18 ms·

It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

175 points by a_imho 6y ago

nonford150 6y ago
My first thought - who owns your living quarters, the machines which show up, the clothes, etc? These are the people who are really living well as the rest of the ruled are indebted to them forever. IF the answer is government, please just stop. A central ruling class? This has always ended badly. If the answer is private enterprise, ask why accept the role you have chosen and instead work to accumulate the goods you can provide as services. Then you have freedom - from rents, from control, and the removal of spontaneity.
- Agebor 6y ago
  Why not corporations? They would be owned by the market and compete against each other to offer best quality machinery. Of course you still have the leadership class of people that could be corrupt, but that can be solved e.g. by sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition + you need anti-monopoly laws and some solutions preventing competition-to-the-bottom (e.g. if marginal cost of service becomes 0, it may no longer make sense to compete for it, so it needs to enter some sort of maintenance mode to keep quality in check)
  - nonford150 6y ago
    It's possible sortition could be used but unlikely to be successful. Yes, there always is corruption in every institution - part of human nature. It's not going away, no matter what ruling class is in power. My point is - how can someone express true happiness when they are controlled by others? With all these services, there would be no justification for betterment. It all sounds like an advertisement for centralized authoritatism - "We'll take care of your wants and dreams; you just give us your all".
dbsmith83 6y ago
Reminds me of Donald Fagen's I.G.Y., right as the song begins to take a creepy AI turn: """ A just machine to make big decisions Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision We'll be clean when their work is done We'll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young """
smitty1e 6y ago
As long as you have a pair of the correct lenses[1], life is all hugs and cupcakes. > The lenses cause their wearers to see, not their squalid surroundings, but the Overworld, a vastly superior version of reality where a hut is a palace, gruel is a magnificent feast, etc. — "seeing the world through rose-colored glasses" on a grand scale. The 2020 election appears a step in this direction. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Overworld https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Overworld
- ragnese 6y ago
  > The 2020 election appears a step in this direction. Care to elaborate?
  - tylerjwilk00 6y ago
    I am speculating but perhaps parent means TV news and media is a lens (Eye of the Overworld) through which the wearer is shown a world layered over the real world. Media would then change the view to either squalor or majesty (perhaps depending on the elected president).
znpy 6y ago
> One by one all these things became free Science fiction, right there.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Yeah one guy is going to get a hundred lambos and use them like tissues. Used it for more than a month? Into the trash.
- versale 6y ago
  Guess what. In Tallinn, Estonia public transport is free for city residents.
  - jansan 6y ago
    It's not free. You pay it with your taxes.
    - TT3351 6y ago
      We also pay for public transit with our taxes in many states/cities in the United States, but they still charge riders. Taxation is implicit in public transit, I'm not aware of a single viable public transit model that doesn't rely on taxpayer money.
- ragnese 6y ago
  Not really, depending on the thing. There (maybe) comes a point where the accounting of who owes what becomes more expensive than the thing you're tracking. It can also go the opposite direction. Air is free right now, but then see the movies Total Recall and The Lorax (not joking).
LandR 6y ago
This reads like a description of a pretty awful dystopia. Or at least one where everything might seem great, until it isn't. And when it turns, turning it back is HARD / near impossible. Do people read this and think that is the sort of life they would want in the future?
- jstummbillig 6y ago
  Parts of it, for sure! (I find it hard to imagine you would read a text of any notable length and not agree with any of its ideas to some degree.) Something that rings very true for me: Sharing is amazingly underutilized (unfortunately I feel it's a deeply cultural problem right now, but oh well, over time things change): I have absolutely no inherent need to own a car. I don't need to own a Hammer. I don't need to own a bicycle pump. Actually, it's intensely inefficient how many things I do have to own and store right now, to be able to only use 5 Minutes every other week or maybe even only half a year. What I instead need is convenient access to these things. If you can show me a model where I can have that without the burden and cost of solo-owning it – something the author is implying will be a solved problem – I am all for that.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    For the Hammer, Bicycle Pump, and other "Tool" type of things the "Tool Library" concept seems to work really well. It's like a "Book Library", (eg centralised local place for storage and co-ordination) but for tools. There's one here in Melbourne (Australia) with about 400 members, and over 1000 tools: * https://www.brunswicktoollibrary.org https://www.brunswicktoollibrary.org * https://brunswicktoollibrary.myturn.com/library/inventory/browse https://brunswicktoollibrary.myturn.com/library/inventory/br... They have power tools (~200), hand tools (~600), garden tools (~200), automotive stuff, electrical/soldering gear, etc. And they have occasional um... workshops (or something similar) teaching people how to repair things. eg: * Bike repair (Sep 2020) - https://www.facebook.com/events/728114278044351/ https://www.facebook.com/events/728114278044351/ * General repair (Feb 2020) https://www.facebook.com/events/613979845834779/ https://www.facebook.com/events/613979845834779/ Seems to work really well, at least in this case. :)
Cloudef 6y ago
It's not like young generations could afford to own anything anyways anymore.
- joaomacp 6y ago
  Get a job!
  - _iyig 6y ago
    >Across the country, Tekin found that "[m]edian home prices have increased at four times the rate of household incomes since 1960," meaning homeownership is increasingly out of reach for many Americans. Rents, meanwhile, have grown roughly twice as fast as adjusted wages between 1960 and 2017. https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/07/25/gap-between-income-growth-and-housing-cost-increases-continues-grow https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/07/25/gap-between-inc...
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Mortgage rates move inversely with house prices (because many buyers, especially marginal buyers) are buying houses based on the monthly payments more than on the HUD-1 statement price. By that admittedly too-simple analysis, houses peaked in unaffordability in 1980 and have been only modestly less affordable since 2000. (Much of this is likely explained by the median house in 2000 being much larger than the median house in 1960, having nearly doubled in size between 1973 and 2016.) [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z-A7AhhKNcVbvq_n8fPP8Fbq65iQ9s8IbkyM7SB6kp4/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z-A7AhhKNcVbvq_n8fPP... [1] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
  - aboringusername 6y ago
    Got a job at minimum wage. No future prospects, stuck in a rut, deadend boringness. Proceeds to kill self. At least toast was nice.
emptyparadise 6y ago
Sounds awful.
fancyfredbot 6y ago
"My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there"? No thanks!
- jansan 6y ago
  And in the evening people can rent it to party. Maybe that is too much. Why not start small and offer your toilet to the public for a dollar per session?
- wcerfgba 6y ago
  The author ignores the difference between personal property and private property. It is true that you do not use either your living room nor your lawnmower 24/7, but your living room is a highly personal space that you customise to fit your own needs and desires, whereas most people are not as emotionally attached to their lawnmowers.
robbrown451 6y ago
I am unclear as to the author's intent. I expect most people here would find such ideas offensive. And yet so many things seem on the right track. It's the polar opposite of the outrageously inefficient model where everything you use, you own, and for 99.9% of the time, the thing just sits there depreciating or taking up space. Regarding cars, as a city liver who needs a car (but has no driveway or garage), I certainly yearn for a better way. Obviously some things are going to be bothersome, such as the idea of people holding business meetings in your living room when you are away. But I do like the idea of more sharing, and letting go -- at least a bit -- of the urge to own so much stuff.
- xwdv 6y ago
  The author’s intent is to stimulate rage.
  - multjoy 6y ago
    Why would someone’s prediction cause anger? They’re not demanding it or proselytising it as The One True Vision.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- jpttsn 6y ago
  The very cynical counter argument is rarely spoken: Owning my things provides value even when I’m not using them, because I benefit from excluding other people (my competition) from using them. Example: The sports car locked in my garage helps keep sports cars away from other people, which maintains their benefit of conferring status. It provides utility even if I basically never drive it. This side of human nature is forgotten at our peril.
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    It’s not even just exclusion. Can you imagine the scheduling nightmare this would induce? Your personal life would be run minute to minute by your calendar. Any time you wanted to do anything it would either have to be booked in advance or you’d have to wait for delivery. This article seems to be written from the perspective of someone who likes spending their time in coffee shops and riding their bike around in circles. Might as well be a hamster in a cage. It’s like the millennial version of brave new world, no sex, boring drugs, and the pervasive feeling that no one knows what they’re doing.
olivierduval 6y ago
Free like... Google Photo? ;-) Products or services are only free either because - you are the product or - temporarily to kill any other competitors, become a monopole and start charging a lot Because, you know... money has to get in...
- ragnese 6y ago
  > Products or services are only free either because - you are the product or - temporarily to kill any other competitors, become a monopole and start charging a lot I try to be careful with this phrasing. Because I do believe it's true for most things. But then look at open source software, which powers SO MUCH of our society. Much of the most essential software in the world was written for absolutely free. These days there's lots of open source that is written for corporate PR, but that wasn't always the case. So, just be careful. Products and services really might be labors of love. We need to leave a tiny gap in our cynicism to allow for some goodness to come in. :)
kyrers 6y ago
I don't understand this. As said in other comments, I believe most people wouldn't want most of the things the author describes. If I want to cook at home and have to order everything, I assume it won't just be there in 5 minutes. And then what? If everything is shared does someone come pick it up when someone else needs it? Do I take it somewhere? Also, are people delivering these things? Or robots? And how can this be free? He also mentions that most work can be done at anytime. Well, if the premisse is order everything I need, even for cooking, that has to be done right away, no? I might be totally off, but this doesn't make any sense to me.
- ragnese 6y ago
  The article is definitely not the "best" version of this vision of the future I've read... Not that I'm advocating for this future in any way, but I assume that a more realistic version of this (especially for as near as 2030) is that many people still have jobs that have an actual schedule. Maybe we can be optimistic and dream that people get to work less than 40 hours a week to have a reasonable quality of life. But the idea of "I own nothing" cannot conceivable extend to personal items like clothing. That doesn't make any sense. In a future of "no ownership", you'd still own your shirt and toothbrush. Probably you'd still own your playstation (but do you actually own your video games today??? Can you play them offline? Does your console have ads?) as well. You wouldn't own a car, or your home (you'd have rights while you occupy your home, but not after you move), maybe you wouldn't own tools that are too expensive/specialized to be almost-free. So for your example, I imagine that immediate delivery services might still exist, but that would be kind of a "high class" service and might be expensive. More than likely, you'd have Amazon dropping off your weekly grocery list on your designated day (e.g., "Wednesdays are trash day and grocery day in my neighborhood"). I highly doubt that we'll have that much more robot workforce by 2030. The only industry where that's possible is brick-and-mortar shopping having no more cashiers, which I do see as somewhat likely.
