5 ms·

We need to understand that this large scale economy is very fragile. We need to reinvest in antifragile local communities. And no, I'm not talking about of goin

by lcam84 6y ago

We need to understand that this large scale economy is very fragile. We need to reinvest in antifragile local communities. And no, I'm not talking about of going back to dark ages just to reduce the scale, maybe to the levels of 30 years ago.

tomohawk 6y ago
What economy would survive arresting people for going to work?
simmanian 6y ago
I agree with you, but just wondering - what industries could we move to local communities aside from growing & delivering food?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kitotik 6y ago
  broadband internet, clothing, real estate, banking, grocery stores would be an awesome start. Which ones could we not?
  - simmanian 6y ago
    I'm picturing every community building their own cloud provider (AWS equivalent) and I don't see how it would be more sustainable than having Amazon do it. I think there would be a right balance between "every community does everything with full redundancy!" and "have economies of scale take care of everything!"
    - jagger27 6y ago
      Kind of tangential, but wouldn’t it be cool to have a rack or two of Internet Archive shards in local library basements?
      - simmanian 6y ago
        I'm hoping distributed computing platforms will mature enough in the near future to get us there.
    - kitotik 6y ago
      There are other benefits from decentralization besides just sustainability, such as resiliency and autonomy.
- lcam84 6y ago
  Honestly, maybe we do not have to move all the industries but they make sense at least in the current dimension. For example, I found out that my country, Portugal has the highest number of houses per inhabitant (6 million houses for 10 million inhabitants). It's natural that now that large-scale tourism has collapsed it's not possible to make more houses. We must therefore not only question whether we can change the means of production to a smaller scale, but whether these means of production make sense. The problem is the creation of work but then we could think of other forms of wealth distribution such as universal basic income.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
That optimization that makes everything fragile is why people can afford the quality of life that they do. You can't have a serious discussion about buying local at a macroeconomic level without an accompanying serious discussion about cost.
- lcam84 6y ago
  The cost of investing in one perfect system is that this kind of events tend to put us in a very dificult and odd place. we should not put all the eggs in the same basket even if our quality of life changes. Regarding quality of life, this economy based on material wealth can only give a sense of well being up to a point.
- rmrm 6y ago
  It would be inflationary, as less efficient local labor would also require more workers and higher wages. Food costs would go up but the money would be more contained locally as well. Net net I think it would decrease some consumptions, but perhaps leading to a more sustainable model overall.
- simmanian 6y ago
  I think the ultimate goal is to trade efficiency (and the resulting "quality of life") for sustainability. I also believe our civilization is at a point where we have to seriously consider trading off convenience and material wealth for increased sustainability anyway, due to the increasing impact of some wicked problems such as climate change.
- tw04 6y ago
  I hear about the cost rising but I guess it still doesn't compute for me. My mom paid for college by having a side-job working at the phone company back in the 70s. There's no planet on which a student would make the money required to pay for college in-full with a part-time job. Outside of the bubble that is HN tech workers - wages have stagnated. The wealth being generated is severely concentrated at the very top. I think your average person walking down the street would gladly exchange their $2 gallon of milk for a $4 gallon of milk if they had a $40k/year salary vs. their current $7/hr.
mcguire 6y ago
At the limit, efficiency is the enemy of resiliency.

by lcam84 6y ago

tomohawk 6y ago

What economy would survive arresting people for going to work?

simmanian 6y ago

I agree with you, but just wondering - what industries could we move to local communities aside from growing & delivering food?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kitotik 6y ago
broadband internet, clothing, real estate, banking, grocery stores would be an awesome start. Which ones could we not?
- simmanian 6y ago
  I'm picturing every community building their own cloud provider (AWS equivalent) and I don't see how it would be more sustainable than having Amazon do it. I think there would be a right balance between "every community does everything with full redundancy!" and "have economies of scale take care of everything!"
  - jagger27 6y ago
    Kind of tangential, but wouldn’t it be cool to have a rack or two of Internet Archive shards in local library basements?
    - simmanian 6y ago
      I'm hoping distributed computing platforms will mature enough in the near future to get us there.
  - kitotik 6y ago
    There are other benefits from decentralization besides just sustainability, such as resiliency and autonomy.
lcam84 6y ago
Honestly, maybe we do not have to move all the industries but they make sense at least in the current dimension. For example, I found out that my country, Portugal has the highest number of houses per inhabitant (6 million houses for 10 million inhabitants). It's natural that now that large-scale tourism has collapsed it's not possible to make more houses. We must therefore not only question whether we can change the means of production to a smaller scale, but whether these means of production make sense. The problem is the creation of work but then we could think of other forms of wealth distribution such as universal basic income.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

That optimization that makes everything fragile is why people can afford the quality of life that they do. You can't have a serious discussion about buying local at a macroeconomic level without an accompanying serious discussion about cost.

lcam84 6y ago
The cost of investing in one perfect system is that this kind of events tend to put us in a very dificult and odd place. we should not put all the eggs in the same basket even if our quality of life changes. Regarding quality of life, this economy based on material wealth can only give a sense of well being up to a point.
rmrm 6y ago
It would be inflationary, as less efficient local labor would also require more workers and higher wages. Food costs would go up but the money would be more contained locally as well. Net net I think it would decrease some consumptions, but perhaps leading to a more sustainable model overall.
simmanian 6y ago
I think the ultimate goal is to trade efficiency (and the resulting "quality of life") for sustainability. I also believe our civilization is at a point where we have to seriously consider trading off convenience and material wealth for increased sustainability anyway, due to the increasing impact of some wicked problems such as climate change.
tw04 6y ago
I hear about the cost rising but I guess it still doesn't compute for me. My mom paid for college by having a side-job working at the phone company back in the 70s. There's no planet on which a student would make the money required to pay for college in-full with a part-time job. Outside of the bubble that is HN tech workers - wages have stagnated. The wealth being generated is severely concentrated at the very top. I think your average person walking down the street would gladly exchange their $2 gallon of milk for a $4 gallon of milk if they had a $40k/year salary vs. their current $7/hr.

mcguire 6y ago

At the limit, efficiency is the enemy of resiliency.