415 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. for - liberal blind spot - Chris Yates - book - liberalism and the challenge of climate change - adjacency - liberalism - individual liberty - progress - bond spot - political polarization - fuel for the right -hyperobjects

      Summary - This short article contains some key insights that point to the right climate communication strategy to target and win over the working class - Currently, climate communications speak to elitist values and is having the opposite effect - The working class farmer protests spreading across the EU is a symptom of this miscommunication strategy - as is the increasing support and ascendency of right wing political parties - Researcher and author Chris Yates is in a unique position with one foot in each world - He articulates his insightful ideas and points is in the right direction to communicate in a way that reaches the working class

      comment - the figure 4 graph is an example of carbon inequality

      Example - carbon inequality - see figure 4

  2. Mar 2024
  3. Feb 2024
    1. Summary - At the heart of the debate, - which is a major driver for the political polarization in politics around the globe, - especially in the United States between - liberals and - conservatives - is structural inequality inherited by colonialism centuries earlier - and how to deal with it today.

    2. Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism—tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear.

      for - Critical race theory - key insight

      key insight - The following passage gets to the heart of the matter: - (see below)

      All these different ideas grow out of longstanding, tenacious intellectual debates.

      Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, - which tends to be skeptical of the idea of - universal values, - objective knowledge, - individual merit, - Enlightenment rationalism, and - liberalism - tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear.

    1. we face an American election unlike any other. It will determine not only the course of the American experiment but the path that civilization collectively follows.

      for - quote - Michael Mann - quote - 2024 U.S. elections - future of civilization - quote - existential threat of 2024 Trump win - polycrisis - politics - inequality - climate

      quote - Michael Mann - date: May 11, 2023 - source: The Hill - Op Ed - https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/4290467-trump-2-0-the-climate-cannot-survive-another-trump-term/ - (see below)

      • It is not an overstatement to say, one year out, that
        • we face an American election unlike any other.
      • It will determine
        • not only the course of the American experiment
        • but the path that civilization collectively follows.
          • On the left is democracy and environmental stewardship.
          • On the right is fascism and planetary devastation.
      • Choose wisely.
  4. Jan 2024
    1. why is, are so many working class whites driving toward the hard right and wanting to support, you know, what seemed to us kind of insane policies? Well, people are desperate. They're looking for the answer. They're looking for the problem, and they're being told the problem is immigrants. And we don't look at wealth as the problem.
      • for: the real BIG LIE, elephant in the room - wealth inequality, working class driven to hard right
  5. Dec 2023
    1. This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate societal aspirations and the narratives around climate change. These extend from well-funded advertising to pseudo-technical solutions, from the financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.
      • for: quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - elite positive feedback carbon inequality loop, climate crisis - societal aspirations, elites - societal aspirations, societal aspirations, key insight - societal aspirations

      • quote

        • This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate
          • societal aspirations and
          • the narratives around climate change.
        • These extend from
          • well-funded advertising to
          • pseudo-technical solutions,
          • and financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to
          • labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.
      • comment

      • key insight - societal aspirations
        • it is the societal aspiration of the logic of capitalism and the free market that continues to create the next generation of the 1%
        • How can the luxury industry NOT BE high carbon intensity? It's an oxymoron. High carbon is baked into the definition of luxury, and it is luxury goods and services which accelerate climate breakdown.
        • The elites have a strong feeling of entitlement. They feel they DESERVE to reward themselves with a luxury lifestyle. That aspiration and reward structure multiplied by 80 million (1% of 8 billion) is a major variable driving the climate crisis
    2. the wealthiest 1% of people on the planet are responsible for double the greenhouse gas emissions of the poorest half
      • for: carbon inequality, question - new COP - focused on elites?

      • comment

        • while COP28 fights over which nations bear what responsibility, from this perspective, there is an entirely different class of people that must be held responsible, not at the nation state level, but at the individual level. Why isn't there a COP where the elites are held responsible?
      • question

        • Are we making a grave category error in holding the wrong class of people responsible? Should questions of carbon equity concern both high polluting nations AND individuals?
        • At the very least, should we formally recognize a parallel set of responsibilities and elevate that recognition to the level of COP conventions to deal with the problem?
      • for: climate crisis - elites, Kevin Anderson - elites, carbon emissions - elites, adjacency - elites - carbon inequality - incentives - luxury - capitalism

      • title: A Habitable Earth Can No Longer Afford The Rich – And That Could Mean Me And You

      • author: Kevin Anderson
      • date: Nov. 29, 2023

      • comment

      • adjacency between
        • elites
        • capitalism
        • free market
        • incentives
        • double bind
        • wicked problem
        • inequality
        • carbon inequality
        • luxury industry
      • adjacency statement
        • This article was pulled by "The Conversation" for being too controversial
        • It addresses the double-bind / wicked problems that we find ourselves in.
        • It's not just that the elites that are the highest per capita polluters, but
          • it is an indictment of the entire philosophy and worldview of capitalism and the market economy which produces winners and losers and
          • the winners reap enormous resource benefits, including being able to afford luxury items as rewards which constitute the largest ecological footprint of all
        • while at any one time, there is always a minority of the 1%, who hold the most outsized ecological footprint of all, the logic that produced that 1% also serves as the incentives for the majority of the 99%, who because of the inherent precarity created by capitalism, will fight and struggle to become part of that 1%
        • So while one generation of the 1% die off, a new generation is born and created by the incentive structure of scarcity and precarity.
        • In this sense, capitalism has its own self-reinforcing, positive feedback loop that keeps the masses of the disenfranchised aspiring to the same high resource and ecological footprint, luxury lifestyle
        • Look at the culture industry of sports, entertainment, movies, music, TV, etc. and of business in general. The leaders of these and ALL fields are celebrated as heros and they all reward themselves with an ultra-high carbon intensity, luxury lifestyle.
        • Unless we do more than simply demonize the current set of elites, and recognize the root cause and change the incentive structure itself, we will only ever deal with the symptom and not the problem, and continue to generate the next generation of elites
        • The luxury lifestyle industry is a important role-player in the self-reinforcing feedback loop
      • for: Kevin Anderson, transition, climate equity, climate justice, climate justice - Kevin Anderson, carbon inequality - Kevin Anderson, life within planetary boundaries, lifestyle within planetary boundaries - elites, climate crisis - Kevin Anderson

      • summary

        • Kevin offers a picture of what a world within the stable climate planetary boundary would look like for the wealthy of the planet.
    1. its design as by its original destination, the car is a luxury good. And luxury, in essence, cannot be democratized: if everyone has access to luxury, no one benefits from it; on the contrary: everyone cheats, frustrates and dispossesses others and is cheated, frustrated and dispossessed by them.
      • for: quote - luxury cannot be democratized, 1% - democracy, elites - democracy, adjacency - luxury - democracy, luxury is not democratic, luxury is inequality, Andre Gorz, Terrestrial website, adjancency - luxury - democracy, quote luxury

      • quote

        • ... By its design as by its original destination, the car is a luxury good. And luxury, in essence, cannot be democratized: if everyone has access to luxury, no one benefits from it; on the contrary: everyone cheats, frustrates and dispossesses others and is cheated, frustrated and dispossessed by them.
      • author: Andre Gorz
      • date: Sept. 25, 2023
      • publication: Terrestrial

      • comment

        • insightful comment reveals an adjacency between luxury and democracy that is obvious in hindsight, but missed seeing in foresight!
      • adjacency between:

        • luxury
        • democracy
      • adjacency statement
        • luxury is, by definition a premium artefact so by definition is beyond the reach of most people. It is therefore un-democratic by design.
    1. The last country to abandon it was Switzerland, which severed ties between its currency and gold in 1999.

      Switzerland inequality kicked in ~1999 roughly when they abandoned the [[Golden Rule]], as hinted by Kevin Tartis in X. Switzerland inequality diagram from 1981-2009, kicking after ~1999

    1. Relative mobility in education around the world (1980s cohort)

      Nice map with mobility of the X generation, Canada, Australia, Mongolia, S.Africa, Yemen, Western EU and Greece are the best. Strange map...

    2. Chettyet al. (2014) estimate intergenerational mobility for the US down to highly disaggregated geographic areas (commuting zones) and find that it varies considerably. In some parts of the country, mobility (or equality of opportunity) is on a par with some of the most mobile countries in Europe, while in other parts, children struggle to escape poverty when born into it. They also find that areas with relatively high rates of mobility tend to be ones that are less residentially segregated (i.e. households from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different races reside in the same neighbourhoods) and have lower inequality, higher quality public school systems, stronger social networks, and stronger family structures. The empirical observation that more equal societies tend to be more mobile is also known as the Great Gatsby curve (Corak 2013).

      Intergenerational mobility is, expectedly, lower in the US where social net is low and segregation high.

  6. Nov 2023
    1. By chance I was reading Robert Goodin's 30 year old book on Green Political Theory yesterday - yes, how I get my kicks. A statement near the end of the book jumped out at me - and, I think, pertinent to the Netherlands now and the heat and noise in my home town, Oxford re. transport policy."...greens will have to impose tougher restraints on the rich than on the poor; they will have to let the poor continue to damage the environment in ways that they are prepared to prevent the rich from doing."
      • for: carbon tax, tax the rich, carbon inequality

      • comment

        • an obvious and logical strategy because
          • the elites are few in number, but hold much wealth
          • the disenfranchised are many in number but hold little wealth
            • but the disenfranchised exist in larger numbers
            • so when it comes to voting, they are a strategic cohort to win over
        • this is in effect the same logic as the Paris Agreement and climate justice
        • climate justice requires us to protect the poor and give them the remaining carbon budget whilst those who already have enough must cut back
    1. why are we still asking the same questions in this slightly sort of sclerotic manner

      Unfortunately, the interviewer did not pick up David's saying on inequality: what should we have been doing by now?

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

      “The Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Economic Injustice runs thus:<br /> At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.<br /> Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet.<br /> Without any special rancour, Vimes stretched this theory to explain why Sybil Ramkin lived twice as comfortably as he did by spending about half as much every month.”<br /> ― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms (1993)

  7. Sep 2023
    1. the pathways must have the equity dimension of who really needs to do the heavy lifting here, which is the the rich minority.
      • for: carbon inequality
    2. better health, better security, better economy, secure job, better... Simply a more modern, attractive life.
      • for: Johan Rockstrom - wellbeing economy, wellbeing economy, green growth, degrowth, question, question - Johan Rockstrom - green growth or degrowth?
      • question
        • Does Johan Rockstrom advocate for a green economy or degrowth?
        • He would seem to be arguing for green growth as degrowth, if not done extremely carefully, can result in a drop in wellbeing.
        • How does he see this taking place when the elites perceive that they have the most (at least materially) to give up? Is there a contradiction here?
    1. In January 2018, Deutsche Bank produced an 81-page report, “US Income and Wealth Inequality”,

      Link to the PDF has moved.

