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I can see that happening. Thinking about Canada. The other day I calculated it would take 25 hours of work for the minimum wage worker to afford a weekend campi

I can see that happening. Thinking about Canada. The other day I calculated it would take 25 hours of work for the minimum wage worker to afford a weekend camping. And I think that's a pretty good indication we're pretty close collapse. Workers not being paid enough, and out of control inflation is how the soviet system collapsed.

hengri 4y ago
Do you think that average people throughout history had the means of going on weekend camping trips.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  IDK. Camping can be very cheap. I went on camping trips all the time as a teenager and I had almost no money. Unless by "camping" you are talking about towing a small mobile home into a paved "campground" with electricity, water, showers and bathrooms.
- aerostable_slug 4y ago
  I think they were called "hunting / gathering" for most of human history. Heck, non-working pets (e.g. herd guardians, vermin control, etc.) were nearly unknown until relatively recently, because who had the wealth to feed a non-productive mouth?
- LocalPCGuy 4y ago
  It's more just what they had to do anytime they traveled longer than a day's distance. I'm sure that happened for pleasure, but a trip specifically to camp seems like something that is more relegated to the modern age where you can get to a destination easily without having to just camp along the way.
- Out_of_Characte 4y ago
  The average person throughout history did not have a refrigerator or global trade. Therefore any decline in todays society is moot.
- dkarl 4y ago
  I vaguely remember a magazine biography of an Italian scientist who lived near the mountains. In the summer, he liked to strike out on Friday afternoon with a hunk of bread and a hunk of cheese, think about scientific problems while he hiked around in the mountains, sleep under his jacket, and come home on Saturday or Sunday. In his location he didn't need any more material wealth to "go camping" than he needed to stay at home. It might be more the opposite, that only in relatively recent times have people been able to get away for a day or two without doing what we would call "camping." If you were a hunter-gatherer you'd grab a buddy (or not), invent some excuse like checking for game in the next valley, and rough it for a night or two. Now if you fuck off for a weekend you can check into a hotel or an AirBNB.
InCityDreams 4y ago
Based on what/ divided how? Purchasing a tent, utensils, backpack etc ie starting from scratch, or assuming everything already paid for and just 'real costs' ie food, tent-place (ground rent?)? Decathlon.fr or .co.uk prices can be pretty cheap, but I'm not sure where the costs start.
- dukeofdoom 4y ago
  Based on Canadian Prices, a working guy would spend. And not even going very far from home. Gas $100 Beer $50 Cigs $15 Ontario Park Campsite $59/night x 2 = $120 Firewood 2 x $15 = $30 Some basic sausages and food = $50 Total $375 Min Wage $15/hour. Hours of work = 25 hours Actually it would take more than 25 hours, because most likely that person does not live with Grandma and has shelter / food expenses. So might need to save up for a month, if not months.
  - weaksauce 4y ago
    this is for how many people? because camping trip fees are split usually. i assume 50 dollars in beer is not for one person in a weekend... when I was there right before the pandemic the beer didn't cost anywhere near that.
    - dukeofdoom 4y ago
      One guy definitely can drink a case over a weekend. I dont think you hanged out with many working people. I think most would not bring a 12 pack, but a full case. But even if they did. Last I rember there was $10 covinince charge for getting the campsite tickets online, which you would want to do. Because you will not drive out there without knowing you have a spot if you saved up for a camping trip.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
    For someone from the other side of the planet (former USSR), this list feels very weird. I can't imagine paying for a campsite (nobody here does, you just go wherever you want and take whatever place is available), or firewood (you can always find a dry tree trunk somewhere along the road, or there's a friend of a friend who will bring some from his own house). So although our minimum wages are absolutely atrocious by your standards (officially it's around $100 per month IIRC, but I haven't heard of anybody making below $200), half of this list doesn't apply, and the other half is cheaper by 5-20 times (a pack of cigs is ~$1 if I'm not mistaken, a liter of gasoline around 50 cents, etc). Considering all of this, we've been chugging along just fine… or not, actually. Braces yourselves, I guess.
debesyla 4y ago
Isn't 25 work hours a really low amount of work? That's just a tiny bit more than 3 work days for whole weekend camping?
- est31 4y ago
