How about we set up some rules and regulations so that the price of goods more accurately reflects their total cost (environmental, moral, material) and then we can all just sort of automatically buy the right amount of stuff.
I'd be fine with this if it was actually an organic movement where Americans realized consumerism didn't bring happiness
My problem is the last few weeks have been an outright propaganda campaign against Americans to accept lower living standards which are a direct result of inflation caused by government policies and allowing companies to outsource everything. These types of headlines are almost a parody, Soviet Union tier stuff trying to normalize what is happening.
Inflation at present is primarily the result of the global pandemic and government's failure to coordinate their response with regards to shipping, hence the crises in global shipping at the moment. Governments spent the better part of 2020 and the first half of 2021 trying to keep their population safe. They took their eye off the eight ball in understanding how these events would impact global shipping. You could argue the policies affecting inflation were therefore the Covid-19 policies, but that really isn't constructive in resolving the situation we now find ourselves in. We can use it to model a better response the next time. Global pandemics have negative impacts to global supply chains.
> "allowing companies to outsource everything"
You mean allowing companies freedom? Funny how "free societies" do that! Meanwhile, economists of all political persuasions have been arguing for decades that this has been the key factor to America's success and her high standard of living. It has also encouraged investment in America's financial markets from all over the world.
We're currently experiencing constrained supply due to the global shipping crises and constant demand. Econ 101 informs us this will result in price increases. I think the central banks have been pretty transparent about it. They still see inflation as a non-issue because they believe once the supply constraints are resolved prices will go back to normal. Meanwhile...what do you propose we do? With a constrained supply we're going to have to make do with less. This isn't propaganda, it's simple, basic economics.
I think you're a little too quick to let the US government off the hook here. It was well established that there would be supply chain issues as early as mid-summer 2020. Part of keeping the population safe and working is keeping the mechanisms for trade in place and working. This includes ensuring ports are cleared, staffed, and operational. It also includes not paying people to stay home. The constant threats of higher taxes and gigantic spending proposals also didn't help. Those costs get priced in at some point.
How long would the world let Americans get paid more while other people around the world are willing to sell at lower prices?
We expect market participants to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities in every other circumstance and buy low and sell high, why would it be different for the billions of people coming online around the world?
A rather simplistic implementation of this could be to create regulations to require trash/refuse processing centers and incinerators in every zip code. Consumerism generates so much trash that well off folks are able to ship to poor areas - out of sight/out of mind. Making the effects from waste processing more “equitable” should change behaviors.
That would hurt the poors while the wealthy would still be able to buy loads of stuff. Maybe a tax that would become bigger the more you buy? Like, the more gas or electricity you consume, the more expensive it gets per unit? But it would be very hard to implement I guess..
I think some European countries are on the right path: the tax money is not gone, just distribute it equally (as the externalities of emissions hurt everyone in the same way), and the poor will be fine. If only we could roll out such a scheme globally, it would be the just and definite solution for climate change.
Your individual emissions are above the global average? Tough luck. Are they below the global average? Congratulations, your higher purchase price for iphones is more than compensated by the payout everyone worldwide gets every month.
It isn't that simple. Some geographies have intrinsically higher carbon footprints than others, all other things being equal and with similar levels of effort and investment. The cost of reducing carbon footprint is not remotely uniform, through no fault of the people that live there.
Differentially taxing people by virtue of where they live for no local purpose is reliably unpopular in similar contexts, and that would easily be the case here.
Just put all the taxes collected from it into a "emission pool", then distribute it evenly among the people. That way the rich buying a lot of stuff effectively is them paying for the poor's emission quota. Or any of the many other ways to handle this, there are so many solutions to the problem that it is not an issue unless you want it to be.
Brilliant. Yes, we're facing a consumption catastrophe, so let's distribute more funding toward more people so they can consume more.
This is almost as fantastic as the HN zeitgeist of:
1. OMG there's a climate apocalypse coming due to the carbon emissions of about a billion people!
2. There's another 6 billion people we need to either import into, or bring up to the living standards (e.g. carbon footprint) of, those first 1 billion.
