-average household income that allows them to pay a little more for sustainably produced food³⁸. Of course there are also many less-well-to-do who support collectivist views founded on the premise that rich people were the symptom of unjustified inequality and the consequential remedy of forceful redistribution had to be imposed for the common good³⁹. Those may build their views more on resentment and animosity for wealthy people, amongst them many managers and CEOs who they believe earn their money without contributing anything to society. But since this is not the topic of this blog post, we will ignore this, also for sake of not sowing any unnecessary division or inject any culture war-topics to this post. Instead, it should be pointed out that it is easy to expect of others to do right while not doing right oneself. It is the concept expressed in the idiom of drinking wine while praising water⁴⁰. And it is easiest with visibly elusive corporations and equally oblivious managers and CEOs who one could shout at and decry as scourges of humanity as old men yell at clouds. They could function as involuntary, unharmed valves for people who feel powerless in the face of powerful corporations who seem to control the world like a puppeteer in a puppet theatre during a children's matinée. It is the same feeling of impotence that also fuels the emergence of conspiracy theories⁴¹. But with some sobriety we must also emphasise one important premise in our world: That we must be the change we want to see in the world. As everyone knows, this is a quote by the pacifist, non-violent independence fighter Mahatma Gandhi. (Or so it is believed, although falsely so⁴²)
Where does this lead us to? Obviously the belittled and oftentimes begrudged concept upon which the whole free market rests, down the line: Supply and demand. (Although the order should be in reverse: First comes the consumer demanding a badge of whatever the distributor sells, and the distributor makes an offer the consumer may accept. Thus comes the supply at the negotiated conditions. But you get the jest) The reason for why I bring this up should be crystal clear: We have assessed that while some global corporations bear a good brunt of the world's pollution and reckless exploitation of natural resources without a sense of sustainability⁴³—economically it may be, but ecologically, it isn't, so that it becomes a naïve fallacy to believe that this equalled a long-term business plan to work by—, they only do so on indirect behest of the customers who continue buying their products. Some critics would yell 'you're reversing perpetrator and victim here', but this were a wholly emotional reaction to it. Because again, companies and corporations alike are no monoliths who produce goods and spill them down the gutter once they are finished. Customers who are earnestly concerned about the ethics of the goods they purchase usually have a more ethical alternative in stock. Whether it is a foul game to sell the more ethical alternatives at higher prices than the unethical ones stands on a different letter; it is obvious that the sellers thereof would like to be more competitive, but in the end, the divergence between the costs of production (and marketing) and sales is too great to allow for lower prices. It is likewise understandable that some people, particularly those with less disposable income, are drawn into spending on less qualitative products without restraint⁴⁴.
Down the line, little has changed between the second and the third chapter: While we can agree that a lot of pollution is produced by corporations, it depends on the customers to signal said companies that they needed to change their business in favour of sustainability. Boycotts have recently been proven to still be an effective technique to punish companies for unfavourable business decisions⁴⁵. And if it works with a beer company having hired a trans TikToker for one single reel promoting their product, it certainly works with a distributor of vegetables that were picked in Latin America and were flown to Europe to be sold in German supermarkets. (Just as an example) To paraphrase the ›Federal Chant of the General German Workers Club‹ (Bundeslied für den Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeiterverein) (and also translate it into English):
Wake up, all you customers!
And recognise your might!
All the companies' revenues stand on the rim,
happening only at your whim.⁴⁶
Ludwig von Mises
While all other animals are unconditionally driven by the impulse to preserve their own lives and by the impulse of proliferation, man has the power to master even these impulses. He can control both his sexual desires and his will to live. He can give up his life when the conditions under which alone he could preserve it seem intolerable. Man is capable of dying for a cause or of committing suicide. To live is for man the outcome of a choice, of a judgment of value.⁴⁹
The essence of an individual’s freedom is the opportunity to deviate from traditional ways of thinking and of doing things.⁵³
Society does not exist apart from the thoughts and actions of people. It does not have “interests” and does not aim at anything. The same is valid for all other collectives.⁵⁵
It is true and we already notice many positive oscillations into a more sustainable future. But it would be naive to solely rely on human reason alone—that tenor should be clear by now, as we're heading for the end of this text. The question is: Could von Mises change our opinion on the subject anyhow, major or minor? No, he couldn't, as there was little that could have pursued us of the righteousness of our prior points of view. The more interesting question would instead be whether, as an earlier thesis paper has rather focused on Ronald Coates and F. A. Hayek, would have agreed with more radical climate change policies, or disagreed and called them a sign of growing authoritarianism for an alleged higher good's sake. This question is difficult to answer because throughout his political life and writing career, he has stuck to theoretical issues alone, he has written little on practical subjects on living examples, something that differs him negatively from counterparts like James M. Buchanan, who, together with his colleague Gordon Tullock, has written extensively on practical subjects while never technically leaving the theoretical route. Therefore, and also aware that my verdict may draw ire from sympathisers and apologetics of von Mises', I would say that he would have disagreed and drawn comparisons to Hayek's “Road to Serfdom”⁵⁶. The problem is that we did not enquire or pursue the individual's disempowerment in favour of planned economies and production. We pursue what has always helped us gaining the greatest benefits of the free market with the lowest risk of its failure due to false pursuits imposed by too-powerful managers and operators who favour their personal gain alone, short-sighted and with long-term harm for their business⁵⁷. Unlike the legislators usually decried by Libertarians, entrepreneurs are not as severely accountable for their sometimes detrimental pursuits and actions, even if they may threaten their business' survival and prosperity, and their shareholders' stocks' values. We could think of Volkswagen's Martin Winterkorn and Deutsche Bank's Anshu Jain, of Porsche's Ferdinand Piëch and Rio Tinto Jean-Sebastian Jacques. The point should be clear: Whatever those men did, no-one spent any time in gaol, despite of their actions' impact on everybody's life. (Everybody at least referring to the automotive CEOs. Deutsche Bank mostly harmed its own customers and shareholders)
Reading this should finally grant us the wisdom that when it comes to theoretical works of any discipline, we should read them with a grain of salt and the consciousness that their knowledge is often limited to theoretical frameworks alone, but are incapable of always expanding to us insights into how to solve practical issues of our days. They can lead us into the right direction when it comes to what premises we must clear in order to structure our solution, but they cannot fill the void within the scaffold they erect. This must be filled with the material that is the context of the real world: The world theoretical works cannot penetrate because this way, they would carve into their own flesh. There is a distinction between theory and praxis: Theory grants us the background knowledge we need in order to make sense of the Hows and Whys of the practical world. Only when we understand the theoretical world, we can make proper sense of the practical one.