  If the minimum wage worker had free housing, food, electricity, etc. your calculation would make sense. Generally if you are a minimum wage worker who is working full time, a large component of your disposable income goes into those things (living paycheck to paycheck). So having a disposable income at all is a luxury, even if it's 10% of your income. Assuming that 10% figure, you can multiply those 3 days by 1/10% = 10 and you get 30 days of working for one weekend of camping. Not really great.
londons_explore 4y ago
My weekends camping rarely cost me more than $20. $1.50 on food per meal. $1 on camping gas or coal for the weekend. $200 of gear, but it will last me 20+ camping weekends. $0 on travel, because I'll be hiking.
- ssully 4y ago
  It was a viral post from a few weeks back. From what I remember the main cost increase was because of gas prices.
- kodt 4y ago
  You can hike to the campground from your home?
johnwalkr 4y ago
That’s actually a really interesting metric. Cost of living has really shot up in Canada while wages have stagnated. Everyone knows that housing has increased dramatically. This leads to less disposable income obviously. I’m 40 and grew up in Edmonton. Once or twice a year, as a kid and into my late 20s, my family and and/or I did a hotel type vacation in Banff or Jasper once a year, which seemed expensive at the time, and multiple times camping in the Rockies per year, which basically seemed free. My slightly more wealthy friends’ parents had a cabin and boat. Now if I were to live in Edmonton again, I could probably still camp as if it were free but I appreciate your assessment that a minimum wage worked could not. Because I certainly could as a minimum wage worker back in the day. And I probably would never justify a domestic hotel type weekend or week long trip within Canada.
- eastbound 4y ago
  I’ll take the devil’s position: Your are not owed by nature a footprint on the ground, or a weekend camping. Manille (Manila? Capital of Philippines) has 43079 inhabitants per square kilometer (23sqm per person, including agriculture), China tries to do the same. The key is nature doesn’t owe you democracy, and governments neither. We can store many people vertically if we remove their personality. What I mean is poverty doesn’t make the system itself collapse, it can actually survive pretty far, even thrive while everyone is expunged. After all, USSR only collapsed in 1991, 69 years after Stalin took power, after killing probably 1/4 of its population in gulags.
  - johnwalkr 4y ago
    I don't know why I'm replying to someone who thinks governments don't owe us democracy but people are allowed to complain when things get worse and I would prefer if previous policy didn't disallow increasing density in Canada. Incidentally I live in Tokyo now and it's now cheaper than Vancouver and the density (which is actually not as high as people think[1]) is a positive, not a negative. [1] Just for fun, I checked densities. Tokyo 23 wards (the actual city of Tokyo): 14,500/km^2. Downtown Vancouver: 17,000/km^2. Downtown Edmonton: 5,000/km^2
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
panick21_ 4y ago
> Workers not being paid enough, and out of control inflation is how the soviet system collapsed. No its not actually. If anything the Soviet system collapsed because the elites didn't really like it that much. The elites had lost interest in preserving the system. Elites didn't like the party discipline. There is a reason why Soviet collapsed and China didn't. Just having demonstrations and unhappy population does magically lead to successful overthrows of governments.
- dukeofdoom 4y ago
  Workers going on a mass strike across the Easter Block countries in the "Solidarity" movement in the late 80s is how its generally viewed as being the beginning of the end of the soviet system. The communist governments were put in a position where there were going to have to massacre their own people openly revolting in massive strikes. I don't think Chinese government would survive another Tiananmen square incident.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > is how its generally viewed Yes and as many historical topics, it a romantic tail that people like to tell rather then a great analysis of the truth. > The communist governments were put in a position where there were going to have to massacre their own people openly revolting in massive strikes. That's what many governments in history did. And that's exactly the point, the reason a state fails is when the elites have not enough reason to defend the current system. When they do, then the army shows up. And in Hungary in 1956 they were willing for example.
- vintermann 4y ago
  I like Francis Spufford's comment: Stalin was a gangster who thought he was a social scientist. Krushchev was a gangster who hoped he was a social scientist. Brezhnev and those who came after him were gangsters who only pretended to be social scientists. We can add to that, after the failed hardliner coup, the country was run by gangsters who didn't even care to pretend they were anything else.

hengri 4y ago

Do you think that average people throughout history had the means of going on weekend camping trips.

