Confronted with the likelihood that we cannot achieve climate goals, confront socioeconomic inequality, and ultimately build a better world without significant personal sacrifice: How much are you personally capable and willing to lose? I mean this in the most earnest way possible. Acknowledging the likely possibility of working for an unethical organization while simultaneously supporting family who rely on you financially. Do you believe the amount we can and will bear aligns with the amount we must bear?
Well over “35k plutocrats”.
Killing a billionaire would reduce carbon emissions more than anything else I could personally do, so let’s start there and see how it goes. We can talk about me giving things up when those efforts won’t be undone by some asshole flying to Chamonix for the weekend or whatever those fucks are doing.
So are you willing to murder a billionaire and face the consequnces?
He doesn’t need to get caught. He could poison him as like a food caterer or something. It would probably be a higher chance of success then just trying to break through a crowd and getting some shots off with a pistol. People survive shootings everyday.
Yeah the old lie that we are all in it together and should try our best was, yeah, a lie, and some just took all our efforts.
There shouldn’t be billionaires, it’s a morally wrong concept. Money is not meant for hoarding.
We could just confiscate everything over 100 millions and they’d probably wouldn’t even notice. An upper limit of 10 millions seems fair, until no one starves on the planet, have access to health care, education.
And no heritages. Get your money as everybody else.
An upper limit of 10 millions seems fair, until no one starves on the planet, have access to health care, education.
I actually really like this idea. They all seem to have some sort of God complex, so let’s put them to the test. You provide clean drinking water to everyone, you unlock another 50 Mil to your cap. Feed the world, you unlock more to your cap. You get the idea.
I’d additionally like to propose a change to corporate tax code. Any full-time employees at your company that are on food stamps or other financial hardship support programs have 2x the cost that the government pays for those benefits added directly to the company’s overall tax bill as a final adjustment. The adjustments will not be deferrable or offset by any other portion of tax code. If your company cannot pay those adjustments, your company now belongs to the government.
I am very fucking sick of companies socializing their losses to the rest of the country and keeping all the profit for themselves.
Also no wage gap bigger than ten times (including bonuses, shares etc).
I don’t have kids. Both a personal sacrifice and a way to massively minimize my carbon footprint.
And I don’t even get to claim that I want a better climate for my offspring.
I do get to shamelessly do everything I want to do in my lifetime, though. Can recommend.
This comes across as sort of like something the ancients would do. Sacrifice a lamb, a baby, 10 women, a man into a volcano, I mean who are you sacrificing to for what return? Lent has the same vibe, but more about atonement. I think what the bottom line is- is a feeling of desperation to shout it out and be heard as a community looking for answers. Maybe you will find them? I always wondered if the ancients ever did?
It’s always crazy to come into threads like these and see people say “I would murder as many elites as possible” without batting an eye, and in the same comment say “I could never give up hamburgers.” It’s some kind of insane self-soothing to throw all of the responsibility for a global issue onto a few scapegoats. It also shows that people have no intention of doing fuck all about climate change beyond typing up snarky comments on the internet.
People can misquote all kinds of studies they half remember to pretend that they have no responsibility for making changes, but that doesn’t make it true. Just as one example, first world countries’ per-capita rate of meat consumption alone is enough to push the world over our 1.5C warming target. But because it’s an inconvenience to make any changes to my life, I’m going to pretend I would personally kill scores of people rather than make a new recipe for dinner. We’re fucked
The CO2 impact of one member of the Parasite Class is usually in excess of 100,000 working-class people, and if a personal jets and yachts are involved, can exceed the impact of 1,000,000 working-class people.
So yes, violently denuding the Parasite Class (which can also be done via effective taxation; just saying) is an effective way to combat climate change, provided the outcome doesn’t involve the working class adopting more excessive lifestyles due to more a equitable distribution of wealth.
Call me a coward, but I’m more of a problem solver. Within these tinted walls of depression, if I squint really hard, I can see the light in the corner. Yes, I do see the light. Don’t kill yourself, you’re more valuable just being there for your brothers, or better still, helping create the world we all want. We have no choice but to accept the current reality, and live with it every day, but still - keep your chin up, & keep working towards the future you want. #WeRiseTogether
I think people are willing to sacrifice more than even they would expect, but no one wants to be the only one sacrificing, especially if it puts them at a disadvantage compared to others. But collectively, if people sacrificed together, it could even become a point of pride. It’s why countries develop strong solidarity in times of war.
i want to see jeff bezos living with a median wage. then we can talk.