To put it in a clearer way: We could learn all the vocabulary of a language, but we will not be able to make sense of the word salad presented to us in newspapers, books or conversations by the coffee machine in our office unless we understand the grammar linked to this lingual gibberish. We could learn all the theoretical framework of street traffic, but what good did it do if we didn't know how to ride a bicycle or a motorcycle, or how to drive a car or bus? Of course we could ride by bus or just walk, but this would seriously hinder the speed at which we could travel. And what if we didn't know how to purchase a ticket for the bus? The point should be clear, at least in regards to the first example (we could also imagine learning all about what a packaging machine does and how it does that, but what good did that do for us if we didn't know how to operate it?): We need the knowledge of both worlds in order to function properly, not for someone else's sake, but for our own (too). von Mises, unfortunately, delved only into the first world, not the second; only the theoretical, not the practical.
Final Remarks
„Der Wirtschaftslenkung fehlt jegliches Kriterium für die Übereinstimmung von Bedarf und Produktion. Solange es in der Wirtschaftslenkung typisch ist, daß die Spannung zwischen Preisstopp und Kreditexpansion besteht, wird dem Konsumenten ein Warensortiment praktisch aufgezwungen, ohne daß festgestellt werden kann, ob es seinen Wünschen entspricht.”⁶⁴
For good measure, we should include one quote from Mises' aforementioned book as he has equipped an example of just how a government were bound to fail in its attempt to plan the economy:
“There will be hundreds and thousands of establishments in which A minority of these will produce goods ready for use. The majority will produce capital goods and semi-manufactures. All these establishments will be closely connected. Each commodity produced will pass through a whole series of such establishments before it is ready for consumption. Yet in the incessant press of all these processes the economic administration will have no real sense of direction. It will have no means of ascertaining whether a given piece ofwork is really necessary, whether labour and material are not being wasted in completing it. How would it discover which of two processes was the more satisfactory? At best, it could compare the quantity of ultimate products. But only rarely could it compare the expenditure incurred in their production. lt would know cxactly - or it would imagine it knew - what it wanted to produce. lt ought therefore to set about obtaining the desired results with the smallest possible expenditure. But to do this it would have to be able to make calculations. And such calculations must be calculations of value. They could not be merely 'technical', they could not be calculations of the objective use-value of goods and services. This is so obvious that it needs no further demonstration.”⁶⁵
„Wir müssen daher künftig die Wirtschaftspolitik von einer reinen Ordnungsidee her entwickeln, die entweder marktwirtschaftlich oder lenkungswirtschaftlich sein müßte. [...]Es muß demgegenüber betont werden, daß keine Ordnung als solche schon sittlich ist. Auch die Marktwirtschaft darf primär nur als ein instrumentales Mittel gelten. Wenn wir sie für nicht ungeeignet halten, einer ethischen Ordnung als Basis zu dienen, so geschieht dies weil in ihr persönliche Verantwortung bei Freiheit des einzelnen eher notwendig einengt.”⁷¹
List of Footnotes
Rosenthal, B. G. (2004). The Russian Subtext of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, 6(1), 195–225. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41560275
In Hollywood, she had been intimate with relatively few people and was largely unaware, she later said, of the degree of “pink” penetration in America or of the growing appeal of Communist battle cries to screenwriters and directors and to some of the nation’s bankrupt farmers, miners, and unemployed industrial workers. In New York, the leftward trend was more evident, especially among the cultural elite; she gradually became aware that many literary celebrities, such as Mencken’s old friend Theodore Dreiser, Heywood Broun, Edmund Wilson, Langston Hughes, John Dos Passos, and critics Malcolm Cowley, Matthew Josephson, and Granville Hicks, were members of or sympathizers with the Communist Party of the United States. At the literary cocktail parties and events that were covered in the gossip columns, they endorsed Stalinism as a noble experiment and drank toasts to the coming of America’s “Red Dawn.” Their message was that capitalism had been tested and had failed; the time had come to try Marxism on the Soviet model. It was only after living in New York for a year or two that Rand began to see the extent of the pro-Communist bias on the American intellectual left. A nineteenth-century Russian at heart, she believed that ideas have the power to change history and that intellectual leaders are the engines and agents of change. It was American intellectuals whom she eventually decided she would have to target and fight.
(Heller, Anne C. (2009). Ayn Rand and the World She Made. New York City, London: Penguin Books. I am unfortunately unable to provide a precise page number as I have only got the EPUB edition. The quote is from chapter four, ›We Are Not Like Our Brothers, 1934—1938‹. Underscores are mine.)
