But also corporations are also run by people with wants and not all of those decisions are being made with consideration of what the masses want anymore but what the people at the top want. More money, more of the profit share, more cheap labor.
What the people at the top want is money, and the way to get it is by giving the masses what they want.
I agree it results in weird incentives. But blaming corporations exclusively (which is a popular opinion these days) is beyond stupid. We need to acknowledge that we are the root of the problem. The solution to corporate abuses is just for us to make laws to reign them in. In the end, they’re just an abstraction.
I’m very suspicious about the motives of people who act like corporations are the only problem. Either they’re incredibly naive, or they’re just looking for an easy way to ease their own conscience.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t pickle everything I need for the winter. That’s a shitload of work. I go to the grocery store and buy food like everybody else, and just try to make reasonable choices while I’m there.
I just don’t fume the whole time about how Safeway is destroying the planet, and suggesting that everything would be great if only they were gone. I deeply appreciate the fact that we’ve built such an incredibly efficient system of food distribution, and that I can get all the calories I need and more in the form of fresh fruit & veggies even in the middle of the winter, even if I also acknowledge that we really need to tweak it to reduce the damage it’s causing.
Point is, corporations aren’t generating 99% of global emissions. We are producing 99% of global emissions, by choosing to buy mangos and pineapples from Whole Foods in January instead of pickling carrots and asparagus in September. You can’t get rid of the corporations and then live off of tropical fruits without generating any CO₂.
Also, for the record, my grandparents supported a family of 10, and they lived through the winter largely on pickled and canned foods. In the fall, all the wives would get together and pack vegetables into jars every weekend. That was already a huge improvement, because a lot of what they pickled came from the grocery store: their grandparents could only pickle what they could grow. There was a whole room in the basement full of pickles & canned food. It was totally doable then, and it’s only gotten easier in the intervening decades.