The decidability factor is exploited by the side with skin in the game. Those that would be bankrupted by expensive restrictions on behavior, or restrictions designed to prevent such business entirely, know that they can point to unpreventable externalities like caldera volcanos and extinction event asteroids as a means to arm consumers with a toolkit to rationalize hedonism.
As if to say, live well now, because what if any of these other catastrophies strike, and obviate your life savings and insurance policies. You could have spent that money on good times today, but living with your means, and planning for a future that possibly doesn’t exist will leave you kicking yourself during the rapture.
The other side also has existential skin in the game, in the sense that a destroyed inhospitable biosphere is the figurative eating of our only free lunch, and understands the optics of the decision, but hasn’t come up with selfish motives to prey upon the undisciplined weakness of the unwashed masses. Mostly because such principles of psychological exploitation for personal gain (the joy of living in a world where the ice caps don’t melt and unleash category six hurricanes on a monthly basis in every quadrant of the world) are unrelatable to their own motivations to good conduct.
This asymmetry of operations means an unfair fight, and thus a waiting game, each biding everyone’s time until it’s too late, but undeniable.
Until then, the level of money poured into this system is only equalized by the perception of threat on the part of the hedonists. The more they feel threatened, the more they spend to fight the shadow of the obvious truth that will ultimate rob them of all inaction anyway. They aren’t even fighting their do-gooder counterpart. They’re fighting their own capacity to continue typical behavior, with diminishing returns. Shooting themselves in the foot, to maintain a gun collection of foot guns.
As if to say, live well now, because what if any of these other catastrophies strike, and obviate your life savings and insurance policies. You could have spent that money on good times today, but living with your means, and planning for a future that possibly doesn’t exist will leave you kicking yourself during the rapture.
The other side also has existential skin in the game, in the sense that a destroyed inhospitable biosphere is the figurative eating of our only free lunch, and understands the optics of the decision, but hasn’t come up with selfish motives to prey upon the undisciplined weakness of the unwashed masses. Mostly because such principles of psychological exploitation for personal gain (the joy of living in a world where the ice caps don’t melt and unleash category six hurricanes on a monthly basis in every quadrant of the world) are unrelatable to their own motivations to good conduct.
This asymmetry of operations means an unfair fight, and thus a waiting game, each biding everyone’s time until it’s too late, but undeniable.
Until then, the level of money poured into this system is only equalized by the perception of threat on the part of the hedonists. The more they feel threatened, the more they spend to fight the shadow of the obvious truth that will ultimate rob them of all inaction anyway. They aren’t even fighting their do-gooder counterpart. They’re fighting their own capacity to continue typical behavior, with diminishing returns. Shooting themselves in the foot, to maintain a gun collection of foot guns.