Now the language is unlike the one I have used, Ms. Rand may not have been aghast at the sight of the US интеллигенция that endorses Stalinism while she had seen to what Stalinism does to the humans, particularly those who do not embrace it wholeheartedly. I have also now used the word intelligentsiya although I didn't want to, but when we speak about people who live abroad and purport Soviet propaganda in spite of being able to know better, they fit the concept of the brainiacs true to their incumbent government come hell or high water.
Vo, A. N. (2009). Vietnam as a transforming country. In The Transformation of Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations in Vietnam (pp. 17–40). Elsevier. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84334-270-0.50002-X
Miah, Md. B., Haque, Md. S., Khaleque, Md. A., & Santos, R. M. (2023). Sludge Management in the Textile Industries of Bangladesh: An Industrial Survey of the Impact of the 2015 Standards and Guidelines. Water, 15(10), 1901. MDPI AG. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/w15101901
Mason, M., & McDowell, R. (2020). Rape, abuses in palm oil fields linked to top beauty brands. AP News. Link: https://apnews.com/article/palm-oil-abuse-investigation-cosmetics-2a209d60c42bf0e8fcc6f8ea6daa11c7
Aside of that, there are further studies that simply prove the same point. Of all of them, one and shall be listed for full clarity on the subject:
Marcantonio R, Javeline D, Field S, Fuentes A (2021) Global distribution and coincidence of pollution, climate impacts, and health risk in the Anthropocene. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0254060. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254060
Another study has also pointed out that greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing particularly throughout the past fifty years, thus gradually worsening the onset from which we start trying to save our planet:
Minx, J. C., Lamb, W. F., Andrew, R. M., Canadell, J. G., Crippa, M., Döbbeling, N., Forster, P. M., Guizzardi, D., Olivier, J., Peters, G. P., Pongratz, J., Reisinger, A., Rigby, M., Saunois, M., Smith, S. J., Solazzo, E., and Tian, H.: A comprehensive and synthetic dataset for global, regional, and national greenhouse gas emissions by sector 1970–2018 with an extension to 2019, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 5213–5252, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5213-2021, 2021.
⁹ Needless to say, it is highly unpopular to present such arguments towards the public as a politician because the populace would immediately rush towards the adversary who promised them the pie in the sky instead. But with regards to all the imaginable scenarios concering climate change's reality, the hardship humankind, and particularly every individual on their own, were multiply greater than the loss of minor comforts in personal life. The following study elaborates on that:
Kemp, L., Xu, C., Depledge, J., Ebi, K. L., Gibbins, G., Kohler, T. A., ... & Lenton, T. M. (2022). Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(34), e2108146119. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108146119
¹⁰ Nicolini, G., Antoniella, G., Carotenuto, F., Christen, A., Ciais, P., Feigenwinter, C., ... & Papale, D. (2022). Direct observations of CO2 emission reductions due to COVID-19 lockdown across European urban districts. Science of the Total Environment, 830, 154662. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154662
Ray, R. L., Singh, V. P., Singh, S. K., Acharya, B. S., & He, Y. (2022). What is the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on global carbon emissions?. Science of The Total Environment, 816, 151503. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151503
¹¹ Bhanumati, P., de Haan, M., & Tebrake, J. W. (2022). Greenhouse Emissions Rise to Record, Erasing Drop During Pandemic. IMF Blogs. Link: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/06/30/greenhouse-emissions-rise-to-record-erasing-drop-during-pandemic
¹² Munich RE (July 27, 2023). Earthquakes, thunderstorms, floods: Natural disaster figures for the first half of 2023. Link: https://www.munichre.com/en/company/media-relations/media-information-and-corporate-news/media-information/2023/natural-disaster-figures-first-half-2023.html
Ana M Vicedo-Cabrera et al 2023 Environ. Res. Lett. 18 074037. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ace0d0
¹³ In the end, recycling will play a major role in keeping rare earths available:
Silvestri, L., Forcina, A., Silvestri, C., & Traverso, M. (2021). Circularity potential of rare earths for sustainable mobility: Recent developments, challenges and future prospects. Journal of Cleaner Production, 292, 126089. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.126089
Another problem, obviously, is the fact that many of the rare earths deposits are located in countries that do not have the whitest of vests when it comes to their human rights record. And those recently discovered deposits of lithium in Sweden and Portugal will only partially make up for the world's need for both, not to speak of all the actual rare earths the greatest mining country by and large remains the People's Republic of China: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270277/mining-of-rare-earths-by-country/
¹⁴ DaSilva, Bryann; Dhar, Julia; Rafiq, Sana; Young, David (May 20, 2022). Nudging Consumers Towards Sustainability. Boston Consulting Group: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2022/nudging-consumers-to-make-sustainable-choices
He, G., Pan, Y., Park, A., Sawada, Y., & Tan, E. S. (2023). Reducing single-use cutlery with green nudges: Evidence from China’s food-delivery industry. Science (New York, N.Y.), 381(6662). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.add9884
¹⁵ Fraser C Lott et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 104040. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abe9e9
¹⁶ Cozzi, L., Chen, O., & Kim, H. (2023). The world’s top 1% of emitters produce over 10,000 times more CO2 than the bottom 1%. International Energy Agency (IEA): https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-world-s-top-1-of-emitters-produce-over-1000-times-more-co2-than-the-bottom-1
¹⁷ Cass, N., Büchs, M., & Lucas, K. (2023). How are high-carbon lifestyles justified? Exploring the discursive strategies of excess energy consumers in the United Kingdom. Energy Research & Social Science, 97, 102951. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.102951
¹⁸ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Emissions Gap Report 2022. Link: https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2022
I have heard that argument mostly on the internet, particularly on Twitter because that platform I frequented the most, but there are even academic professionals who make the argument that the mere existence of rich people were in itself unsubstainable:
Hickel, J. (2020). We can't have billionaires and stop climate change. The Correspondent, 9. Link: https://thecorrespondent.com/728/we-cant-have-billionaires-and-stop-climate-change
The argument is as silly as to say that one could not have subsidised healthcare and a department for gender studies at every public university. Billionaires are humans, first of all, and specifically they are humans who have managed to grow their wealth oftentimes either through the discovery of a market gap they dexteriously filled with demanded products or the management of a company in such a way that it remained excessively profitable. Their existence is the culmination of consumer satisfaction and management skill. The least of their success was built either on corruption or luck, despite of what the vox populi believes is the reason for their abnormal wealth.
