Disqus Doodlings – “…proving once again, environmentalist are the people of “you don’t and CAN’T have that” – Part 3 - Granite Grok

Disqus Doodlings – “…proving once again, environmentalist are the people of “you don’t and CAN’T have that” – Part 3

Incentivize: Motivate or encourage (someone) to do something; provide with an incentive.

We changed topics, in the comment section at  Treehugger’s Katherine Martinko mental midget meltdown (people are misbehaving and not living up to her standards about eating meat).  Since Jim Gordon didn’t want to come out and play with me anymore, another commenter decided to take his place but in a totally different direction – one can either take it as not understanding one’s own language or realizing “oops, I’m being called out on it”.  And of course, for me, one is never enough so I went after both at the same time.  After all, the key is just to use their language, challenge them on their DEFINITION (which they HATE) and how it differs from our common language. You know, like a meaty dog bone. So peted66616 stepped up to the plate and…

“it appears that the reason why people weren’t eating as much meat was because they couldn’t afford it, not because they were concerned about its environmental impact”

And this is surprising, how?

And then decided to let folks know that we have to be bribed in order to act the way “they” want us to.

Humans, including Americans, do all kinds of things that are harmful to the environment in some way. And, for the most part, humans will not change their habits unless economically incentivized to do so. The one thing that will reliably lead to reduced meat consumption is for meat production to internalize all of the currently-externalized costs.

Now, I disagree with that supposition all together – people change their habits all the time for all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of ways.  At least, those habits that are most important to us/me.  There are times I have changed my habits because I just wanted to and sometimes because someone I cared about dropped a hint (or a bunch of hints).  I don’t have to be bribed.  Here, however, peted66616 brought up the idea of incentivizing in a strange way but typical of a Progressive mannerism – don’t behave the way I want you to?  My “incentive” will be to penalize you (like Obama and his posse made it clear that if we didn’t buy the healthcare insurance they wanted us to, they would unleash the government junkyard dog (IRS) upon you.

This is, not coincidentally, also the same thing that will reliably lead to reduced consumption of fossil fuels, to more conservative home building, to greater reliance on locally-produced food, to a practice of keeping electronics longer instead of replacing them every time the latest iteration is released, etc.

I get that there are vegetarians out there who feel that there are reasons besides the environmental ones to refrain from eating meat. But ultimately, the only thing that is likely to effect broad change are economic effects. Arguments like the environment, and especially morality (which is an even more vague and highly individualized basis), simply don’t have the near-term, immediate impact required to change personal habits in the general population.

And I asked the leading question, the most important one:

And who should do the “incentivizing”?

Because it is QUITE clear from reading Treehugger for a long time now, that NONE of these Collectivists would reach into their own pockets. Nay, dear reader – nope.  They’ll talk about all kinds of costs, externalities, internalities, and made-up-alities until the cows come home.  And with each and every one is the claim that the folks they are targeting don’t know about all these costs and that they should.  Further, they need to be made to PAY all of them as soon as possible.  THIS, they consider “incentivizing”.

And of course, I asked the question knowing that there is only one entity, one organization, that can make their dreams come true – yes, I baited him. And that’s when he decided that he had to go sideways.

Next post.

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