Re:Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
by candiodari on Thursday October 11, 2018 @06:21AM
(#18192248)
Nope stockholders need return on investment. Sorry. You can't skip that.
The problem if you kill this is that it breaks the asset allocation "algorithm" that is capitalism. If we don't have return on investment why wouldn't we spend all our money on, say, gold toilet seats ?
Or to put it a bit glib: Why do we need factories to "feed starving children" more than we need gold toilet seats ? Return on investment.
First, in order to determine what people will do, the relevant word is not "need" but "want".
#6 is that stockholders want growth of return on their investments (because, hey, extra money is good for them). And they'll want that growth to be as big as possible, no matter what the inflation is; so stopping inflation won't remove the pressure for growth.
On the other hand, if you want to force people to be satisfied with what they have and not strive for more, well, that's against a lot of our psychology, it's not going to happen - compared to that, getting all the governments to do what needs to be done (while still striving for as much growth is feasible given the restrictions) is easy.