¹⁹ The argument that it were the rich to blame for global climate change, which is propelled particularly by CO₂ emissions, it is the darling also of many think tanks, next to the online left that likes to allege the right of picking easy solutions for complex problems but jumps to allege nouvelles riches and established billionaires of being responsible for destroying the planet for quick cash grabs. As we will come back to the argument, one example for the think tank's like-mindedness, we shall prove at least one article published less than one year:
Oxfam International (November 07, 2022). A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person. Link: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person.
The subtitle already hints towards what is wrong with the allegation in general, and why we cannot grant it the titular switch in verbs towards accuse.
²⁰ Beatriz Barros & Richard Wilk (2021) The outsized carbon footprints of the super-rich, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 17:1, 316-322, DOI: 10.1080/15487733.2021.1949847
Salgmann, Rico; Rojon, Isabelle; Englert, Dominik (June 15, 2023). Pricing emissions from shipping: Where should the money go? World Bank Blogs: https://blogs.worldbank.org/transport/pricing-emissions-shipping-where-should-money-go
Sørensen et al., Anthropogenic noise impairs cooperation in bottlenose dolphins, Current Biology (2022), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.063
Erbe, C., Smith, J. N., Redfern, J. V., & Peel, D. (2020). Impacts of shipping on marine fauna. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, 637.
Haarr, M. L., Falk-Andersson, J., & Fabres, J. (2022). Global marine litter research 2015–2020: geographical and methodological trends. Science of The Total Environment, 820, 153162.
Ailijiang, N., Zhong, N., Zhou, X. et al. Levels, sources, and risk assessment of PAHs residues in soil and plants in urban parks of Northwest China. Sci Rep 12, 21448 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-25879-8
United States Geological Survey (USGS) (July 05, 2023). Tap water study detects PFAS 'forever chemicals' across the US. Link: https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/tap-water-study-detects-pfas-forever-chemicals-across-us
Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 2023, 10, 3, 234–239. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00094
Ehsan, M. N., Riza, M., Pervez, M. N., Khyum, M. M. O., Liang, Y., & Naddeo, V. (2023). Environmental and health impacts of PFAS: Sources, distribution and sustainable management in North Carolina (USA). Science of The Total Environment, 878, 163123. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163123
²⁴ Umlauf, Georg; Vorbeck, Claudia (July 18, 2023). PFAS-kontaminiertes Wasser wird wieder sauber – erfolgversprechendes und umweltschonendes Verfahren entwickelt. Fraunhofer-Institut: https://www.igb.fraunhofer.de/de/presse-medien/presseinformationen/2023/pfas-kontaminiertes-wasser-wird-wieder-sauber-erfolgversprechendes-und-umweltschonendes-verfahren-entwickelt.html
And since this is not an article that implicitly addresses of PFAS-infested groundwater, we should add another article that does:
Ailijiang, N., Zhong, N., Zhou, X. et al. Levels, sources, and risk assessment of PAHs residues in soil and plants in urban parks of Northwest China. Sci Rep 12, 21448 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-25879-8
²⁵ Neelavannan, K., Sen, I. S., Lone, A. M., & Gopinath, K. (2022). Microplastics in the high-altitude Himalayas: assessment of microplastic contamination in freshwater lake sediments, Northwest Himalaya (India). Chemosphere, 290, 133354. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.133354
It is worth mentioning that since it makes up a fifth of global carbon emissions:
Li, M., Jia, N., Lenzen, M. et al. Global food-miles account for nearly 20% of total food-systems emissions. Nat Food 3, 445–453 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00531-w
²⁶ But as is the case with the fossil-fuel production, those goods are neither produced, nor grown for the sole purpose of garnering money from thin air. There is a demand for them on the market, iterated by regular customers who are ready to pay for them, knowing that the delivery may contribute to an ongoing climate hazard.