  - kyrers 6y ago
    I'm not even taking into consideration de 2030 part. But yeah, I generally agree with you. Especially in this: > But the idea of "I own nothing" cannot conceivable extend to personal items like clothing. That doesn't make any sense ... maybe you wouldn't own tools that are too expensive/specialized to be almost-free.
thenoblesunfish 6y ago
I think that the part that should be mentioned about this scenario (whether you see it as utopia or distopia), is that the word "privacy" here also stands in for "liberty", "power", etc. The remarkable thing about the scenario depicted is not the wonders of the sharing economy, it's the fact that there is somehow a stable distribution of power that prevents all these own-nothings from being cattle. Not impossible, but that's the challenge.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  The story sounds more like they are cattle. Someone or something is setting the rules, designating protected nature reserves, excluding the people who didn’t come along from participating in their economy, scheduling the business meetings in your living room.
AussieWog93 6y ago
I actually don't mind the idea of renting a large number of products that are only used occasionally. A drone dropping off a mixmaster or hair straightener only when you need it actually makes sense in an economy where energy is cheap and space is at a premium. I can't see why this necessitates me not owning clothes, or allowing random strangers to use my living room while I'm out, though. I don't even really see the economic utility in either of those cases.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I only use my toothbrush a few minutes each morning and evening as well. So inefficient.
zelphirkalt 6y ago
> It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much. All that becoming "free" (here meaning "at no cost") will never happen in a capitalistic society such as many of ours. So from that point on it is pure fiction.
- chmod775 6y ago
  What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provides housing and food at no cost to those who need it. Expand on that and you're at what the author is describing. I personally wouldn't bet money on "this will never happen", would you?
  - zelphirkalt 6y ago
    I am in Europe and I do not see anything close to what the author is describing. Nothing is really at no cost. It is paid for with tax money or directly. The author is not specifying "for those who could not otherwise afford it", but describing it as at no cost for everyone. Most universities cost money to enrole and attend. Does your baker give out buns at no cost? Is the grocery store giving away all the food at no cost? Has it all become a service at no cost? Nope, none of that has happened and it will not happen, as long as everything needs to be a good business in a capitalistic sense. The single person business or small business or any business cannot escape the reality in this system. Show me that country or even that city please. Show me the social experiment, that tries to get people to work without pay, as long as they have access to "all the things we need in our daily lives". As far as I know, it has never been done. What if you have any extra wish? How will it be supplied, without tracking your every move in such a society? How would different needs be satisfied, everyone having slightly different needs? So that's why I call it pure fiction. You are welcome to show me that model city, which self-sufficiently makes it happen. I might move there.
baradhiren07 6y ago
"I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me." -- This gave me a feeling that I am unable to put into words.
- _Microft 6y ago
  This is why Neuralink frightens the hell out of me. I feel that no matter how they are planning to protect their brain-computer-interfaces, they will eventually fail at it (like it happens with any sufficiently complex technology). Once that happens, any dictator, autocrat or the 'ethically-challenged tech bro du jour' will use them to gain unfettered access to the minds of people and wreak havoc on what makes people themselves. And good luck working against this once they can read your thoughts.
  - georgesC 6y ago
    Just like today's "don't spread personal data on the internet and avoid forms", the future of that will be "don't use a brain-computer device/software that is not entirely open-source". We're warned. Now what we have to do is to work on reducing the power of malicious individuals who would want to read our thoughts by force. That's a political/societal thing more than technical. Or is it? what if it was financially not worth it for anyone to do such things...
- ragnese 6y ago
  Is that feeling an overwhelming sense of dread caused by the realization that we are already living in that world and most of us don't realize or care? The feeling of helplessness and doom? No? Just me? Never mind...
- dwaltrip 6y ago
  Humanity does not yet have the wisdom to handle having that much power over everyone. We may never.
  - baradhiren07 6y ago
_zamorano_ 6y ago
And I guess, as owning is so awful, the elites will follow the same lifestyle.
RickJWagner 6y ago
People work hardest (and invent new stuff) when they want something for themselves.
ryanackley 6y ago
Personally, I think a future where AI can do most jobs is frightening. It will be run by a group of relatively few elites that are involved in power struggles for control of the AI and the rest of us that do stuff like pick fruit (assuming it's cheaper than having an AI do it) and serve as cannon fodder in the AI armies. I find people who believe that it will lead to some kind of Utopia horribly naive and they have no understanding of human nature.
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
  (I'm using "you" not to mean "you personally", but both uto/dystopian AI futurists.) You have used technology right? You know it is all mostly shit that breaks down, crashes, and gets replaced and thrown out on an 18 month cycle? What I think lots of people get wrong is forgetting just how crappy consumer tech is, and industrial/military isn't far behind. We may get AI working well in 5-25 years, but I doubt deployments will be any less buggy. Repairing & provisioning the billions of bots will be most of the "tech" jobs. Think like the IT dept at your company that hands out new laptops, times a million.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    "AI" is such a vague term we forget that it encompasses both horribly stupid industry/task specific systems as well as grand artificial minds that might one say dwarf all of human intelligence combined. For the first, you are right - certainly in that timescale. For the later, I assume we will need to justify our continued existence.
    - SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
      AI isn't a vague term at all. It is extremely well defined. The best example I can point you to is from the 1990's by Russell & Norvig in their seminal work "Artificial Intelligence" which coalesces a half century of research. They spend the first 100 pages clearly defining the types of domains and vocabulary needed to define the space of AI: it is an exhaustive analysis with citations going back decades, covering early thinkers like Norbert Wiener and Von Neumann. Your claim indicates you haven't really studied the field. But everyone jumping into tensorflow on a raspberry pi has probably had zero exposure the to decades of research put into AI. Your second claim about a giant mind that might dwarf all of humanity, is, well, grandiose sci-fi. Much like Dyson Spheres or Time Travel.
eyeball 6y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=swfyslAaz2o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=swfyslAaz2o
deleted 6y ago
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lbrito 6y ago
>Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them. The main point of owning things is that you get to use them when you want to use them. People keep those things in cupboards because when they decide on a whim to make pasta they do just that. The same goes for all the rest - having cars, houses and so on. Unless there's some kind of Philip K Dick-style machine that near-instantly delivers good X to your apartment through a vacuum tube or something, that as-a-service bs won't fly. No one wants to wait hours (on the best case given our current logistics network) after deciding to make pasta to actually get the pasta machine.
- cnity 6y ago
  For the most part, I agree. Some things really do work better in a "borrow" type system. For instance, I'm fixing up my old bike and the sheer number of tools necessary for basic tasks is astounding. I wish there were some local "bike maintenance tools" library where like-minded folks could go to fix up their bikes and use tools. You could probably serve an entire city with a handful of chain tools, and yet it's interesting to consider how many millions of them must be manufactured so that everyone has one for the one time a year they need to replace a bike chain.
  - Invictus0 6y ago
    I used to be a member at a community makerspace in Nashua, NH which had stuff like that. Lasercutters, woodworking area, auto bay, machine shop, 3d printing, etc. It was awesome, and sustainably non-profit! http://www.makeitlabs.com/ http://www.makeitlabs.com/
- collyw 6y ago
  Also you can take pride in things, keep them maintained and tuned to your preferences. Or the opposite. In the case of my car I don't need to take care of the cosmetics. I can load a muddy mountain bike into it and scratch it without needing to pay through the nose as I would wit a rental car. In my case it would be cheaper to rent a car than own one as I use it relatively infrequently, but every time I rent I need to wait in the queue picking it up and dropping it off. It probably uses two or three hours of my life every time I rented.
raspyberr 6y ago
This is only ridiculous because we're in a society that values making money more than anything else. I wouldn't want to everything to be rent/subscription based because the other party will always be looking for how to get more money out of me. If everything were really truly free and I could order waffles that arrived in 3 minutes what incentive would anyone have to change that service in anyway?
- pluto9 6y ago
  And when you're done eating those waffles, you can have a free toothbrush delivered so you can freshen up before sending it on its way to the next lucky recipient. Owning things has advantages beyond accumulating wealth.
hjrnunes 6y ago
>Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city". I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes. >Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends Whose bike, again?
sybercecurity 6y ago
"Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly." When you start off with this, the rest is understandable. That's the hard part.
efitz 6y ago
The author can’t help but drag ownership back in al the time - “my bicycle’ “my living room”. Also the author ignores the tragedy of the commons - what if the last person broke the pasta maker or didn’t clean it. Where is the labor coming from to keep up all this stuff? How much supply is available? How much does it cost to get a pasta maker delivered? Does it come today or a month from now because I have to reserve one of my city’s 3 pasta makers and that was the soonest available? What if I don’t return it?
quicklime 6y ago
It’s 2020 and I don’t own a house or car, or even a bicycle. I rent all those things when I need them, and it really is great. I also care about privacy. Yes, you have to hand over id to your landlord when you apply for a lease. But unless you can afford to buy your home with cash, you also have to do that to get a mortgage. I hope my bike share program isn’t selling my trip data to other companies. I would like it if it worked more like public transport, where you can easily buy a ticket without id and use it anonymously. There’s nothing inherent about renting that prevents privacy. You can buy cars that have gps trackers on them, which can be tracked by a company in the event of theft. Some cars, like the Nissan GT-R, use them to stop you driving too fast if you’re not at an approved race track. I think regulation is the only way to protect privacy, regardless of whether people rent or own.
