If I were dictator

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Sean Hayden
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If I were dictator

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Aug 29, 2019 1:56 pm

I'd start with "think tanks" and especially industry PR groups with the words "public" and "policy" in their names. Their heads would roll first.

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Re: If I were dictator

Post by laklak » Thu Aug 29, 2019 2:56 pm

I'd ban words like 'totes' and 'woke'. STFU and eat your Soylent, prole.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Sean Hayden
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Re: If I were dictator

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Aug 29, 2019 3:02 pm

:lol:

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Re: If I were dictator

Post by Rum » Thu Aug 29, 2019 6:00 pm

Every day would be the first day of Spring. :swoon:

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Re: If I were dictator

Post by Animavore » Thu Aug 29, 2019 6:04 pm

That's a 'tato, shaped like a dick, right?
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Re: If I were dictator

Post by Joe » Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:26 pm

I'd abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons. :tut:
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Re: If I were dictator

Post by JimC » Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:59 pm

...I would assassinate you... :tea:
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Re: If I were dictator

Post by laklak » Thu Aug 29, 2019 9:09 pm

I'd assimilate all y'all. Resistance is.....futile.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: If I were dictator

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Aug 29, 2019 10:03 pm



...to replace all sports.

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Re: If I were dictator

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Aug 29, 2019 10:33 pm

I'd get a dog. Probably a lurcher.
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Re: If I were dictator

Post by pErvinalia » Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:10 pm

I'd send all conservatives to reeducation camps.
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Re: If I were dictator

Post by Tero » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:37 am

Every day would be a national emergency. The failing new York times would fail. And Fox News would be the official channel...wait, that was already done.

We would take up fishing. We would ban lawn chemicals. They drain into the lakes here so you can't eat the fish.
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Re: If I were dictator

Post by rainbow » Fri Aug 30, 2019 6:28 am

Animavore wrote:
Thu Aug 29, 2019 6:04 pm
That's a 'tato, shaped like a dick, right?
Image
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Re: If I were dictator

Post by laklak » Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:17 pm

I'd ban lawns. Plant Victory Gardens instead. Keeping a few chickens would be mandatory. All septic tanks would converted to lobster farms. They're bottom feeding shit eaters anyway. Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: If I were dictator

Post by PsychoSerenity » Fri Aug 30, 2019 4:16 pm

I would establish a new bureaucracy to create standardised lifecycle environmental impact assessments for almost all goods and services. There would probably be an exemption or a simpler standard of regulations for small businesses.

One of the most fundamental problems with any consumer-driven or market based economic system is asymmetric information. Even if we were to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a market of non-profits and community cooperatives or a big-data demand-driven AI-managed command economy, we would still have this problem. The end user has a very limited capacity to get information about the environmental impact about their consumer choices, and the government doesn't have the data to implement effective environmental regulations.

At each step along a supply chain a calculation would need to be performed to assess the impacts of the products or services per unit. This would involve several components.

First, taking the environmental impact of all inputs to the business and measuring their relevant percentages in each product. To simplify things, sufficiently similar products could be grouped together and inputs which are of sufficiently small percentages could be set at standard average rates. Initially this would all be based on tables of environmental impacts of standard or common products calculated by scientists and civil servants, but it would become more sophisticated and become per-input product as the system was developed.

A second part would be the end of life impact. This information would be passed back along the supply chain and would look at typical end of life use, conducted by standardised surveys and compared with data from recycling centres, to see how much of the product is recycled and into which point in the chain, and the average impacts of disposal.

A third part of the calculation would be the types of impact involved. Things like amount of CO2 released and biodiversity loss would be given different weightings based on high level assessments of what is currently the most urgent problem and would be updated annually.

There would be software to help with the calculations and likely companies would be set up to do a lot of this work on behalf of other businesses, but there would also be rigorous auditing to ensure that assessments were being carried out in a fair and consistent manner. Any business found deliberately miscalculating would face heavy penalties and owners or higher management could face criminal charges. A full recalculation of all products would be required annually, and whenever there was a major supplier change, and with monthly checks to see if inputs or processes had change beyond certain thresholds.

When it comes to supply chain inputs from overseas there would be simpler but higher (due to estimated transport costs, and potentially any penalties against countries seen as not doing their bit for the environment) standardised rates when importing from any country that can't provide equivalent standards of environmental impact assessment.

Once the calculations are made, each product would have a standardised score, for example from 0.0 being no environmental impact to 10.0 being burning bees with coal dug up from the Amazon. For businesses along the supply chain it would be standard practice to exchange the necessary information along with any sale, including the business's own calculations for the product sold for business-to-business verification of calculations which, outside of certain thresholds would carry mandatory reporting requirements for anything that seems amiss, and so equivalent inputs can be grouped for the subsequent calculation. For end user consumers the final score would have to be clearly displayed on or with the product or service, perhaps with a colour gradient from green to red.

People could then be given information about per-capita sustainable consumption, so for example to live sustainably the average person needs to use goods or services with environmental impact scores that add up to less than x per day or per week, and they could easily check for themselves if they were achieving that, and make informed decisions about what they may choose to cut back or spend more on.

It would then be a requirement that all businesses make efforts to reduce their total environmental impact output per equivalent unit by a certain percentage each year. They can do this in many ways from encouraging better end of life management/recycling of their products, choosing less environmentally damaging suppliers, or making their own environmental efficiency savings.

There would also be point of sale taxes applied on a sliding scale according to the environmental impact of the product or service. This would prevent businesses being able to profit by cutting corners in ways which are environmentally damaging, thereby creating a level playing field for a sustainable world. It would also further encourage consumers to choose lower impact goods.

These taxes could then help fund research and development and capital investment. Along with auditors checking the calculations, the government would provide experts with available funds to share best practice to assist businesses in reduction of their environmental impacts.

Obviously, I haven't got all the details worked out yet, but hey, that's what civil servants are for. However, I do honestly believe that if we don't take action, at least somewhere along these lines if not substantially more radical, we won't be able to keep this planet habitable for the vast majority of people.
[Disclaimer - if this is comes across like I think I know what I'm talking about, I want to make it clear that I don't. I'm just trying to get my thoughts down]

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