3. What? Oh lol you heartless rationalist, #2 doesn't conflict with #1 because uhhhh.... Elon Musk exists? (no analysis of the actual energy requirements and fossil fuel mix over time is provided or considered, just an assumption of cornucopian miracles)
No, TFA is correct. We need to consume less, end our obsession with "growth", and most importantly, divest ourselves of the bleeding-heart suicidal idea of quadrupling our energy requirements with immigration and/or foreign aid. There will be a time to do that, when our energy mix is largely renewables, but not yet, and not within at least half a century.
Also we could redistribute the tax as a sort of UBI. This way not only product that pollute would be more expensive, people would have the ability to say no to crappy jobs.
I think this kind of progressive consumption tax would be amazing for society.
In a capitalist society, the theory goes that the individuals who are better at allocating capital will accumulate more capital, allocate it better, thus accumulating more, etc. in a loop.
I could be convinced that some people are much, much better at allocating capital than most. It makes sense to let them be our societal capital allocators. Obviously, we want limits so that if 1 person makes a serious misjudgment, it doesn’t completely tank society.
But I could see it being the case where, if we were purely optimizing for sum-total societal capital accumulation, it would be optimal 1% of the population to be in charge of 90% of the capital.
There are a few obvious problems with this scheme where it meets reality, though. The most over-arching is that our current system allows the controllers of capital to more or less arbitrarily convert between capital and consumption.
That is, some billionaire can burn some of their capital and buy a $500MM mega-yacht. At the end of the day, this is essentially wasting the labor of 10,000 people for a year (at 50k average salary).
Even if we accept the premise that Jeff Bezos is a better capital allocator than 99.99% of people, I think we could argue that his having a $500MM mega yacht is not going to increase his capital allocation ability.
This is where the progressive consumption tax comes in. Imagine a tax that was quadratic with consumption. For example, you’d pay $1K in tax on $10K of consumption, $100K of tax on $100K of consumption, and $10MM in tax on $1MM in consumption (obviously these are example numbers, any upwardly curved function will do, though). It very quickly becomes prohibitively expensive to consume much more than some societal average. This would significantly decrease consumption inequality.
There are a lot of second-order things affected by this tax:
- becomes much harder for 1 billionaire to burn capital in order to consume marketing and influence elections
- one could use some proceeds of this tax as simple transfer payments, so not only is it quadratically more expensive to consume more, but the revenue from doing so gets send to people lower on the consumption distribution. This enhances the consumption flattening effect.
- reduces conspicuous consumption which is good for climate change
- improves labor productivity by increasing the societal savings rate (driving investment and increasing capital allocation per unit of labor), which further enhances this whole flywheel
- more things that are too long for this comment
There are obvious implementation problems though. On the face of it, it seems more difficult for me to hide consumption than it is to hide wealth, but I’m sure there are schemes to do so. The basic form of this tax would be to demonstrate to the tax agency some accounting of your wealth (savings, investments, etc) at two points in time, and then your consumption is computed based on the net inflows and outflows.
You'll be hitting the poorer folk very hard. I said that a few times already, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the cheapest iPhone in my country costs around 3 median monthly salaries. (I am not arguing that everybody should be using iPhones, I don't use and don't want them, it's only to give you an estimate.) If prices get even higher, we won't be able to buy anything at all.
And if you raise the prices only in the US, then Americans will be buying all their stuff from other countries over mail, like we do now.
This regularly comes up on any kind of tax proposal. You just reimburse some fraction of it to the poor. One super easy way to do that is to replace an existing regressive tax, but there's a thousand different ways.
If any kind of market efficiency pricing change actually hurts the poor, it's because the people passing the law wanted it to, but many wouldn't even if done super simply, because rich people buy more stuff, use more carbon etc.
I thought customs are already solved problem? EU even managed to force sellers in other countries to automate the whole thing... So I see no reason why individuals wouldn't be charged tariffs when importing things.
If the unit cost is higher than the maximum a manufacturer or retailer can charge, it won't be produced at all. This results in a market failure, similar to the one China's experiencing with their energy market, where the price of coal is 4x what it was earlier this year.
I'm not an economist, but I'm curious about this topic.
If, say, an iPhone cost $20k (because of emissions and slave/inhumane labor), obviously us normal folks (or poor folks) wouldn't own one, but would they still be produced for the grotesquely wealthy among us or would they just be scrapped or would the supply chain optimize for the new cost-structure and stop using slave labor to bring it down to a more reasonable price?