²⁷ A similar phenomenon has already been examined amongst internationally operating corporations, with a positive outcome. Because governments of specially powerful nations in equally noticeable alliances, there is good reason to believe that both the arguments and results can be transposed. See the study:
Bodnaruk, A., Massa, M., & Simonov, A. (2013). Alliances and corporate governance. Journal of Financial Economics, 107(3), 671-693. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2012.09.010
²⁸ Gossen, M., Jäger, S., Hoffmann, M. L., Bießmann, F., Korenke, R., & Santarius, T. (2022). Nudging Sustainable Consumption: A Large-Scale Data Analysis of Sustainability Labels for Fashion in German Online Retail. Frontiers in Sustainability, 3, 922984. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2022.922984
²⁹ In all honesty, though, it hs had a minor impact on customers' decision-making, as studies have proven:
Folkvord, F., Bergmans, N., & Pabian, S. (2021). The effect of the nutri-score label on consumer’s attitudes, taste perception and purchase intention: An experimental pilot study. Food Quality and Preference, 94, 104303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104303
³⁰ Die Bundesregierung (October 04, 2022). Reserve für Stromproduktion nutzen. Link: https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/schwerpunkte/klimaschutz/versorgungsreserve-2130276. The title already insinuates what is written in the brief press release: That they should not run indefinitely from the date onwards, but in case of emergencies, when energy should run low because Russia has cut off ties for energy distribution, and France could not run its nuclear plants permanently because its rivers ran dry, thus disallowing the cooling of the plants:
Ouest-France (August 18, 2022). EN IMAGES. De la Loire au Louet, la sécheresse en Maine-et-Loire. Link: https://www.ouest-france.fr/pays-de-la-loire/maine-et-loire/en-images-de-la-loire-au-louet-la-secheresse-en-maine-et-loire-bf84977e-1ef7-11ed-8d55-ffd310d62ef7
³¹ Vlastelica, Ryan; Turner, Matt (May 11, 2022). Saudi Aramco Becomes World’s Most Valuable Stock as Apple Drops. Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-11/saudi-aramco-becomes-world-s-most-valuable-stock-as-apple-drops. Of course it didn't take its adversaries long to overtake them again, but when it comes to the pole position, it is an embattled field with frequent place trades.
³² It is called ›Statens pensjonsfond‹, colloquially called ›Oljefondet‹, the latter which also shows that it is entirely ifnanced with oil drilling: https://www.nbim.no/no/oljefondet/om-oljefondet/
³³ Throughout the past few months, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk took over Twitter (now called X, but I will never bow down to his rebranding effort), the term vox populi is being misused as it was never meant in a positive sense. It is derived from a letter by the Christian scholar Alcuiniana to the then-Holy Roman emperor Carolus Magnus in 798 anno Domini. The apparent passage, because it seems impossible to find the full passage of the letter in Latin (passage VIIII, as some people may have missed the part where the number 9 is written as IX), reads as follows:
Populus iuxta sanctiones divinas ducendus est, non sequendus; et ad testimonium persone magis eliguntur honeste. Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit
³⁴ This were not even the most aggressive suggestion/order uttered by the populace, as a look in the ›Guardian‹ and the redirection to the article's original resource that sparked the article:
Grasso, M., & Heede, R. (2023). Time to pay the piper: Fossil fuel companies’ reparations for climate damages. One Earth, 6(5), 459-463. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.04.012
See one paper promoting the acceleration of a fossil-fuel phase-out:
Thielges, S. (2023). The global shift away from fossil energy. Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs. https://doi.org/10.18449/2023C38
Frost, Rosie (August 12, 2021). The end of fossil fuels: Which countries have banned exploration and extraction? Euronews: https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/08/12/the-end-of-fossil-fuels-which-countries-have-banned-exploration-and-extraction
Britain, meanwhile, has committed to explorations in ending its dependency on fossil fuels while simultaneously securing its energy supply by other means. (Hoping that this will not just be energy produced with the same means they banned in their own country. See hereunder: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmenvaud/109/report.html
Another country that has got my interest is that of Poland; a country that is highly dependent on coal, even though it infests the air in cities like Kraków and even affects women's fertility:
Wronka, I., Kliś, K. Effect of air pollution on age at menarche in polish females, born 1993–1998. Sci Rep 12, 4820 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-08577-3
Poland is dependent on coal, and the incumbent government (writing as of today, August 27, 2023) has vowed to transition to a cleaner energy production blend, although it is yet to tell whether they can succeed in this project or will fail:
Li, Y., Zhang, H., & Kang, Y. (2020). Will Poland fulfill its coal commitment by 2030? An answer based on a novel time series prediction method. Energy Reports, 6, 1760-1767. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2020.06.021
As is necessary in all kinds of transitioning processes at least for smaller countries with a smaller GDP, outside entities support them financially with credits. The World Bank is such an entity, and it helps Poland with the transformation of former, historical coal regions like the wielkopolskie, śląskie and dolnośląskie województwa. It can be read about under the following link: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/poland/publication/support-for-polish-coal-regions-in-transition (There, three different, interrelated reports can be downloaded and read)
Finally, a Polish think tank has conceptualised three different scenarios for Poland's energy future, and the results are pretty predictable with a little fantasy: Scenario one is the most optimistic: Poland switches to renewable energies and the earth relieves. The second scenario is the bleakest of all three: The global climate rises by 2.5 ˚C and all the consequences of such a rise come into force. The third scenario is similar to the first scenario but with even more hazardous consequences, both of whic hshow that when projected onto the rest of the world shows that inactivity or pathological hesitancy will have a couple of unpleasant repercussions (check the following link for the full analysis: https://www.cire.pl/artykuly/o-tym-sie-mowi/trzy-scenariusze-przyszlosci-sektora-energetycznego-w-polsce)
³⁶ Mishra, A., & Agarwal, A. (2019). Do infrastructure development and urbanisation lead to rural-urban income inequality? Evidence from some Asian countries. International Journal of Sustainable Economy, 11(2), 167-183. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1504/IJSE.2019.099054
³⁷ Mazur, C. (2016). Homes on the range: Homeownership rates are higher in rural America. Census Blogs, US Census Bureau. Link: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2016/12/homes_on_the_range.html
Another opportunity for rural development is the interconnectivity between urban and said rural areas:
Tacoli, C. (2003). The links between urban and rural development. Environment and urbanization, 15(1), 3-12. Link: https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/G00486.pdf (PDF, 88.5 KB)
Still, there are a few studies on the eocnomic effects of urban-to-rural migration, although more studies, also in journals that are not alleged of predatory malpractice, would be necessary to manifest the point and iron out probable inaccuracies:
Le, T. H., Nakagawa, Y., & Kobayashi, Y. (2021). Conditions under Which Rural-to-Urban Migration Enhances Social and Economic Sustainability of Home Communities: A Case Study in Vietnam. Sustainability, 13(15), 8326. MDPI AG. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su13158326
