Liberal institutions always become and bolster the thing they're supposed to fight against. For decades we had an argument over whether or not this was real. The oil guys paid to have their own science done. The only bastion of truth was the IPCC. If you got into an argument about climate change after 2000, then you probably cited it in order to prove climate change was a problem. So the IPCC was legitimized and became this respected institution on climate science. The credentialed and experienced and educated smart people always had our best interests in mind. But then you inevitably find out they too were biased and lying. Not doing it in some greater service to helping people, but in protecting the same fucked system that the oil guys are doing it for. We must preserve the economy because it is life itself. We went through this with covid and health organizations too. The trust science shit is always about blindly following liberal scientific institutions who will lie to save jobs but will collapse before they lie to save lives. It's never really about actual science outside of the post-enlightenment liberal institution.
People are actually smart. They see this shit and it just withers trust in institutions. It ends up bolstering the other side who claims they were lying all along. Because some university dipshit 10 years ago didn't want to upset the chamber of commerce by suggesting we not increase production as a solution. Eroding trust sounds great to accelerationists but if nobody trusts large federal institutions then it's kind of hard selling central planning where there will also be large national institutions. It's not just about the institutions it's eroding trust in the idea that groups of people can accomplish things. People begin to believe that every time you get a group of smart people together, they end up doing nothing or being corrupt. That's why libertarian bullshit has so much sway. It's not chuds being greedy fucks so much as people who have watched every institution fail and they think the only solution is complete atomization.
Because some university dipshit 10 years ago didn’t want to upset the chamber of commerce by suggesting we not increase production as a solution.
There's a lot of truth in your comment, but I don't think this part is quite fair.
How do you tell people the sky is falling? How do you get them to believe that the sky is falling, but it won't really start to fuck up their lives for a generation or two? How do you sell this to the United States in all the optimism and arrogance of the end-of-history 1990s? How do you -- at the zenith of capitalism -- get people to take a problem seriously when the only solution is dismantling capitalism? How do you do this in the face of a massive, coordinated propaganda effort to the contrary?
That's a monumentally difficult task with no obvious winning strategy. I can believe the "lead with the worst-case scenario" strategy would have failed, too, so I find it hard to judge them for not choosing it.
You tell them that the sky is falling. You just tell them. Because it is falling. There is no larger game here. You tell them the truth. Plus you can't separate that decision from its relation to capital. There wasn't a situation where they couldn't tell the truth because capitalism did propaganda. They were part of the capitalist propaganda. The scientific consensus stuff was part of it. People were never given the chance to take it seriously. The real group that needed to change was the industrialists who were doing the most emissions. But they couldn't tell all the wealthy fucks to stop living their lives like kings, they had to sell a narrative that made them feel better about their choices. They lied to normal people in that process. What you're saying is that they had to lie to us because we couldn't handle it. We could and can if we had gotten the chance.
Also, we know that history doesn't change based on how educated or rational the public is. The public wasn't the largest emitter of CO2. The public didn't have any substantial political power. It's not that people were too irrational to handle it. It happened because the material conditions were that they had to tell the wealthy to stop being as wealthy.
Liberal institutions always become and bolster the thing they're supposed to fight against. For decades we had an argument over whether or not this was real. The oil guys paid to have their own science done. The only bastion of truth was the IPCC. If you got into an argument about climate change after 2000, then you probably cited it in order to prove climate change was a problem. So the IPCC was legitimized and became this respected institution on climate science. The credentialed and experienced and educated smart people always had our best interests in mind. But then you inevitably find out they too were biased and lying. Not doing it in some greater service to helping people, but in protecting the same fucked system that the oil guys are doing it for. We must preserve the economy because it is life itself. We went through this with covid and health organizations too. The trust science shit is always about blindly following liberal scientific institutions who will lie to save jobs but will collapse before they lie to save lives. It's never really about actual science outside of the post-enlightenment liberal institution.
People are actually smart. They see this shit and it just withers trust in institutions. It ends up bolstering the other side who claims they were lying all along. Because some university dipshit 10 years ago didn't want to upset the chamber of commerce by suggesting we not increase production as a solution. Eroding trust sounds great to accelerationists but if nobody trusts large federal institutions then it's kind of hard selling central planning where there will also be large national institutions. It's not just about the institutions it's eroding trust in the idea that groups of people can accomplish things. People begin to believe that every time you get a group of smart people together, they end up doing nothing or being corrupt. That's why libertarian bullshit has so much sway. It's not chuds being greedy fucks so much as people who have watched every institution fail and they think the only solution is complete atomization.
There's a lot of truth in your comment, but I don't think this part is quite fair.
How do you tell people the sky is falling? How do you get them to believe that the sky is falling, but it won't really start to fuck up their lives for a generation or two? How do you sell this to the United States in all the optimism and arrogance of the end-of-history 1990s? How do you -- at the zenith of capitalism -- get people to take a problem seriously when the only solution is dismantling capitalism? How do you do this in the face of a massive, coordinated propaganda effort to the contrary?
That's a monumentally difficult task with no obvious winning strategy. I can believe the "lead with the worst-case scenario" strategy would have failed, too, so I find it hard to judge them for not choosing it.
You tell them that the sky is falling. You just tell them. Because it is falling. There is no larger game here. You tell them the truth. Plus you can't separate that decision from its relation to capital. There wasn't a situation where they couldn't tell the truth because capitalism did propaganda. They were part of the capitalist propaganda. The scientific consensus stuff was part of it. People were never given the chance to take it seriously. The real group that needed to change was the industrialists who were doing the most emissions. But they couldn't tell all the wealthy fucks to stop living their lives like kings, they had to sell a narrative that made them feel better about their choices. They lied to normal people in that process. What you're saying is that they had to lie to us because we couldn't handle it. We could and can if we had gotten the chance.
Also, we know that history doesn't change based on how educated or rational the public is. The public wasn't the largest emitter of CO2. The public didn't have any substantial political power. It's not that people were too irrational to handle it. It happened because the material conditions were that they had to tell the wealthy to stop being as wealthy.
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