  8. Aug 2023
    1. We are already seeing the emergence of ‘tech-free’ camps and vacation packages. Experiencing life ‘offline’ will become a generational goal, much like the Millennial generation introduced ride sharing and home sharing. Ironically, it will be technology that enables this trend, and premiums will be paid for uninterrupted time to focus or to simply enjoy being alive. This may also indicate a new kind of disparity between economic strata, with the more-wealthy affording privacy, peace and quiet while the lower strata remain fodder for 24/7 social media aggregators and botnets.
      • for: futures, digital futures, online vs offline role reversal, inequality
      • quote
      • paraphrase
        • We are already seeing the emergence of
          • ‘tech-free’ camps and
          • ' tech-free' vacation packages
        • Experiencing life ‘offline’ will become a generational goal,
          • much like the Millennial generation introduced ride sharing and home sharing.
        • Ironically, it will be technology that enables this trend, and premiums will be paid for uninterrupted time to focus or to simply enjoy being alive.
        • This may also indicate a new kind of disparity between economic strata, with
          • the more-wealthy affording privacy, peace and quiet while
          • the lower strata remain fodder for 24/7 social media aggregators and botnets.
      • author: Sam Adams
        • 24 year veteran of IBM
        • senior AI research scientist, RTI International
    1. what I'm advocating here isn't radical redistribution it's merely more 00:13:08 redistribution in a and structurally dependable manner that is fair that is inclusive and that allows for the poor and improvised Nations to be granted excess not just a vital strategic resources that are very much needed in 00:13:21 maintaining the quality of life at own citizens but also more importantly the ropes to climb the ladder
      • for: W2W, TPF, stats, inequality, wealth redistribution, wealth tax, quote, quote - wealth tax, quote - inequality, stats, stats - inequality, stats - wealth tax
      • quote
      • stats
        • An annual wealth tax of just 5% on multi-millionaires and billionaires
        • could raise US $1.7 trillion a year
        • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty
      • author Institute for Policy (2023)
      • comment
        • that breaks down to approximately $US 1,000 per person for 2 billion people from the 1% elites
        • this is pretty reasonable
        • W2W can begin with this simple VOLUNTARY ASK
        • if the multi-millionaires and billionaires do just this consistently, then it is so little from their coffers and they could avoid a wealth tax by simply stepping up voluntarily
        • Could W2W motivate them to?
    2. there's the unsustainable lifestyle of so many of us and I include myself I have far more than I need and 00:10:11 some people take this to excess and they have way way way more than they could ever possibly need and this is something that somehow we have to change
      • for: quote, quote - W2W, quote - inequality, quote - jane goodall
      • quote
        • there's the unsustainable lifestyle of so many of us
        • and I include myself
        • I have far more than I need and
        • some people take this to excess and they have way way way more than they could ever possibly need and
        • this is something that somehow we have to change
      • comment
        • this supports the need for the W2W program
    3. if you're very poor then you're living in some kind of Wilderness Area you're going to destroy the environment in order to survive let me take for 00:08:05 example Gumby Street National Park in 1960 it was part of the Great Forest built by the late 1980s was a tiny Islander forest and all the hills around were bare more people living there in 00:08:19 the land could support two poor to buy food elsewhere struggling to survive cutting down the trees to make money from charcoal or Timber or to make more land grow more food and that's when it 00:08:33 hit me if we don't help these people these local communities find ways of living without destroying the environment we can't save chimpanzees forests or anything else so we need to 00:08:46 alleviate poverty
      • for: inequality, poverty, W2W, Jane Goodall, socio-ecological system, climate justice, emptiness - example, entanglement - inequality and climate crisis
      • key insight
        • if you're very poor and you're living in some kind of Wilderness Area
          • you're going to destroy the environment in order to survive
          • example: Gumby Street National Park
            • in 1960 it was part of the Great Forest
            • but by the late 1980s was a tiny Islander forest and all the hills around were bare
            • more people living there than the land could support
            • too poor to buy food elsewhere
              • struggling to survive
              • cutting down the trees to make money from charcoal or Timber
              • or to make more land grow more food and
            • that's when it hit me
              • if we don't help these people these local communities find ways of living without destroying the environment
              • we can't save chimpanzees forests or anything else so we need to alleviate poverty
      • comment
        • This is why the inequality crisis is entangled with the climate crisis
    1. why does it in a sense if we think of money as a voting tool why is it that a billionaire has a 00:32:31 billion times more power to decide what society should be like than i do
      • for: voting, power - money, money - voting, inequality, voting - money, equity, voting power - rich
      • paraphrase
      • question
        • if we think of money as a voting tool
          • why does a billionaire have a billion times more power to decide what society should be like than i do?
    1. Americans are increasingly experiencing economic insecurity. According to a recent survey by Bankrate, 6 out of every 10 of us don’t even have $500 in the bank.
      • for: precarity, inequality, United States - poverty, no savings, financial crisis
      • quote
      • stats
        • 6 out of every 10 American interviewed said they did not have $500 savings in the bank
      • source
        • Bankrate 6 survey
    1. And where the artists take part in a fantasy of overconsumptionThe place where artists play a distinctive role, exactly like high-level sports athletes, is in the propagation of a certain fantasy.
      • for: W2W, carbon inequality, carbon footprint - 1%, carbon emissions - 1%, luxury advertising, luxury advertising contracts, carbon emissions - luxury goods
      • key insight
        • the elites are often the main popularizers, influencers and propagandists of the fantasy of overconsumption
        • culture of overconsumption
        • such elites have a close tie to the luxury industry via large advertising contracts
        • Media posts critical of the carbon air travel emissions of famous DJ named DJ Snake offers a prime example of a common attitude of privilege and self-righteousness found amongst a number of elites
      • for: emissions reduction, bend the curve, TPF, W2W, emissions reduction - cultural sector, bend the curve - cultural sector, TPF - cultural sector, W2W - cultural sector, carbon emissions - cultural sector, carbon inequality

      • comment

        • well written article on the carbon emissions challenges of the cultural sector
        • this is related to the carbon emissions of the luxury industry as well
      • question
        • same question as asked about luxury, since there is overlap with culture industry and luxury
        • Given that the 1% have the same carbon emissions as the bottom half of humanity, does the sustainability impacts of the decarbonization efforts of the luxury aspects of the culture industry measure up to stay under earth system boundaries in time?
      • reference
    1. there's 00:08:43 nothing there that could be secured and here's the important point I think we experienced that we experience it as a sense of lack 00:08:58 that is to say the sense that something is wrong with me something is missing something isn't quite right I'm not good enough and the reality is I think all of us to 00:09:14 some degree have some sense of that some sense of lack even though we might ignore it or cover it up there's there's some sense of that but because it's mostly sort of unconscious in the sense that we don't 00:09:29 really know where it comes from
      • for: sense of lack, sense of self, sense of self and sense of lack, human condition, poverty mentality, alienation, separation, emptiness, emptiness of emptiness, W2W, inequality
      • key insight
        • sense of self is equivalent to
          • sense of lack
          • duality
          • disconnection
          • alienation
          • separation
          • solidification - the opposite of emptiness
      • comment
        • this sense of lack that is intrinsically associated with the sense of self is perhaps the deepest root of our unhappiness
        • this is a key insight for sharing for both those who have too much (the 1%) as well as those who are so materially impoverished and deprived that they are forced to adopt survivalist strategies to stay alive, and if successful, take on a hard edge to survivalism, over-appreciating materialism
        • the same mistake is committed on both end of the disparity spectrum, both groups are still under the illusion that that sense of lack can be filled
    1. Our findings suggest that the share of US$2020-millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050, and cause accumulated emissions of 286 Gt CO2. This is equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget, and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C.
      • for: millionaire emissions, carbon inequality, inequality, W2W
      • paraphrase
        • Our findings suggest that the share of US$2020-millionaires in the world population will grow
          • from 0.7% today
          • to 3.3% in 2050,
        • and cause accumulated emissions of
          • 286 Gt CO2
          • equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget,
        • and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C.
        • Continued growth in emissions at the top makes a low-carbon transition less likely,
          • as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest
          • is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize.
          • To this end, we question whether policy designs such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters will be sufficient.
    1. According to a new study by tourism professor Stefan Gössling, the millionaires will, within just a few decades, be responsible for almost three quarters of carbon dioxide emissions.
      • for: wealth inequality, inequality, carbon inequality, elite emissions, 1% emissions, millionaire emissions
      • According to a new study by tourism professor Stefan Gössling,
        • the millionaires will, within just a few decades, be responsible for almost three quarters of carbon dioxide emissions.
  9. Jul 2023
    1. In addition to their high GHG emissions from consumption, high-SES people have disproportionate climate influence through at least four non-consumer roles: as investors, as role models within their social networks and for others who observe their choices, as participants in organizations and as citizens seeking to influence public policies or corporate behaviour
      • for: high-SES, 1%, W2W, inequality, carbon inequality, elites, billionaires, millionaires, leverage point
      • five high carbon emission areas of high-SES, HNWI, VHNWI
        • consumption
        • investor
        • role model within social networks
        • participants in organizations
        • citizens seeking to influence public policies or corporate behavior
    2. We focus on individuals and households with high socioeconomic status (SES; henceforth, high-SES people) because they have generated many of the problems of fossil fuel dependence that affect the rest of humanity.
      • for: high-SES, 1%, W2W, inequality, carbon inequality, elites, billionaires, millionaires, leverage point
      • definition
        • high-SES
          • high socioeconomic status
          • equivalent to high net worth individual (HNWI) or
          • very high net worth individual (VHNWI)
      • for: carbon inequality, w2w, leverage point - climate change, 1%, inequality, wealth tax
      • title
        • The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions
      • authors
        • Kristian S. Nielsen
        • Kimberly A. Nicholas
        • Felix Creutzig
        • Thomas Dietz
        • Paul C. Stern
      • date
      • abstract
        • People with high socioeconomic status disproportionally affect energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions directly
          • through their consumption and
          • indirectly through their financial and social resources.
        • However, few climate change mitigation initiatives have targeted this population segment,
          • and the potential of such initiatives remains insufficiently researched.
        • In this Perspective, we analyse key characteristics of high-socioeconomic-status people and explore five roles through which they have a disproportionate impact on energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions and potentially on climate change mitigation, namely as:
          • consumers,
          • investors,
          • role models,
          • organizational participants and
          • citizens.
        • We examine what is known about their disproportionate impact via consumption and
          • explore their potential influence on greenhouse gas emissions through all five roles.
        • We suggest that future research should focus on strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by high-socioeconomic-status people and to align their
          • investments,
          • organizational choices and
          • actions as social and political change agents
        • with climate change mitigation goals.
      • for: inequality, 1%, carbon inequality private jets, carbon emissions, patriotic millionaires
      • title
        • He’s a millionaire with a private jet. But now he’s selling it for the sake of the environment
      • source
      • date
        • July 13, 2023
      • Stephen Prince, vice-chair of the Patriotic Millionaires – a group of wealthy Americans pushing for higher taxes which also contributed to the report – is giving up his Cessna 650 Citation III.
      • for: inequality, climate justice, wealth tax
      • policy paper
      • title
        • survival of the richest
      • date
        • Jan 16, 2023
      • executive summary
        • Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth
          • nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99% of the world’s population.
        • Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7bn a day,
          • even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.7
        • Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022,
          • paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders,
          • while over 800 million people went to bed hungry
        • Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes and
          • half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.
        • A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year,
          • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.
      • for: inequality, wealth tax, climate justice, earth system justice
      • policy paper
      • title
        • Survival of the Richest
      • source
        • Oxfam
      • date