mdpm 6y ago
Communities sharing resources, rather than nuclear families is a good idea. Much of the world lives like this already. Not every house on your street needs a lawnmower (or a lawn). Lack of privacy however, is a lack of personhood. It will be eroded, and some aspects of it should change, nudity for example should be less abhorrent to all. But this seems like a thought experiment for the sake of argument, and I fear that arguments are all it will generate.
vagrantJin 6y ago
For much of the world, which still needs a lot of work, posts like this are nothing short of well written fairytales. Africa has been struggling with building roads for possibly millenia. Still struggling today. Will struggle for the next few centuries I gather[0]. And yet, if you live in a huge metro, the idea that something as ubiquitous as tar and paving would be cause for struggle is nothing short of absurd India is one if the fastest growing developing countries and yet, close to 50% of people still burn biomass to meet their energy requirements[1] [0]-https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/september-2002/building-efficient-road-network https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/september-2002/bui... [1](https://earthjournalism.net/stories/millions-die-as-most-indians-still-cook-with-wood-and-dung https://earthjournalism.net/stories/millions-die-as-most-ind...)
hamilyon2 6y ago
Sharing is okay if ultimate owner is one single customer and it rents /reverse rents it to every other customer. Therefore, he has a say in how it is used and how much, at what price etc. Sharing is fine as long as ownership is not gone.
stareatgoats 6y ago
> clean energy became free A substantial part of the article rests on this premise, and it ain't gonna happen, because if it did, someone would use it all in order to get ahead of everyone else. Sorry abt that, welcome back with a new suggestion (some kind of quota system maybe).
raelmiu 6y ago
Yet another communist utopia idea... As usual they're missing: - Who does all that work, and why? Someone must be incentivised to clear that living room between his lounging and the business meetings. - Who decides what stuff you get to use? Oh there's no shopping huh. Great. Everything you rent is just perfect for you? Well who makes sure of that? The AI? So your will is what? A calculation? - The fallacious idea of "Privacy is not a necessary cause I'm not doing anything wrong" except that everyone is, all the time. No system of rules has ever had enough gray areas, and most of the victims of invaded privacy are normal people not doing anything extreme. I realise this is an article meant as a talking point start. I just find this style of typical communist/rousseau utopia very tiresome. It's so incredibly dehumanised and boring. Sorry for the rant.
- anoncake 6y ago
  That would be a very confused communist who doesn't understand that there is a difference between private and personal property.
dudul 6y ago
And who delivers all these things for you to cook? All this "sharing economy" and "everything as a service" grand vision always forget to specify that they are built on the shoulders of the poor to make life even easier for the rich.
motohagiography 6y ago
What the author describes is humans living in captivity. There is a cadre of people who argue, "really? you wouldn't survive a day outside this so-called captivity, tough guy" and then go on to justify how their various compromises are somehow moral. To me that whole line of argument is just indoors cats lecturing outdoors cats about how to manage the shame of dependency, which outdoors cats just don't have. If we do not learn to limit the power of people who wield tech, we will become their captives. This was the whole reason to be a hacker, to act as a check on having humanity dominated by our own tech.
- xapata 6y ago
  > living in captivity That's a big leap, and you've given no explanation for it. Perhaps we have different understandings of what captivity means, so it'd be helpful if you define your terms. To me, captivity is a location (or metaphorical location, so a situation) you want to leave, but can't. In the article, the narrator does not indicate a desire to leave, or any difficulty doing so if they wished. The bit about being recorded hints at it, but we'd have to assume there are no other cities in the world, or some other unstated bit about a police state.
  - godelski 6y ago
    My cat almost never wants to go outside. She also isn't allowed outside. So is she captive or not? What if I let her out? She's still my pet and while I love her, she's captive. I'm not sure it would be different if she was an outdoor cat except her life expectancy would drop. Would you not define my cat (a pet) as captive?
    - xapata 6y ago
      For most pet cats, no. In my own experience with a pet cat, if he really wanted to run away, he could have. The opposite would happen. He'd sneak out when we weren't paying attention and then we'd accidentally lock him outside. We'd eventually hear the meowing and let him back in.
deleted 6y ago
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Kronmonker 6y ago
What an unintentionally horrifying dystopia. In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there. If you don't pay the rent, it's not your living room. You are camping out in somone's office.
- pmontra 6y ago
  Of course this was pre-Covid. A similar view of 2030 now would be about distance between people, not strangers reusing other strangers' quarters.
sealthedeal 6y ago
I rent everything and have ZERO assets. Sounds like a solid way to never building any wealth...
nyxtom 6y ago
Free transportation is actually something accessible already in a few places around the world. I could feasibly see this increasing over time as it gains popularity. Considering the savings on actually handling fares, efficiency gains in boarding, possible economic models around more commerce, then you add in more automation in the years ahead..etc https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/us/free-public-transit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/us/free-public-transit.ht... It might not happen everywhere but I do suspect that a number of cities (like the ones already listed here https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/02/free-public-transportation-is-a-reality-in-100-citiesheres-why.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/02/free-public-transportation-i...) will continue to push that direction. Not sure about the other things in the OP, but it's worth considering one aspect of daily life that seems more and more likely as time goes on.
_28jh 6y ago
I've seen this article reach the front page many times and I laugh every single time. There's too many golden lines. > First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. > Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. > Once in awhile, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. > Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now. > Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me. I can't tell if it's written by a normal person, some buzzword-spouting AI, or someone from the 80's who's never interacted with modern technology. EDIT: And of course, how could I forget, "In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there."
- syshum 6y ago
  >>I can't tell if it's written by a normal person, some buzzword-spouting AI, I hope the latter, because I can not image a normal person viewing any of those things as good... This view of the future right out of a dystopian horror
  - hahaiscjaaka 6y ago
    Written by a Scandinavian politician. People from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland (idk about Iceland) are surprisingly ok with trusting institutions won’t harm you, and conformism is the norm.
    - syshum 6y ago
      Conformism is requirement in Authoritarian regimes. Now I am sure I will get massive amount of push back calling Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland authoritarian but it seems in many ways human culture is loosing what desire for freedom, replacing it with conformism, safety, and security which they falsely equate with freedom
TheUndead96 6y ago
This is compounded by the fact that consumer electronics are becoming less useful as general computing devices. Increasingly people "rent" their primary devices. You pay a monthly plan, or a fee upfront, to use a gated smartphone that does very little in comparison to its ability on paper. So in summary: - You do not own media (music, movies, books to some extent). - You do not own the device (in the sense that you can readily program it). - You may not repair the devices you use. - They are all listening to you.
greggyb 6y ago
I only get one coin out of this article, and it's got two sides: 1. Infinity is really, really big. 2. 0 is really, really small. Infinite clean energy with no cost? Nonexistent transaction costs (economics meaning)? Yeah, this is probably a very mild description of what the world might look like with those constraints removed. To me, this is the economic equivalent of a think-piece on what the world would be like if gravity and magnetism disappeared as forces. It may be interesting, and there is likely value in such counterfactual thinking. But it's not something we need to plan for or a goal to aspire to. It's a thought experiment.
- anm89 6y ago
  As this interesting article points out, the surface of the earth would exceed the boiling temperature in about 400 years if we sustain 2.3% energy consumption growth over that period. Something I think a lot of techno utopians have not considered when they mention unlimited energy. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
- bccdee 6y ago
  Yeah, it has a strange sense of economic blindness. The article seems to think that the big innovations they're talking about are "renting clothes by the day," or "everyone uses driverless cars," but in reality the innovation is in how the economy doesn't need money to function. Like, I get that this is a post-automation utopia, but at no point in history has capitalist automation ever meant that people need to do less work. It has always meant that people lose their income and go hungry. "We created a society which encourages people to innovate & pitch in without punishing them when they don't work" is, sociologically speaking, a much more interesting and important development than "the algorithm recommends me clothes in the morning." The most interesting thing is that the author seems not to realize that this all entails an end to capitalism. They say things like "my living room is used for business meetings when I'm not there," but what business meetings? How is anyone making money in a society where everything's free? If no one's making money, is it even a business? Does everyone do it purely out of passion? Or do we needed some form of soft incentive for people to be involved in the economy? What form would that take? This article raises a million interesting questions, but seems interested only in entertaining the most boring ones, like "how would algorithms be involved with this?" and "what if I had no privacy?" It's as if they picture every business being like Gmail, where it's free because that's in the interest of the service provider. But Google still needs to turn a profit from somewhere. It' can't be Gmails all the way down. He's trying to propose communism, but imagining that that would merely entail businesses gradually reducing all their prices down to zero for some unexplained reason.
samirillian 6y ago
Ah yes the myth of the laplacean demon where apps allow us to know the location and fair price of every commodity and service in the market; a fantasy only sustainable if you live in Utrecht or some other core city running on the labor of the economic periphery.
helen___keller 6y ago
Ironically, despite how this article is both patently fictional and fairly dystopian, several of the premises actually do apply to me and many others: I own no house, no car, no appliances. But no, rent isn't free, I pay through the nose to live in a location where it's possible to rely on transit (in non pandemic times, anyways). And I do hard work to pay that rent, I'm not sure what business meetings I could illegally sublet out my tiny living room to fetch over $3000 per month. I do get things delivered, quite often (groceries weekly and sometimes restaurant meals). It's absurdly expensive and once the pandemic is over I plan to cut the deliveries out of my life as much as I can (I cancelled prime in January and resubscribed in March, oops!)
game_the0ry 6y ago
