4 ms·

They need their electricity and washing machine, but do they need exotic vacations and long commutes in powerful cars? Do they need clothes that are made to be

They need their electricity and washing machine, but do they need exotic vacations and long commutes in powerful cars? Do they need clothes that are made to be worn for a very short time? Do they need technology that's cheap to the point of it being wasted without an afterthought?

koheripbal 7y ago
There is an important argument here about how not all GDP is created equal. In both developing and developed worlds - a lot of people just buy wasteful garbage.
yvdriess 7y ago
Indeed, you can run a lot of new fridges in the developing world on the kWh budget of a heated private swimming pool.
Bostonian 7y ago
How are people in developed countries who have exotic vactions etc. going to tell people in poorer countries that they should do without?
martythemaniak 7y ago
Do you have any family or friends in the developing world? Have you ever tried convincing anyone of this view offline?
BjoernKW 7y ago
> [...] long commutes in powerful cars? People in developed countries don't need that either. Commuting being a hard requirement for modern life in an industrialised country is both a fallacy and perpetuated cargo cult. Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". Doing away with lengthy commutes will be key to addressing many of today's problems, including climate change.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". A million times this. My entire office could do their job from home as even when we need something we have to email our team leads and CC our manager so I could be doing that at home, in comfortable clothes, not fighting 50-something men for access to 4 stalls and not fighting 100 something people for 2 microwaves. I mean, to be honest, getting 4-5 hours of my time back every week would actually a huge compensation... after you remove my vacation that's like 8 days a year of free time I'd get back. But alas, my employer would never hear of working from home. Likely because of the ages of the corporate leadership: Chairman & CEO is 75, President & COO got his first degree in 1987 so is 'young' at 54~, CFO & EVP is 66, CIO is 59, VP of ops is 58, Information Services EVP & CIO is 60... Good luck selling remote work to corporate leadership types that have 30-50 years of old-school corporation under their belts. I'm sure any cost savings would probably be kept by the company and not not passed on to employees but I'd save 20-25 minutes of commuting a day (plus the half hour every day I waste sitting at my desk off the clock because the tardy policy is terrible, accidents are frequent on the way in and logging in to your computer and getting the time keeping software open can take as long as 5 minutes) so once you remove my vacation weeks that would get me 8~ days of free time back which alone would be nice. Plus the reduced mileage/maintenance/fuel etc for my car. I wish I could find remote work so bad, or that my employer would adopt it.
  - Tade0 7y ago
    I friend of mine always asked during job interviews how many bathrooms the office had. The reason for this was that he spent a considerable amount of time in an office, where there was one bathroom for somewhere around two hundred people. Madness.
    - dpifke 7y ago
      In the US, that would be illegal: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.141#1910.141(c)(1)(i) https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19...
roenxi 7y ago
Do we need a future? If we aren't going to stick to higher density fuels like fossil, nuclear or some sort of interesting synthetic then we are going to struggle to get off the planet earth. There are two very-long-term futures. One where humanity ends up in space, and one where we get the Chicxulub treatment. One of those paths involves us having so much energy that wasting a bit on holidays is irrelevant, and the other raises the question of how much we need to conserve for future generations anyway given that we're going down the nihilistic path.
- polotics 7y ago
  The way I see it the two paths are: sobriety then fusion then space ortherwise waste then generalized Syria-like conditions then low-budget mad-max reruns.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
alexnewman 7y ago
yes

koheripbal 7y ago

There is an important argument here about how not all GDP is created equal. In both developing and developed worlds - a lot of people just buy wasteful garbage.

yvdriess 7y ago

Indeed, you can run a lot of new fridges in the developing world on the kWh budget of a heated private swimming pool.

Bostonian 7y ago

How are people in developed countries who have exotic vactions etc. going to tell people in poorer countries that they should do without?

martythemaniak 7y ago

Do you have any family or friends in the developing world? Have you ever tried convincing anyone of this view offline?

BjoernKW 7y ago

> [...] long commutes in powerful cars? People in developed countries don't need that either. Commuting being a hard requirement for modern life in an industrialised country is both a fallacy and perpetuated cargo cult. Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". Doing away with lengthy commutes will be key to addressing many of today's problems, including climate change.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". A million times this. My entire office could do their job from home as even when we need something we have to email our team leads and CC our manager so I could be doing that at home, in comfortable clothes, not fighting 50-something men for access to 4 stalls and not fighting 100 something people for 2 microwaves. I mean, to be honest, getting 4-5 hours of my time back every week would actually a huge compensation... after you remove my vacation that's like 8 days a year of free time I'd get back. But alas, my employer would never hear of working from home. Likely because of the ages of the corporate leadership: Chairman & CEO is 75, President & COO got his first degree in 1987 so is 'young' at 54~, CFO & EVP is 66, CIO is 59, VP of ops is 58, Information Services EVP & CIO is 60... Good luck selling remote work to corporate leadership types that have 30-50 years of old-school corporation under their belts. I'm sure any cost savings would probably be kept by the company and not not passed on to employees but I'd save 20-25 minutes of commuting a day (plus the half hour every day I waste sitting at my desk off the clock because the tardy policy is terrible, accidents are frequent on the way in and logging in to your computer and getting the time keeping software open can take as long as 5 minutes) so once you remove my vacation weeks that would get me 8~ days of free time back which alone would be nice. Plus the reduced mileage/maintenance/fuel etc for my car. I wish I could find remote work so bad, or that my employer would adopt it.
- Tade0 7y ago
  I friend of mine always asked during job interviews how many bathrooms the office had. The reason for this was that he spent a considerable amount of time in an office, where there was one bathroom for somewhere around two hundred people. Madness.
  - dpifke 7y ago
    In the US, that would be illegal: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.141#1910.141(c)(1)(i) https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19...

roenxi 7y ago

Do we need a future? If we aren't going to stick to higher density fuels like fossil, nuclear or some sort of interesting synthetic then we are going to struggle to get off the planet earth. There are two very-long-term futures. One where humanity ends up in space, and one where we get the Chicxulub treatment. One of those paths involves us having so much energy that wasting a bit on holidays is irrelevant, and the other raises the question of how much we need to conserve for future generations anyway given that we're going down the nihilistic path.

polotics 7y ago
The way I see it the two paths are: sobriety then fusion then space ortherwise waste then generalized Syria-like conditions then low-budget mad-max reruns.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

alexnewman 7y ago

yes