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> People say this, but I'll note that humans have lived through "crippling poverty" for most of our 2 million year existence. It is only crippling poverty by to

by darawk 6y ago

> People say this, but I'll note that humans have lived through "crippling poverty" for most of our 2 million year existence. It is only crippling poverty by today's distortion lens (also a shifting baseline). That's very easy to say. But it's hard for me not to notice that you're commenting on web forums, which means you probably haven't given up on the creature comforts of modernity. If you're not willing to do it, what gives you the right to tell half of India to? > We should focus on what people really need to live quality lives, which is: good health (read: access to modern healthcare, freedom from pollution, disease), good food (read: freedom first from starvation, from malnutrition, poor diet), shelter from the elements, and then the rest of Maslow's hierarchy. Cars, TV, home appliances, and the whole lot of today's energy-hungry living isn't sustainable, and I'd argue isn't even the thing we should be shooting for. People of the past lived very different and satisfying lives that we simply can't imagine because, frankly, we are spoiled. People lived in tribes and hunted with spears for 100,000 years at least. And you know what, they beat those drums, painted their faces, tracked the stars, and contrary to whatever we might believe from our high place of "development" they actually enjoyed their lives. I see a whole lot of people saying things like this, and literally no one actually living it. The contradiction is hard to ignore. Maybe the old way of living wasn't really that nice.

titzer 6y ago
> I see a whole lot of people saying things like this, and literally no one actually living it. The contradiction is hard to ignore. Maybe the old way of living wasn't really that nice. Well you quite obviously are not going to due to selection bias. But yes, there are people who have tried to simplify their lives down, both now and since the dawn of the modern era. Pick any level of tech you like: log cabin, lean to, nothing but a knife. People try. Some succeed. Sometimes they write books, sometimes books are written about them. Very few post on hackernews. Nowadays it's pretty much impossible to escape the modern world, so I wouldn't hold my breath for naturalist/primitivists to rise up and take over the world. But I'm not really arguing for anything. We're headed back to sustainability one way or another.
pietrovismara 6y ago
>That's very easy to say. But it's hard for me not to notice that you're commenting on web forums, which means you probably haven't given up on the creature comforts of modernity. If you're not willing to do it, what gives you the right to tell half of India to? Which is another way to say: "How dare you criticize capitalism from your smartphone?" This argument is so old, overused and has been debunked so much already, but I'll do it once again for you, even though it would take the intellectual honesty and introspection capacity of an 8 years old to realize it's a really bad argument. 1) We don't choose to be born and live in this society. It just happens, and we don't get to learn the survival skills necessary to do without it. Therefore, one could say we're stuck in it. Especially considering nowadays everything is property of someone, you can't just go and take a piece of forest to have your primitive tribe there. 2) Technology and innovation ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE to Capitalism. Repeat it once again if you need. Soviets had a space program too you realize that? Saying that Capitalism is the only way to have innovation, because someone invented iPhone under Capitalism means having no idea of what false correlation is. I'd suggest studying the very basis of statistics before making such claims. >Maybe the old way of living wasn't really that nice. Maybe we can take the best from both worlds. Lose the hunger for profit, the abstract finance, the exploitation and keep the progress.
- darawk 6y ago
  > 1) We don't choose to be born and live in this society. It just happens, and we don't get to learn the survival skills necessary to do without it. Therefore, one could say we're stuck in it. Especially considering nowadays everything is property of someone, you can't just go and take a piece of forest to have your primitive tribe there. You're not stuck. Learning survival skills is not very hard. You are simply waking up every single day and choosing not to do it. Nobody is stopping you. > 2) Technology and innovation ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE to Capitalism. Repeat it once again if you need. Soviets had a space program too you realize that? Saying that Capitalism is the only way to have innovation, because someone invented iPhone under Capitalism means having no idea of what false correlation is. I'd suggest studying the very basis of statistics before making such claims. Of course the Soviets had a space program. It's all they had. Their economy was falling apart. Centrally planned economies can do things. They're particularly effective at mustering the entire population behind a single project: like the space race. They're much less good at doing all the things necessary to run a modern economy simultaneously. Everyone who has ever tried to run an economy this way has failed. The Soviets, the Chinese, North Korea is still making a valiant effort, but it sure doesn't seem to be working out very well for them. It's true that capitalism isn't the only way to have innovation. It's also true that it's the only way to do it consistently, over a long period of time, across a broad array of industries. There are precisely zero counter-examples in world history. Of course, that doesn't prove it can't be done. But the numbers don't look very good. > Maybe we can take the best from both worlds. Lose the hunger for profit, the abstract finance, the exploitation and keep the progress. It'd be nice. I think if you want ideas like that, Glen Weyl's book Radical Markets is probably for you. Fundamentally you aren't going to make any progress on creating that world until you recognize that markets are not your enemy. Centralized state planning is not and never will be an effective way of coordinating an economy. It can be useful in some domains, but it simply doesn't work to run an entire economy that way. What you can do, however, are create market mechanisms that are more progressive than what we have now, by having properly designed taxation schemes, as described in the aforementioned book.
pietrovismara 6y ago
MODERNITY !== CAPITALISM

