Eric Franz Leher wrote:
>> Though I can see what you are getting at, I don't think the public
>> have been asked to make any significant sacrifices for the sake of the
>> environment.
If some people have more power than others, as is certainly the case in liberal capitalist polities, then when any general cost is incurred, the more powerful will make the less powerful pay it.
Carrol Cox:
> Gordon has a cute habit of pulling out of a rabbit hole all sorts of
> fantasies about what "real folk" will or won't do or how they will or
> won't respond to this or that.
Suppose the idea became widespread among the voting public that, indeed, if general costs are incurred, the more powerful will make the less powerful pay them. The public would then lose interest in soak-the-rich politics because they would understand that the soaking would only be passed on to them. And in fact this is what we observe.
> The probability is that large numbers of
> people would be quite willing, had they the opportunity to decide, to
> sacrifice a good deal for the environment. ...
Maybe. Often, environmental preservation and improvement is presented to the public as cost-free, or as exacting a cost only on a small and perhaps despised segment of the population. When it comes with a visible price tag of some sort -- like, say, raising the taxes on gasoline -- the public seem much more dubious, do they not?
> ...