A minority cannot socially pressure a majority, it will just backfire

I think there is a selection bias here. If it succeedes the minority becomes a majority.

I think a good example are religious movements (obviously i dont want to equate religion with morality, but often they come with certain moral views attached). They start as a minority, and either they die or they take over. Christianity was a minority at one point.

a tiny minority can't but somewhere between 10% or a quarter is enough to pressure the rest to support them. for example to force the majority of restaurants to make sure their food is halal, because otherwise muslims would not eat there. or to port your software to run on macs, etc...

it depends of course on the cost of compliance. halal food is fine, because everyone can eat it. a minority of vegans could not force restaurants to stop serving meat because that would in turn exclude the majority of meat eaters.

While i agree with your general point, i'm not sure i agree with your example. i don't think a minority of muslims (or jews) are going to convince all resturants to stop serving pork, because bacon is too popular.

in some places i have traveled to that were predominately christian but had a minority muslim population, pork was very rare, and most shops and restaurants indicated that they were halal. now pork could have been rare for other reasons, but places advertising halal food clearly can only come from the muslim minority. although, maybe it was just muslims running all the restaurants. no idea. i don't know what it takes to be allowed to advertise halal food. i know kosher food requires an inspection by someone authorized. and it also takes considerable effort.

this example just came to mind from my observations. i didn't check any statistics other than the religions in the region. also i just realize, i don't remember seeing this in singapore, which also has a 15% muslim population. so yeah, it looks like you are right, and it is a bad example after all.

The history of social pressure would disagree with you.

You are incredibly proving OPs point

Local governments can do the trade off on tax revenue vs inconvenience

Yes, any major manufacturing ends up as a big number. It is still usually worth doing!

It's worth doing when the -true cost of resources- is represented in their price.

If it's not, then more of the thing ends up being done than is socially optimal.

E.g. artificially cheap agricultural water -> lots of water-heavy crops being produced like alfalfa and exported for less than the cost of the water.

I think we might disagree about the degree to this is true, but I think most of us can agree that the true cost of energy is not completely included in its price.

For sure, and for me that means AI tech is a great moral good like all human productivity improving technology.

I mean if you had the same reaction when personal computers were made, you would also be an outcast. They also put whole industries out of business and caused huge pollution and etc. There is no real difference. But you have a right to withdraw from the world and be a luddite.

It is the exact same capital that paid all of our salaries for the last 20 years

That is almost a meaningless sentence. Cats and traffic lights both manipulate human behavior.

You know exactly what the intent of the lawmakers was.

No, I definitely dont. And neither do they, its hundreds of law makers. Meaning is usually sussed out through case law.

Training is resource intensive. Serving gpt4o is not