by darawk 6y ago

titzer 6y ago

> I see a whole lot of people saying things like this, and literally no one actually living it. The contradiction is hard to ignore. Maybe the old way of living wasn't really that nice. Well you quite obviously are not going to due to selection bias. But yes, there are people who have tried to simplify their lives down, both now and since the dawn of the modern era. Pick any level of tech you like: log cabin, lean to, nothing but a knife. People try. Some succeed. Sometimes they write books, sometimes books are written about them. Very few post on hackernews. Nowadays it's pretty much impossible to escape the modern world, so I wouldn't hold my breath for naturalist/primitivists to rise up and take over the world. But I'm not really arguing for anything. We're headed back to sustainability one way or another.

pietrovismara 6y ago

>That's very easy to say. But it's hard for me not to notice that you're commenting on web forums, which means you probably haven't given up on the creature comforts of modernity. If you're not willing to do it, what gives you the right to tell half of India to? Which is another way to say: "How dare you criticize capitalism from your smartphone?" This argument is so old, overused and has been debunked so much already, but I'll do it once again for you, even though it would take the intellectual honesty and introspection capacity of an 8 years old to realize it's a really bad argument. 1) We don't choose to be born and live in this society. It just happens, and we don't get to learn the survival skills necessary to do without it. Therefore, one could say we're stuck in it. Especially considering nowadays everything is property of someone, you can't just go and take a piece of forest to have your primitive tribe there. 2) Technology and innovation ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE to Capitalism. Repeat it once again if you need. Soviets had a space program too you realize that? Saying that Capitalism is the only way to have innovation, because someone invented iPhone under Capitalism means having no idea of what false correlation is. I'd suggest studying the very basis of statistics before making such claims. >Maybe the old way of living wasn't really that nice. Maybe we can take the best from both worlds. Lose the hunger for profit, the abstract finance, the exploitation and keep the progress.

darawk 6y ago
> 1) We don't choose to be born and live in this society. It just happens, and we don't get to learn the survival skills necessary to do without it. Therefore, one could say we're stuck in it. Especially considering nowadays everything is property of someone, you can't just go and take a piece of forest to have your primitive tribe there. You're not stuck. Learning survival skills is not very hard. You are simply waking up every single day and choosing not to do it. Nobody is stopping you. > 2) Technology and innovation ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE to Capitalism. Repeat it once again if you need. Soviets had a space program too you realize that? Saying that Capitalism is the only way to have innovation, because someone invented iPhone under Capitalism means having no idea of what false correlation is. I'd suggest studying the very basis of statistics before making such claims. Of course the Soviets had a space program. It's all they had. Their economy was falling apart. Centrally planned economies can do things. They're particularly effective at mustering the entire population behind a single project: like the space race. They're much less good at doing all the things necessary to run a modern economy simultaneously. Everyone who has ever tried to run an economy this way has failed. The Soviets, the Chinese, North Korea is still making a valiant effort, but it sure doesn't seem to be working out very well for them. It's true that capitalism isn't the only way to have innovation. It's also true that it's the only way to do it consistently, over a long period of time, across a broad array of industries. There are precisely zero counter-examples in world history. Of course, that doesn't prove it can't be done. But the numbers don't look very good. > Maybe we can take the best from both worlds. Lose the hunger for profit, the abstract finance, the exploitation and keep the progress. It'd be nice. I think if you want ideas like that, Glen Weyl's book Radical Markets is probably for you. Fundamentally you aren't going to make any progress on creating that world until you recognize that markets are not your enemy. Centralized state planning is not and never will be an effective way of coordinating an economy. It can be useful in some domains, but it simply doesn't work to run an entire economy that way. What you can do, however, are create market mechanisms that are more progressive than what we have now, by having properly designed taxation schemes, as described in the aforementioned book.

pietrovismara 6y ago

MODERNITY !== CAPITALISM