SoftTalker 4y ago
IDK. Camping can be very cheap. I went on camping trips all the time as a teenager and I had almost no money. Unless by "camping" you are talking about towing a small mobile home into a paved "campground" with electricity, water, showers and bathrooms.
aerostable_slug 4y ago
I think they were called "hunting / gathering" for most of human history. Heck, non-working pets (e.g. herd guardians, vermin control, etc.) were nearly unknown until relatively recently, because who had the wealth to feed a non-productive mouth?
LocalPCGuy 4y ago
It's more just what they had to do anytime they traveled longer than a day's distance. I'm sure that happened for pleasure, but a trip specifically to camp seems like something that is more relegated to the modern age where you can get to a destination easily without having to just camp along the way.
Out_of_Characte 4y ago
The average person throughout history did not have a refrigerator or global trade. Therefore any decline in todays society is moot.
dkarl 4y ago
I vaguely remember a magazine biography of an Italian scientist who lived near the mountains. In the summer, he liked to strike out on Friday afternoon with a hunk of bread and a hunk of cheese, think about scientific problems while he hiked around in the mountains, sleep under his jacket, and come home on Saturday or Sunday. In his location he didn't need any more material wealth to "go camping" than he needed to stay at home. It might be more the opposite, that only in relatively recent times have people been able to get away for a day or two without doing what we would call "camping." If you were a hunter-gatherer you'd grab a buddy (or not), invent some excuse like checking for game in the next valley, and rough it for a night or two. Now if you fuck off for a weekend you can check into a hotel or an AirBNB.

InCityDreams 4y ago

Based on what/ divided how? Purchasing a tent, utensils, backpack etc ie starting from scratch, or assuming everything already paid for and just 'real costs' ie food, tent-place (ground rent?)? Decathlon.fr or .co.uk prices can be pretty cheap, but I'm not sure where the costs start.

dukeofdoom 4y ago
Based on Canadian Prices, a working guy would spend. And not even going very far from home. Gas $100 Beer $50 Cigs $15 Ontario Park Campsite $59/night x 2 = $120 Firewood 2 x $15 = $30 Some basic sausages and food = $50 Total $375 Min Wage $15/hour. Hours of work = 25 hours Actually it would take more than 25 hours, because most likely that person does not live with Grandma and has shelter / food expenses. So might need to save up for a month, if not months.
- weaksauce 4y ago
  this is for how many people? because camping trip fees are split usually. i assume 50 dollars in beer is not for one person in a weekend... when I was there right before the pandemic the beer didn't cost anywhere near that.
  - dukeofdoom 4y ago
    One guy definitely can drink a case over a weekend. I dont think you hanged out with many working people. I think most would not bring a 12 pack, but a full case. But even if they did. Last I rember there was $10 covinince charge for getting the campsite tickets online, which you would want to do. Because you will not drive out there without knowing you have a spot if you saved up for a camping trip.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  For someone from the other side of the planet (former USSR), this list feels very weird. I can't imagine paying for a campsite (nobody here does, you just go wherever you want and take whatever place is available), or firewood (you can always find a dry tree trunk somewhere along the road, or there's a friend of a friend who will bring some from his own house). So although our minimum wages are absolutely atrocious by your standards (officially it's around $100 per month IIRC, but I haven't heard of anybody making below $200), half of this list doesn't apply, and the other half is cheaper by 5-20 times (a pack of cigs is ~$1 if I'm not mistaken, a liter of gasoline around 50 cents, etc). Considering all of this, we've been chugging along just fine… or not, actually. Braces yourselves, I guess.

debesyla 4y ago

Isn't 25 work hours a really low amount of work? That's just a tiny bit more than 3 work days for whole weekend camping?