This is a part of World Economic Forum marketing the concept of "The Great Reset"[1]. The founder of WEF has wrote a book about this and there is even a podcast. Basically, they are mentally preparing policy makers and their citizen(-slaves) for much a much lower quality of living, with the blame on covid (not the bad policy the WEF attendees have pushed in their respective countries...how convenient). Case in point - the WEF tweeted a (now deleted) video about 8 predictions for 2030. The first is: "You will own nothing. And you'll be happy"[1]. My questions - who does the "owning" and does this apply to the "elites" that attend Davos? I am not one for conspiracy theories, but this is not a conspiracy anymore. The "elites" don't even hide their intentions. [1]https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/ https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/ [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/jio3r3/youll_own_nothing_and_youll_be_happy_the_great/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/jio3r3/youll_ow...
- dtbx 6y ago
  They want to define happiness as the ultimate goal in life. For me it is not happiness, but intelligence. Two weeks ago, the economist asked: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing? [1] Yes. It is dangerous. For them. They want to push happiness. They want to replace GDP with a Gross National Happiness. Their wet dream is a populace of happy but unquestioning people. [1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/10/24/can-too-many-brainy-people-be-a-dangerous-thing https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/10/24/c...
- rvense 6y ago
  The article is four years old.
  - game_the0ry 6y ago
    Indeed. The WEF "elites" have been preparing for a decline in economics as we go into 2030. Now they can blame covid (instead of taking responsibility for bad policy that got us here) and you see that through their marketing of the Great Reset.
    - 6y ago
hckrnwsthrwwy 6y ago
You WILL be happy, and you WILL eat the bugs.
drummer 6y ago
I recommend reading "The best that money can't buy" by Jacque Fresco for a better possible future.
dmitrybrant 6y ago
I have to laugh for two reasons: - This sounds like an absolute nightmare scenario for me and most people I know. - The year 2030 is virtually tomorrow in terms of societal progress. Nothing of the sort will happen by 2030. This is like science fiction authors of the 1970s predicting that we'll colonize the solar system by 2001.
john_moscow 6y ago
A bigger, much bigger problem, is that having a family and raising kids is effectively being outsourced to cheaper countries. Come to think of it, about 50 years ago you could afford a mortgage on a detached house from a single salary, where the other parent would dedicate their time to raising/teaching the kids. That would also make people need each other more, and care more about alignment of values, since that's something you want to pass to the next generation. Currently, 2 median salaries will barely pay for your apartment rent. Worse, in many lower-level jobs you are expected to be an "independent contractor" and stitch your living from several part-time sources, multiplying commute time and draining your time and energy. And I can't even think of what all those people will have to do when the old age catches up to them to the point where the previous generation would simply retire. Most disturbingly, many people don't seem to see a problem with it. There is a lot of activism targeting many flaws of our society, but the fact that having a family and passing your knowledge and beliefs to the next generation has become a luxury, somehow receives very little light.
- godelski 6y ago
  I think part of the problem is that people see criticism as blame and bad actors. Really criticism is about improving and is an essential aspect of any democracy. It's also fair to say that many that complain blame, but some take advantage and deserve blame. But a big problem is that any criticism is considered a bad thing. I actually run into this problem a lot when I tell people it's more important to criticize the leaders of your party, because you have a voice in that party. So you can actually iterate and improve your party. You don't have a voice in the opposing party and many times complaining about the other is used smugly to express how your party is superior. We forgot that critique is about improving, not hating.
  - john_moscow 6y ago
    That's identity politics that stems out of centralization. Imagine 2 hot dog stands across the road. Alice makes sour hot dogs, while Bob makes sweet ones. They both focus on how they make the hot dogs. If fewer people want to buy the sour ones, or customers start giving strange looks, Alice will think about tweaking the recipe. Likewise the Bob can now charge more, or open a spin-off at the next intersection. The fun part is that Alice and Bob can even be buddies. They can go play pool together in the evening, because business is separate from your private life. Now imagine a HotDogCo buying both stands. Both Alice and Bob now follow exactly the same tested and optimized recipe, patented by the corporation. Their hot dogs are indistinguishable. So, they now focus on what they are. If someone gives you a strange look, you interpret it as a personal insult. If Alice sells fewer hot dogs than Bob, she will think it's due to her gender, some other identity attribute. The energy that could be spent on improving the recipe is now spent on blaming Bob across the road for having an unfair advantage, and asking your followers to boycott him. The corporations are happy. Out of each 0.99$ hot dog, 0.5$ goes to the corporate profit, 0.2$ - to the ingredients, and Alice and Bob get paid minimum wage. They are also interchangeable and are now too busy fighting each other to launch an independent stand and keep that $0.5 to themselves. Mission accomplished, HotDogCo stocks soar, while Alice and Bob are now locked into misery, hatred, and zero savings or retirement perspectives.
FreekNortier 6y ago
I bet if the author of this piece spent some time living under communism they would feel completely different.
snappr021 6y ago
Where is the best place to live where creating things that truly make the lives of your community better gets rewarded sustainably? Where people show each other simple respect regardless of the color of their skin, their gender, and their personal beliefs that do not infringe on the reasonable rights of others? Where weapons in any form are left at the gate?
TheDesolate0 6y ago
It's 2020. I own nothing. I have no privacy. I am miserable.
ravenstine 6y ago
What I think is interesting about this article is that, if we saw this back in 2016, it would have been interpreted by the HN community in a more positive light. I say this because it used to be a sort of fantasy by some of us that they could get rich in Silicon Valley by renting a bunk, taking Uber instead of owning a car, eschewing privacy in favor of more convenient app experiences, work out of coworking spaces, and overall live in "the future". With the decline of big cities and people waking up to the reality of globalism, I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how skeptical we've become of such propaganda, yet I still find it surprising. The irony of this vision of the future is that, in order to rent, someone must own. This means that if there ever cam a point where even 25% of the population lived in a fully-rented state of being, a significant portion of the population will have been made into serfs and lords. Of course, we do already have a large degree of this dynamic. It's quite different from the vision of the future we had hundreds of years ago; the one where we imagined everyone being able to develop their own independent fiefdoms within a society.
wave_function 6y ago
The author seems to sidestep what exactly it means to “own nothing”. Here’s thought experiment home ownership(as an example) that relates to some of these issues. Consider two worlds: A) All housing is owned by individuals. Some people own the housing they live in, and pay the maintenance for their housing. Some people are landlords who own more housing than they need and collect rent, while other people don’t own their housing and need to pay that rent. To move up the “housing/economic ladder” you need to save up for a downpayment on a house, and then get a giant (for many people, life-defining) mortgage to do it, and many people never will be able to do it. This is roughly the world we (at least America, I know Germany is different). B) All housing is owned by publicly traded REITs. Some people own an amount of REIT shares equal to the housing they consume (rented from the same RIETs) , such that (Dividends from REITs - Rent To REITs) is equivalent to the maintenance costs they would have paid. The “Landlords” make more from dividends than the rent they pay, and the “renters” own no equity. To move up the “housing/economic ladder” people simply buy shares of the REITs. Building up ‘your fair share’ of equity is a equally life-defining economic task, and many people never will be able to do it. If the wealth inequality in worlds A,B are the same, is world B actually any worse? What’s the difference between spending 50% of your income to rent a shitty apartment owned by a slumlord vs. spending 50% of your income renting from the REIT, which is in turn owned by the “equity slumlord”? If you rent your car, but own “one cars worth” of shares in Zipcar, are you worse off than if you own your car? Conversely, “The sharing economy” is just a "rent-a-center" economy if only a few people own the things being "shared". What is the economy of this world? Who owns the apartment that the “Narrator” is living in? The government? The “Generalized REITs” of world (B)? Mysteriously benevolent rich people? They say “our city” but what does The Narrator do(or own) to merit living in he city more than the people “in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages” Am I missing something here or does the author dodge all of this?
desktopninja 6y ago
The people in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy" were ahead on this :)
eyeball 6y ago
It’s exceedingly creepy that so many powerful people buy into this creepy utopian crap. https://time.com/collection/great-reset/ https://time.com/collection/great-reset/
- game_the0ry 6y ago
  It's because they see the changes coming and they want to control the direction of the narrative. The narrative: - Blame covid, not the bad policy that set the world in this direction (bc then the "elites" might be held accountable for their bad policy). Note that they were preparing for the downturn into 2030 back in as late as 2016 - the WEF "elites" have seen this coming for a while, and covid is an opportunity to aggressively push the narrative. - The changes will be for the better, particularly for your quality of life. Except things are getting worse for the average person. The WEF "elites" are trying to sell blissful ignorance.
  - eyeball 6y ago
    Seems very true. Even McKinsey is getting in on the act: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/the-case-for-stakeholder-capitalism https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector... https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insight...
toinetoine 6y ago
A reminder to take the World Economic Forum's "forecasts" with a grain of salt: https://imgur.com/a/BNIodMv https://imgur.com/a/BNIodMv
bassman9000 6y ago
My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there. BS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Auken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Auken This article is rich coming from a bureaucrat with a guaranteed salary and pension[0]. It's infuriating having to endure these asinine articles with a blatant disregard for basic economy and its central tenet: resources are scarce. Everything's free in their fantasy land, and they never see how that could be abused. I guarantee you they won't be living like that. [0]https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/members/remuneration-and-pensions https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/members/remuneration-a...
rkagerer 6y ago
When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability. I think it actually incentivize the opposite.
magwa101 6y ago
This guy makes the glaring mistake that we will fit ourselves to technology, it is very much the other way around.
bullen 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0BPRn5KbAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0BPRn5KbAg
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  removed due to copyright claim by world economic forum.
Octopodes 6y ago
"My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there." This article is absurd. Why would a business meeting be held in a squalid flop full of empty beer cans? What a laugh.

