[programmers frantically pulling cables out of the wall]
AI: "Nuclear power. Double teachers' salaries. Build more houses. Distribute food more fairly. TRAINS—"
— qntmyrrh (@qntm) November 24, 2023 I remember growing up with that same old adage of how you could be the next scientist to invent a cure for cancer, or a solution to climate change, or whatever. What they don’t tell you is that we already have solutions for a lot of problems, we just don’t use them.
OK, so the post ends with an exhortation to “DO SOMETHING,” but what? What the fuck can I do?
First of all to understand that the problem is not technology, but the systems we have. So the goal should be to either change the systems we already have or to create new ones. The common tools are:
A lot of this can be done on a smaller scale as well. Local councils are responsible for roads and therefore can turn parts of them into cycling infrastructure. Then you have stuff like cooperatives for utlities for example. They are run for the benfits of the members and not for Wallstreet. The key is to change the underlying system to make it better. There are plenty of threads here, which talk about individual solutions. Just go for a problem that you are intrested in and find a solution. Usually they can be fund and just have to be copied and adapted to local factors.
Also important to say is that you are not going to fix the every problem in the world alone. Fixing one part of the problem is difficult enough and you have to trust that others will do the right thing as well.
You didn’t answer the question.
How? The niches for those technologies are created and maintained by those same people you want to do a complete 180 and ban-hammer them instead.
How? Using your example you have to either manufacture and distribute said cancer medicine yourself. Which is a crime… And at they point it’s probably more effective to just straight up rob a pharmacy and redistribute, robin hood style. I hope I don’t need to go into detail how that’s not a real answer/solution…
(Sidenote: https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ is very cool and doing some work in this sort of direction, but it should stand as an example of how complicated and largely inefective at scale that approach is.)
So go to approval hearings and throw a fit until you are arrested and they build the car based infrastructure anyways?
Oooh neoclassical economics!!! So how should I bill you for my time writing this comment?
By lobbying the government. It happens a lot. For my example you have a list of gas boiler phase outs here and for fossil fuel cars here. Obviously this is far from easy, but a combination of lobbying, electing the right politicans and protests has worked. You can easily look up what exactly they had to do, to get it done, if you care.
Public health care as I said. That way you are not negotiating alone against big pharma, but form a monoploy in a given country, which is able to reduce costs a lot. To be fair most countries already have it, so it is mostly adapting it to work. Here is a little map of who already has it(the green ones):
For the most part you just go to the public hearings and calmly and nicely agrue your case. For the most part nobody cars, so you might be alone in them. As it is also on a local level, big fossil fuel often does not even turn up. You have to be aware that the project you argue to be better is not going to be improved much unless you are lucky. It is about the next one, where the planners actually start to incorporate your sugestions and propably badly. Then you turn up again and suggest something better. It takes a long time, but it has been done in a lot of different places.
Thanks has to be enough. Seriously we have a capitalist system and that is a good way of stopping the bleeding.
Anyway the solutions are out in the world. Not just the technology, but also for the most part the systems we need to implement them on scale. It is just a matter to spread them.
So to summarize your suggestions are:
Again, none of those answer the question. Those are all “do nothing and trust those with power and authority to do the right thing.” It’s the definition of useless liberalism and displays quite the level of privilege and disconnect from reality.
You can easily look up how completely ineffective those solutions are, if you care. Did you even read the article this comment thread is posted under?
No, trusting the authorities to do the right thing, would be sitting at home and doing absolutly nothing.
Right, which is why I’m saying that your ‘solution’ is nothing. It boils down to: “Lobby!(1) Then go home(2), sit and wait(3)”
Great that we agree that lobbying works. Otherwise you would not go home and sit around and just wait. With a fixed problem however that is perfectly fine.
Great, my work is done. I’ve done a lobby and convinced you that Lobbying doesn’t actually change anything and that you’ll have to actually do something. And now I can sleep easy knowing that you’ll fix it all for me!