That would unfortunately be a “regressive” pricing, it would disproportionately impact the poor. Just cars and energy I would expect to become unattainable unless alternative sources of sustainable transportation and energy are embraced by society in never before seen levels.
Being poor is a separate problem that is solved by giving someone money to not be poor. Assuming one wants to solve the problem of poorer people.
It has nothing to do with accurately pricing externalities. Of course, wealth transfers are extremely politically unpopular.
In the ideal world there would be marginal sales taxes, but that seems infeasible in the near future. Although, not inconceivable if everyone’s purchases were being tracked.
Any taxation aside from super progressive tax schemes that top out at 90% and more would disproportionally impact the poor. But is our goal to destroy the rich (so poor can consume more) or is it to lower overall consumption?
That'd push to fix suburbanisation and make mass transit cool again. Or enforce remote work.
Who do you think is going to be hardest hit when the climate crisis hits in force?
Anyway, there are a variety of wealth redistribution schemes that can target the problem of poverty, including giving the proceeds from a carbon/whatever tax to lower income Americans.
Just off the top of my head, I currently have TV from 2008, a microwave from the early 2000s, cookware from the 80s, dishes from the 80s, most of my furniture is from the 90s and earlier, my gym equipment is from the 70s and 80s, my bass amp is from the late 70s, and my extremely stylish windbreaker is my dad's from the 80s.
I have a electric shoe shiner my dad bought in the 60s that still works. It smells like ozone when you turn it on. I have a bunch of small kitchen appliances that are 20+ years old, including a George Foreman grill. My college washer and dryer lasted 20 years until the washer got out of balance. I should have just repaired it but I got new ones. I have furniture from the 90s, 60s, 30s and some pieces from the 1800s. I have tools in the garage 20+ years old. Until recently, I kept a car for 9+ years (last one broke after a few years).
I find I buy much less stuff. I get buyer's remorse from spending money that I should save as a war chest and the quality of stuff I buy today is mostly absolute crap.
Bikes, some items of clothing, furniture, DIY/garden tools, pretty much every kitchen utensil and gadget could be handed down after that period of time if it's high quality. A lot of electrical stuff like radios and TVs are still useful after 20 years.
>A lot of electrical stuff like radios and TVs are still useful after 20 years.
Like my incandescent light bulbs? Plenty of things should not be kept around for twenty years simply because their replacements are better for the environment. At a certain point the accumulated impact of an old thing will exceed the impact of making and operating a new thing to replace it.
It's also true about cars, homes, power tools, computers, and etc. Newer variants of these items are more efficient and it's just dumb to try to use things forever without updating them.
While I agree with your other examples, I think power tools are a bad example. I'm using a wired drill and circular saw from 20 years ago, which both still work perfectly. How is buying a modern power tool which requires disposable batteries that 99% of people will dispose of improperly a better choice for the environment? My guess is that the industry shifted toward batteries because of convenience, not efficiency, but I could be wrong.
plenty of toys, as a kid I would go to my grandparents house and play with their toys. the same toys my mother and grandmother played with when they were children.
same with clothes. my mother saved a lot our children clothes and gave them no my sister when she had children.
furniture is a huge one. my grandparents and parents own a lot of furniture that could easily last hundreds of years, their current stuff is going on 50 years, and I got my eye on a lot of pieces that look like new still. and a hell of a lot better than anything you can buy today.
art and decor are others. kitchen items, basically any non perishable good in your house that isn't fixed?
Tools more than anything, stuff breaks and needs repairs and the form factor of those tools have generally remained the same for a long while with all the bolts and bits..etc
Hah, sure (some) cars and homes) but that’s cheating, some assets will of course be timeless. Sure also (some) watches and cameras are too but they’re disproportionately expensive :D
Most assets are timeless. The ephemera leaping to your mind so easily are leaping there because they are the exception and you don't notice all the stuff that isn't.
Why am I looking at a broken laundry basket? Why are all my laundry baskets broken, just from hauling clothes around? Why is the shelf that I'm looking at now broken on top? I have a chest of drawers that is now ~45 years old and was for the time a cheap piece of junk, that is, particle board and wood, but it's still in great condition, basically like new.