175 points by a_imho 6y ago

My first thought - who owns your living quarters, the machines which show up, the clothes, etc? These are the people who are really living well as the rest of the ruled are indebted to them forever. IF the answer is government, please just stop. A central ruling class? This has always ended badly. If the answer is private enterprise, ask why accept the role you have chosen and instead work to accumulate the goods you can provide as services. Then you have freedom - from rents, from control, and the removal of spontaneity.

Agebor 6y ago
Why not corporations? They would be owned by the market and compete against each other to offer best quality machinery. Of course you still have the leadership class of people that could be corrupt, but that can be solved e.g. by sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition + you need anti-monopoly laws and some solutions preventing competition-to-the-bottom (e.g. if marginal cost of service becomes 0, it may no longer make sense to compete for it, so it needs to enter some sort of maintenance mode to keep quality in check)
- nonford150 6y ago
  It's possible sortition could be used but unlikely to be successful. Yes, there always is corruption in every institution - part of human nature. It's not going away, no matter what ruling class is in power. My point is - how can someone express true happiness when they are controlled by others? With all these services, there would be no justification for betterment. It all sounds like an advertisement for centralized authoritatism - "We'll take care of your wants and dreams; you just give us your all".

dbsmith83 6y ago

Reminds me of Donald Fagen's I.G.Y., right as the song begins to take a creepy AI turn: """ A just machine to make big decisions Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision We'll be clean when their work is done We'll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young """

smitty1e 6y ago

As long as you have a pair of the correct lenses[1], life is all hugs and cupcakes. > The lenses cause their wearers to see, not their squalid surroundings, but the Overworld, a vastly superior version of reality where a hut is a palace, gruel is a magnificent feast, etc. — "seeing the world through rose-colored glasses" on a grand scale. The 2020 election appears a step in this direction. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Overworld https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Overworld

ragnese 6y ago
> The 2020 election appears a step in this direction. Care to elaborate?
- tylerjwilk00 6y ago
  I am speculating but perhaps parent means TV news and media is a lens (Eye of the Overworld) through which the wearer is shown a world layered over the real world. Media would then change the view to either squalor or majesty (perhaps depending on the elected president).

znpy 6y ago

> One by one all these things became free Science fiction, right there.

imtringued 6y ago
Yeah one guy is going to get a hundred lambos and use them like tissues. Used it for more than a month? Into the trash.
versale 6y ago
Guess what. In Tallinn, Estonia public transport is free for city residents.
- jansan 6y ago
  It's not free. You pay it with your taxes.
  - TT3351 6y ago
    We also pay for public transit with our taxes in many states/cities in the United States, but they still charge riders. Taxation is implicit in public transit, I'm not aware of a single viable public transit model that doesn't rely on taxpayer money.
ragnese 6y ago
Not really, depending on the thing. There (maybe) comes a point where the accounting of who owes what becomes more expensive than the thing you're tracking. It can also go the opposite direction. Air is free right now, but then see the movies Total Recall and The Lorax (not joking).

LandR 6y ago

This reads like a description of a pretty awful dystopia. Or at least one where everything might seem great, until it isn't. And when it turns, turning it back is HARD / near impossible. Do people read this and think that is the sort of life they would want in the future?

jstummbillig 6y ago
Parts of it, for sure! (I find it hard to imagine you would read a text of any notable length and not agree with any of its ideas to some degree.) Something that rings very true for me: Sharing is amazingly underutilized (unfortunately I feel it's a deeply cultural problem right now, but oh well, over time things change): I have absolutely no inherent need to own a car. I don't need to own a Hammer. I don't need to own a bicycle pump. Actually, it's intensely inefficient how many things I do have to own and store right now, to be able to only use 5 Minutes every other week or maybe even only half a year. What I instead need is convenient access to these things. If you can show me a model where I can have that without the burden and cost of solo-owning it – something the author is implying will be a solved problem – I am all for that.
- justinclift 6y ago
  For the Hammer, Bicycle Pump, and other "Tool" type of things the "Tool Library" concept seems to work really well. It's like a "Book Library", (eg centralised local place for storage and co-ordination) but for tools. There's one here in Melbourne (Australia) with about 400 members, and over 1000 tools: * https://www.brunswicktoollibrary.org https://www.brunswicktoollibrary.org * https://brunswicktoollibrary.myturn.com/library/inventory/browse https://brunswicktoollibrary.myturn.com/library/inventory/br... They have power tools (~200), hand tools (~600), garden tools (~200), automotive stuff, electrical/soldering gear, etc. And they have occasional um... workshops (or something similar) teaching people how to repair things. eg: * Bike repair (Sep 2020) - https://www.facebook.com/events/728114278044351/ https://www.facebook.com/events/728114278044351/ * General repair (Feb 2020) https://www.facebook.com/events/613979845834779/ https://www.facebook.com/events/613979845834779/ Seems to work really well, at least in this case. :)

Cloudef 6y ago

It's not like young generations could afford to own anything anyways anymore.

joaomacp 6y ago
Get a job!
- _iyig 6y ago
  >Across the country, Tekin found that "[m]edian home prices have increased at four times the rate of household incomes since 1960," meaning homeownership is increasingly out of reach for many Americans. Rents, meanwhile, have grown roughly twice as fast as adjusted wages between 1960 and 2017. https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/07/25/gap-between-income-growth-and-housing-cost-increases-continues-grow https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/07/25/gap-between-inc...
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Mortgage rates move inversely with house prices (because many buyers, especially marginal buyers) are buying houses based on the monthly payments more than on the HUD-1 statement price. By that admittedly too-simple analysis, houses peaked in unaffordability in 1980 and have been only modestly less affordable since 2000. (Much of this is likely explained by the median house in 2000 being much larger than the median house in 1960, having nearly doubled in size between 1973 and 2016.) [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z-A7AhhKNcVbvq_n8fPP8Fbq65iQ9s8IbkyM7SB6kp4/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z-A7AhhKNcVbvq_n8fPP... [1] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-living-space-per-person-has-nearly-doubled/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...
- aboringusername 6y ago
  Got a job at minimum wage. No future prospects, stuck in a rut, deadend boringness. Proceeds to kill self. At least toast was nice.

emptyparadise 6y ago

Sounds awful.

fancyfredbot 6y ago

"My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there"? No thanks!

jansan 6y ago
And in the evening people can rent it to party. Maybe that is too much. Why not start small and offer your toilet to the public for a dollar per session?
wcerfgba 6y ago
The author ignores the difference between personal property and private property. It is true that you do not use either your living room nor your lawnmower 24/7, but your living room is a highly personal space that you customise to fit your own needs and desires, whereas most people are not as emotionally attached to their lawnmowers.

robbrown451 6y ago

I am unclear as to the author's intent. I expect most people here would find such ideas offensive. And yet so many things seem on the right track. It's the polar opposite of the outrageously inefficient model where everything you use, you own, and for 99.9% of the time, the thing just sits there depreciating or taking up space. Regarding cars, as a city liver who needs a car (but has no driveway or garage), I certainly yearn for a better way. Obviously some things are going to be bothersome, such as the idea of people holding business meetings in your living room when you are away. But I do like the idea of more sharing, and letting go -- at least a bit -- of the urge to own so much stuff.

xwdv 6y ago
The author’s intent is to stimulate rage.
- multjoy 6y ago
  Why would someone’s prediction cause anger? They’re not demanding it or proselytising it as The One True Vision.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jpttsn 6y ago
The very cynical counter argument is rarely spoken: Owning my things provides value even when I’m not using them, because I benefit from excluding other people (my competition) from using them. Example: The sports car locked in my garage helps keep sports cars away from other people, which maintains their benefit of conferring status. It provides utility even if I basically never drive it. This side of human nature is forgotten at our peril.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  It’s not even just exclusion. Can you imagine the scheduling nightmare this would induce? Your personal life would be run minute to minute by your calendar. Any time you wanted to do anything it would either have to be booked in advance or you’d have to wait for delivery. This article seems to be written from the perspective of someone who likes spending their time in coffee shops and riding their bike around in circles. Might as well be a hamster in a cage. It’s like the millennial version of brave new world, no sex, boring drugs, and the pervasive feeling that no one knows what they’re doing.

olivierduval 6y ago

Free like... Google Photo? ;-) Products or services are only free either because - you are the product or - temporarily to kill any other competitors, become a monopole and start charging a lot Because, you know... money has to get in...

ragnese 6y ago
> Products or services are only free either because - you are the product or - temporarily to kill any other competitors, become a monopole and start charging a lot I try to be careful with this phrasing. Because I do believe it's true for most things. But then look at open source software, which powers SO MUCH of our society. Much of the most essential software in the world was written for absolutely free. These days there's lots of open source that is written for corporate PR, but that wasn't always the case. So, just be careful. Products and services really might be labors of love. We need to leave a tiny gap in our cynicism to allow for some goodness to come in. :)

kyrers 6y ago

I don't understand this. As said in other comments, I believe most people wouldn't want most of the things the author describes. If I want to cook at home and have to order everything, I assume it won't just be there in 5 minutes. And then what? If everything is shared does someone come pick it up when someone else needs it? Do I take it somewhere? Also, are people delivering these things? Or robots? And how can this be free? He also mentions that most work can be done at anytime. Well, if the premisse is order everything I need, even for cooking, that has to be done right away, no? I might be totally off, but this doesn't make any sense to me.

