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You know, everyone blames the mega rich. I blame everyone else. If you're completely honest and you assume that shits going to hit the fan, would you care more

You know, everyone blames the mega rich. I blame everyone else. If you're completely honest and you assume that shits going to hit the fan, would you care more about the happiness of 1 billion random people you've never met or the happiness of 100 that you know? On paper you'll say 1 billion, but in reality if someone shoots your mother you cry, if someone shoots someone in Syria you most likely won't ever notice. But here's a list of things partly responsible: 1. The mere idea that justice is something that will be served at some point is ludicrous. There's no universal concept of morality to begin with. The more money you have, the less like you are to be indicted or pay penalties for virtually anything. Why would you give that might away? 2. That disgusting cult of happiness that is more prevalent in San Francisco than anywhere else in the world is the very foundation of forcing people to be happy with what they have. Institutions like Landmark Forum that are actually requirements for certain management positions make sure that people don't actually critique or change things that are messed up. 3. Everyone knows that we're eating up our resources and dump the rest into the seas all the while doing so. The result is that a lot of things available today will be luxury super rich items in the not too distant future. Tuna and Cocoa amongst them(just wait and see). If I had money I'd invest in huge warehouses to make money with those things in 20-30 years. That's exactly what superwealthy do. There have been more than one buyouts in bankrupt countries in the last couple of years. Buying resources while everyone is hoping for the utopia where we can create something from nothing. 4. The only way this stuff could possibly change we pull the handbreak right now. But it's absurd to think that that's a possibility. Nobody even so much dares to talk about the consequences of a full stop change. If you do, you're the pessimist. People don't want a change of course, they want the illusion of change so that can stay happy until they crash in the cement wall at 200mp/h. At the very least I have enough Schadenfreude in me to always enjoy these arguably predictable changes like the refugee "crisis" in europe

hga 10y ago
Everyone knows that we're eating up our resources and dump the rest into the seas all the while doing so. The result is that a lot of things available today will be luxury super rich items in the not too distant future. Not sure how old you are, i.e. did you live through the '70s "Limits to Growth" Zeitgeist era? If not try, say, watching the 1973 movie Soylent Green, where the two protagonists just marvel at a jar of strawberry preserves they found in the dwelling of a rich person, and then go to your favorite grocery store's jams and jellies section.... Maybe someday we'll see that future you envision, but having already lived through at least one cycle of this, not to mention the ongoing global cooling -> global warming -> climate change one, I don't worry quite so much (and by now have a lot more than just these surface level observations to base that on). ADDED: And this was a major theme of Heinlein in his '50s juveniles, most directly his 4th, published in 1950, Farmer in the Sky, but also see his last really good book, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in 1966, where it was plot significant that the moon colony (or was it colonies?) grew wheat and shot it back to the Earth using a mass driver.
- chronic6l 10y ago
  I'm probably one of the people you hate. Global warming is real and is accelerated by humans. I still don't give a damn. I will throw all my waste in the trash and drive gasoline vehicles. I'll let someone else fix it.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I'll care about the Earth when I can feel like I can actually own a piece of it. I have no skin in the game, really, other than some vague dread of total environmental collapse. Ted Turner, now, he has a great reason to be an environmentalist. Let the burden of environmental protection fall primarily on those who claim the most ownership of it. If Ted wants me to separate my recyclables and watch TBS on a TV constructed from recycled material and powered solely by renewables, he can damn well pay me something to do all that. You don't ask the team that loses by 50 points every game to start playing with their shoelaces tied together. And you don't ask the poor to sacrifice for the benefit of the rich. Developing nations are going to burn coal, and non-rich people are going to eat from disposable paper plates and then not recycle them. Environmentalism is a luxury, and only those who already have a sense of economic security will buy in to it. But as long as I have an "at will" job and no more attachment to the land than a one-year lease, I'm not going to feel all that motivated.
    - Nydhal 10y ago
      Well some might consider their children as "skin in the game" but still. As far as I am concerned having children is also a luxury. At least it should be considered so, from my moral perspective.
      - logfromblammo 10y ago
        Kids are not inextricably attached to any particular part of this planet. And many parents have no piece of it to give to them after they die, anyway. If I have kids, they would be in roughly the same situation I am in. The situation is roughly analogous to the entire world being a city block filled with apartment buildings. A few people own all the buildings. Most people rent apartments from them. The buildings are not extraordinary. They need maintenance and repair, or they will deteriorate. But for whatever reason, the building owners are not responding to maintenance requests in a timely fashion. (But woe to you if your rent check is even half a day late!) Some tenants, alarmed by the state of their surroundings, spend their own time and money, over and above their monthly rent, to do repairs. But none of the tenants can address all the problems on their own. At most, they can patch up a cracked window, re-wrap the ductwork with better insulation, tighten plumbing connections. No one has the resources to both pay the rent and also pay extra for all the repairs they might want. Some tenants do nothing, because it is the landlords' responsibility to maintain the properties. Also, they don't have enough money to spend on it, anyway. If the landlords want to be slumlords, then surely it would be possible to move to a better-kept building when things get too bad. Except--whoops!--the landlords that do invest more in maintenance are not accepting new tenants. The properties for sale are too expensive for any slum-renter to buy. In analogy form, the solution seems obvious, does it not?
js8 10y ago
"There's no universal concept of morality to begin with." There is universal morality, the one embedded in genes of most people. We are social creatures, and we understand concepts like tit-for-tat.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  For a contrary opinion, I turn to the character of Lord Vetinari, written by Terry Pratchett: > [...] "I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. > One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."
  - kefka 10y ago
    If there is evil in this world, it lies in the heart of mankind. -Edward Morrison
  - js8 10y ago
    The fact that we have morality (on average) doesn't imply it's always pretty. Nor does it imply that it scales well to modern society with billions of people.
- zeroer 10y ago
  > universal ... most wut
1337biz 10y ago
>Institutions like Landmark Forum that are actually requirements for certain management positions Can you elaborate on that? I always thought of them as some occultish clowns.
- staticautomatic 10y ago
  Landmark forum is scary. I know a few people who are members. Most are deeply in need of mental health treatment.
aianus 10y ago
There's nothing stopping you from buying cocoa futures and rolling them over indefinitely for the next twenty years. In fact, in an efficient market the cost of doing so is equal to the cost of maintaining your own warehouse.
throwaway1892 10y ago
Why "crisis"? The situation is not bad enough to warrant the term crisis, in your opinion?