It would only take a bit more plastic on my laundry baskets to last indefinitely, just like my cheap chest of drawers has lasted decades because it only has a bit more thickness on the drawer bottoms than anything does nowadays. You shouldn't have to step up a factor of magnitude in cost to get something that will last, and to be honest I've been bitten a few times even then and merely gotten a higher grade of trash.
Durability and repair-friendliness are threats to manufacturer profits. You can only sell a good pair of boots once every 30 years. You can sell a bad pair of boots every season. (Thank you, Watch Commander Vimes.)
Most people buy cheap stuff, I think there are three main factors that cause this. 1. It's what's available in big box stores, 2. It's cheap (affordable), and 3. Many people don't have the skills/space to build their own.
Personally I am quite lucky, having learned woodworking from a very talented shop teacher in high-school, I am more than capable of building my own furniture. One of my first projects was an end-table with a chessboard built into the top with a few decorative inlays, all cherry and maple. When I built it, I put maybe $20 extra (nearly a decade ago, forgive my memory) worth of support boards, the table is one of the most solid things I've ever personally see, and was capable of supporting 3 ~150lb people standing on it (yes, it was fun to test this). I remember having to beg my mom to purchase the wood, and the total was under $200, ballpark $150 I think, not including labor of course. I fully expect it to last well past my own life, and it will be a great hand-me-down to my kids.
Contrast this to a nice looking bookshelf I picked up from Ikea two years ago that had felt somewhat sturdy in the store, the shelves themselves were made of real(!) softwoods. It was $130, which felt extremely cheap, but worth a shot. The thing lasted 6 months, then summer came, with it's humidity, and the thing collapsed. Turns out having correctly designed supports is pretty important, who would've thought, certainty not a multi-billion dollar furniture company. So, for having to spend 3 hours assembling it myself, I got to watch it implode when the weather turned, lovely! The sad reality is that this is the standard for household goods in many American homes.
The experience of buying that utter garbage bookshelf prompted me to start building a workshop of my own and to start woodworking again. I had gotten a burning desire to build high quality and long lasting products for people. I've been working on small projects when time permits, mostly drink coasters and cutting boards so far, but I'm actively planning out bigger pieces of furniture as future projects. I've given a couple items away as gifts, and even made a few sales over on etsy[0]. Compared to writing software, which is lucky if it lives for more than few years, I've gotten a massive sense of satisfaction in knowing that for each product I build, it has a good shot at completely outliving the owner.
I actually have a rather nice but 'cheap' used Canon DSLR, and my watches were all gifts - not expensive for me, and still cheaper than my phone, but can easily see how expensive it could be for those who aren't anywhere near my financial position.
Aside from home furniture and some home electronics, much of the discarded once-use garbage seems to be plastic packaging of items.
While true, modern cars - especially buying brand new take resources to build. The severe amount of limiting computers in a car now can also make them more disposable and harder to repair.
Lest us forget that in 2001 the Honda Insight achieved above 40mpg, the 90's compact cars also could achieve high fuel-efficiency targets.
At the detriment of safety, an old car can in some cases be better than a brand new car, especially in price.
New cars are heavier and increased weight does not inherently mean 'safer'
You know - I bought a piece of salmon the other day. A piece of Salmon, in Pittsburgh, in November, shipped from the Atlantic.
It was $10.99/lb. Which is an increase from $9.99 and felt “expensive”. Then I realized that my $9.99 is paying for the workers at the grocery store, the electricity to power the cooler, the refrigerator, the truck driver, the ice for shipping, the loading dock, the boat, the fishermen, and every other piece of work that went into getting me that fish, in Pittsburgh, in November.
If I wanted to go catch a Salmon in the Atlantic, I could work for the next 5 years of my life and probably not be successful. I’m terrible at building boats, I wouldn’t know what bait to use, or where the fish would even be. I’d probably die at sea.
I write all of that, because at the end of it all, ANY meat or fish for <$10 a pound is an incredible bargain and a testament to our society and specialization in the US. And I think we are living in an incredible time of abundance that is likely unsustainable.
So! What’s the solution? I’m shifting to hobbies with a “buy once” view that may have a high up-front cost, but a low long term recurring cost (e.g. disc golf, guitar (except for string replacement).