³⁸ Brown-Iannuzzi, J. L., Lundberg, K. B., & McKee, S. (2017). The politics of socioeconomic status: how socioeconomic status may influence political attitudes and engagement. Current opinion in psychology, 18, 11-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.06.018
³⁹ Gu, Y., Wang, Z. Income Inequality and Global Political Polarization: The Economic Origin of Political Polarization in the World. J OF CHIN POLIT SCI 27, 375–398 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-021-09772-1
⁴⁰ Smilansky, S. (1994). On Practicing What We Preach. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31(1), 73–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20014485
⁴¹ Groh, D. (1987). The Temptation of Conspiracy Theory, or: Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? Part I: Preliminary Draft of a Theory of Conspiracy Theories. In: Graumann, C.F., Moscovici, S. (eds) Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy. Springer Series in Social Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4618-3_1
⁴² What he actually said is:
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
Source: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India (1964). The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume XII, April 1913 to December 1914, Chapter: General Knowledge About Health XXXII: Accidents Snake-Bite, (From Gujarati, Indian Opinion, 9-8-1913). Page 158. The Mahatma Gandhi Sevagram Ashram provides a different edition of his collected works, but a good one and one that is freely available online. The quote can be found in the 13th volume of his works, on page 241: https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/mahatma-gandhi-collected-works-volume-13.pdf#page=241
We read similar sentiments in the Holy Bible as well. Just think about what is written in James 2, 14-17, about a believer who complains about a lack of work while there were poverty and misery to combat in his approximant environment:
So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.
For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
We thus see that the idea of taking action ourselves rather than expecting others to do the work for us is not bound to cultural or ideological, theoretical or religious boundaries, it is somewhat universal, although we may emphasise that for once, the Holy Bible build the philosophical groundwrok for the Christian religion, whereas Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement. But still, both are bestowed with goodness and goodwill, with the idea that all people could live together in a peaceful fraternity.
⁴³ — Bocken, N. M., & Short, S. W. (2021). Unsustainable business models–Recognising and resolving institutionalised social and environmental harm. Journal of Cleaner Production, 312, 127828. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127828
— Lenton, T.M., Xu, C., Abrams, J.F. et al. Quantifying the human cost of global warming. Nat Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01132-6
— Certainly the second study is more directed towards the question of how much the aftermath of climate change will cost humankind rather than the businesses, but in the end, once the frequency of natural catastrophes goes higher and creates more proprietary damage, the people will call upon their governments to retaliate those tragedies by punishing the alleged perpetrators, namely corporations that exploit natural resources as a bsuiness model and—again, allegedly—take no prisoners therein, as long as the money kept coming. With regards to what we have assessed earlier in the text, a more appropriate description of the causes for their professionalised zero-sum game would be that they had targets to meet under the best possible conditions, best meaning the cheapest. And the judge setting the target is the customer demanding affordable products.
Affordability is a thorny issue specifically regarding essential products. The US are an omnipresent palette of examples for many issues, and this one is amongst them too. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, one product became scarce although many young parents relied on it: Formula. Anti-Capitalists cherish the photographs of locked-up grocery shelves where formula is only accessible after talking to the supermarket staff. The locks were necessary because those products were oftentimes victims to shoplifting. Those conditions already existed previous to the pandemic, but worsened meanwhile still. Critics alleged that the producers of formula deliberately imposed those scarcities in order to increase their profits, which made little sense since they could have pulled that lever all the time before too, with the same conclusions. They didn't need to wait until a pandemic took off and set international supply chains off the rails. After a couple of weeks, it turned out that while there were too few national producers of infant formula in the US—the situation could eventually be relieved by lifting regulations on imported infant formula from Europe—, one major bottleneck were regulations imposed by the government. For those who don't want to pay for further information, there is a concise commentary from GWU:
Sullivan, Mary (July 21, 2022). Factors Contributing to the Infant Formula Shortage. George Washington University: https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/factors-contributing-infant-formula-shortage-0
And for those who are ready to pay for some insights, there is also a study on the same subject:
Doherty, T., Coutsoudis, A., McCoy, D., Lake, L., Pereira-Kotze, C., Goldhagen, J., & Kroon, M. (2022). Is the US infant formula shortage an avoidable crisis?. The Lancet, 400(10346), 83-84. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00984-9
Now this is a little outside of this blog post's scope, but regulations, when producing a negative effect, harm the customer-supplier relationship in such a way as that natural ways and means no longer show the desired effects. This is when regulations overreach and create more harm than good. A benevolent interpretation of such overreaching would be that the people, the voters, demand noticeable conclusions, and since the government is thus under a zugzwang, it imposes invasive regulations that will inevitably produce noticeable effects, presumably positive ones. At first glance, this may seem reasonable: In order for a regulation to moderate the market in the people's favour, there needs to be a certain degree of invasiveness. But this clearly missed the point, since regulation does not work as a linear upwards equation. At one point it reaches a break even point where the line will go down because regulation harms the market's functionality. Of course such a BEP is a myth, it doesn't exist; regulations cannot be treated like mathematical equations that could be pinned down in their values. They are abstractions, abstract items created within the construct of our society. It is more complex than a single number whose characteristics can be listed, thus creating a full description of it. A regulation is too abstract to be even comprehended in its fullest scale when described in a draft bill ranging over hundreds of pages. When written down in such a way, all estimations as to how its impact will be in the environment is sterile, and once it has taken effect, it still remains a matter of discussion as to whether it has a beneficial or maleficient effect on the economy and the people as a whole. It is what separates an umbrella discipline like sociology from the analytical field of mathematics, or STEM sciences in general. It is also why I am better at the former than the latter: Because the latter leaves space for interpretations and creative abstracting of the matter at hand; the answer is not pinned down and cannot be precisely concluded. It is more materialistic and therefore more ductile. No level of human reason could make our society as precise as a mathematical equation.