        • Jan 2023
      • Executive Summary

        • Since 2020, the richest 1% have captured almost two-thirds of all new wealth
          • nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99% of the world’s population.
        • Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7bn a day,
          • even as inflation outpaces the wages of at least 1.7 billion workers, more than the population of India.7
        • Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022,
          • paying out $257bn to wealthy shareholders,
          • while over 800 million people went to bed hungry
        • Only 4 cents in every dollar of tax revenue comes from wealth taxes and
          • half the world’s billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax on money they give to their children.
        • A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year,
          • enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.
    1. The surplus of life’s labor is not sufficient to con-tinue bearing the burden of a caste system devoted tocontrolling the many so a few can indulge in egotisti-cal displays of privilege on a dying Earth. The more ofhumanity’s labor we devote to maintaining the system ofdomination, the less that is available to secure life’s wellbe-ing and the more rapid the living system’s collapse.
      • for: caste system, caste, inequality, carbon inequality,

      • quote

        • "The surplus of life’s labor
        • is not sufficient to continue bearing the burden of a caste system
        • devoted to controlling the many so a few can indulge in egotistical displays of privilege on a dying Earth. -The more of humanity’s labor we devote to maintaining the system of domination (by the few),
        • the less that is available to secure life’s wellbeing (for all) and the more rapid the living system’s collapse."
      • Author
        • David Korten
      • parantheses

        • Stop Reset Go
      • new adjacency

        • articulating inequality as a caste system
    1. "In the paper we sketch five different roles
      • for: carbon inequality, W2W, leverage point

      • five leverage points

        • consumer.
        • investors
        • lobbyist
        • influencer
        • citizen
    2. "The top 1% use basically a similar amount to the bottom 50% of humanity.
      • for: carbon inequality, w2w
      • comment
        • it would be useful to have the accounting process used to calculate how the top1% emit carbon equivalent to bottom 50% to help us identify areas where interventions can be developed
      • Oxfam inequality report
      • Report name
        • Survival of the Richest
      • Date
        • Jan 2023
      • Key findings
        • the richest 1% earned nearly 2/3 of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020
        • the remaining 99% earned the remaining 1/3
    1. The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population,
      • The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020,
        • almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population,
    1. Wenn die reichsten Menschen in Europa ihren Energieverbrauch auf 170 Gigajoule pro Jahr reduzieren würden, ließen sich allein damit 10% der EU-Emissionen reduzieren - wobei 170 Gigajoule mehr sind, als 80% der europäischen Bevölkerung verbrauchen. Eine neue Studie zeigt das Potenzial von Reduktionen auf der Nachfrageseite vor allem bei Wohlhabenden. Eine bessere Befriedigung grundlegender Energiebedürfnisse von Armen hat dagegen nur geringe Auswirkungen auf die Emissionen. https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000179254/energiesparen-bei-reichen-kann-erhoehten-verbrauch-bei-armen-kompensieren

      Studie: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01283-y

    1. we are left with questions of how to split the burden of collectively staying within the PBs. To know if e.g. a person or a company is absolute environmentally sustainable, we need to know that person’s or the company’s assigned SoSOS. How to determine a person’s or a company’s assigned SoSOS is not only normative, but essentially a question of distributive justice.
      • question
        • how to we split the burden of collectively staying within the PBs?
        • To know if e.g. a person or a company is absolute environmentally sustainable,
          • we need to know that person’s or the company’s assigned SoSOS.
        • How to determine a person’s or a company’s assigned SoSOS is not only normative,
          • but essentially a question of distributive justice.
    1. One option is to cap the top 20% of energy users while allowing those people who use little energy and have poverty-level incomes to be able to increase their consumption levels and improve their quality of life.
      • One energy demand reduction strategy
        • Cap the top 20% of energy users
        • while allowing those people
          • who use little energy and
          • have poverty-level incomes
        • to be able to
          • increase their consumption levels and
          • improve their quality of life.
    2. Cap top 20% of energy users to reduce carbon emissions
      • Title
        • Cap top 20% of energy users to reduce carbon emissions
      • Publication

      • Summary -Consumers in the richer, developed nations will have to accept restrictions on their energy use

        • if international climate change targets are to be met, warn researchers.
        • The big challenge is to identify the fairest and most equitable way
        • that governments can curtail energy use,
          • a process known as energy demand reduction. -The research team analyzed several scenarios to identify a potential solution.
    1. protest and disrupt the “exclusive vacations of wealthy fossil fuel investors and polluters driving the climate crisis
      • comment
        • Disney is an ardent wealth and climate reformer and was protesting the 1%'s use of carbon intensive jet planes.
    1. We see virtually no prospect that the Wall Street system will transform itself from within. Change depends on citizen’s working from outside the establishment to create from the bottom up a New Economy based on new values and institutions.
      • quote
        • "We see virtually no prospect that the Wall Street system will transform itself from within.
        • Change depends on citizen’s working from outside the establishment
          • to create from the bottom up a New Economy based on new values and institutions."
      • Author
        • David Korten
  10. May 2023
  11. Apr 2023
    1. Highlights erroneously posted to a group:

       We allocate national consumption emissions to individuals within each country based on a functional relationship between income and emissions, drawing on new income distribution dataset
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      inequalityOxfam and SEI's approach to estimating how global carbon emissions can be attributed to individuals based on their consumption builds on Oxfam's 2015 report 'Extreme Carbon Inequality,'23 which gave a snapshot of the global distribution of emissions in a single year, and that of Chancel and Piketty24 among others. It is explained in detail in the accompanying research report.25
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      nequal growth has another cost: it means that the global carbon budget is being rapidly depleted, not for the purpose of lifting all of humanity to a decent standard of living, but to a large extent to expand the consumption of a minority of the world's very richest people
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      The World Bank recently concluded that continued unequal growth will barely make a dent in the number of people living on less than $1.90 per day by 2030; only a reduction in income inequality will help
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      S. Kartha, E. Kempt-Benedict, E. Ghosh, A. Nazareth and T. Gore. (2020). The Carbon Inequality Era: An assessment of the global distribution of consumption emissions among individuals from 1990 to 2015 and beyond. Oxfam and SEI. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/handle/10546/621049The dataset is available at https://www.sei.org/projects-and-tools/tools/emissions-inequality-dashboard
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      The poorest 50% barely increased their consumption emissions at all.
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      t is striking that the shares of emissions across income groups have remained essentially unchanged across the period
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      the total emissions added to the atmosphere since the mid-1800s approximately doubled.2Global GDP doubled in this period too, a
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      juncture – prioritizing yet more grossly unequal, carbon intensive economic growth to the benefit of the rich minority
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      in the service of increasing the consumption of the already affluent, rather than lifting people out of poverty.
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      It took about 140 years to use 750Gt of the global carbon budget, and just 25 years from 1990 to 2015 to use about the same again
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      Oxfamand SEI's research estimates how global carbon emissions are attributed to individuals who are the end consumers of goods and services for which the emissions were generated. See Box 2.
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      while the total growth in emissions of the richest 1% was three times that of the poorest 50%
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      The richest 1% (c.63 million people) alone were responsible for15% of cumulative emissions, and 9% of the carbon budget –twice as much as the poorest half of the world’s population
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      he richest 10% of the world’s population (c.630 million people) were responsible for 52% of the cumulative carbon emissions – depleting the global carbon budget by nearly a third (31%) in those 25 years alone
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      From 1990 to 2015, a
      

      HeinzWittenbrink 26 Dec 2020 in COS-OER

      This briefing describes new research that shows how extreme carbon inequality in recent decades has brought the world to the climate brink.
      
    1. Here I estimate the global inequality of individual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 1990 and 2019 using a newly assembled dataset of income and wealth inequality, environmental input-output tables and a framework differentiating emissions from consumption and investments.
    1. The question now is, will we high-consuming few make (voluntarily or by force) the fundamental changes needed for decarbonisation in a timely and organised manner? Or will we fight to maintain our privileges and let the rapidly changing climate do it, chaotically and brutally, for us

      Question - Those is the big question!

    2. Most IAM models ignore and often even exacerbate the obscene inequality in energy use and emissions, both within nations and between individuals.

      In Other Words - These recommendations, if we followed continue the existing inequality, Indeed can exasperate it. - Wealthy countries and individuals cannot be allowed to continue emitting high levels of carbon if we are to honour the principle of climate justice andequity written into the climate agreements

  12. Mar 2023
    1. While policies limiting the high emitters are thus unavoidable, such as progressive taxes on emissions, they are hampered by three consecutive barriers.

