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> I wish people like you understood economy. What I understand is that we have decided that one particular measurement, GDP, has been taken to be more valuable

by moosey 7y ago

> I wish people like you understood economy. What I understand is that we have decided that one particular measurement, GDP, has been taken to be more valuable than all other measurements. Such as, but not limited to, human welfare. It's been this way since for decades, and we are now laying in the bed that was made.

JadeNB 7y ago
I wish I could remember where I read it yesterday—so many articles on the science, but also the policy and history, that they blur together; but someone pointed out "this thing that you (GP imchillyb, not moosey) think is a natural law has actually only been the case for 50 years, and need not continue forever."
- moosey 7y ago
  At the end of one of Harari's books he points out that nothing that we see today is natural or inevitable: that there are infinite outcomes for the way that humanity lives and organizes itself. Proof of this can be seen in how we've lived historically. Those in power want us to believe that current power structures were inevitable, that the world wants to return to the current mean should we try to change it. We just have to stop people from getting power over others. I think that this is best achieved through random selection of leadership.
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    > At the end of one of Harari's books he points out that nothing that we see today is natural or inevitable: that there are infinite outcomes for the way that humanity lives and organizes itself. Proof of this can be seen in how we've lived historically. That's true, and a good point, but this was much more pointed: less "had humanity evolved differently, we could have been nicer people" and more "what seems like the inevitably market- and capitalism-focussed way of life that's all anyone has ever experienced was actually a creation of the '60's and after." (Sort of like the current geopolitics of the US, which seem eternal to those of us, like me, who came of political age when they were already fairly well established, but which have actually changed dramatically in the mere 250-ish years the US has been around to have geopolitics.)

by moosey 7y ago

JadeNB 7y ago

I wish I could remember where I read it yesterday—so many articles on the science, but also the policy and history, that they blur together; but someone pointed out "this thing that you (GP imchillyb, not moosey) think is a natural law has actually only been the case for 50 years, and need not continue forever."

moosey 7y ago
At the end of one of Harari's books he points out that nothing that we see today is natural or inevitable: that there are infinite outcomes for the way that humanity lives and organizes itself. Proof of this can be seen in how we've lived historically. Those in power want us to believe that current power structures were inevitable, that the world wants to return to the current mean should we try to change it. We just have to stop people from getting power over others. I think that this is best achieved through random selection of leadership.
- JadeNB 7y ago
  > At the end of one of Harari's books he points out that nothing that we see today is natural or inevitable: that there are infinite outcomes for the way that humanity lives and organizes itself. Proof of this can be seen in how we've lived historically. That's true, and a good point, but this was much more pointed: less "had humanity evolved differently, we could have been nicer people" and more "what seems like the inevitably market- and capitalism-focussed way of life that's all anyone has ever experienced was actually a creation of the '60's and after." (Sort of like the current geopolitics of the US, which seem eternal to those of us, like me, who came of political age when they were already fairly well established, but which have actually changed dramatically in the mere 250-ish years the US has been around to have geopolitics.)