ragnese 6y ago
The article is definitely not the "best" version of this vision of the future I've read... Not that I'm advocating for this future in any way, but I assume that a more realistic version of this (especially for as near as 2030) is that many people still have jobs that have an actual schedule. Maybe we can be optimistic and dream that people get to work less than 40 hours a week to have a reasonable quality of life. But the idea of "I own nothing" cannot conceivable extend to personal items like clothing. That doesn't make any sense. In a future of "no ownership", you'd still own your shirt and toothbrush. Probably you'd still own your playstation (but do you actually own your video games today??? Can you play them offline? Does your console have ads?) as well. You wouldn't own a car, or your home (you'd have rights while you occupy your home, but not after you move), maybe you wouldn't own tools that are too expensive/specialized to be almost-free. So for your example, I imagine that immediate delivery services might still exist, but that would be kind of a "high class" service and might be expensive. More than likely, you'd have Amazon dropping off your weekly grocery list on your designated day (e.g., "Wednesdays are trash day and grocery day in my neighborhood"). I highly doubt that we'll have that much more robot workforce by 2030. The only industry where that's possible is brick-and-mortar shopping having no more cashiers, which I do see as somewhat likely.
- kyrers 6y ago
  I'm not even taking into consideration de 2030 part. But yeah, I generally agree with you. Especially in this: > But the idea of "I own nothing" cannot conceivable extend to personal items like clothing. That doesn't make any sense ... maybe you wouldn't own tools that are too expensive/specialized to be almost-free.

thenoblesunfish 6y ago

I think that the part that should be mentioned about this scenario (whether you see it as utopia or distopia), is that the word "privacy" here also stands in for "liberty", "power", etc. The remarkable thing about the scenario depicted is not the wonders of the sharing economy, it's the fact that there is somehow a stable distribution of power that prevents all these own-nothings from being cattle. Not impossible, but that's the challenge.

throwaway316943 6y ago
The story sounds more like they are cattle. Someone or something is setting the rules, designating protected nature reserves, excluding the people who didn’t come along from participating in their economy, scheduling the business meetings in your living room.

AussieWog93 6y ago

I actually don't mind the idea of renting a large number of products that are only used occasionally. A drone dropping off a mixmaster or hair straightener only when you need it actually makes sense in an economy where energy is cheap and space is at a premium. I can't see why this necessitates me not owning clothes, or allowing random strangers to use my living room while I'm out, though. I don't even really see the economic utility in either of those cases.

deleted 6y ago
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sokoloff 6y ago
I only use my toothbrush a few minutes each morning and evening as well. So inefficient.

zelphirkalt 6y ago

> It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much. All that becoming "free" (here meaning "at no cost") will never happen in a capitalistic society such as many of ours. So from that point on it is pure fiction.

chmod775 6y ago
What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provides housing and food at no cost to those who need it. Expand on that and you're at what the author is describing. I personally wouldn't bet money on "this will never happen", would you?
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  I am in Europe and I do not see anything close to what the author is describing. Nothing is really at no cost. It is paid for with tax money or directly. The author is not specifying "for those who could not otherwise afford it", but describing it as at no cost for everyone. Most universities cost money to enrole and attend. Does your baker give out buns at no cost? Is the grocery store giving away all the food at no cost? Has it all become a service at no cost? Nope, none of that has happened and it will not happen, as long as everything needs to be a good business in a capitalistic sense. The single person business or small business or any business cannot escape the reality in this system. Show me that country or even that city please. Show me the social experiment, that tries to get people to work without pay, as long as they have access to "all the things we need in our daily lives". As far as I know, it has never been done. What if you have any extra wish? How will it be supplied, without tracking your every move in such a society? How would different needs be satisfied, everyone having slightly different needs? So that's why I call it pure fiction. You are welcome to show me that model city, which self-sufficiently makes it happen. I might move there.

baradhiren07 6y ago

"I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me." -- This gave me a feeling that I am unable to put into words.

_Microft 6y ago
This is why Neuralink frightens the hell out of me. I feel that no matter how they are planning to protect their brain-computer-interfaces, they will eventually fail at it (like it happens with any sufficiently complex technology). Once that happens, any dictator, autocrat or the 'ethically-challenged tech bro du jour' will use them to gain unfettered access to the minds of people and wreak havoc on what makes people themselves. And good luck working against this once they can read your thoughts.
- georgesC 6y ago
  Just like today's "don't spread personal data on the internet and avoid forms", the future of that will be "don't use a brain-computer device/software that is not entirely open-source". We're warned. Now what we have to do is to work on reducing the power of malicious individuals who would want to read our thoughts by force. That's a political/societal thing more than technical. Or is it? what if it was financially not worth it for anyone to do such things...
ragnese 6y ago
Is that feeling an overwhelming sense of dread caused by the realization that we are already living in that world and most of us don't realize or care? The feeling of helplessness and doom? No? Just me? Never mind...
dwaltrip 6y ago
Humanity does not yet have the wisdom to handle having that much power over everyone. We may never.
- baradhiren07 6y ago

_zamorano_ 6y ago

And I guess, as owning is so awful, the elites will follow the same lifestyle.

RickJWagner 6y ago

People work hardest (and invent new stuff) when they want something for themselves.

ryanackley 6y ago

Personally, I think a future where AI can do most jobs is frightening. It will be run by a group of relatively few elites that are involved in power struggles for control of the AI and the rest of us that do stuff like pick fruit (assuming it's cheaper than having an AI do it) and serve as cannon fodder in the AI armies. I find people who believe that it will lead to some kind of Utopia horribly naive and they have no understanding of human nature.

SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
(I'm using "you" not to mean "you personally", but both uto/dystopian AI futurists.) You have used technology right? You know it is all mostly shit that breaks down, crashes, and gets replaced and thrown out on an 18 month cycle? What I think lots of people get wrong is forgetting just how crappy consumer tech is, and industrial/military isn't far behind. We may get AI working well in 5-25 years, but I doubt deployments will be any less buggy. Repairing & provisioning the billions of bots will be most of the "tech" jobs. Think like the IT dept at your company that hands out new laptops, times a million.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  "AI" is such a vague term we forget that it encompasses both horribly stupid industry/task specific systems as well as grand artificial minds that might one say dwarf all of human intelligence combined. For the first, you are right - certainly in that timescale. For the later, I assume we will need to justify our continued existence.
  - SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
    AI isn't a vague term at all. It is extremely well defined. The best example I can point you to is from the 1990's by Russell & Norvig in their seminal work "Artificial Intelligence" which coalesces a half century of research. They spend the first 100 pages clearly defining the types of domains and vocabulary needed to define the space of AI: it is an exhaustive analysis with citations going back decades, covering early thinkers like Norbert Wiener and Von Neumann. Your claim indicates you haven't really studied the field. But everyone jumping into tensorflow on a raspberry pi has probably had zero exposure the to decades of research put into AI. Your second claim about a giant mind that might dwarf all of humanity, is, well, grandiose sci-fi. Much like Dyson Spheres or Time Travel.

eyeball 6y ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=swfyslAaz2o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=swfyslAaz2o

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lbrito 6y ago

>Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them. The main point of owning things is that you get to use them when you want to use them. People keep those things in cupboards because when they decide on a whim to make pasta they do just that. The same goes for all the rest - having cars, houses and so on. Unless there's some kind of Philip K Dick-style machine that near-instantly delivers good X to your apartment through a vacuum tube or something, that as-a-service bs won't fly. No one wants to wait hours (on the best case given our current logistics network) after deciding to make pasta to actually get the pasta machine.

cnity 6y ago
For the most part, I agree. Some things really do work better in a "borrow" type system. For instance, I'm fixing up my old bike and the sheer number of tools necessary for basic tasks is astounding. I wish there were some local "bike maintenance tools" library where like-minded folks could go to fix up their bikes and use tools. You could probably serve an entire city with a handful of chain tools, and yet it's interesting to consider how many millions of them must be manufactured so that everyone has one for the one time a year they need to replace a bike chain.
- Invictus0 6y ago
  I used to be a member at a community makerspace in Nashua, NH which had stuff like that. Lasercutters, woodworking area, auto bay, machine shop, 3d printing, etc. It was awesome, and sustainably non-profit! http://www.makeitlabs.com/ http://www.makeitlabs.com/
collyw 6y ago
Also you can take pride in things, keep them maintained and tuned to your preferences. Or the opposite. In the case of my car I don't need to take care of the cosmetics. I can load a muddy mountain bike into it and scratch it without needing to pay through the nose as I would wit a rental car. In my case it would be cheaper to rent a car than own one as I use it relatively infrequently, but every time I rent I need to wait in the queue picking it up and dropping it off. It probably uses two or three hours of my life every time I rented.

raspyberr 6y ago

This is only ridiculous because we're in a society that values making money more than anything else. I wouldn't want to everything to be rent/subscription based because the other party will always be looking for how to get more money out of me. If everything were really truly free and I could order waffles that arrived in 3 minutes what incentive would anyone have to change that service in anyway?

pluto9 6y ago
And when you're done eating those waffles, you can have a free toothbrush delivered so you can freshen up before sending it on its way to the next lucky recipient. Owning things has advantages beyond accumulating wealth.

hjrnunes 6y ago

>Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city". I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes. >Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends Whose bike, again?

sybercecurity 6y ago

"Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly." When you start off with this, the rest is understandable. That's the hard part.

efitz 6y ago

The author can’t help but drag ownership back in al the time - “my bicycle’ “my living room”. Also the author ignores the tragedy of the commons - what if the last person broke the pasta maker or didn’t clean it. Where is the labor coming from to keep up all this stuff? How much supply is available? How much does it cost to get a pasta maker delivered? Does it come today or a month from now because I have to reserve one of my city’s 3 pasta makers and that was the soonest available? What if I don’t return it?

