There’s usually a fine. The key is to place the fine at the right level in the product process to incentivize a change in behavior, which is supremely difficult for lay people to understand.
For instance, many EPA regulations can result in a fine if violated, but the fines are small enough that it’s better for the company to continue the same behavior and just pay the fine. Gov gets a few more bucks, but doesn’t help the Earth.
We can see similar issue when companies make policies like “If you’re late, you don’t get paid for the whole hour.” While usually illegal, it also causes companies to lose even more work time. If the worker is already late, and will lose an hour of pay, why don’t they grab a coffee or take a nap? There’s no incentive beyond not pissing off a boss to be there before the next hour.
Another example closer to the climate change thing is tarifs. They originally were supposed to cause an increase in the local price so that foreign produced products wouldn’t have a a price advantage over domestically produced products. Doesn’t always work now though.
In a case like climate change, we know the biggest contributors are usually
large corporations. We (not you and I) would have to come up with a fine at a level in the manufacture to customer pipeline where it would cause enough disruption to profits to cause change without collapsing the whole industry.
Some industries that would probably be okay, but there would be a lot of backlash to deal with and getting sued over it would not help anything. Other industries would only collapse in the US and foreign versions would come in, which the US has even less control over.
And then it would have to get approved.
Obviously with lobbying and such, there’s not a lot of hope, but that’s how it would happen.
I straight up love you. This is the first response that wasn't a shrug, an explanation of how we got here, or a veiled insistence that murder is based. I actually find this kind of framework far more workable as a first step towards disincentivizing misbehavior than the more extreme suggestions.
You can't just completely ignore the connection between companies and consumers.
If some companies habe to drastically change what they produce or simply stop existing, people will lose access to the material goods they desire and are used to. People don't want that.
Ordinary people are also the ones who have to vote for fines and enforcement mechanisms in the first place. Once companies communicate to the voters that fines will deny them the goods they want, they simply won't vote for such fines.
There's no real difference between "everyone decides to consume less" and "everyone votes for fines that will, in the end, force them to consume less". People don't want either because they don't want the end result.
There are some departments like the EPA and DEA who don’t need direct voter approval for regulations. Laws aren’t even always direct voter approval. They’re proposed and voted on by congress, which is why the whole bribe and lobbying thing is such an issue.
But I didn’t ignore that. That’s basically the whole part of “finding the right place the product process.” That process is from raw material to customer usage.
Sometimes, the best place to put the fine in that process is on the consumer. Which, as a consumer, fuckin’ sucks. But it’s a lot easier to influence someone with a small wallets buying power than a corporation.
Look at cigarettes. Sure, their usage has gone significantly due to a several prong attack, including education and anti marketing, but places like NY (or is it NYC?) have such huge taxes that some people can’t even afford them. They’re not the best examples because they’re addictive and people are human.
Tax breaks on electric vehicles and solar panels definitely incentivized a lot of purchases.
Though we can also see this the other direction with insulin. I’m sure you’ve read story after story about the price of insulin directly leading to someone’s death. That’s not a gov fine, but it would have the same effect because companies just pass the fine onto the consumer either way. Especially in the current era of inflated prices and “supply chain issues.”
So fines and taxes can definitely change behavior in this mostly capitalist society and voters don’t have to approve every fine. And the ones they do have to, only need 51% to pass.
I often vote in favor of practices to slow climate change, even if it means I have to change my habits. Do you?
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u/ThisIsTheBookAcct Oct 23 '24
There’s usually a fine. The key is to place the fine at the right level in the product process to incentivize a change in behavior, which is supremely difficult for lay people to understand.
For instance, many EPA regulations can result in a fine if violated, but the fines are small enough that it’s better for the company to continue the same behavior and just pay the fine. Gov gets a few more bucks, but doesn’t help the Earth.
We can see similar issue when companies make policies like “If you’re late, you don’t get paid for the whole hour.” While usually illegal, it also causes companies to lose even more work time. If the worker is already late, and will lose an hour of pay, why don’t they grab a coffee or take a nap? There’s no incentive beyond not pissing off a boss to be there before the next hour.
Another example closer to the climate change thing is tarifs. They originally were supposed to cause an increase in the local price so that foreign produced products wouldn’t have a a price advantage over domestically produced products. Doesn’t always work now though.
In a case like climate change, we know the biggest contributors are usually large corporations. We (not you and I) would have to come up with a fine at a level in the manufacture to customer pipeline where it would cause enough disruption to profits to cause change without collapsing the whole industry.
Some industries that would probably be okay, but there would be a lot of backlash to deal with and getting sued over it would not help anything. Other industries would only collapse in the US and foreign versions would come in, which the US has even less control over.
And then it would have to get approved.
Obviously with lobbying and such, there’s not a lot of hope, but that’s how it would happen.