Is "Be the part of the change you want to see in the world!" bullshit?

[FlatAssembler]

Many people, including me a few years ago, say stuff like "Be the part of the change you want to see in the world! Capitalism allows us to fix the world's problems by being careful about which products we buy!". Now I think that is mostly false. That is, it's true in theory. Obviously, capitalism allows individuals to address world's problems, much more so than communism does. However, the problem is that the average person's understanding of the world's problems is bad, and many people are doing ineffective or even counter-productive things in an attempt to fix the world's problems.

For example, many people are boycotting sweatshops. But it is difficult to see how boycotting sweatshops could do anything but make the problem of global poverty worse. People are in sweatshops voluntarily, so they think the alternatives available to them are even worse. And they are probably right about that. They certainly have more insight into the situation in their country than we do.

A few years ago, I was worried about global warming, so I stopped drinking cow's milk... to replace it with rice milk. Whether that's helping is hard to tell. It's certainly not helping significantly. Both the production of cow's milk and the production of rice milk emit huge amounts of methane.

A few years ago, I was worried about superbacteria, so I stopped eating meat... but I continued eating eggs and, later, I even started drinking wine. The biggest user of antibiotics these days, by far, is the egg industry, not the meat industry. And the industry that uses antibiotics the most irresponsibly is the vineyards: antibiotics stay in the ground forever, forever causing antibiotic resistance, and it's just a matter of time before the genes for antibiotic resistance spread from bacteria which attack plants to bacteria which attack humans via horizontal gene transfer (as bacteria can conjugate with their quite distant relatives). Vegetarianism addresses neither of those two things.

I was wondering what you thought about that.
Let me be clear that I am still not against capitalism, I think that capitalism is the best economic system compared to others that have been tried from time to time. I just think that perhaps it doesn't really make it easy to address the world's problems.

[Belacqua]

Many people, including me a few years ago, say stuff like "Be the part of the change you want to see in the world! Capitalism allows us to fix the world's problems by being careful about which products we buy!". Now I think that is mostly false. That is, it's true in theory. Obviously, capitalism allows individuals to address world's problems, much more so than communism does. However, the problem is that the average person's understanding of the world's problems is bad, and many people are doing ineffective or even counter-productive things in an attempt to fix the world's problems.

For example, many people are boycotting sweatshops. But it is difficult to see how boycotting sweatshops could do anything but make the problem of global poverty worse. People are in sweatshops voluntarily, so they think the alternatives available to them are even worse. And they are probably right about that. They certainly have more insight into the situation in their country than we do.

A few years ago, I was worried about global warming, so I stopped drinking cow's milk... to replace it with rice milk. Whether that's helping is hard to tell. It's certainly not helping significantly. Both the production of cow's milk and the production of rice milk emit huge amounts of methane.

A few years ago, I was worried about superbacteria, so I stopped eating meat... but I continued eating eggs and, later, I even started drinking wine. The biggest user of antibiotics these days, by far, is the egg industry, not the meat industry. And the industry that uses antibiotics the most irresponsibly is the vineyards: antibiotics stay in the ground forever, forever causing antibiotic resistance, and it's just a matter of time before the genes for antibiotic resistance spread from bacteria which attack plants to bacteria which attack humans via horizontal gene transfer (as bacteria can conjugate with their quite distant relatives). Vegetarianism addresses neither of those two things.

I was wondering what you thought about that.
Let me be clear that I am still not against capitalism, I think that capitalism is the best economic system compared to others that have been tried from time to time. I just think that perhaps it doesn't really make it easy to address the world's problems.

I've always heard the slogan as "be the change you wish to see in the world." I think it makes a lot of sense.

If you think everyone ought to be living a certain way, or behave a certain way, it doesn't make sense to say that you'll wait and start doing it when everybody else does. Morally, we are better to live the right way even if it makes no difference at all in the larger picture. If you say "I'll stop being an asshole as soon as everyone else stops being an asshole" it just means that you're still an asshole. 

Another slogan is "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism." And this is true too, but it's still better to make those efforts that we can. At the very least, to be aware of the fact that we live by exploiting others.

[The Grand Nudger]

In a field of exclusively suboptimal decisions the trick is not to do the right thing - that door is closed. It's picking which of the wrong things you're comfortable with.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@FlatAssembler

If you truly think ‘people are in sweatshops voluntarily’, you’re even stupider than I imagined.

Boru

[arewethereyet]

In a field of exclusively suboptimal decisions the trick is not to do the right thing - that door is closed.  It's picking which of the wrong things you're comfortable with.

And that is how I have lived my life.  

[Ravenshire]

@FlatAssembler

If you truly think ‘people are in sweatshops voluntarily’, you’re even stupider than I imagined.

Boru

I don't think any of us have the capacity for imagination required in this case.

[Foxaèr]

Did the Flower Children accomplish anything?



At the most, most of the time, all we can do is make changes to our individual, personal lives that matter the most to us.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Talk without action is, well, only words. We should all lead by example.

[FlatAssembler]

If you say "I'll stop being an asshole as soon as everyone else stops being an asshole" it just means that you're still an asshole.

But the problem is that it is better to be "an asshole" than to do ineffective or counter-productive things in an attempt to address the global problems.
People who simply don't care about global problems are better for the world than people who are boycotting sweatshops (a very counter-productive thing).
And who knows whether insisting on me being a vegetarian in my father's house (after my mother ended up in a prison) was morally objectionable. It definitely caused him to worry about my health (unjustifiably, but that's a predictable consequence of my actions) and to spend significantly more time cooking. Insisting on me not eating eggs would probably cause way less trouble and would certainly be way more effective in reducing my impact on superbacteria.

Another slogan is "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

I must admit I don't understand what that means.

At the very least, to be aware of the fact that we live by exploiting others.

But isn't the same true under any economic system, and not just capitalism? In fact, it's even more true under socialism, since socialism relies on coercion to work, while capitalism doesn't.

[John 6IX Breezy]

It's a game theoretic problem, something like the volunteer's dilemma. We all benefit as a group from someone doing something about climate change, but individually we are better off if that someone isn't us. The solution is usually to change the payoffs and incentives. For example, if there's a law that fines me for doing some activity that harms the environment, then I'm better off switching to an activity that doesn't harm the environment.