3 ms·

When I say brutal, I'm not specifically talking about people working 50+ hours a week, I'm talking about the mindset that says that the singular number of how m

by badsock 10y ago

When I say brutal, I'm not specifically talking about people working 50+ hours a week, I'm talking about the mindset that says that the singular number of how many bucks you can pull in should determine whether or not you're going to have a seriously downtrodden life, as if that were the only measure of your value to the world, or as a human being.

ci5er 10y ago
How should you measure your value to the world if not by what you produce? By being very very good looking and your mother thinks you're smart? By being a nice person? Being nice should be table stakes, but ultimately, on average, people need to produce more than they consume or the world as we know it fails. It wasn't too long ago, that 50+ hours/week was a luxury - and it wasn't earned by typing at a desk.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >By being very very good looking Models are paid to be very, very good-looking. "What you produce" is a value decision in the first place, one that society makes together by how we allocate resources.
  - learc83 10y ago
    Yes. We basically pay people based on 1 metric. Not what they produce, but how good they are at convincing other people to give them money. Whether it's by building a product, being very good-looking, or asking for a handout. (Sure you can say that we pay people based on what they produce if you argue that a homeless man is producing good feelings when you donate to him, but I think that's a bit silly). Obviously this is always going to be the case to some extent in a free society, but we should definitely do more to help those who don't happen to be good at convincing other people to part with their cash.
- badsock 10y ago
  Many contributions that people make to a functioning society can't, and never will be, quantified. One way around this is to assign a base value to a person because they are a member of the human race and a citizen of your country, and then let them demonstrate additional value through the usual capitalist means. It's imperfect, certainly, but it works well enough in many developed countries, and it's more accurate than the model that says what can't be measured has no value.
adventured 10y ago
And how does that brutality compare to the 96% (or more) of the rest of the world that falls below the US median standard of living? You're trying to pretend those systems aren't extraordinarily brutal to their people? It's absurd. I see no evidence to support your premise that the US is brutal toward its people, given the high wages the US pays, the high standard of living the US offers at the median, and the extraordinarily high disposable income levels the US offers at the median ($44,000 household disposable income vs eg $28,000 in Finland). Where's the brutality? The sole thing I can see that is actually bad is in healthcare. Let's compare the US median to the medians in: Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Czech, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, New Zealand, China, South Korea, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia. The only thing you're going to find where the US lags significantly, is in regards to healthcare costs. In nearly every other economic respect, the US exceeds those nations and the radical majority of the planet.
- learc83 10y ago
  Why would you compare the US to developing countries. If you want to compare us to other countries, compare us to developed countries. Yes our median and mean incomes, disable incomes, household wealth etc... are high. But those values aren't very evenly distributed at all. Just look at average household wealth by race. You'll find an enormous discrepancy. (I was actually shocked when I looked at this. I knew it was bad, but not that bad) We have a huge number of people doing incredibly well, and a huge number of people barely getting by. The social programs other developed countries offer go a long way towards easing the burdens of that 2nd group. You can point to Finland and say that yes they have $16k less in disposable income, but they have universal health care (which you already pointed out), they have paid family leave, they have worker protections, better unemployment etc...

by badsock 10y ago

ci5er 10y ago

How should you measure your value to the world if not by what you produce? By being very very good looking and your mother thinks you're smart? By being a nice person? Being nice should be table stakes, but ultimately, on average, people need to produce more than they consume or the world as we know it fails. It wasn't too long ago, that 50+ hours/week was a luxury - and it wasn't earned by typing at a desk.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>By being very very good looking Models are paid to be very, very good-looking. "What you produce" is a value decision in the first place, one that society makes together by how we allocate resources.
- learc83 10y ago
  Yes. We basically pay people based on 1 metric. Not what they produce, but how good they are at convincing other people to give them money. Whether it's by building a product, being very good-looking, or asking for a handout. (Sure you can say that we pay people based on what they produce if you argue that a homeless man is producing good feelings when you donate to him, but I think that's a bit silly). Obviously this is always going to be the case to some extent in a free society, but we should definitely do more to help those who don't happen to be good at convincing other people to part with their cash.
badsock 10y ago
Many contributions that people make to a functioning society can't, and never will be, quantified. One way around this is to assign a base value to a person because they are a member of the human race and a citizen of your country, and then let them demonstrate additional value through the usual capitalist means. It's imperfect, certainly, but it works well enough in many developed countries, and it's more accurate than the model that says what can't be measured has no value.

adventured 10y ago

And how does that brutality compare to the 96% (or more) of the rest of the world that falls below the US median standard of living? You're trying to pretend those systems aren't extraordinarily brutal to their people? It's absurd. I see no evidence to support your premise that the US is brutal toward its people, given the high wages the US pays, the high standard of living the US offers at the median, and the extraordinarily high disposable income levels the US offers at the median ($44,000 household disposable income vs eg $28,000 in Finland). Where's the brutality? The sole thing I can see that is actually bad is in healthcare. Let's compare the US median to the medians in: Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Czech, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, New Zealand, China, South Korea, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia. The only thing you're going to find where the US lags significantly, is in regards to healthcare costs. In nearly every other economic respect, the US exceeds those nations and the radical majority of the planet.

learc83 10y ago
Why would you compare the US to developing countries. If you want to compare us to other countries, compare us to developed countries. Yes our median and mean incomes, disable incomes, household wealth etc... are high. But those values aren't very evenly distributed at all. Just look at average household wealth by race. You'll find an enormous discrepancy. (I was actually shocked when I looked at this. I knew it was bad, but not that bad) We have a huge number of people doing incredibly well, and a huge number of people barely getting by. The social programs other developed countries offer go a long way towards easing the burdens of that 2nd group. You can point to Finland and say that yes they have $16k less in disposable income, but they have universal health care (which you already pointed out), they have paid family leave, they have worker protections, better unemployment etc...