      Three obstacles to policies limiting elite carbon emissions - First is the realization of connection between wealth and carbon emissions - Second is polarized politics making it difficult to pass or implement policies to limit dangerous consumption - Third is focused policy on the oversized contributions of elites

    2. Our findings raise the issue of global policy choices, with this research confirming that targeting the high emitters will be key. Staying within temperature limits of 1.5 °C or 2.0 °C is difficult without addressing the consequences of wealth growth.

      key finding - staying within 1.5 or even 2 deg C will be difficult without addressing wealth growth - a significant share of the remaining carbon budget risks being depleted by a very small group of human beings

    3. command-and-control policies are required to ban energy-intense premium class and private flights.

      // - if millionaire consumptive behavior - threatens the survival of civilization, - then laws can be created to ban the dangerous consumptive behavior - if they cannot self-regulate

    4. In this estimate, US$2020 millionaires will deplete 72% of the 1.5 °C carbon budget (400 Gt CO2, 67% chance of staying within temperature range), or 25% of the 2 °C budget (1150 Gt CO2, 67% chance) over the next 30 years.

      key finding - Elite consumption has the potential to make 1.5 Deg C target unreachable - US$2020 millionaires will deplete 72% of the 1.5 °C carbon budget (400 Gt CO2, 67% chance of staying within temperature range), - or 25% of the 2 °C budget (1150 Gt CO2, 67% chance) - over the next 30 years.

    5. 1% of the world's population is responsible for an estimated 50% of emissions from commercial air transport, most of this associated with premium class air travel of affluent frequent fliers
      • Quote
        • carbon inequality stat
          • 1% of the world's population is responsible for 50% of emissions from commercial air transport
    6. 5245 superyachts with lengths of 30–180 m in 2021, a five-fold increase from 1090 yachts in 1990

      yacht stats - 2021: 5245 superyachts of lengths 30-180m - 1990: 1090 superyachts of lengths 30-180m - stats - yachts - quote - yachts

    7. power law in emission inequality

      carbon inequality follows a power law

    8. the top 1% now being responsible for 17% of total emissions, the top 10% for 48%, and the bottom half of the world population for only 12% (in 2019).

      Quotable carbon inequality stats: - the top 1% responsible for 17% of total emissions, - the top 10% for 48%, - the bottom 50% for12% - stats carbon inequality - quote carbon inequality - 2019

      // A key question is also this: - what are individuals using those carbon emissions for? - is it being used just for luxury consumption - or is it being used to develop and actionize scalable low carbon strategies? - if it is the later, it could be seen as a de-carbon investment

    9. They also highlighted that high emitters live in all countries, but were concentrated in the USA (3.16 million), causing an average 318 t CO2-e per person, Luxemburg (10,000 individuals emitting 287 t CO2-e/year each), Singapore (50,000, 251 t CO2-e/year), Saudi Arabia (290,000, 247 t CO2-e/year), and Canada (350,000, 204 t CO2-e/year)

      Noteworthy countries with the most high carbon net worth individuals (HCNW): - USA - 3.16 million individuals emitting an average 318 t CO2-e/year/person, - Luxemburg: 10,000 individuals emitting an average 287 t CO2-e/year/person, - Singapore: 50,000 individuals emitting 251 t CO2-e/year/person, - Saudi Arabia: 290,000 individuals emitting 247 t CO2-e/year/person, - Canada: 350,000 individuals emitting 204 t CO2-e/year/person

    10. Key drivers of individual emissions include energy-intense transportation, especially private aircraft and yachts, and multiple real estate ownership, often in different continents

      Biggest source of emissions of the elite: - yachts - private air transportation - multiple homes in different countries

      // - luxury industries of: - private jets - luxury home real estate - yachts - are unsustainable - this irresponsible, unsustainable consumption is imperiling civilization itself

    11. close to two thirds of the overall carbon footprint of those billionaires owning yachts is caused by yacht-ownership. This implies a contribution to climate change that is up to 6500 times greater for these individuals than the global average of 4.5 t CO2 per capita and year, or up to 300,000 times greater than the contribution of the poorest, at 0.1 t CO2 per person and year

      Yacht stats: - close to two thirds of the overall carbon footprint of those billionaires owning yachts is caused by yacht-ownership. - Carbon footprint is - 6500 times greater than the global average of 4.5 t CO2 per person per year, - 300,000 times greater than the poorest, at 0.1 t CO2 per person and year - stats - carbon inequality - quote - carbon inequality

    12. the top 0.01% emitting in excess of 2300 t CO2-e per capita in 2019, compared to 6 t CO2-e on global average.

      Quotable carbon inequality stats: - top 0.01% emit more than 2300 t CO2-e per capita in 2019, - global average is 6 t CO2-e - therefore, the top 0.01% emit 2300/6 = 383x more than the global average. - quote - carbon inequality - stats - carbon inequality

    13. Title: Millionaire spending incompatible with 1.5 °C ambitions Authors: - Stefan Gossling - Andreas Humpe

      • Abstract

        • Research question

          • Growing evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionally to climate change.
          • This study considers the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions,
            • and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (about 400 Gt CO2).
          • The study presents a model that extrapolates observed growth in millionaire numbers (1990–2020)
            • and associated changes in emissions to 2050.
        • Results

          • The share of US$2020-millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050,
            • and cause accumulated emissions of 286 Gt CO2.
          • This is equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget,
            • and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C.
          • Continued growth in emissions at the top
            • makes a low-carbon transition less likely,
            • as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest
            • is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize.
          • To this end, we question whether policy designs
            • such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters
          • will be sufficient.

      // and if it is not sufficient, then what?

    1. Millionaires will burn through two-thirds of the world’s carbon budget by 2050, scientists warn

      Taxing? No, they have enough wealth to just keep going. - if we people don't act on their own, legal regulation is required - unless they can transform themselves and the global luxury industry also undergoes a huge transformation

    1. Integrating a focus on minima andmaxima is the basis for addressing questions of justice in a moreprofound and comprehensive way than a sole focus on the neces-sity of minima. Indeed, maximum consumption standards enforce apowerful message about justice, which is a central goal of consump-tion corridors.
      • Comment
      • Material wealth has been worn as a badge of honor
      • Within this framework, pathological levels of consumption can be seen in from the perspective of justice as a badge of inequity.
      • Title
        • Impacts of meeting minimum access on critical earth systems amidst the Great Inequality
      • Abstract
      • Paraphrase

        • The Sustainable Development Goals aim to improve access to resources and services, reduce environmental degradation, eradicate poverty and reduce inequality.
        • However, the magnitude of the environmental burden that would arise from meeting the needs of the poorest is under debate—especially when compared to much larger burdens from the rich.
        • The ‘Great Acceleration’ of human impacts was also accompanied by a ‘Great Inequality’ in using and damaging the environment.
        • To correct the great inequality, the authors define ‘just access’ to minimum energy, water, food and infrastructure.
        • The penality incurred for achieving just access in 2018, with existing inequalities, technologies and behaviours, would have produced 2–26% additional impacts on the Earth’s natural systems of climate, water, land and nutrients—thus further crossing planetary boundaries.
        • These hypothetical impacts, caused by about a third of humanity, equalled those caused by the wealthiest 1–4%.
        • Technological and behavioural changes thus far, while important, did not deliver just access within a stable Earth system.
        • Achieving these goals therefore calls for a radical redistribution of resources.
      • Comment

    1. The black line in Fig. 5 shows that redistribution is not enough; if everyone’s emissions are equalized at escape from poverty levels, then we would still overshoot the climate boundaries
      • First stage of characterizing the Safe and Just Corridor
      • The black line in Fig. 5 shows that
      • redistribution is not enough
        • if everyone’s emissions are equalized at escape from poverty levels, then
        • we would STILL overshoot the climate boundaries (annotator's emphasis)
        • hypothetical pressure from 62% of humanity that is lacking humane access to resources is equal to the pressure exerted by 4% of the elits of humanity
  13. Feb 2023
    1. tackling global poverty will not overshoot global carbon budgets, as is often claimed. Failure to address the power and privilege of the polluter elite will. These are related because reducing carbon consumption at the top can free up carbon space to lift people out of poverty.
      • report shows that tackling global poverty will not overshoot global carbon budgets, as is often claimed.
      • Failure to address the power and privilege of the polluter elite will.
      • These are related because

        • reducing carbon consumption at the top
        • can free up carbon space to lift people out of poverty.
      • = comment:

    2. The World Inequality Lab is co-directed by the influential economist Thomas Piketty

      The = World Inequality Lab - is co-directed by Thomas Piketty,

    3. people on low incomes within developed countries are contributing less to the climate crisis, while rich people in developing countries have much bigger carbon footprints than was previously acknowledged.

      = comment - It has been a research claim for SRG for years that this is the case, - and is also rather obvious that - carbon inequality exists wherever there is wealth inequality - our more interesting analysis is the historical connection between colonialism and capitalism - As the explicit form of colonialism began to disappear for to progressive action, globalised, industrial capitalism began to emerge - the North/South divide created by colonialism began to plant the seed of the extractive logic of democratically into opportunist minds of every creed - in effect, the traditional colonialist perpetrator club, swung their doors wide open, inclusive now of non-white exploiters - there is now a North /South divide within each country

    4. The difference between the carbon emissions of the rich and the poor within a country is now greater than the differences in emissions between countries
      • The difference between the carbon emissions of the rich and the poor
      • within a country
      • is now greater than the differences in emissions
      • between countries
  14. Dec 2022
    1. This new paper finds that people are less interested in reducing economic inequality through redistribution when they think about wealth disparities as hierarchies of individuals rather than of groups. This seems to be because, as the researchers put it, “people are more likely to believe that the wealth of individuals, rather than groups, at the top is well earned”.
  15. Nov 2022
    1. Το ανακαλυψα από τον Alexander Clapp about για τους πλούσιους ελληνες εφοπλιστές που διασκεδαζαν στο θωρηκτό Αφερωφ ενω οι πολιτες πεινούσαν.

  16. Oct 2022
  17. Sep 2022
    1. Consider another example—education. It is true that in most countries, asin the United States, a higher level of educational attainment is typically as-sociated with a lower risk of economic insecurity. But the penalties associatedwith low levels of educational attainment, and the rewards associated with highlevels of attainment, vary significantly by country. Full-time workers without ahigh school degree in Finland, for instance, report the same earnings as thosewith a high school degree. In the United States, however, these workers ex-perience a 24 percent earnings penalty for not completing high school.23 InNorway, a college degree yields only a 20 percent earnings increase over a highschool degree for full-time workers, versus a much higher 68 percent increase inthe United States.24 The percentage of those with a high school degree earningat or below the poverty threshold is more than 4 times higher in the UnitedStates than in Belgium.25

      The US penalizes those who don't complete high school to a higher degree than other countries and this can tend to lower our economic resiliency.