⁴⁴ Although it is not all doom and gloom on the market. In fact, the conditions are as a Neoliberal, for example, would expect it to be:
Morikawa, M. (2021). Price competition vs. quality competition: Evidence from firm surveys. Journal of Economics and Business, 116, 106007. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeconbus.2021.106007
Even better, the tides may turn in the customers' favour, particularly those with said lower disposable income. Some may argue that they hadn't experienced such a turn of tides, saying that nothing had changed and that the cheaper products were still those of inferior quality, but as we know, such statistical papers can never describe specific details but only an overall average.
Chenavaz, R. (2017). Better Product Quality May Lead to Lower Product Price
. The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, 17(1), 20150062. https://doi.org/10.1515/bejte-2015-0062
⁴⁵ BusinessWire (May 04, 2023). AB InBev Reports First Quarter 2023 Results. Link: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230504005165/en/AB-InBev-Reports-First-Quarter-2023-Results
⁴⁶ I also really like the Yiddish translation of this song, entitled « און דו אקערסט און דו זייסט ». Unfortunately, the National Library of Israel didn't provide the full lyrics for it, but at least a clean recording: https://www.nli.org.il/he/items/NNL_MUSIC_AL990038580930205171/NLI.
⁴⁷ Contrarily, the same question has been proposed with regards to Austro-English economist F. A. Hayek and English economist Ronald Coase. Read:
Anderson, T. L. (2016). If Hayek and Coase were environmentalists: Linking economics and ecology. Supreme Court Economic Review, 23(1), 121-140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/686475
⁴⁸ Needless to say that the Mainland Chinese government has forged a plan to lead its people into carbon neutrality. What is surprising, though, is that it is by far not as invasive in its policy proposals as it would be expected from a government that is known to control its people in every step of life. You can read their proposal hereunder: https://en.ndrc.gov.cn/policies/202110/t20211027_1301020.html
⁴⁹ von Mises, Ludwig (1998). Human Action. A Treatise on Economics. Auburn (AL): Ludwig von Mises Institute. Page 19-20.
⁵⁰ The Western world—a probably more appropriate description of the Western, first world, as opposed to what we call the third world, although this negatively denoted title may be misleading in many ways, including the view it conveys about indigenous people who would be poor in our definition, which is mostly based in a view of the financial situation, while they themselves would not consider themselves poor. The US-American novelist and journalist Rose Wilder Lane witnessed the same about Georgian people in the Caucasus (the people whose native country is called Sakartvelo in their native language; not to be confused with the US State of the same name) as they were pushed in the impoverishing kolkhozy of the Soviet Union.
But first, read how the World Bank perceives the indigenous peoples of the US:
Davis, S. H., & Wali, A. (1993). Indigenous views of land and the environment. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Rose Wilder Lane didn't emphasise the humility of the Georgian people (unlike I remembered it), but mentioned that they lived in what we would call poverty but those people would call home. As she wrote about their standard of living:
Certainly the standard of living was primitive. In a hundred years, it had not changed. They had no electric lights, no plumbing. They bathed, I supposed, only once a week in the village bath-house, and perhaps it wasn't sanitary. How many germs were in their drinking water, no one knew. Their windows were not screened. Their dusty roads were undoubtedly fathomless mud in rainy weather. They had no automobiles, nor even horses; only ox-wagons. Their standard of living, in a word, had remained that of the pioneers of Illinois a hundred years ago. Possibly their standard of living has already been raised. It may be that in time every tooth in Russia will be brushed thrice daily and every child fed spinach. (Wilder Lane, Rose (1936). Give me Liberty. Caldwell (IO): The Caxton Printers, Ltd.)
⁵¹ The NASA, in the second footnote of its Evidence page (https://web.archive.org/web/20230923190857/https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/), has given us the years of 1896, 1938, 1941, and finally 1956, the antepenultimate and penultimate lying pretty close to one another. Either way, the knowledge about a problematic direction where humanity and its lifestyle were headed is old; old enough to have countered it through trends towards sustainability. The reason why we didn't lies in our preference of convenience. Preference for convenience and the consequential ignorance of warnings by the Cassandrian experts was also what led to the fateful demise of many citizens of Hamburg when the “Blanke Hans” (Bare Hans) went down on them in 1962: https://hhla.de/en/company/history/storm-flood-1962
⁵² He even won the Nobel Prize in 2007, sharing it with the IPCC on the same subject, we could say:
Al Gore – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 24 Sep 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2007/gore/facts/
⁵³ von Mises, Ludwig (2007). Theory & History. Auburn (AL): Ludwig von Mises Institute. Page 378.
⁵⁴ And since I won't share anything in either such direction, I want to emphasise that the reason why some people are either ignorant or in denial about elephants in the room, the reason for this is as easy as it is problematic: People don't like leaving their comfort zones, and so they will instead rest in a state of bliss and enjoy the time of comfort that is left to them. Many who live in such blissful states are said to be elders or nearing seniority, so that they were allegedly enjoying the last years of peace and prosperity, leaving behind for their offspring and following generations the decay of their ignorance. I disagree with this assessment as this firstly constitutes a fallacious generalisation that simultaneously alleges an entire generation of irresponsibility while stylising another generation of a carte-blanche innocence and sainthood in terms of sustainability, and secondly is not supported by any relevant research. Thirdly, divisiveness won't solve any issues, since we will always live (and die) in a multigenerational, pluralist society. This multi-layered plurality is a dilemma insofar as that it is our joy and demise at once.