quicklime 6y ago

It’s 2020 and I don’t own a house or car, or even a bicycle. I rent all those things when I need them, and it really is great. I also care about privacy. Yes, you have to hand over id to your landlord when you apply for a lease. But unless you can afford to buy your home with cash, you also have to do that to get a mortgage. I hope my bike share program isn’t selling my trip data to other companies. I would like it if it worked more like public transport, where you can easily buy a ticket without id and use it anonymously. There’s nothing inherent about renting that prevents privacy. You can buy cars that have gps trackers on them, which can be tracked by a company in the event of theft. Some cars, like the Nissan GT-R, use them to stop you driving too fast if you’re not at an approved race track. I think regulation is the only way to protect privacy, regardless of whether people rent or own.

mdpm 6y ago

Communities sharing resources, rather than nuclear families is a good idea. Much of the world lives like this already. Not every house on your street needs a lawnmower (or a lawn). Lack of privacy however, is a lack of personhood. It will be eroded, and some aspects of it should change, nudity for example should be less abhorrent to all. But this seems like a thought experiment for the sake of argument, and I fear that arguments are all it will generate.

vagrantJin 6y ago

For much of the world, which still needs a lot of work, posts like this are nothing short of well written fairytales. Africa has been struggling with building roads for possibly millenia. Still struggling today. Will struggle for the next few centuries I gather[0]. And yet, if you live in a huge metro, the idea that something as ubiquitous as tar and paving would be cause for struggle is nothing short of absurd India is one if the fastest growing developing countries and yet, close to 50% of people still burn biomass to meet their energy requirements[1] [0]-https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/september-2002/building-efficient-road-network https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/september-2002/bui... [1](https://earthjournalism.net/stories/millions-die-as-most-indians-still-cook-with-wood-and-dung https://earthjournalism.net/stories/millions-die-as-most-ind...)

hamilyon2 6y ago

Sharing is okay if ultimate owner is one single customer and it rents /reverse rents it to every other customer. Therefore, he has a say in how it is used and how much, at what price etc. Sharing is fine as long as ownership is not gone.

stareatgoats 6y ago

> clean energy became free A substantial part of the article rests on this premise, and it ain't gonna happen, because if it did, someone would use it all in order to get ahead of everyone else. Sorry abt that, welcome back with a new suggestion (some kind of quota system maybe).

raelmiu 6y ago

Yet another communist utopia idea... As usual they're missing: - Who does all that work, and why? Someone must be incentivised to clear that living room between his lounging and the business meetings. - Who decides what stuff you get to use? Oh there's no shopping huh. Great. Everything you rent is just perfect for you? Well who makes sure of that? The AI? So your will is what? A calculation? - The fallacious idea of "Privacy is not a necessary cause I'm not doing anything wrong" except that everyone is, all the time. No system of rules has ever had enough gray areas, and most of the victims of invaded privacy are normal people not doing anything extreme. I realise this is an article meant as a talking point start. I just find this style of typical communist/rousseau utopia very tiresome. It's so incredibly dehumanised and boring. Sorry for the rant.

anoncake 6y ago
That would be a very confused communist who doesn't understand that there is a difference between private and personal property.

dudul 6y ago

And who delivers all these things for you to cook? All this "sharing economy" and "everything as a service" grand vision always forget to specify that they are built on the shoulders of the poor to make life even easier for the rich.

motohagiography 6y ago

What the author describes is humans living in captivity. There is a cadre of people who argue, "really? you wouldn't survive a day outside this so-called captivity, tough guy" and then go on to justify how their various compromises are somehow moral. To me that whole line of argument is just indoors cats lecturing outdoors cats about how to manage the shame of dependency, which outdoors cats just don't have. If we do not learn to limit the power of people who wield tech, we will become their captives. This was the whole reason to be a hacker, to act as a check on having humanity dominated by our own tech.

xapata 6y ago
> living in captivity That's a big leap, and you've given no explanation for it. Perhaps we have different understandings of what captivity means, so it'd be helpful if you define your terms. To me, captivity is a location (or metaphorical location, so a situation) you want to leave, but can't. In the article, the narrator does not indicate a desire to leave, or any difficulty doing so if they wished. The bit about being recorded hints at it, but we'd have to assume there are no other cities in the world, or some other unstated bit about a police state.
- godelski 6y ago
  My cat almost never wants to go outside. She also isn't allowed outside. So is she captive or not? What if I let her out? She's still my pet and while I love her, she's captive. I'm not sure it would be different if she was an outdoor cat except her life expectancy would drop. Would you not define my cat (a pet) as captive?
  - xapata 6y ago
    For most pet cats, no. In my own experience with a pet cat, if he really wanted to run away, he could have. The opposite would happen. He'd sneak out when we weren't paying attention and then we'd accidentally lock him outside. We'd eventually hear the meowing and let him back in.

deleted 6y ago

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Kronmonker 6y ago

What an unintentionally horrifying dystopia. In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there. If you don't pay the rent, it's not your living room. You are camping out in somone's office.

pmontra 6y ago
Of course this was pre-Covid. A similar view of 2030 now would be about distance between people, not strangers reusing other strangers' quarters.

sealthedeal 6y ago

I rent everything and have ZERO assets. Sounds like a solid way to never building any wealth...

nyxtom 6y ago

Free transportation is actually something accessible already in a few places around the world. I could feasibly see this increasing over time as it gains popularity. Considering the savings on actually handling fares, efficiency gains in boarding, possible economic models around more commerce, then you add in more automation in the years ahead..etc https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/us/free-public-transit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/us/free-public-transit.ht... It might not happen everywhere but I do suspect that a number of cities (like the ones already listed here https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/02/free-public-transportation-is-a-reality-in-100-citiesheres-why.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/02/free-public-transportation-i...) will continue to push that direction. Not sure about the other things in the OP, but it's worth considering one aspect of daily life that seems more and more likely as time goes on.

_28jh 6y ago

I've seen this article reach the front page many times and I laugh every single time. There's too many golden lines. > First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. > Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. > Once in awhile, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. > Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now. > Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me. I can't tell if it's written by a normal person, some buzzword-spouting AI, or someone from the 80's who's never interacted with modern technology. EDIT: And of course, how could I forget, "In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there."

syshum 6y ago
>>I can't tell if it's written by a normal person, some buzzword-spouting AI, I hope the latter, because I can not image a normal person viewing any of those things as good... This view of the future right out of a dystopian horror
- hahaiscjaaka 6y ago
  Written by a Scandinavian politician. People from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland (idk about Iceland) are surprisingly ok with trusting institutions won’t harm you, and conformism is the norm.
  - syshum 6y ago
    Conformism is requirement in Authoritarian regimes. Now I am sure I will get massive amount of push back calling Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland authoritarian but it seems in many ways human culture is loosing what desire for freedom, replacing it with conformism, safety, and security which they falsely equate with freedom

TheUndead96 6y ago

This is compounded by the fact that consumer electronics are becoming less useful as general computing devices. Increasingly people "rent" their primary devices. You pay a monthly plan, or a fee upfront, to use a gated smartphone that does very little in comparison to its ability on paper. So in summary: - You do not own media (music, movies, books to some extent). - You do not own the device (in the sense that you can readily program it). - You may not repair the devices you use. - They are all listening to you.

greggyb 6y ago

I only get one coin out of this article, and it's got two sides: 1. Infinity is really, really big. 2. 0 is really, really small. Infinite clean energy with no cost? Nonexistent transaction costs (economics meaning)? Yeah, this is probably a very mild description of what the world might look like with those constraints removed. To me, this is the economic equivalent of a think-piece on what the world would be like if gravity and magnetism disappeared as forces. It may be interesting, and there is likely value in such counterfactual thinking. But it's not something we need to plan for or a goal to aspire to. It's a thought experiment.

anm89 6y ago
As this interesting article points out, the surface of the earth would exceed the boiling temperature in about 400 years if we sustain 2.3% energy consumption growth over that period. Something I think a lot of techno utopians have not considered when they mention unlimited energy. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
bccdee 6y ago
Yeah, it has a strange sense of economic blindness. The article seems to think that the big innovations they're talking about are "renting clothes by the day," or "everyone uses driverless cars," but in reality the innovation is in how the economy doesn't need money to function. Like, I get that this is a post-automation utopia, but at no point in history has capitalist automation ever meant that people need to do less work. It has always meant that people lose their income and go hungry. "We created a society which encourages people to innovate & pitch in without punishing them when they don't work" is, sociologically speaking, a much more interesting and important development than "the algorithm recommends me clothes in the morning." The most interesting thing is that the author seems not to realize that this all entails an end to capitalism. They say things like "my living room is used for business meetings when I'm not there," but what business meetings? How is anyone making money in a society where everything's free? If no one's making money, is it even a business? Does everyone do it purely out of passion? Or do we needed some form of soft incentive for people to be involved in the economy? What form would that take? This article raises a million interesting questions, but seems interested only in entertaining the most boring ones, like "how would algorithms be involved with this?" and "what if I had no privacy?" It's as if they picture every business being like Gmail, where it's free because that's in the interest of the service provider. But Google still needs to turn a profit from somewhere. It' can't be Gmails all the way down. He's trying to propose communism, but imagining that that would merely entail businesses gradually reducing all their prices down to zero for some unexplained reason.

samirillian 6y ago

Ah yes the myth of the laplacean demon where apps allow us to know the location and fair price of every commodity and service in the market; a fantasy only sustainable if you live in Utrecht or some other core city running on the labor of the economic periphery.

helen___keller 6y ago

Ironically, despite how this article is both patently fictional and fairly dystopian, several of the premises actually do apply to me and many others: I own no house, no car, no appliances. But no, rent isn't free, I pay through the nose to live in a location where it's possible to rely on transit (in non pandemic times, anyways). And I do hard work to pay that rent, I'm not sure what business meetings I could illegally sublet out my tiny living room to fetch over $3000 per month. I do get things delivered, quite often (groceries weekly and sometimes restaurant meals). It's absurdly expensive and once the pandemic is over I plan to cut the deliveries out of my life as much as I can (I cancelled prime in January and resubscribed in March, oops!)

