• DreamButt@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Government isn’t business. It should not be chasing a profit margin. The decisions should be around sustainability, ecological friendliness, and robustness against failure

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Unfortunately, government is a business. They are beholden to the same profits and losses that any other business is subjected to based on market conditions. The government has to answer to shareholders (citizens) and it’s creditors (BoC and other countries).

      • SmoothIsFast@citizensgaming.com
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        1 year ago

        Least we forget the US is like the only country who won’t recycle their nuclear waste. We have enough sitting to generate power for like 140 years. Waste isn’t useless it can still be reprocessed…

      • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If only there were organizations of people who were known for building really high quality technology without a profit motive… Like some kind of space program 🤔🤔

        • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          They had a profit motive, like space race, cold war and all that. You know, USA and USSR were really preparing for The Global Thermonuclear War back then.

          And, of course, all the people participating in that were being paid.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nah, due to Negative Externalities and things like Tragedy Of The Commons it’s quite common for companies to be making massive profits whilst destroying the very environment they need to thrive.

        I mean, look at Polution, look at Global Warming, look at Overfishing, look at the 2008 Crash - without an external entity (i.e. the State) to force them to change their ways or rescue them, most economic entities in the pursuit of profitability will act in ways that systemically will eventually destroy the very things they need to be profitable.

        Stuff like Negative Externalities is pretty basic Economics.

        That naive idea of your of how economics works probably came from stuff you heard from politicians, not from reading books…

        • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          While without a profit motive of any kind they won’t exist.

          I really don’t get how those things you mentioned existing negate what I said. These are orthogonal. Well, except for that weird logic that it’s about choosing between two teams, but nobody can be that stupid, right?