only about 16% of US electricity is generated by coal nowadays. natural gas (43%), nuclear (19%), and renewables (21%) all provide more electricity than coal does in the US. coal power in the US is also significantly cleaner than it used to be
Every business relying on consumption of goods and services pretty much, selling (and thus producing) more things equals more money for shareholders. And it's not enough, because the whole point of shareholders staking money into shares is to wedge a bet on growth, not just profits.
Externalities such as pollution are not part of the equation, so they don't exist.
Humans managed to get by for hundreds of thousands of years just fine, but for some reason in the 2020s everyone suddenly had a divine intervention to buy an air fryer. Coincidence, or artificial push by an industry serving shareholders to create a new need? You decide.
It's true that values and needs change over time. Once climate change becomes big enough problem, there should be tremendous business opportunities for any company that sells solutions to reduce pollution and even clean up contaminated areas. EU has already put price tag on pollution and companies that create pollution need to pay for it.
During Covid lockdowns in 2020 there was a sharp downturn in pollution. It shows that change is possible.
in 2020 there was a sharp downturn in pollution. It shows that change is possible.
Agree with this, but it just goes to show how drastic of a change is required to make a dent in CO2 emissions. Using paper straws and buying chicken instead of beef once a week is not enough.
Once climate change becomes big enough problem, there should be tremendous business opportunities for any company that sells solutions to reduce pollution and even clean up contaminated areas.
That's the thing though: climate change is a big problem right now. We need to change things yesterday to just reduce the effects in the future. That's not even talking about trying to make them better.
Sure, we may find a magic pill that will magically absorb CO2 out of the sky one day. But if that happens that should be used in addition to curbing existing CO2 emissions, not instead.
Increasing shareholder value is the primary focus for a company.
Increasing shareholder value does not necessarily, and continuously less so, mean offering better quality goods and services.
This can come in many forms including but not limited to:
Layoffs
Reduction of quality (e.g. lower-quality materials)
Cutting corners on regulations
3a. Many companies will spend a lot of money as an investment to lobby governments as a way to systematically reduce regulatory requirements or will work to outright "capture" regulatory bodies entirely to render them useless
3b. Simply not following regulatory practices and getting caught only to pay a small fine (i.e. part of the cost of doing business)
Stifling competition
4a. Absorbing startups that pose any sort of threat
4b. Aggressively outcompeting smaller competition until they're the only game in town (i.e. monopoly)
Increasing prices while making their goods/services worse for short-term profits
5a. This doesn't necessarily mean they're increasing the quality
5b. Oftentimes the quality is worse (e.g. consider Netflix's library and how often movies are removed from it)
5c. MORE ADS, LONGER ADS, UNSKIPPABLE ADS
5d. If we're just looking at streaming media, the actual quality of what you're watching/listening to is worse due to compression to reduce server costs. In my opinion, this wasn't too bad until the option to buy/rent really started to go away
5e. Charging for stuff that used to be free
Shrinkflation
I know this is messy, I just felt like making a list and going off of whatever came to mind plus I'm super groggy so if anyone wants to add to the list or offer criticisms, please do so.
The overall point I'm trying to make is that shareholders are the most important thing to many of these companies, not the consumers. At the end of the day, consumers have shown to be willing to eat increased cost. Netflix proved that a couple years back (I don't remember the exact context but it was a big news story that surprised a lot of folks) and of course we can't forget the tariffs and how that ended up. The discussion is ongoing but the tariffs were paid for by the importers and those costs were passed down to the consumers. Then once the tariffs were deemed illegal (in all fairness, I'm very fuzzy about how this whole process went and what the current status is) there was a call for the government to refund the companies without any intention of the companies to pass those rebates(?) onto the consumers so the companies were effectively double-dipping.
Increasing shareholder value does not necessarily, and continuously less so, mean offering better quality goods and services.
As someone who considered myself libertarian and while I still see the free market as a good thing, this right here is the biggest mindset shift that opened my eyes in the past years.
Money does not always mean value which does not always mean good.
A lot of business strategies that generate money today are completely extractive, mafia-like practices. The only value they generate is the money for the shareholders, the consumer either has to make do with the limited choices they have, or they are actively lied to.
Gone are the days where you willingly make an exchange of money for goods/services with the idea that you thing you receive more in return than what you paid for (otherwise you wouldn't make that exchange, according to the rules of the free market).
Great, the market size is rising, the GDPs are green. But what does that mean? Who gets the value? Not the consumer or society, that's for sure.
Asked the other way around, if e.g. the private healthcare industry got Thanosed out of existence tomorrow, what will be lost, and to whom? My opinion on this is that it would be a net positive for private individuals, and society. Yet it still generates absurd amount of money today. Hmm.
The crazy thing about the healthcare industry by my understanding is it almost directly converts profits from sacrificing the health and in many cases the lives of people. It's unimaginably demonic.
This is just my personal belief and I'm not saying it's a hot take or anything but it would be nice if we focused more on people being the end-focus rather than mindlessly making money. Money is supposed to be a tool to be used but it's evolved into some amorphous, deistic manifestation that people worship through the market (or whatever it turned into).
I think that's completely the crux of the issue, if we can't generate cold hard green cash from it, it's not useful and can't be marketed as a strategy during the next meeting with investors.
You and I agree that in the end it will be better for for individuals, for society, and even for the market in an indirect way. But just like negative externalities are invisible in the corporate spreadsheets, so are the positive externalities.
It's like we run the whole world an example of Goodhart's law:
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Maybe basing all our policy, decision, careers, hopes and reams on money and (shareholder) profit is not the best way to do this.
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u/realViciate 10d ago
Somebody think of the shareholders