Long story short, there is also noticeable literature on the phenomenon of blissful ignorance:
Zerubavel, E. (2006). The elephant in the room: Silence and denial in everyday life. Oxford University Press.
⁵⁵ von Mises, Ludwig (1962). The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science. Princeton (NJ): D van Nostrand Company, Ltd. Page 79.
⁵⁶ Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily re-created in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.
(Hayek, F. A.; Caldwell, Bruce (ed.) (2007). The Road to Serfdom. The Definitive Edition. Texts and Documents. Chicago (IL): Chicago University Press. Page 216-217.)
⁵⁷ von Mises wrote that “If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.” (von Mises, Ludwig (1974). Planning for freedom, and twelve other essays and addresses. South Holland (IL): Libertarian Press. Page 44) He is right with regards to that, I have spoken similarly earlier and elsewhere. Wherever man is at work, the risk of error is imminent. But he judges prematurely when he claims that when the entrepreneur errs, the legislator will err likewise. When we speak of the legislator, we speak of laws he passes that mean to set barriers for the market to direct him. Those laws are not passed prematurely and pushed through with all of the legislator's might. Instead, those laws undergo several layers of review and are being scrutinised by the parliamentary opposition. Those who deem it problematic anyhow can enquire a review by a court. Again, those courts are occupied by humans, equally errable. If we had to assume that all those layers of humans failed to notice a fallacy within those laws, we could either assume that we reached another reason for why humanity were its own doom, or that the error were so tiny that its effects will remain infinitesimal and won't (marginally) hinder the entrepreneur from producing a satisfactory good or deliver a decent service to his customers.
⁵⁸ Unilever was one of the first companies I heard of that planned to replace its plastic container for pot noodles with a paper one. The plans have been reported some time ago:
Francis, Jo (July 12, 2023). Unilever trials paper for Pot Noodle. Printweek: https://www.printweek.com/news/article/unilever-trials-paper-for-pot-noodle
PepsiCo, in the meantime, tries to squash the responsibility back to the end customer and contemplates further options for them to avoid additional plastic containers by refilling their beverages at home.
Packaging Europe (September 18, 2023). PepsiCo: EU packaging rules should embrace refill at home. Link: https://packagingeurope.com/comment/pepsico-eu-packaging-rules-should-embrace-refill-at-home/10328.article
In my opinion, it was weak of PepsiCo to not present own plans for a more sustainable packaging of their products, given the wide range it offers. For example, until recently, I didn't know that they also sold concentrate solutions, but they have even got a whole subordinate company only for such products. The idea itself, though, is not bad, it's even pretty good as this could also reduce the distribution of further bottles and other containers once people started keeping them at home. The interest of consumers was already noticeable with the growing popularity of robust to-go drinking cups and thermal mugs. The only problem I had wit hthis interview in general was the point about SodaStream-like home carbonation systems that require carbon capsules that are often throw-away products, like the coffee caps by Nescafé, which are moreover fit for Nescafé machines too, adding up on an already ludicrous product. It has been mentioned that those caps should become reusable too; it could help to make them more popular for drinkers of carbonated water (like me), plus it could make purchasing and carrying heavy castes of glass bottles superfluous—targeting singles who live in flats up in the higher storeys.
There are many more stories one could refer, such as the commitments of other corporate giants, two of which I too have read only recently and should be mentioned due to their global brand recognition. Think, for example, of the ALDI group's commitment to trace packaging to improve its sustainability, preluded by another partnership programme:
ALDI South Group (June 2022). Tackling plastic and packaging: ALDI becomes a member of HolyGrail 2.0 and RecyClass. Link: https://cr.aldisouthgroup.com/en/responsibility/news/tackling-plastic-and-packaging-aldi-becomes-member-holygrail-20-and-recyclass
Starbucks Stories & News (August 14, 2023). Starbucks Latest California Borrow A Cup Test Furthers Company’s Shift Toward Reusables. Link: https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2023/starbucks-latest-california-borrow-a-cup-test-furthers-companys-shift-toward-reusables/
The latter press release was also a good example of why quotation marks exist. But aside of that, those are two commitments urgently required because incentivisation on the customer side does not suffice when there are no practical, affordable alternatives to the existing plastic products. Paper straws were mocked for their impracticality for a reason, just as metal straws were for beverages that are not lukewarm but either hot or cold. What is more is that both plastic and paper straws have recently been found to contain PFAS, thus narrowing down the choice down to technically just the metal straws:
Pauline Boisacq, Maarten De Keuster, Els Prinsen, Yunsun Jeong, Lieven Bervoets, Marcel Eens, Adrian Covaci, Tim Willems & Thimo Groffen (2023) Assessment of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in commercially available drinking straws using targeted and suspect screening approaches, Food Additives & Contaminants: Part A, 40:9, 1230-1241, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/19440049.2023.2240908
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. (John 8:10-11)
Milne, Richard (September 25, 2023). Lego ditches oil-free brick in sustainability setback. Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/6cad1883-f87a-471d-9688-c1a3c5a0b7dc
Shawn, Donnan (September 29, 2023). A Nobel Laureate Offers a Biting Critique of Economics. Bloomberg Businessweek: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-29/angus-deaton-s-new-book-says-economists-value-markets-over-people
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