I run an e-commerce business, and the reality is that a huge chunk of our customer base isn't reluctantly parting with their hard earned cash in order to meet a need but instead genuinely enjoy the anticipation and payoff that come with making a purchase.
I would go so far as to say that for the average consumer, spending money is only really seen as a loss in the few cases where the cost is high enough to cause immediate-term financial stress.
As noted in other responses, the problems
of excess fossil fuel consumption and the problem of being poor are separate problems and can have separate solutions.
The fossil fuel tax solves excess fossil fuel consumption, and redistribution wealth from rich to poor solved the poor problem.
I see this everywhere now. I think it is built into shopify/whatever they are using. Food/items/tools/coffee/anything. Go to checkout and there is an option to break up that $15 dollar purchase into 6 payments. Whaaa!?!
If people are actually doing this because they do not have the $15 to purchase something, off the internet, we have bigger issues to tackle.
There are companies that will offer that on anything you purchase. And I do mean anything. Though if you didn't pay, would they really go through the trouble of collecting on the debt.
Anyone else notice these articles accelerating along with inflation. Any day we'll see the media narrative "High inflation is actually a good thing: here's why"
High inflation can be a good thing, if you're working and in debt.
The key worries are that the people with large assets overreact and you end in Nazi Germany (which was directly correlated with the austerity brought in by the rich to 'fix' inflation)
Also working well with people who own assets. I refinance all my properties in the last year, at 2.3% interest despite inflation at 5%. Rents one of the biggest drivers so I'll likely be able to increase rent 10% when my tenants move out (generally wont raise if its the same tenant)
While I personally find shopping draining and possessions overwhelming, I don’t really understand the moral conviction that some people have that possessions are evil.
I don’t like those marvel films either but if other people do I’m happy they are being made.
This could work if people knew how to build things. We're all Brand Evangelists, Social Media Marketers, Loan Orignators, Project Coordinators, and Financial Planners now--nobody has the skills to make or repair physical things anymore.
I'm sure some people find it easier to consume more in the privacy of ordering things at home, from potentially anyplace on the planet. But, for me, making a list and sticking to it has resulted in much less food waste, dropping a few pounds because fewer sweets end up in my fridge, and more carefully considered purchases of clothes.
Could we start with better quality stuff to buy? I own 2 washing machines. The nice one I paid more for is so unreliable, I bought a cheap one to use while I wait for the nice one to get repaired.
Our economy was roaring not to long ago because everyone had more money and there was stuff to buy. Now I have less money and less stuff to buy. Good bye economy.
Americans can still spend a shitload of money if they have to, just do it on services - that way economy keeps going, there's still jobs going around plus we stop buying and hence making shit we don't really need.
I wonder if there's any studies out there that calculate if Americans (or the worldwide middle class in general) reduce their overall consumption of...anything by X%, what is the likelihood of it sending a particular industry into chaos from the reduced demand.
Americans should be encouraged to spend more money on experiences rather than stuff. It's better for them and it's better for the local economy, especially after the COVID devastation.
"Go to the theatre / concert / game / etc more often" is a similar statement to "buy less stuff" but it has much different connotations.
They're expensive because they are provided by humans. Almost all "stuff" is built by machines and robots with very minimal human involvement. That's what makes them cheap in comparison.
It has more to do with supply and demand than cost of production (except for commodities). It's especially true for luxury goods (even robot made luxury goods) and experiences.
Sorry mate, the fact that you could ever consider a consistent $100/day wage to be poverty trumps the OP for the most spoilt, uninformed comment - on any forum - I have ever seen.
You've totally misread the comment you're replying to. The person described is not money-poor, but time-poor and energy-poor. These people can afford experiences but given their lifestyle, it isn't really feasible to partake in them compared to buying things like a new TV or phone.
I think you'll find high-income finance/law/medicine/entrepeneur types are even more time and energy constrained. Yet, I doubt the poster would be bleating about them.
There is a nasty polemic (especially prevalent on HN) that any possible advice about personal choices must be from some racially-narrow, empathy-lacking urbane perspective.
And the poster also suggests that coloured folk can neither perceive, nor possibly comment that that a group of largely overweight, sedentary, reasonably affluent people stuck to 70" TVs shouldn't perhaps just go for a walk.
