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Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

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Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#191

Post by megaremote »

qsymmachus wrote: post #37
seibelj wrote: post #23

Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost, but that simply isn't true. I can create digital goods and services which people buy, and this increases GDP, and it doesn't hurt the environment and is indeed economic growth in the realest sense. I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment.

This is incorrect. Every economic output requires material inputs. > I can create digital goods and services which people buy Your digital goods and services require physical machines to run on. These machines are made of physical materials, including some rare earth minerals that are costly to extract. These machines require energy to run, which also requires material inputs. > I can even give massages all day, and…

> Human beings like yourself require material inputs to live – food, shelter, energy, to name only a few. Just by being alive on a biosphere, you are impacting the environment in some way. T

They would be doing that if they were not giving massages.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#192

Post by anon1m0us »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #166
anon1m0us wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what I am learning about myself lately is that I have the power to lie to people and convince them to do things they don't want to do or don't know better. People know this about me. They know it almost instantly. I sense it in them. I sense the same about other people. They have that power over me. However, I make an effort not to. Or, when I do, I work especially hard to steer them in the direction of their…

I stand with you here. I recognized something like this myself - I phrase it as "I want to live in a world of cooperation, of win-win deals", but there are still people who prefer to exploit others, play "win-lose" games. That's why I despise the advertising industry so much. They're all playing win-lose games with society, and the collateral damage slowly eats at the base of what keeps our societies together.

Yes! I remember someone asked me one time, "What do you want?"

I said, "I want to create synergistic relationships with other people."

I despise advertising too, but I realized I have to advertise so people know about my products. There are people who want them. Advertising helps them find my products that solve their problems.

And then I realized the advertising platforms like adwords and such were also deceptive. So I stopped advertising.

It doesn't help me though or the people who I could help if they knew.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#193

Post by icebraining »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #172
panpanna wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 99% this is _not_ a EU thing. Maybe some German law?? Or just common practice in Germany? Edit: I think I confused your response with parent. I understand price/kg is a thing although I didn't knew it was mandated by law. What I don't understand is being forced to use some odd unit like price per 500g.

Same in Hungary. Everything has price / kg or litre shown next to the item’s price.

I read panpanna's post as saying that it's not common to have different units, not that there's no price per unit value next to labels.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#194

Post by TeMPOraL »

abstractbarista wrote: post #72
qsymmachus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Every economic output requires material inputs. > I can create digital goods and services which people buy Your digital goods and services require physical machines to run on. These machines are made of physical materials, including some rare earth minerals that are costly to extract. These machines require energy to run, which also requires material inputs. > I can even give massages all day, and…

Ahh but those machines are constantly becoming simultaneously more efficient and more powerful. And soon enough they'll all be ran on renewable energy. OP said nothing about growing the population. His statement can be true even as world population growth is slowing. Like many things, there may be no purely immaterial, but there is much (and increasing) practically immaterial.

> Ahh but those machines are constantly becoming simultaneously more efficient and more powerful.

There are limits to efficiency due to fundamental laws of physics. We're already hitting some, we might be far from others, but a) we may not hit all of them fast enough to met the demand of exponential growth, and b) after we hit them, we can't improve those machines/processes further.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#195

Post by scroy »

anon1m0us wrote: post #149
r00fus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I prefer buying bulk when I can (with reusable containers/bags [1]). Bulk Coffee + airtight/cool storage hasn't resulted in bad coffee for me. Why put up with deceptive packaging? [1] Yes I know that most of that product came arrived in even more packaging, but doing what I can for now.

I guess what I am learning about myself lately is that I have the power to lie to people and convince them to do things they don't want to do or don't know better. People know this about me. They know it almost instantly. I sense it in them. I sense the same about other people. They have that power over me. However, I make an effort not to. Or, when I do, I work especially hard to steer them in the direction of their…

What's Stack Overflow deceiving us about?

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#197

Post by TeMPOraL »

anon1m0us wrote: post #192
TeMPOraL wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand with you here. I recognized something like this myself - I phrase it as "I want to live in a world of cooperation, of win-win deals", but there are still people who prefer to exploit others, play "win-lose" games. That's why I despise the advertising industry so much. They're all playing win-lose games with society, and the collateral damage slowly eats at the base of what keeps our societies together.

Yes! I remember someone asked me one time, "What do you want?" I said, "I want to create synergistic relationships with other people." I despise advertising too, but I realized I have to advertise so people know about my products. There are people who want them. Advertising helps them find my products that solve their problems. And then I realized the advertising platforms like adwords and such were also deceptive. S…

Like almost all big problems of our times, this too is a coordination problem.

When everyone around you shouts through a megaphone, you need a megaphone too just so that the person next to you can hear you. If someone took all megaphones from everyone at the same time, people would have the ability to finally have a conversation.

Advertising currently is this. It's oversaturating our attention. Of course, for a market to function, you need a way for people to know what's available to buy. If done honestly, it's totally fine, and I don't have anything against it. My beef is with the existing industry, with all the things I've mentioned here[0]. I want someone to take their megaphones away, so that we could talk to each other like human beings.

--

[0] - http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#198

Post by TeMPOraL »

scroy wrote: post #195
anon1m0us wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what I am learning about myself lately is that I have the power to lie to people and convince them to do things they don't want to do or don't know better. People know this about me. They know it almost instantly. I sense it in them. I sense the same about other people. They have that power over me. However, I make an effort not to. Or, when I do, I work especially hard to steer them in the direction of their…

What's Stack Overflow deceiving us about?

You may have missed a lot of recent drama, some of which involves deceptive advertising practices.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#199

Post by Aengeuad »

freeflight wrote: post #165
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU, shops are required to display the price per , i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g price. There used to be an even more drastic law proscribing certain sizes and disallowing all others. Flour would only be available in 500g and 1kg bags, for example. They got rid of it, possibly because they got sick of people making fun of EU regulations (that's what happened with the famous…

Sadly it doesn't translate very well to every kind of grocery item. Kitchen paper towels and toilet paper can still give you a pretty good math exercise to figure out what's more affordable.

My local supermarket sells their budget fruit brands (which are actually owned/leased from the supermarket itself) as a pack with no actual weight measurement given, so the price is per apple. Every other brand lists their weight and prices are given per 100g, so if you actually want to figure out what is cheaper you need to go weigh the budget brand on the scales and then do the maths yourself!

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#200

Post by baroffoos »

benibela wrote: post #160
r00fus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not consistent. Sometimes they $/lb sometimes they price $/item - for the same class of item. It's as often design to mislead and prevent comparison as it is to inform you that "store brand is definitely cheaper than name brand". Since none of it is mandated, they do only what benefits their bottom line or they are publicly pressured to.

They do that in the EU/Germany, too €/item, €/100g, €/1kg are all common

At least comparing 100g to 1kg is trivial.
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