      American exceptionalism at play?

      Another factor at play with respect to https://hypothes.is/a/2uAmuEENEe2KentYKORSww

    2. With respect tomeasuring the amount of economic inequality in a country, we make use ofwhat is known as the Gini coefficient or index.9 This is an overall measure ofhow unequal the income distribution is, and it ranges from 0 (complete equality)to 1 (complete inequality).

      see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

      It can apparently apply to either income inequality or wealth inequality, so it may have slightly different meanings based on this underlying context.

      Delve into this question of definition.

    3. We will also examine wealth inequality. This is analogous toincome inequality but is looking at the distribution of economic assets ratherthan income. Net worth refers to all of one’s assets minus all of one’s debts.Financial wealth is exactly the same but does not include the equity that onehas built up in a home.6

      compare with income inequality: https://hypothes.is/a/_JLGuj3HEe2dJFdOJRcvaQ

    4. Income inequality refers to how wide or narrow the overall distribution of an-nual income is.5
  18. Aug 2022
    1. In U.S.schools, young people, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, live amidenduring patterns of social and economic inequality. Indeed, American public schools arecharacterized by the many significant gaps between communities in the provision of educationand educational enrichment opportunities (Kozol 2012)

    Tags

    Annotators

  19. Jul 2022
    1. Hayek's political influence reached its height in 1986, when Mrs Thatcher's government swept away much of the regulation that had constrained the city of London

      Direct link to Thatcher

    1. That means that while the one per cent is doing very well, the rest of them are doing worse.The author thinks it's fundamental to an understanding of what is going on in the politics, in the economy, and in the society today.While the top has been doing very well, those in the middle - in the median - has not.Median income today in the United States is lower than it was a decade and a half ago.

      The 1% problem laid out clearly

    2. That the level of inequality, and the way inequality is created in the United States, has resulted in our economy performing more poorly than it would if we had less inequality

      The negative externalities of inequality on an economy

    3. the chances of somebody going from the bottom to the middle, the bottom to the top, are lower in the United States than even in northern Europe.

      The life prospects of a young person in the United States is more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in other advanced countries for which there's data

    1. Could social systems be finally reprogrammed, at long last, ‘as if peoplemattered’ [ 8]?
      • They are currently programmed by minority power holders to serve their interest.
      • Many individuals and projects are trying to do this
      • Climate change is a classic example of power holders dictating the agenda
    1. First, our numbers have risen by 1.4 billion, nearly a hundred million per year. In other words, we’ve added another China or 40 more Canadas to the world. The growth rate has fallen slightly, but consumption of resources — from fossil fuel to water, from rare earths to good earth — has risen twice as steeply, roughly doubling our impact on nature. This outrunning of population by economic growth has lifted perhaps a billion of the poorest into the outskirts of the working class, mainly in China and India. Yet those in extreme poverty and hunger still number at least a billion. Meanwhile, the wealthiest billion — to which most North Americans and Europeans and many Asians now belong — devour an ever-growing share of natural capital. The commanding heights of this group, the billionaires’ club, has more than 2,200 members with a combined known worth nearing $10 trillion; this super-elite not only consumes at a rate never seen before but also deploys its wealth to influence government policy, media content, and key elections. Such, in a few words, is the shape of the human pyramid today.
    1. this is going to be a really critical year uh for public goods uh generation um and here at year i'm using 00:00:40 you know starting from now through the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. uh so what i'm going to go through is a case for why this year really matters and why this decade really matters in 00:00:53 the century

      Why is 2022 a critical year to fund projects that build the commons?

      From a scientific, commons and Stop Reset Go perspective, humanity now stands at the doorsteps of the Anthropocene and we as a species have collectively shaped the planet in a way that is harming many species on the globe, including our own.

      We are at a bifurcation point in human history, a fork in the road and the next few years will determine the course of humanity for the next thousands of years to come.

      The funneling of human resources to the few elites at the top leaves the majority of humanity little agency to determine our own future and carbon emissions are also related to structural inequality: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oxfam.org%2Fen%2Fpress-releases%2Fcarbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity&group=world

      See Jason Hickel's arguments against the overly optimistic story that Neoliberal capitalism has alleviated poverty. Hickel finds the opposite when critical analysis is applied to the rosy claims that Steven Pinker and Bill Gates make: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjacobin.com%2F2019%2F02%2Fsteven-pinker-global-poverty-neoliberalism-progress&group=vnpq69nW

      Funding projects in the commons counters the wealth of elites, a trend that is counter to planetary health because it continues degrading the environment through carbon inequality:

      https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity#annotations:8gdC3ht8EeyWyQ-BBdinXw

      and wealth inequality.

    1. The richest 10 percent accounted for over half (52 percent) of the emissions added to the atmosphere between 1990 and 2015. The richest one percent were responsible for 15 percent of emissions during this time – more than all the citizens of the EU and more than twice that of the poorest half of humanity (7 percent).

      This is a key leverage point strategy for Stop Reset Go for Rapid Whole System Change (RWSC) strategy. As argued by Kevin Anderson https://youtu.be/mBtehlDpLlU, the wealthy are a crucial subculture to target and success can lead to big decarbonization payoffs.

      The key is to leverage what contemplative practitioners and happiness studies both reveal - after reaching a specific level of material needs being met, which is achievable for staying within planetary boundaries, we don’t need any more material consumption to be happy. We need an anti-money song: https://youtu.be/_awAH-JJx1kamd and enliven Martin Luther King Junior’s quote aspirational: the only time to look down at another person is to give them a hand up. Educate the elites on the critical role they now play to solve the double problem of i equality and runaway carbon emissions.

  20. Jun 2022
    1. Between 1914 and 1980, inequalities in income and wealth decreasedmarkedly in the Western world as a whole (the United Kingdom,Germany, France, Sweden, and the United States), and in Japan,Russia, China, and India, although in different ways, which we willexplore in a later chapter. Here we will focus on the Western countriesand improve our understanding of how this “great redistribution”took place.

      Inequalities in income and wealth decreased markedly in the West from 1914 to 1980 due to a number of factors including:<br /> - Two World Wars and the Great Depression dramatically overturned the power relationships between labor and capital<br /> - A progressive tax on income and inheritance reduced the concentration of wealth and helped increase mobility<br /> - Liquidation of foreign and colonial assets as well as dissolution of public debt

    1. The inequalities in the US arise from huge disparities in the resources at school, and a highly unequal society at large. I personally think that improving education is much more about support for students, resources, tutoring, teacher training, etc, than whether we teach logarithms using method X or method Y.
  21. May 2022
    1. Wealthy individuals contribute disproportionately to higher emissions and have a high potential28for emissions reductions while maintaining decent living standards and well-being (high29confidence).

      Oxfam reports that the carbon footprints of the richest 1 percent of people on Earth is set to be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement in 2030. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-set-be-30-times-15degc-limit-2030

      The richest one percent of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity during a critical 25-year period of unprecedented emissions growth. The richest 10 percent accounted for over half (52 percent) of the emissions added to the atmosphere between 1990 and 2015. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity

    1. We shall see that different inequalities have persisted at considerableand unjustified levels on all these dimensions—status, property,power, income, gender, origin, and so on—and, moreover, that indi-viduals often face inequalities in combination.

      Nice that Piketty is giving a nod to intersectionality.

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. Frank Wilhot's: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/
  22. Apr 2022
    1. One of those factors is globalization which has helped lift hundreds and millions out of poverty, most notably in China and India, but which, along with automation has also ended entire economies, accelerated global inequality, and left millions of others feeling betrayed and angry at existing political institutions.

      An awareness of other structural, economic issues that are weakening democracy: Globalization, Automation, Inequality.

    1. ReconfigBehSci. (2020, November 3). As debate on ‘saving the economy versus saving lives’ marches on, it’s worth noting that this type of contrast actually has a name in fallacy research: Https://t.co/N8U4ABWTuh it’s also worth noting that there is now a substantial number of research articles on the topic. 1/n [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1323603017179013130

    1. South Africa has one of the most unequal school systems in the world. The gap in test scores between the top 20% and the rest is wider than in almost every other country. On the one side, there are functional, wealthy schools. On the other, which 85% of our students attend, are poorly funded, dysfunctional schools

      the inequality in the the is huge. and the 20% of schools appear to probably be in suburbs. meaning the majority of schools in townships are not well equipped for better education.

  23. Mar 2022
    1. “Scarcity: WhyHaving Too Little Means So Much” (2013) by Mullainathan andShafir. They investigate how the experience of scarcity has cognitiveeffects and causes changes in decision-making processes.

      I'm reminded of a reference recently to Republicans being upset that poor people of color would "waste" their money on frivolities like manicures and fake fingernails instead of on food or other necessities. How might this tie into the argument made in this book?

  24. Feb 2022
    1. Our brains work not that differently in terms of interconnectedness.Psychologists used to think of the brain as a limited storage spacethat slowly fills up and makes it more difficult to learn late in life. Butwe know today that the more connected information we alreadyhave, the easier it is to learn, because new information can dock tothat information. Yes, our ability to learn isolated facts is indeedlimited and probably decreases with age. But if facts are not kept

      isolated nor learned in an isolated fashion, but hang together in a network of ideas, or “latticework of mental models” (Munger, 1994), it becomes easier to make sense of new information. That makes it easier not only to learn and remember, but also to retrieve the information later in the moment and context it is needed.

      Our natural memories are limited in their capacities, but it becomes easier to remember facts when they've got an association to other things in our minds. The building of mental models makes it easier to acquire and remember new information. The down side is that it may make it harder to dramatically change those mental models and re-associate knowledge to them without additional amounts of work.


      The mental work involved here may be one of the reasons for some cognitive biases and the reason why people are more apt to stay stuck in their mental ruts. An example would be not changing their minds about ideas of racism and inequality, both because it's easier to keep their pre-existing ideas and biases than to do the necessary work to change their minds. Similar things come into play with respect to tribalism and political party identifications as well.

      This could be an interesting area to explore more deeply. Connect with George Lakoff.

