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> If the 20th-21st century has taught us anything, it's that consumerism is a very powerful motivator. Or, perhaps, that there is much attention on consumers w
by prepend 6y ago
> If the 20th-21st century has taught us anything, it's that consumerism is a very powerful motivator.
Or, perhaps, that there is much attention on consumers who spend significantly as they have “louder” lifestyles that are easy to show.
Poverty rates are high with 14% of the US under the poverty line [0] and I don’t think consumerism is motivating them very much.
And I think it’s risky to equate considering as a large scale motivator based on extrapolating mass consumer behavior to all.
[0] https://www.prb.org/usdata/ https://www.prb.org/usdata/
- danShumway 6y agoWell, yeah, like I said: > Whether consumerism is a powerful enough motivator... I just think people are very over-confident talking about what is definitely going to happen in a system that has basically never been tried before. People are really eager to look at populations and make very strong assertions about what their intrinsic motivators are with (in my mind) little evidence. > and I don’t think consumerism is motivating them very much. Are 14% of the population below poverty levels because they like living there? Because our systems discourage saving money once you're on wellfare? Because of market pressures? We have basically zero large-scale experiments, but people on both sides of the UBI test seem really confident that they know what everyone will do.