game_the0ry 6y ago

This is a part of World Economic Forum marketing the concept of "The Great Reset"[1]. The founder of WEF has wrote a book about this and there is even a podcast. Basically, they are mentally preparing policy makers and their citizen(-slaves) for much a much lower quality of living, with the blame on covid (not the bad policy the WEF attendees have pushed in their respective countries...how convenient). Case in point - the WEF tweeted a (now deleted) video about 8 predictions for 2030. The first is: "You will own nothing. And you'll be happy"[1]. My questions - who does the "owning" and does this apply to the "elites" that attend Davos? I am not one for conspiracy theories, but this is not a conspiracy anymore. The "elites" don't even hide their intentions. [1]https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/ https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/ [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/jio3r3/youll_own_nothing_and_youll_be_happy_the_great/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/jio3r3/youll_ow...

dtbx 6y ago
They want to define happiness as the ultimate goal in life. For me it is not happiness, but intelligence. Two weeks ago, the economist asked: Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing? [1] Yes. It is dangerous. For them. They want to push happiness. They want to replace GDP with a Gross National Happiness. Their wet dream is a populace of happy but unquestioning people. [1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/10/24/can-too-many-brainy-people-be-a-dangerous-thing https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/10/24/c...
rvense 6y ago
The article is four years old.
- game_the0ry 6y ago
  Indeed. The WEF "elites" have been preparing for a decline in economics as we go into 2030. Now they can blame covid (instead of taking responsibility for bad policy that got us here) and you see that through their marketing of the Great Reset.
  - 6y ago

hckrnwsthrwwy 6y ago

You WILL be happy, and you WILL eat the bugs.

drummer 6y ago

I recommend reading "The best that money can't buy" by Jacque Fresco for a better possible future.

dmitrybrant 6y ago

I have to laugh for two reasons: - This sounds like an absolute nightmare scenario for me and most people I know. - The year 2030 is virtually tomorrow in terms of societal progress. Nothing of the sort will happen by 2030. This is like science fiction authors of the 1970s predicting that we'll colonize the solar system by 2001.

john_moscow 6y ago

A bigger, much bigger problem, is that having a family and raising kids is effectively being outsourced to cheaper countries. Come to think of it, about 50 years ago you could afford a mortgage on a detached house from a single salary, where the other parent would dedicate their time to raising/teaching the kids. That would also make people need each other more, and care more about alignment of values, since that's something you want to pass to the next generation. Currently, 2 median salaries will barely pay for your apartment rent. Worse, in many lower-level jobs you are expected to be an "independent contractor" and stitch your living from several part-time sources, multiplying commute time and draining your time and energy. And I can't even think of what all those people will have to do when the old age catches up to them to the point where the previous generation would simply retire. Most disturbingly, many people don't seem to see a problem with it. There is a lot of activism targeting many flaws of our society, but the fact that having a family and passing your knowledge and beliefs to the next generation has become a luxury, somehow receives very little light.

godelski 6y ago
I think part of the problem is that people see criticism as blame and bad actors. Really criticism is about improving and is an essential aspect of any democracy. It's also fair to say that many that complain blame, but some take advantage and deserve blame. But a big problem is that any criticism is considered a bad thing. I actually run into this problem a lot when I tell people it's more important to criticize the leaders of your party, because you have a voice in that party. So you can actually iterate and improve your party. You don't have a voice in the opposing party and many times complaining about the other is used smugly to express how your party is superior. We forgot that critique is about improving, not hating.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  That's identity politics that stems out of centralization. Imagine 2 hot dog stands across the road. Alice makes sour hot dogs, while Bob makes sweet ones. They both focus on how they make the hot dogs. If fewer people want to buy the sour ones, or customers start giving strange looks, Alice will think about tweaking the recipe. Likewise the Bob can now charge more, or open a spin-off at the next intersection. The fun part is that Alice and Bob can even be buddies. They can go play pool together in the evening, because business is separate from your private life. Now imagine a HotDogCo buying both stands. Both Alice and Bob now follow exactly the same tested and optimized recipe, patented by the corporation. Their hot dogs are indistinguishable. So, they now focus on what they are. If someone gives you a strange look, you interpret it as a personal insult. If Alice sells fewer hot dogs than Bob, she will think it's due to her gender, some other identity attribute. The energy that could be spent on improving the recipe is now spent on blaming Bob across the road for having an unfair advantage, and asking your followers to boycott him. The corporations are happy. Out of each 0.99$ hot dog, 0.5$ goes to the corporate profit, 0.2$ - to the ingredients, and Alice and Bob get paid minimum wage. They are also interchangeable and are now too busy fighting each other to launch an independent stand and keep that $0.5 to themselves. Mission accomplished, HotDogCo stocks soar, while Alice and Bob are now locked into misery, hatred, and zero savings or retirement perspectives.

FreekNortier 6y ago

I bet if the author of this piece spent some time living under communism they would feel completely different.

snappr021 6y ago

Where is the best place to live where creating things that truly make the lives of your community better gets rewarded sustainably? Where people show each other simple respect regardless of the color of their skin, their gender, and their personal beliefs that do not infringe on the reasonable rights of others? Where weapons in any form are left at the gate?

TheDesolate0 6y ago

It's 2020. I own nothing. I have no privacy. I am miserable.

ravenstine 6y ago

What I think is interesting about this article is that, if we saw this back in 2016, it would have been interpreted by the HN community in a more positive light. I say this because it used to be a sort of fantasy by some of us that they could get rich in Silicon Valley by renting a bunk, taking Uber instead of owning a car, eschewing privacy in favor of more convenient app experiences, work out of coworking spaces, and overall live in "the future". With the decline of big cities and people waking up to the reality of globalism, I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how skeptical we've become of such propaganda, yet I still find it surprising. The irony of this vision of the future is that, in order to rent, someone must own. This means that if there ever cam a point where even 25% of the population lived in a fully-rented state of being, a significant portion of the population will have been made into serfs and lords. Of course, we do already have a large degree of this dynamic. It's quite different from the vision of the future we had hundreds of years ago; the one where we imagined everyone being able to develop their own independent fiefdoms within a society.

wave_function 6y ago

The author seems to sidestep what exactly it means to “own nothing”. Here’s thought experiment home ownership(as an example) that relates to some of these issues. Consider two worlds: A) All housing is owned by individuals. Some people own the housing they live in, and pay the maintenance for their housing. Some people are landlords who own more housing than they need and collect rent, while other people don’t own their housing and need to pay that rent. To move up the “housing/economic ladder” you need to save up for a downpayment on a house, and then get a giant (for many people, life-defining) mortgage to do it, and many people never will be able to do it. This is roughly the world we (at least America, I know Germany is different). B) All housing is owned by publicly traded REITs. Some people own an amount of REIT shares equal to the housing they consume (rented from the same RIETs) , such that (Dividends from REITs - Rent To REITs) is equivalent to the maintenance costs they would have paid. The “Landlords” make more from dividends than the rent they pay, and the “renters” own no equity. To move up the “housing/economic ladder” people simply buy shares of the REITs. Building up ‘your fair share’ of equity is a equally life-defining economic task, and many people never will be able to do it. If the wealth inequality in worlds A,B are the same, is world B actually any worse? What’s the difference between spending 50% of your income to rent a shitty apartment owned by a slumlord vs. spending 50% of your income renting from the REIT, which is in turn owned by the “equity slumlord”? If you rent your car, but own “one cars worth” of shares in Zipcar, are you worse off than if you own your car? Conversely, “The sharing economy” is just a "rent-a-center" economy if only a few people own the things being "shared". What is the economy of this world? Who owns the apartment that the “Narrator” is living in? The government? The “Generalized REITs” of world (B)? Mysteriously benevolent rich people? They say “our city” but what does The Narrator do(or own) to merit living in he city more than the people “in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages” Am I missing something here or does the author dodge all of this?

desktopninja 6y ago

The people in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy" were ahead on this :)

eyeball 6y ago

It’s exceedingly creepy that so many powerful people buy into this creepy utopian crap. https://time.com/collection/great-reset/ https://time.com/collection/great-reset/

game_the0ry 6y ago
It's because they see the changes coming and they want to control the direction of the narrative. The narrative: - Blame covid, not the bad policy that set the world in this direction (bc then the "elites" might be held accountable for their bad policy). Note that they were preparing for the downturn into 2030 back in as late as 2016 - the WEF "elites" have seen this coming for a while, and covid is an opportunity to aggressively push the narrative. - The changes will be for the better, particularly for your quality of life. Except things are getting worse for the average person. The WEF "elites" are trying to sell blissful ignorance.
- eyeball 6y ago
  Seems very true. Even McKinsey is getting in on the act: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/the-case-for-stakeholder-capitalism https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector... https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insight...

toinetoine 6y ago

A reminder to take the World Economic Forum's "forecasts" with a grain of salt: https://imgur.com/a/BNIodMv https://imgur.com/a/BNIodMv

bassman9000 6y ago

My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there. BS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Auken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Auken This article is rich coming from a bureaucrat with a guaranteed salary and pension[0]. It's infuriating having to endure these asinine articles with a blatant disregard for basic economy and its central tenet: resources are scarce. Everything's free in their fantasy land, and they never see how that could be abused. I guarantee you they won't be living like that. [0]https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/members/remuneration-and-pensions https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/members/remuneration-a...

rkagerer 6y ago

When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability. I think it actually incentivize the opposite.

magwa101 6y ago

This guy makes the glaring mistake that we will fit ourselves to technology, it is very much the other way around.

bullen 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0BPRn5KbAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0BPRn5KbAg

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
removed due to copyright claim by world economic forum.

Octopodes 6y ago

"My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there." This article is absurd. Why would a business meeting be held in a squalid flop full of empty beer cans? What a laugh.