    1. In crowded housing markets in large cities, house flipping is often viewed as a driver of inequality.

      If house flipping is viewed as a driver of inequality in crowded housing markets in larger cities, what spurs it on? What do the economics look like and how can the trend be combatted?

      What effect does economic speculation have?

  25. Jan 2022
  26. Dec 2021
    1. As physical flux are constrained in our houses exacerbating existing hierarchies inequities, social constraints, as well as giving the occasion to some of us to confirm the richness of our differences and affirm the benefit of collective life choices, ground new network organization, exacerbate our need to share practices of care.
    1. Peruvian letters which was supposedly the letters home by a captured Inca princess who's trapped in France and they're commenting on French society and this is later remembered it 00:50:03 comes out in his late 1740s um it's later remembered as the first book which suggested the idea of the welfare state

      The 1747 book Letters of a Peruvian Woman by the prominent saloniste Madame de Graffigny, which viewed French society through the eyes of an imaginary kidnapped Inca princess, is remembered as the first book to suggest the idea of the welfare state.

    2. first of all the phrase equality inequality so we wasn't used in the Middle Ages at all um you know they've got enough stuff on database that they can do word searches now you know so 00:35:01 people have gone through them and confirmed that this wasn't an issue nobody talked about it the concept of equality and inequality really you know talk about it in math Italian PhD and 00:35:16 wasn't it two guys actually did a systematics went through yeah they did a word search took a whole medieval literature is that discovered that no basically until the fifteen hundreds of pieces these words at all

      The ideas of equality and inequality didn't exist or weren't used in the middle ages until about the 1500s.

      Reference?

    3. managed to get a hold of all the other essays that were submitted there's one book where you could find out and it was hotly tested hotly contested many of the arguments that you see nowadays were

      Rousseau's work on inequality was part of a contest circa 1753, which he didn't win.

    1. Dogs’ innate sense of fairness being eroded by humans, study suggests https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dogs-wolves-unfairness-acceptance-human-owners-pets-behaviour-research-vienna-a7779076.html

      While thinking about inequality in reading The Dawn of Everything, I started thinking about inequality and issues in other animal settings.

      Why am I not totally surprised to find that animals' innate sense of fairness could be eroded by humans?

      I wonder if this effect might be seen across all cultures, or only Western cultures with capitalist economies? Could we look at dogs in Australian indigenous cultures and find the same results?

    1. While reading The Dawn of Inequality, it occurs to me that much less look at humans and inequality or fairness, there's been reasonable research on other animals and their perception of fairness.

      This example is a simple example which scratches the surface and many more could be added.

      https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97944783

    1. The article that preceded the book ("Farewell to the 'childhood of man': ritual, seasonally, and the origins of inequality", https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12247) has been cited 57 times since 2015.
    1. Rather, what Rousseaupresented was more of a parable, by way of an attempt to explore afundamental paradox of human politics: how is it that our innate drivefor freedom somehow leads us, time and again, on a ‘spontaneousmarch to inequality’?8
    2. It’s almost asif we feel some need to come up with mathematical formulaejustifying the expression, already popular in the days of Rousseau,that in such societies ‘everyone was equal, because they were allequally poor.’

      Link this to

      A thousand years ago, the world was flat, economically speaking. —Chapter 1 of Economy, Society, and Public Policy https://hyp.is/-XJOwkOjEeqNeL-phEONOg/www.core-econ.org/espp/book/text/01.html

      I don't think we have to go back even this far. If I recall correctly, even 150 years ago the vast majority of the world's population were subsistence farmers. It's only been since the 20th century and the increasing spread of the industrial revolution that the situation has changed:

      Even England remained primarily an agrarian country like all tributary societies for the previous 4,000 years, with ca. 50 percent of its population employed in agriculture as late as 1759. —David Christian, Maps of Time (pp 401) quoting from Crafts, British Economic Growth, pp. 13–14. (See also Fig 13.1 Global Industrial Potential from the same, for a graphical indicator.

    3. people end up being told their needs are not important, and theirlives have no intrinsic worth. The last, we are supposed to believe, isjust the inevitable effect of inequality; and inequality, the inevitableresult of living in any large, complex, urban, technologicallysophisticated society. Presumably it will always be with us. It’s just amatter of degree.

      People being told they don't matter and don't have intrinsic worth is a hallmark of colonialism. It's also been an ethical issue in the study of anthropology for the past 150 years.

      Anthropologist Tim Ingold in Anthropology: Why It Matters touches on some of this issue of comparing one group of people with another rather than looking at and appreciating the value of each separately.

    4. After all, imagine we framed the problem differently, the way itmight have been fifty or 100 years ago: as the concentration ofcapital, or oligopoly, or class power. Compared to any of these, aword like ‘inequality’ sounds like it’s practically designed toencourage half-measures and compromise. It’s possible to imagineoverthrowing capitalism or breaking the power of the state, but it’snot clear what eliminating inequality would even mean. (Which kindof inequality? Wealth? Opportunity? Exactly how equal would peoplehave to be in order for us to be able to say we’ve ‘eliminatedinequality’?) The term ‘inequality’ is a way of framing social problemsappropriate to an age of technocratic reformers, who assume fromthe outset that no real vision of social transformation is even on thetable.

      A major problem with fighting to "level the playing field" and removing "inequality" is that it doesn't have a concrete feel. What exactly would it mean to eliminate inequality? What measures would one implement? To fix such a problem the issue needs to be better defined. How can the issue be better framed so that it could be fought for or against?

    1. This post is mainly about the book’s attempt to dismantle the myth of “agriculture as the source of social inequality.” The next post will be about Graeber’s and Wengrow’s startling claim that European Enlightenment can be seen, to a large extent, as the result of a conversation with Indigenous, non-western intellectuals and societies – indeed, as inspired by them.

      David Graeber and David Wengrow's book can be seen as having two broad arguments:

      1. Dismantling the myth of "agriculture as the source of social inequality"
      2. The Eurpoean Englightenment can be seen as being inspired by conversations with Indigenous, non-Western intellectuals and societies.

      Open question: Were we englightened only just a little bit, but not enough? How do we get the other part of the transmitted package?

    1. 1 ευρώ θα παίρνετε από αμοιβή, 2 ευρώ θα σας τρώει ο πληθωρισμός. Θα γίνει της Βαϊμάρης…

      Η κοινή παρανόηση πως ο υψηλός πληθωρισμός == υπερπληθωρισμός. Οχι οτι θα ειναι ευκολο για την λαϊκή οικογενεια, ή οτι δεν θα γινουν εξεγερσεις.

  27. Nov 2021
    1. Increasing inequality

      Although remote work was not unfamiliar in the Netherlands (Bishop, 2020) and Dutch schools for social work already had gained some experience with online learning, the situation that arose was quite unfamiliar for most teachers and studen Less

      Increasing inequality

    1. let's stop let's just stop doing it and let's let's find other ways of measuring quality of life other than being flooded 00:21:22 by this great tide of plastic and metal and electronics 99 of which we simply do not need to live a good life

      Stop Reset Go strategy. Stop Button. Could we use the Stop Button to just stop? Is there a way to create a conditional stop button with conditional impacts if thresholds are exceeded?

    2. this is a fundamental issue of justice and equity so the top one percent uh in 00:09:22 terms of wealth around the world use 15 produce 15 of the greenhouse gas emissions which is twice as much as the bottom 50 percent whose total 00:09:34 emissions are just seven percent of the total so we're looking at uh a very small number of people grabbing the lion's share of natural wealth they claim to be wealth creators they're actually taking 00:09:47 wealth from the rest of us they're saying we're going to have all this atmospheric space for ourselves and incidentally all these other resources all the mahogany and the gold and the 00:09:58 diamonds and the bluefin tuna sushi and whatever else that they're consuming on a massive scale and this is driven by to a very large extent by their remarkable disproportionate use of aviation 00:10:12 there's one set of figures suggesting that the richest one percent are responsible for 50 of the world's aviation emissions but also by their yachts for example the average 00:10:24 um commonal garden super yacht um kept on standby for a billionaire to step onto whenever he wants um produces 7 000 tons of carbon dioxide per year 00:10:38 if we're to meet even the conventional accounting for staying within 1.5 degrees of global heating our maximum emissions per person are around 2.3 00:10:49 tons so one super yacht is what over 3 000 people's worth of emissions this is just grossly outrageously unfair and we should rebel 00:11:01 against the habit of the very rich of taking our natural wealth from us

      Stop Reset Go needs to implement a STOP the STEAL! campaign against the elites and luxury producers and also a WEALTH to WELLth program to transition high carbon consumption lifestyle to a low one that helps the wealthy funnel their wealth into climate justice and become carbon heros instead of carbon villains.

      See the reports that George Monbiot is referring to:

      OXFAM REPORT: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Foxfamilibrary.openrepository.com%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F10546%2F621305%2Fbn-carbon-inequality-2030-051121-en.pdf&group=__world__

    1. Recent research suggests that globally, the wealthiest 10% have been responsible for as much as half of the cumulative emissions since 1990 and the richest 1% for more than twice the emissions of the poorest 50% (2).

      Even more recent research adds to this:

      See the annotated Oxfam report: Linked In from the author: https://hyp.is/RGd61D_IEeyaWyPmSL8tXw/www.linkedin.com/posts/timgore_inequality-parisagreement-emissionsgap-activity-6862352517032943616-OHL- Annotations on full report: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Foxfamilibrary.openrepository.com%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F10546%2F621305%2Fbn-carbon-inequality-2030-051121-en.pdf&group=__world__

      and the annotated Hot or Cool report: https://hyp.is/KKhrLj_bEeywAIuGCjROAg/hotorcool.org/hc-posts/release-governments-in-g20-countries-must-enable-1-5-aligned-lifestyles/ https://hyp.is/zo0VbD_bEeydJf_xcudslg/hotorcool.org/hc-posts/release-governments-in-g20-countries-must-enable-1-5-aligned-lifestyles/

      This suggests that perhaps the failure of the COP meetings may be partially due to focusing at the wrong level and demographics. the top 1 and 10 % live in every country. A focus on the wealthy class is not a focus area of COP negotiations perse. The COP meetings are focused on nation states. Interventions targeting this demographic may be better suited at the scale of individuals or civil society.

