I have always felt this way too. Our personal choices do not move the needle on fossil fuel and plastics. One could embrace aversion to these out of a sense of sustainability to signal virtue, but lets not pretend it will save the planet. It won't. Restricting aviation flights, stopping wars and minimizing the dirty fuel used in maritime freight does much more. But the world will not do it.
While I agree in general, my opinion is that customer choices do also matter and can move the needle, slowly, with larger cultural change.
Personally, trying to make better choices, big or small, isn't about "virtue signalling". It's about acknowledging the issues and living according to ones values.
The process you describe above is highly vulnerable as Ponzi scheme. The goal would be to raise total revenues, to paint a certain financial picture to meet targets for cashing out before the high debt load and interest payments sink the ship.
As soon as there is insufficient cashflow for several consecutive periods, the whole thing comes crashing down. This is a strategy for cashing out, rather than building a long term sustainable book of companies for steady, organic growth which has the cash to payout dividends and reward loyal investors.
> The process you describe above is highly vulnerable as Ponzi scheme. The goal would be to raise total revenues, to paint a certain financial picture to meet targets for cashing out before the high debt load and interest payments sink the ship.
You have just described almost every modern VC backed company….
I consider him the Graham Hancock (see Netflix's Ancient Apocalypse) of pop culture topics. Gladwell is trying to do for pop culture which Freakonomics did for economic topics which draw from seemingly disparate elements to provide a correlation and explanation.
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