Yes - this and the previous post touch on something which isn't explored much, which is the generation of conspiracy theories as practical politics. Real democracy relies on informed opinion, so the best way to undermine democracy is to lie.

Social media have made it incredibly easy to get a spectacular return for a very small propaganda budget.

In the same way there's financial and political asymmetry between the extremely privileged and everyone else, there's also informational asymmetry.

Most of the population lives in an incredibly polluted mental and emotional atmosphere. Conspiracy theories are being used - like smoking - to create toxic and self-harming addictive behaviours.

This is a very different space to informed and educated debate which decides policy on merits and rational evaluation of likely outcomes.

It's more like Pavlovian conditioning of entire voter populations. This leaves the shell of a democracy, but the interior is poisoned by lies.

Isn't this position itself just another conspiracy theory?

No, there is clear evidence and the proliferation of conspiracy theories to promote specific political goals has been studied and documented by sociologists.

Yes, it's true, but uncomfortable for people in power to talk about, so that fits my definition above.

Other true things like slavery being bad, the reasons for the civil war, rich people getting away with terrible crimes while poor people were killed for minor infractions, Nazis targeting trade unions, kings being dictators, royal families often being foreign parasites, human races not actually existing and so on fall into this weird realm as well.

How/where does everyone agree that dealing with climate change is cheap? Most likely it will be cheap for the rich and put many people into poverty (which is still the right thing to do in my opinion)

The basic economic theory is that externalities are inefficient. The market's invisible hand is not pointing in the right direction.

Why is this controversial for fossil fuels or lead in gasoline?

Why is the simple act of insulating your house or driving an efficient car considered part of a global communist plot?

How is it going to be cheap for the rich? They make their money off the externalities of climate change. All that "unearned" income is going to disappear meanwhile "earned" income through work won't.

You have all these insane people following the protestant work ethic, who want to work all day even if there is not enough for them to do. Yet simultaneously, they won't work on solving climate change because for some strange reason the "economics" (perceived or not) don't "work out". The interest rate that must be paid to investors i.e. 0% by far exceeds the interest rate that the market can actually deliver. Kind of amusing. It's like people purposefully put on a brain cage and then act completely helpless as if they didn't choose this to happen.

The fact that we even have to argue about this, while short term interest rates should be negative feels like a bad joke.

You must first work then play but if you keep working in your play time, then work itself becomes play, it won't remain work and no amount of distortion by decree will change that.