      Many studies show there are no extra gains in happiness beyond a certain point of material wealth, and point to the harmful impacts of wealth accumulation, known as affluenza, and show many health effects: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/, https://theswaddle.com/how-money-affects-rich-people/, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-dark-reasons-so-many-rich-people-are-miserable-human-beings-2018-02-22, https://www.nbcnews.com/better/pop-culture/why-wealthy-people-may-be-less-successful-love-ncna837306, https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-psychology/affluence,

      A Human Inner Transformation approach based on an open source praxis called Deep Humanity is one example of helping to transform affluenza and leveraging it to accelerate transition.

      Anderson has contextualized the scale of such an impact in his other presentations but not here. A recent example is the temporary emission decreases due to covid 19. A 6.6% global decrease was determined from this study: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3#:~:text=After%20rising%20steadily%20for%20decades,on%20daily%20fossil%20fuel%20emissions. with the US contributing 13% due to lockdown impacts on vehicular travel (both air and ground). After the pandemic ends, experts expect a strong rebound effect.

    2. A final cluster gathers lenses that explore phenomena that are arguably more elastic and with the potential to both indirectly maintain and explicitly reject and reshape existing norms. Many of the topics addressed here can be appropriately characterized as bottom-up, with strong and highly diverse cultural foundations. Although they are influenced by global and regional social norms, the expert framing of institutions, and the constraints of physical infrastructure (from housing to transport networks), they are also domains of experimentation, new norms, and cultural change. Building on this potential for either resisting or catalyzing change, the caricature chosen here is one of avian metaphor and myth: the Ostrich and Phoenix cluster. Ostrich-like behavior—keeping heads comfortably hidden in the sand—is evident in different ways across the lenses of inequity (Section 5.1), high-carbon lifestyles (Section 5.2), and social imaginaries (Section 5.3), which make up this cluster. Yet, these lenses also point to the power of ideas, to how people can thrive beyond dominant norms, and to the possibility of rapid cultural change in societies—all forms of transformation reminiscent of the mythological phoenix born from the ashes of its predecessor. It is conceivable that this cluster could begin to redefine the boundaries of analysis that inform the Enabler cluster, which in turn has the potential to erode the legitimacy of the Davos cluster. The very early signs of such disruption are evident in some of the following sections and are subsequently elaborated upon in the latter part of the discussion.

      The bottom-up nature of this cluster makes it the focus area for civil society movements, human inner transformation (HIT) approaches and cultural methodologies.

      Changing the mindset or paradigm from which the system arises is the most powerful place to intervene in a system as Donella Meadows pointed out decades ago in her research on system leverage points: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/

      The sleeping giant of billions of potential change actors remains dormant. How do we awaken them and mobilize them. If we can do this, it can constitute the emergence of a third unidentified actor in system change.

      The Stop Reset Go (SRG) initiative is focused on this thematic lens, bottom-up, rapid whole system change, with Deep Humanity (DH) as the open-source praxis to address the needed shift in worldview advocated by Meadows. One of the Deep Humanity programs is based on addressing the psychological deficits of the wealthy, and transforming them into heroes for the transition, by redirecting their WEALTH-to-WELLth.

      There are a number of strategic demographics that can be targeted in methodical evidence-based ways. Each of these is a leverage point and can bring about social tipping points.

      A number of 2021 reports characterize the outsized impact of the top 1% and top 10% of humanity. Unless their luxury, high ecological footprint behavior is reeled in, humanity won't stand a chance. Annotation of Oxfam report: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Foxfamilibrary.openrepository.com%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F10546%2F621305%2Fbn-carbon-inequality-2030-051121-en.pdf&group=__world__ Annotation of Hot or Cool report: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhotorcool.org%2Fhc-posts%2Frelease-governments-in-g20-countries-must-enable-1-5-aligned-lifestyles%2F&group=__world__

    3. Perspectives that emphasize lifestyles and consumption help to foreground the fundamental inequalities and injustices in the drivers of climate change (see Section 5.1). There are large variations in emissions between different lifestyles even within similar social groups and geographic regions (not least those with high income versus those without) (2, 129)—and yet, there has so far been a pervasive failure to direct mitigation efforts toward high emitters and emission-intensive practices (156, 158, 162). Confronting such variation and inequality requires demand management practices that target high-carbon lifestyles without disproportionately impacting more vulnerable communities. Such tailored approaches could lead to more effective mitigation policies by focusing on high-emission practices (e.g., frequent flying by wealthier groups). Furthermore, participatory and practice-oriented policy processes, where these involve citizens questioning how to bring about more system-wide change, can engender critique of the very power dynamics and patterns of influence that facilitate unsustainable lifestyles.
    1. This report is an essential companion for policymakers working at the intersection of society and climate change.”

      Policy alone may not be sufficient to change this deeply ingrained luxury lifestyle. It may require deep and meaningful education of one's deeper humanity leading to a shift in worldviews and value systems that deprioritize materially luxurious lifestyles for using that wealth to redistribute to build the future wellbeing ecocivilization. Transform the wealthy into the heros of the transition. Shaming them and labeling them as victims will only create distance. Rather, the most constructive approach is a positive one that shifts our own perspective from holding them as villains to heros.

    2. Dr. Lewis Akenji, the lead author of the report says: “Talking about lifestyle changes is a hot-potato issue to policymakers who are afraid to threaten the lifestyles of voters. This report brings a science based approach and shows that without addressing lifestyles we will not be able to address climate change.”

      This underscores the critical nature of dealing with the cultural shift of luxury lifestyle. It is recognized as a "hot potato" issue, which implies policy change may be slow and difficult.

      Policy changes and new legal tools are ways to force an unwilling individual or group into a behavior change.

      A more difficult but potentially more effective way to achieve this cultural shift is based on Donella Meadows' leverage points: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ which identifies the top leverage point as: The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture — arises.

      The Stop Reset Go (SRG) open collective project applies the Deep Humanity (DH) Human Inner Transformation (HIT) process to effect impactful Social Outer Transformation (SOT). This is based on the inner-to-outer flow: The heart feels, the mind thinks, the body acts and a social impact manifests in our shared, public collective human reality.

      Meadows top leverage point identifies narratives, stories and value systems that are inner maps to our outer behavior as critical causal agents to transform.

      We need to take a much deeper look at the pysche of the luxury lifestyle. Philospher David Loy has done extensive research on this already. https://www.davidloy.org/media.html

      Loy is a Buddhist scholar, but Buddhist philosophy can be understood secularly and across all religions.

      Loy cites the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, especially his groundbreaking Pulitzer-prize-winning book: The Denial of Death. Becker wrote:

      "Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else."

      But Loy goes beyond mortality salience and strikes to the heart of our psychological construction of the Self that is the root of our consumption and materialism exasperated crisis.

      To reach the wealthy in a compassionate manner, we must recognize that the degree of wealth and materialist accumulation may be in many cases proportional to the anxiety of dying, the anxiety of the groundlessness of the Self construction itself.

      Helping all humans to liberate from this anxiety is monumental, and also applies to the wealthy. The release of this anxiety will naturally result in breaking through the illusion of materialism, seeing its false promises.

      Those of the greatest material wealth are often also of the greatest spiritual poverty. As we near the end of our lives, materialism's promise may begin to lose its luster and our deepest unanswered questions begin to regain prominence.

      At the end of the day, policy change may only effect so much change. What is really required is a reeducation campaign that results in voluntary behavior change that significantly reduces high impact luxury lifestyles. An exchange for something even more valued is a potential answer to this dilemma.

    1. New report out today reveals the #inequality that is pushing the 1.5C goal of the #ParisAgreement out of reach without urgent action. Together with colleagues at the Stockholm Environment Institute, we estimate the carbon footprints of the richest 1% in 2030 are set to be 30 times higher than the global per capita level compatible with the 1.5C goal. The footprints of the richest 10% in 2030 are set to be nearly 10 times that level, while those of the poorest half of the global population will remain far below it. In absolute terms, the emissions of the richest 10% alone are set to nearly amount to the global total in 2030 compatible with the 1.5C goal, while those of the remaining 90% are set to only just exceed it. The richest 1% are set for an increasing share of global total emissions, reaching 16% by 2030. Evidently it is not the consumption of most of the people on the planet that is driving the global #emissionsgap - but rather that of the richest minority.

      This Oxfam commissioned study points to how elites hold the rest of humanity hostage: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-set-be-30-times-15degc-limit-2030.

      What policy changes will governments enact? Can law against high carbon consumption be drafted into existence based on the premise that such extreme high carbon lifestyle actually constitutes crimes against humanity?

      Civil society must act as well. Individual’s must undergo a paradigm shift of the whole idea of luxury. It must be completely decoupled from its high carbon footprint. Carbon offsets are no good. Planting trees is yet another simplistic, one dimensional, reductionist solution....destroy an ancient forest and replace it with invasive monoculture tree crops. It is a false equivalency that enables the continuation of a high carbon lifestyle.

      Cultural change is required at this stage. This is an opportunity to educate the wealthy and give them a last opportunity to STOP their high carbon emission behavior, RESET it to low carbon redemptive behavior, and help civilization GO at the greatest speed possible towards a wellbeing ecocivilization.

      Another recent report from theNot or Cool Institute validates these findings:

      https://hotorcool.org/hc-posts/release-governments-in-g20-countries-must-enable-1-5-aligned-lifestyles/

      https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/climate-carbon-footprint-luxury-lifestyle-study/

    1. 2021 has heralded the dawn of a new form of hyper-carbon-intensive luxury travel, space tourism, in which hundreds of tonnes of carbon can be burned in just a ten-minute flight for around four passengers.28

      These should be identified.

    2. Gösling and Humpe found that no more than 1% of the world population likely accounts for half of aviation emissions.30

      Wow! Will carbon neutral fuels be greenwashing or real solutions? Will carbon neutral SpaceX flights be greenwashing, or real carbon neutrality?

    3. Earlier studies also established the major contribution to carbon footprints of the rich and famous from flights, especially via private jets. Gösling’s study constructed aviation emissions estimates based on tracking the international travel of celebrities via their social media postings. Footprints – from aviation alone – were found to be in excess of a thousand tonnes per year.27

      It's not surprising that yachts and private jets, the symbols of elite luxury.are culprits. Large and multiple mansions must be accounted for somewhere as well.

    4. The fact that these countries are still not on track to reach the 1.5⁰C per capita level by 2030, and have still not delivered the minimal commitment to mobilize $100bn per year in international climate finance by 2020, is a double indictment of their moral and legal failure in view of the equity principle at the heart of the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement.

