Mandating specific emission reductions for individual companies could also create problems, especially the creation of perverse incentives and disincentives. If the reductions are based on a baseline, businesses will prefer high baselines so that reductions are more doable and less costly. For instance, when in the market to buy new manufacturing facilities, a company might want to buy high-emitting operations to establish a high baseline, thus reducing subsequent compliance costs.
Hype: nefarious others are exaggerating...Nefarious: sarcasm...
...Ok, so maybe, per Reich, people are having to work multiple jobs to get their full-time hours. Luckily, the BLS has the numbers: fewer workers hold multiple jobs now than they did 20 years ago, although the total number employed is much greater. So much for that theory.
A lot of psychological interventions instill hope, provide a plausible narrative that makes sense of one’s misery and show a credible way out. The specific narrative and techniques matter less than whether the client buys into them.
Puffery: “Examples: legendary, great, acclaimed, visionary, outstanding, leading, celebrated, award-winning, landmark, cutting-edge, extraordinary, brilliant, hit, famous, renowned, remarkable, prestigious, world-class, respected, notable, virtuoso, honorable, awesome ..."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch
Franzen sees the all-consuming warrior spirit of climate change activists as potentially hurting other environmental causes by redirecting priorities and resources away from conservation projects to the cause of reducing green house gases. Climate change is one threat to biodiversity but there are others, such as habitat loss and fragmentation.
The private sector can’t do everything – we need government, regulations, and taxes. But why are government agencies so encumbered by bureaucratic inefficiency? Here are some possible reasons....
According to Kabat-Zinn, not living mindfully is to be in a world of “loss and grief and suffering” (FCL, Kindle p. 440). Mindfulness makes it possible for us to be “fully awake, not lost in waking sleep or enshrouded in the veils of [our] thinking mind” (ibid, p.2346) Living unmindfully, we are “half unconscious…reacting automatically, mindlessly” (ibid, p 9894).
Heuristics that are useful except when they aren’t: 1) It depends; 2) Context is everything; 3) The devil’s in the details...
...people generally react in a very basic way to the threat of dire consequences and horrific scenarios. They simply repress and doubt what they hear - a common strategy when faced with alarming prognostications....
...The authors speculate that the placebo effect may be an important factor in the decline in CBT's efficacy. They note that the “placebo effect is typically stronger for newer treatments; however, as time passes and experience with therapy is gained, the strong initial expectations wane. One may question whether this is the case with CBT....
The assertion that a religious experience is incommensurate with a “regular’ experience is common to believers of many persuasions. To be incommensurate is to be on a different level altogether. When two things are incommensurate, they don’t share a common measure and so cannot be compared. The rules that apply to one side are irrelevant to the other. The conviction of incommensurability protects beliefs from critical scrutiny to the extent that these beliefs are thought to stem from religious experience.
In the market place, value boils down to the point of overlap between what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are willing to accept. Value is not a property of the object but of the transaction.
Useful “savoring strategies” included focusing attention on the present moment, engaging in positive rumination, and telling others about positive experiences. The authors conclude: “Hence, our findings contribute to the increasing body of evidence emphasizing the importance of the flexibility of biological and psychological processes for well-being…. our research suggests that practicing as many savoring strategies as possible...
According to Clifford Geertz, religion creates “an aura of utter actuality. It is this sense of the ‘really real’ upon which the religious perspective rests” (Interpretation of Cultures, p. 112; my italics).
Both action and inaction have consequences. To the extent that these consequences matter to us, we have to decide what to do and what not to do – often under conditions of uncertainty and risk. None of this has to do with “free will”.
Bottom line: more police, less prison time. The DOJ piece says prison doesn’t have much deterrence effect – but if it had no deterrence effect, being caught would have no deterrence effect. How much prison or jail time is enough to make one think twice before committing to some criminal act
Once a country achieves a certain standard of living, inhabitants become less focused on doing whatever it takes to survive and start caring more about the world around them. Poorer countries tend to chop down forests, richer countries to plant them.
My beef with cognitive approaches to motivation, emotion, and behavior: cognitivists tend to consider what happens in the head as products of what goes on in the head, with the implicit opposition to what happens "objectively" "in the world". I see what happens in the head as tethered to the world that exists beyond the head.
Scarcity is about a perceived mismatch between what is available (supply) and what is desired (demand). You pay more attention to things associated with scarcity, whether it’s scarcity of guesses, friends, time, or income. Scarcity creates a mindset affecting what we notice, how we decide and how we act.