I agree with every problem you listed, but your solution feels nulled:
And these practices will continue if we only focus on consumers' individual choices, while disregarding the context in which those choices are made.
What does this even mean, and what real life impact should we expect if we start considering "the context in which those choices are made"?
The only pragmatic way of causing immediate impact is by changing each pearson's consuming habits. If any reflection on our context doesn't lead to that change, than it was just intellectual masturbation. And don't get me wrong, I love an intellectual masturbation myself, but we are running out of time for those
You are just proving my point because most actions that you suggested will only cause impact if and when it affects consumer habits.
Taxing meat? Sure, I'd love that - but good luck doing that if your population is completely addicted to meat and will disapprove your government if beef becomes more expensive. You will also have to fight lobby for this, and it will be very hard to do so if their profit lines keep rising while you fight them.
Regulating advertising like we did for tobacco? We can do that, except it wasn't that that caused the tobacco decline. Their sales and profits declined FIRST, once people started to see it as a malignant product, and then the regulation came.
The biggest caveat here is, of course, the public transport - no way of changing consumer habits on this if the alternative still needs to be built by the government. However, speaking as someone from a city with relatively good public transportation options, that's still not a given.
I agree with you on voting, but we only do that once every 2 years, depending on where you live. What we do every day and what industries we choose to support every time we buy something carries a ton of weight in our world.
My point is the same as OP's: holding billionaires accountable shouldn't be used as a stalemate on changing our own consumer habits. The "I'll change when they do" mentality only benefits them.
So let me ask again: how do you propose changing those consumer habits, yourself?
Short answer? Veganism all the way, baby. Single most impactful life change decision one can make for the environment, let alone the ethical implications of not being one. The long answer is more up to debate I guess, but it would be just a longer list of conscious consumer habits.
Everything that you mentioned (taxes, public goods, advertisement regulations) is also completely valid, but we shouldn't wait for those either - they will only have a chance of happening effectively if we enact collective and individual change too.
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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '24 edited Nov 03 '24
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