      The facts reflect the truth that developed economies are essentially unwilling to cede their way of life. The people of these economies want to cling to their high carbon way of life.

    5. The extreme difference between the expected carbon footprints of a small minority of the world’s population in 2030 and the global average level needed to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5⁰C goal alive is not tenable. Maintaining such high carbon footprints among the world’s richest people either requires far deeper emissions cuts by the rest of the world’s population, or it entails global heating in excess of 1.5⁰C above pre-industrial levels. There is no other alternative.

      Humanity and the entire biosphere should not be made to suffer for the whims of 1% of the population. National commitments are very difficult to negotiate. We must really begin to target High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI), for they may hold the fate of humanity in their hands.

    6. Chancel’s recent paper adds new insights by allocating national consumption emissions associated with capital investments to individuals within each country based on their share of asset ownership, derived from the latest wealth inequality datasets. He finds that emissions from investments make up an increasing share – up to 70% in 2019 – of the footprints of the world’s 1% highest emitters.32

      Hence, High Net Worth Individual Divestment (HNWID) is definitely an important future strategy.

    7. Between 2015 and 2030, the richest 1% are set to reduce their per capita consumption emissions by just 5%, compared with the 97% cuts needed to align with the global per capita level compatible with the 1.5⁰C goal

      This sentence seems contradictory to what Figure 3 shows, an increase of 1% of emissions for the top 1%. Either way, while we need a 97% reduction, their emissions are set to go up!

      It should be noted that Figure 3 shows that the top 10% are slightly decreasing their emissions from 34% in 2015 to 32% in 2030. THIS is a drop of approximately 5%. Perhaps this is what they are referring to.

    8. 4 In absolute terms, we find that despite the small total emissions cuts globally from 2015 to 2030, the total emissions associated with the richest 1% are set to continue to increase (see Figure 2). Notably, we also estimate that the total emissions associated with 90% of the global population combined will only just exceed the total global 1.5⁰C-compatible emissions level in 2030, while the total emissions associated with the consumption of just the richest 10% of the world population alone will nearly amount to that level. Figure 2: Total consumption emissions 1990–2030 of global income groups and the 2030 1.5⁰C-compatible total global emissions level Source: IEEP and SEI analysis This growth in the absolute emissions linked to the richest 1% also translates into a continued growth in their share of total global emissions, which we estimate will continue to grow from 13% in 1990 to 15% in 2015 and is set to reach over 16% by 2030 (see Figure 3).17 This continued increase is a reflection of the fact that in countries that are home to most of the world’s richest 1%, the carbon intensity of the economy is not set to improve sufficiently to offset the expected increase in income and consumption of those countries’ richest citizens.

      This figure reveals that between now and 2030, the top 11% (top 1% added to the next tier down, the top 10%) are responsible for roughly 50% of all carbon emissions. Hence, strategies for decarbonizing the top 11% are very strategic.

      Note that the carbon emissions of the 1% are actually INCREASING while everyone else is suppose to be decreasing by 97%!

    9. Wilk and Barros drew on 82 databases of public records to document billionaires’ houses, vehicles, aircraft and yachts. Applying carbon coefficients, they found billionaire carbon footprints easily run to thousands of tonnes per year, with superyachts the biggest contributor, each adding around 7,000 tonnes per year, for example.26

      This is a good study on the consumption and carbon footprint of the elites.

    10. Figure 6: Changing geographic source of emissions of world’s richest 1% 2015–2030

      China and India will have the largest growth of elites between 2015 and 2030. Therefore, strategic, culturally appropriate interventions need to be applied to this elite demographic.

  28. Oct 2021
    1. Many players already struggle with bandwidth and network congestion for online games that require only positional and input data. The Metaverse will only intensify these needs. The good news is that broadband penetration and bandwidth is consistently improving worldwide. Compute, which will be discussed more in Section #3, is also improving and can help substitute for constrained data transmission by predicting what should occur until the point in which the ‘real’ data can be substituted in.

      Data/bandwidth/access inequality will be among the next big concerns/issues: areas offering high speed reliability will enable residents of those markets opportunity to transact & experience things off limits to "underserved" data markets (solvable via satellite internet?) in ways that pose a severe disadvantage to the latter

      Control over the distribution & availability of this technology will be extremely vital (and will hopefully be egalitarian, but... it means $$$ and vested interests will seek to establish gatekeeper roles).

      Per the chart below, it appears some markets will remain substantially ahead of others (who knows how the tech will ultimately be deployed), but the rollout of web 3metaverse technology will likely NOT be an egalitarian digital immersion accessible by all people, not even close.

  29. bafybeiery76ov25qa7hpadaiziuwhebaefhpxzzx6t6rchn7b37krzgroi.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeiery76ov25qa7hpadaiziuwhebaefhpxzzx6t6rchn7b37krzgroi.ipfs.dweb.link
    1. Recent research suggests that globally, the wealthiest 10% have been responsible foras much as half of the cumulative emissions since 1990 and the richest 1% for more than twicethe emissions of the poorest 50% (2).

      this suggests that perhaps the failure of the COP meetings may be partially due to focusing at the wrong level and demographics. the top 1 and 10 % live in every country. A focus on the wealthy class is not a focus area of COP negotiations perse. Interventions targeting this demographic may be better suited at the scale of individuals or civil society.

      Many studies show there are no extra gains in happiness beyond a certain point of material wealth, and point to the harmful impacts of wealth accumulation, known as affluenza, and show many health effects: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/, https://theswaddle.com/how-money-affects-rich-people/, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-dark-reasons-so-many-rich-people-are-miserable-human-beings-2018-02-22, https://www.nbcnews.com/better/pop-culture/why-wealthy-people-may-be-less-successful-love-ncna837306, https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-psychology/affluence,

      A Human Inner Transformation approach based on an open source praxis called Deep Humanity is one example of helping to transform affluenza and leveraging it accelerate transition.

    1. "The story of the American college is largely the story of the rise of the slave economy in the Atlantic world," says Craig Steven Wilder, a historian at MIT and author of "Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities."

      In this way, the past seeps into the present. This is a literal example of the legacy of structural inequality.

  30. Sep 2021
    1. Steven Brust's (quoted in my novel Walkaway): "Ask what's more important, human rights or property rights. If they say 'property rights ARE human rights' they're on the right." https://craphound.com/category/walkaway/
    2. Technology changes the nature of both of these collapses. Take guard labor: mass surveillance and technological controls make it cheaper than at any time in history to isolate and neutralize political threats to elite rule. How much cheaper? Well, in 1989, the Stasi employed one in sixty East Germans to spy on the whole nation. Today, the NSA spies on the whole world, at a spy:subject ratio that's more like 1:10,000 – two orders of magnitude more efficient than the spies of a generation ago. That's a huge productivity gain, and it's all thanks to digital technology.

      Cory Doctorow estimates that mass surveillance technology has enabled an efficiency of two orders of magnitude between the East German Stasi (1:60) and the American NSA (1:10,000) which provides a huge productivity gain for guard labor to enable massive wealth inequality.

    3. Impose sufficient austerity and brutality on a society and the cost of defending it exceeds the wealth its productive sector manages to produce, and boom – French Revolution, the World Wars, etc.

      Must the cost of defense exceed the productive sector or simply come near enough it by a percentage?

    4. He reiterates his thesis that inequality self-corrects, thanks to the instability it engenders. Left on their own, market economies collapse, torn apart by the bill for guards to defend lenders' fortunes, the bill for interest payments that enrich lenders.

      Thomas Piketty indicates that inequality self-corrects when market economies collapse, an inevitable function of the inability to guard against lenders' fortunes when the inequality becomes too great.

    5. This fundamental truth (expressed in economic notation as r > g, or "return on capital is greater than economic growth") means that "meritocracy" is a lie: the richest people in a market economy aren't the people who do the best work, it's the people who started off rich.

      Thomas Piketty's r > g shows that meritocracy is a lie in that the richest people aren't the ones that do the best or most productive work, but simply those who start of rich.

    6. Piketty concludes that no matter how fast an economy is growing – no matter how productive its makers are – that wealth grows faster, making the takers who financed growth even richer than the people whose work is propelling the economy.
    1. 45.8 percent of global household wealth is in the hands of just 1.1 percent of the world's population. Those 56 million individuals control a mind-boggling $191.6 trillion, as can be seen on the following pyramid.Below that, 583 million people own $163.9 trillion, 39.1 percent of global wealth, despite accounting for just 11.1 percent of the adult population. The base of the pyramid is the most poignant and it shows how 2.9 billion people (55 percent of the world's population) share a combined wealth of $5.5 trillion which is just 1.3 percent of total wealth.

      combine this with Oxfam's 2020 report on carbon emissions and we have the real driver's of carbon emissions, the wealthy. COP26 addresses nation states, not individuals. We need to focus on individuals as well.

    1. while the super-rich may move through through world cities, their cosmopolitan practices and lifestyles rarely break out of the exclusive transnational spaces which stand at the intersecting points of particular corporate, capital, technological, information and cultural lines of flow.

      The elites move in a world of their own. Embedded within the deteriorating spaces all around them, their privileged and exclusive spaces are like self-constructed lotus blossoms floating on a sea of muck, which their lifestyles have disproportionately helped create in the first place. The geographic juxtapostion of these two spaces is stark, as illustrated in images such as those of Cape Town’s elite neighborhoods nextdoor to crowded townships. Wealth and privilege live side by side poverty.

    2. Developing this argument, Bauman (2000) talks of the super-rich as the 'new cosmopolitans', suggesting that the fundamental consumption cleavage in contemporary society is between these 'fast subjects' who dwell in transnational space and those 'slow subjects' whose lives remain localised and parochial. The fast world is one consisting of airports, top level business districts, top of the line hotels and restaurants, chic boutiques, art galleries and exclusive gyms - in brief, a sort of glamour zone that is fundamentally disconnected from the life worlds of the vast majority of the world's population. Bauman thus equates power with mobility, echoing Massey's notion of unequal 'power-geometries'

      Formal, sharply defined terminology to describe this class for academic writing.

    1. Elon Musk has built not one but two world-changing companies (Tesla and SpaceX.) He clearly deserves to be wealthy. As does Jeff Bezos, who quickly regained his title as the world’s wealthiest person. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and many other billionaires changed our world and have been paid handsomely for it.

      Surprising for an egalitarian economic text to admit that, on conditions, the rich are entitled to their wealth.