The point is to increase the cost of the plastics to the point that alternatives start to actually be competitive. And really, we're just making them actually pay for some of the externalities they're getting a free ride on.
If you use government to increase the cost of a thing to the point alternatives become cheaper, most businesses are going to switch. They aren't sticking with plastics out of ideology or anything... it's just cheap. And it shouldn't be.
Second part first, agree totally. I don't mean to suggest Trump truly represents some sea change against neoloberalism... but his rhetoric was very much a rejection of a lot of it. He's absolutely a liar in terms of actually representing change from the status quo... he's a pure kleptocrat, plain and simple. But the point is that facade is what resonated with people because even those without the knowledge base or words to form why they're over neoliberalism, are very much over neoliberalism. Regular people, not, not just political nerds.
First part, hard disagree because it informs strategy on how to move past it. If you believe both sides are colluding to keep the masses down and there's no real electoral path to improvement... well, we're at the stage of violent revolution and there's no point faffing about further. Neither of us are out there with rifles yet, so I'd argue neither of us really, truly thinks that's the case yet. Because that actually does happen in places like Gaza, and for good reason - they literally have no other recourse. We've got the table tilted against us, but ultimately we can and do upset the institutional power still. Trump, while he didn't represent real change, was absolutely totally rejected by institutional power in his initial run and managed to win by establishing a faux-populist cult of personality... that literally could not have worked if electoralism was truly totally dead.
100% not a psy-op or collusion. They really just both bought deeply into the shift to neoliberalism in the 80's, and it has so defined politics for the last 4 decades that few politicians have wrapped their heads around the fact that the continual rejection of both parties by the people is really a rejection of that neoloberalism that we're clearly in the death throes of. Trump succeeded not because every person who voted for him was a racist (I mean, that's definitely a big cadre among his supporters, but it isn't what got him in), he succeeded because people are so desperate to end the neoliberal norm that's crushing everyone that they'll vote for a guy that literally soft-pedals fascism over another neoliberal.
But I really do think the majority of them are true believers. They've been born and raised in that politically environment. It's all they know and they really can't imagine anything else, even if it's really only been a few generations ago that things looked very different.
There needs to just be a blanket, punitive, 100+% tax on any and all single use plastics that are not medical devices. Obviously there's lots of other bigger environmental issues that need to be tackled but this really seems like a pretty obvious one imo.
Fair point.