Nothing, I’m only making a better world if I can make my own life better at the same time. I do live an extreme frugal existence and avoid working for any unethical organization, but it’s not a sacrifice.
What we can “bear” is the wrong question for a couple reasons:
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Consumer luxuries don’t actually make for a better life.
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Altruistic scheming isn’t anyone’s actual motivation for doing things.
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“sacrifice” is irrational bargaining; reality doesn’t care whether you’ve made yourself enough of a martyr, and people who want to be martyrs don’t care if what they’re sacrificing actually makes much of a difference.
An effective solution will involve changes we can be happy about and a lifestyle that is actually better than what we have now. Commutes and lives spent stressing over money are a shit trade for what people get from it anyway, it won’t be hard to do better with less.
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I highly doubt there will ever be a better world, our current “business as usual” course will doom humanity to extinction within the next two centuries, and have a non-trivial probability of initiating a Venus Scenario due to the inertia present in human-made climate change.
Our only hope of avoiding that future is bringing out the guillotines and removing pretty much the entire Parasite Class from existence, implementing a true separation of capitalism and state, and instituting punitive laws that control and limit the worst depredations of capitalism (far more than what currently exist). While it wouldn’t be true socialism, it would bring us much closer to democracy that is free of capitalistic cronyism and corruption, allowing society as a whole to save itself without being handcuffed and bound to a profit-at-all-costs path by our corporate masters.
Not a good damn thing, unless everyone with a higher standard of living than I do has already sacrificed enough to bring them down to my level. If I was anywhere near the top standards of living then I would be more willing to go first. But I am not going to be tricked into giving things up on my own, or even as a sizable group, while some individuals and corporations are continuing to make issywors
The first major issue is “How do I know it will work? How do I know the sacrifice won’t be in vain?”
Even if I just up commit suicide, cutting my carbon emissions to zero, private planes will still fly, we’ll still ship plastic trinkets across the pacific, still destroy habitat, etc.
Its defeatist, but unless we get the rich on board, shit sucks.
Well, I’ve heard people say that rich people are pretty delicious, so that could be an alternate plan…
It’s true that we’ll have to make significant sacrifices, but we also have so much to gain, and I’d argue that the things that we have to gain are more important than the things we have to lose. Right now, we financially support our families at the cost of not spending time with them. We pursue education only by mortgaging our future in student loan debt. We need Netflix only because we require a disconnect from a world that’s destroying itself and forcing us to participate, and it’s not even that fun. We cling to the convenience of plastic and cars at the expense of livable cities and the Earth itself. Even this fucking phone that I’m typing on makes me sad and mad so often. I fucking hate this thing.
What are the memories you cherish? For me, it’s big feasts at family reunion, or mountain summits in the winter, or finishing a huge renovation project, or days with my grandma before she passed. We don’t have to give up any of those things. In fact, we should demand more of those, and less time actively destroying our bodies and our planet in order to enrich shareholders. There will always be work, but there’s currently so much of it, a lot of which is bullshit, and the wealth we create is hoarded by greedy fucks who aren’t just stealing your labor, but your time with your grandma or on mountaintops.
We need to change our society such that we can decide what matters together. It’s the only way through this crisis. That’s why I’m a member of several socialist organizations. It’s why I left my job and founder a coop. There will be big changes, but we should share in the costs and the benefits together, from each according to their ability, and to each according to their needs.
Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything!
Every day I look at the shit happening around us and I find myself getting closer and closer to Luthen Rael’s state of mind.
And here’s the relevant clip, for those who haven’t seen it.
I’ll sacrifice enough of my time to help build the guillotines we’ll need to deal with the root cause of these problems.
In case it’s not apparent already none of these problems are things that can be solved by personal sacrifices of average individual citizens. We need sweeping government and economic reforms if we’re going to do anything except kick the can down the road for another generation or three while the wealthy continue to loot the planet for their own benefit. If anyone needs to make sacrifices right now it’s the 0.01% sitting on top of enough money and influence to solve all of these problems.
Not that much if I’m being completely honest. I’ve got bills to pay so I’m going to keep driving my truck to work, consuming stuff and buying meat. I’m more than happy to take part in the collective effort however so when the government sets new laws and regulations to fight climate change I just go with it even if it inconveniences me. Up to a point obviously. I just don’t think that my actions as an individual makes any real difference. I’m not going to live more sub-optimal life than what I’m already living only so that I can feel good about being on the moral highground despite knowing it made no difference. I applaud everyone who does but that’s just not me.