est31 4y ago
If the minimum wage worker had free housing, food, electricity, etc. your calculation would make sense. Generally if you are a minimum wage worker who is working full time, a large component of your disposable income goes into those things (living paycheck to paycheck). So having a disposable income at all is a luxury, even if it's 10% of your income. Assuming that 10% figure, you can multiply those 3 days by 1/10% = 10 and you get 30 days of working for one weekend of camping. Not really great.

londons_explore 4y ago

My weekends camping rarely cost me more than $20. $1.50 on food per meal. $1 on camping gas or coal for the weekend. $200 of gear, but it will last me 20+ camping weekends. $0 on travel, because I'll be hiking.

ssully 4y ago
It was a viral post from a few weeks back. From what I remember the main cost increase was because of gas prices.
kodt 4y ago
You can hike to the campground from your home?

johnwalkr 4y ago

That’s actually a really interesting metric. Cost of living has really shot up in Canada while wages have stagnated. Everyone knows that housing has increased dramatically. This leads to less disposable income obviously. I’m 40 and grew up in Edmonton. Once or twice a year, as a kid and into my late 20s, my family and and/or I did a hotel type vacation in Banff or Jasper once a year, which seemed expensive at the time, and multiple times camping in the Rockies per year, which basically seemed free. My slightly more wealthy friends’ parents had a cabin and boat. Now if I were to live in Edmonton again, I could probably still camp as if it were free but I appreciate your assessment that a minimum wage worked could not. Because I certainly could as a minimum wage worker back in the day. And I probably would never justify a domestic hotel type weekend or week long trip within Canada.

eastbound 4y ago
I’ll take the devil’s position: Your are not owed by nature a footprint on the ground, or a weekend camping. Manille (Manila? Capital of Philippines) has 43079 inhabitants per square kilometer (23sqm per person, including agriculture), China tries to do the same. The key is nature doesn’t owe you democracy, and governments neither. We can store many people vertically if we remove their personality. What I mean is poverty doesn’t make the system itself collapse, it can actually survive pretty far, even thrive while everyone is expunged. After all, USSR only collapsed in 1991, 69 years after Stalin took power, after killing probably 1/4 of its population in gulags.
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  I don't know why I'm replying to someone who thinks governments don't owe us democracy but people are allowed to complain when things get worse and I would prefer if previous policy didn't disallow increasing density in Canada. Incidentally I live in Tokyo now and it's now cheaper than Vancouver and the density (which is actually not as high as people think[1]) is a positive, not a negative. [1] Just for fun, I checked densities. Tokyo 23 wards (the actual city of Tokyo): 14,500/km^2. Downtown Vancouver: 17,000/km^2. Downtown Edmonton: 5,000/km^2
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

panick21_ 4y ago

> Workers not being paid enough, and out of control inflation is how the soviet system collapsed. No its not actually. If anything the Soviet system collapsed because the elites didn't really like it that much. The elites had lost interest in preserving the system. Elites didn't like the party discipline. There is a reason why Soviet collapsed and China didn't. Just having demonstrations and unhappy population does magically lead to successful overthrows of governments.

dukeofdoom 4y ago
Workers going on a mass strike across the Easter Block countries in the "Solidarity" movement in the late 80s is how its generally viewed as being the beginning of the end of the soviet system. The communist governments were put in a position where there were going to have to massacre their own people openly revolting in massive strikes. I don't think Chinese government would survive another Tiananmen square incident.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > is how its generally viewed Yes and as many historical topics, it a romantic tail that people like to tell rather then a great analysis of the truth. > The communist governments were put in a position where there were going to have to massacre their own people openly revolting in massive strikes. That's what many governments in history did. And that's exactly the point, the reason a state fails is when the elites have not enough reason to defend the current system. When they do, then the army shows up. And in Hungary in 1956 they were willing for example.
vintermann 4y ago
I like Francis Spufford's comment: Stalin was a gangster who thought he was a social scientist. Krushchev was a gangster who hoped he was a social scientist. Brezhnev and those who came after him were gangsters who only pretended to be social scientists. We can add to that, after the failed hardliner coup, the country was run by gangsters who didn't even care to pretend they were anything else.