hga 10y ago

Everyone knows that we're eating up our resources and dump the rest into the seas all the while doing so. The result is that a lot of things available today will be luxury super rich items in the not too distant future. Not sure how old you are, i.e. did you live through the '70s "Limits to Growth" Zeitgeist era? If not try, say, watching the 1973 movie Soylent Green, where the two protagonists just marvel at a jar of strawberry preserves they found in the dwelling of a rich person, and then go to your favorite grocery store's jams and jellies section.... Maybe someday we'll see that future you envision, but having already lived through at least one cycle of this, not to mention the ongoing global cooling -> global warming -> climate change one, I don't worry quite so much (and by now have a lot more than just these surface level observations to base that on). ADDED: And this was a major theme of Heinlein in his '50s juveniles, most directly his 4th, published in 1950, Farmer in the Sky, but also see his last really good book, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in 1966, where it was plot significant that the moon colony (or was it colonies?) grew wheat and shot it back to the Earth using a mass driver.

chronic6l 10y ago
I'm probably one of the people you hate. Global warming is real and is accelerated by humans. I still don't give a damn. I will throw all my waste in the trash and drive gasoline vehicles. I'll let someone else fix it.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I'll care about the Earth when I can feel like I can actually own a piece of it. I have no skin in the game, really, other than some vague dread of total environmental collapse. Ted Turner, now, he has a great reason to be an environmentalist. Let the burden of environmental protection fall primarily on those who claim the most ownership of it. If Ted wants me to separate my recyclables and watch TBS on a TV constructed from recycled material and powered solely by renewables, he can damn well pay me something to do all that. You don't ask the team that loses by 50 points every game to start playing with their shoelaces tied together. And you don't ask the poor to sacrifice for the benefit of the rich. Developing nations are going to burn coal, and non-rich people are going to eat from disposable paper plates and then not recycle them. Environmentalism is a luxury, and only those who already have a sense of economic security will buy in to it. But as long as I have an "at will" job and no more attachment to the land than a one-year lease, I'm not going to feel all that motivated.
  - Nydhal 10y ago
    Well some might consider their children as "skin in the game" but still. As far as I am concerned having children is also a luxury. At least it should be considered so, from my moral perspective.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      Kids are not inextricably attached to any particular part of this planet. And many parents have no piece of it to give to them after they die, anyway. If I have kids, they would be in roughly the same situation I am in. The situation is roughly analogous to the entire world being a city block filled with apartment buildings. A few people own all the buildings. Most people rent apartments from them. The buildings are not extraordinary. They need maintenance and repair, or they will deteriorate. But for whatever reason, the building owners are not responding to maintenance requests in a timely fashion. (But woe to you if your rent check is even half a day late!) Some tenants, alarmed by the state of their surroundings, spend their own time and money, over and above their monthly rent, to do repairs. But none of the tenants can address all the problems on their own. At most, they can patch up a cracked window, re-wrap the ductwork with better insulation, tighten plumbing connections. No one has the resources to both pay the rent and also pay extra for all the repairs they might want. Some tenants do nothing, because it is the landlords' responsibility to maintain the properties. Also, they don't have enough money to spend on it, anyway. If the landlords want to be slumlords, then surely it would be possible to move to a better-kept building when things get too bad. Except--whoops!--the landlords that do invest more in maintenance are not accepting new tenants. The properties for sale are too expensive for any slum-renter to buy. In analogy form, the solution seems obvious, does it not?

js8 10y ago

"There's no universal concept of morality to begin with." There is universal morality, the one embedded in genes of most people. We are social creatures, and we understand concepts like tit-for-tat.

Terr_ 10y ago
For a contrary opinion, I turn to the character of Lord Vetinari, written by Terry Pratchett: > [...] "I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. > One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."
- kefka 10y ago
  If there is evil in this world, it lies in the heart of mankind. -Edward Morrison
- js8 10y ago
  The fact that we have morality (on average) doesn't imply it's always pretty. Nor does it imply that it scales well to modern society with billions of people.
zeroer 10y ago
> universal ... most wut

1337biz 10y ago

>Institutions like Landmark Forum that are actually requirements for certain management positions Can you elaborate on that? I always thought of them as some occultish clowns.

staticautomatic 10y ago
Landmark forum is scary. I know a few people who are members. Most are deeply in need of mental health treatment.

aianus 10y ago

There's nothing stopping you from buying cocoa futures and rolling them over indefinitely for the next twenty years. In fact, in an efficient market the cost of doing so is equal to the cost of maintaining your own warehouse.

throwaway1892 10y ago

Why "crisis"? The situation is not bad enough to warrant the term crisis, in your opinion?