Grifts feed what was called the politicians syllogism is Yes, Prime Minister:
We must do something
This is something
We must do this
Usually the utter mismatch between problem and supposed solution is obvious to experienced people. It is obvious how it will fail on day 1.
Conversation
But it is really hard to explain because the weakness is at the level of systems impedance mismatch. You can’t prove it can’t work. And sometimes a grift is timed right so it is active when broader forces actually cause movement on the problem, and the grifters can claim credit.
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Grifts often rely on narrative vacuums. When the real story is too complicated or boring or requires numbers and graphs to understand, people reach for the simpler story. Grifters supply it.
Plastic straw ban bullshit narrative? Pure 100% sustainability grifter theater.
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You don’t even have to be a sustainability expert. Five minutes googling reveals that plastic straws are not a real problem, that the whole campaign was based on some kid’s estimate, that fishing nets are the actually biggest source of plastic waste etc etc.
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Anybody who knowingly pushed and hyped that thing literally does not care about the environment, climate action or sustainability. They merely want to profit from the existence of climate action as a hard problem,em people are motivated to do something about. Grifters.
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The world is currently overflowing with hard problems, so it is overflowing with grift as well.
To be continued. Gotta shower, eat, and do a meeting.
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A good way to tell a grift apart from other similar things is to ask: if it is exposed as such, does it get undermined completely or can it still survive. Grifts can survive exposure by claiming to be about instilling values. Which is almost a good argument.
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For eg. consider this hypothetical exchange:
"The plastic straws thing is bullshit"
"I know, but still, it raises awareness of plastic waste as an issue"
"But the real problem of fishnet waste and microparticulates aren't addressed!"
"Straw campaign is still worth something."
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There are grey area grifts. For example, is recycling a grift?
Most stuff can't actually be "recycled" with net reduction in environmental impact (besides clean PET, aluminum).
Recycling is in crisis (China National Sword, plus Covid)
Still: maybe instilling behaviors is good?
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Replying to
Steel yeah, but that's rarely in the consumer recycling loop anyway. It's big things like cars and refrigerators that are handled differently from the main waste stream. Cardboard is interesting. I haven't yet made up my mind about it.
Replying to
Ah yes, I forgot about those since I rarely eat canned food. They're tin-plated steel I think. Was thinking of soda cans which are aluminum.

