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> The author wants to live in a world where everyone gets everything at no cost: that isn't even admiribale, it's childish. Why is it childish to want a life i

> The author wants to live in a world where everyone gets everything at no cost: that isn't even admiribale, it's childish. Why is it childish to want a life in which you don’t need to labor to have everything you need to be happy? It’s childish to think that human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life? Why do we need to earn those things? Are they not inherent within us?

M4v3R 4y ago
Because at the end of the day you need to obtain food, clothing, shelter and other necessities to even survive to the next day, not even mentioning doing anything for pleasure. Either through labor of your own, or by doing labor to earn money to buy these for you possibly your family. Thinking that "human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life" is childish - the world doesn't owe us anything, and if we want to continue living on it we have to earn it.
- neoromantique 4y ago
  It is getting increasingly easier to provide these essentials as time goes on, so why is it unimaginable that there might be a day when those are default, and not something that you need labour for?
  - generalizations 4y ago
    Yes, it's increasingly easier. The ratio of (people consuming) / (people producing) has been growing massively. However, it's impossible for (people producing) to reach zero. And, unless (people producing) = 0, there will always be a cost to the goods produced, and (people consuming) has to pay that.
- trial3 4y ago
  this approach, to me, feels even more childish and lacking in nuance than “human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life” the “world” may not owe anyone anything, but do we as individuals, groups, tribes, governments, and a species owe each other some attempt at that? how does this view extend into discussions about marginalized, disabled, the idea of social safety nets?
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  It’s a challenging time in human history because we’re now capable of producing enough food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities for every human on Earth. That will only get more true as population growth slows while innovation continues to drive productivity improvements. But we’re still culturally in the mindset you’re describing: that we must each individually wrest life out of the wilderness day by day. As a result we seem to be inventing more and more complex and bizarre ways of forcing that reality to still exist. Like pointless YouTube challenge videos done solely to provide ad inventory so well-off people can sell things to other well-off people.
  - itsyaboi 4y ago
    >we’re now capable of producing enough food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities for every human on Earth This should come with a footnote that it's only possible due to slave labor in third world countries. A much smaller subset of people would be buying iPhones if they were $5000.
    - blep_ 4y ago
      iPhones are not food, clothing, or shelter.
      - itsyaboi 4y ago
        Many would consider them an "other necessity", if we're being pedantic.
  - Orothrim 4y ago
    We aren't inventing more and more complex ways of forcing that reality to still exist. That reality does still exist, it's close to not existing, maybe only another 300-400 years, but it's still 100% true right now. You are ignoring the massive logistical challenge of getting all those things to all those people and spreading all that knowledge to get production happening. Additionally, our current system is built on a 100 leaning towers of pisa. Look at Ukraine, it gets invaded and our global supply of food is massively impacted, many people are going to starve and freeze to death over the war in Ukraine this winter who have never set foot in Ukraine or Russia.
- wruza 4y ago
  There is no shortage of ways to devalue labor though. We all know people who work and would be not rich but prosperous enough, if not the economy system they live in held them hostage. Arguing that income disparity is their fault is neither humane nor logical. Childish is an expectation that people must spend their childhood, teen age or adult mental health on learning hard how to dig themselves out of a pit that they never had a choice not to be born into, when your favorite system at some point makes it adequate for them to present you a knife and to ask for your wallet to just survive, or to participate in a humiliating activity if they have no courage to do the former. It’s up to us to decide how it all should work, not to some trivial natural limitations.
- bestcoder69 4y ago
  > Thinking that "human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life" is childish - the world doesn't owe us anything, and if we want to continue living on it we have to earn it. That's just, like, your opinion, man. But, IRL there are plenty of people that require care-taking, who we never expect any labor from.
  - bryan_w 4y ago
    Isn't that survivorship bias? There are plenty of people that required care-taking and died of exposure. It seems there's a capacity limit to the safety net and if you go over it, starvation ensues.
flerchin 4y ago
The folks working on farms, few though they are in the modern world, deserve compensation. What will the people not working on the farm do to deserve the fruits of their labor? Whatever it will be, will be work. Same for the folks building houses, and all the rest of modern infrastructure that we depend upon to live.
- jerojero 4y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying we shouldn't compensate people doing labour that is required. I think the problem is that we don't really have a societal model that is doing its hardest to cover these needs first before other ones. If we used the money we spend on, say, entertainment or high-end mobile phone industry on R&D regarding farms and food yield and distribution we might see lots more advancements in this area. But that's not really something that is desirable in our modern economies; for people in the USA and most of the developed world we don't really need to invest any more in solving hunger because we are really not hungry anymore. And the ones that are hungry we don't really acknowledge as a big problem, although they exist. Housing on the other hand, it's really interesting to think of this problem because acquiring a house has gotten much more difficult even though our capabilities to build houses have increased so much. This seems to be a problem in how we are deciding the prices of houses rather than a pure "we need to pay for materials and construction costs". So although these people deserve to be compensated, we are in no way paying the "right" prices. I reckon for food we are actually paying less money than we should be paying for some products (counting externalities that are derived from our current methods of production) and for housing we are paying more than the actual material and labour cost of the construction. All in all, it seems prices and cost of living is kind of whacky in modern societies.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    "If we used the money we spend on, say, entertainment or high-end mobile phone industry on R&D regarding farms and food yield and distribution we might see lots more advancements in this area." There are massive sums invested in agricultural R&D. Some of this does include a focus on poorer markets. We also heavily subsidize many crops to be competitive on the global market, thus exporting to poorer nations (overall that might be a bad thing, stunting their economic growth).
prepend 4y ago
> Why is it childish to want a life in which you don’t need to labor to have everything you need to be happy? The same way it’s childish to want my parents to provide for all my needs. Or to want dragons to be real. It’s not realistic and is counterproductive to being creative and providing for myself. We can’t all be trust fund kids, thankfully as all the ones I’ve known have been insufferable.
colinmhayes 4y ago
People aren't born worthy of anything. Thinking otherwise is childish. We need to earn things because they're not unlimited. Living a happy peaceful life means consuming things, if you don't provide things back no one is going to give you anything to consume.
- sweetheart 4y ago
  > People aren't born worthy of anything. Thinking otherwise is childish. The entire fields of early childhood development and mental health counseling firmly disagree with you.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    I'm not sure what this means. It'd be nice if people had free access to mental health counseling, but guess what, mental health counselors require payment. If you want things you need to work for them. Until robots do everything that will remain reality.
- msmenardi 4y ago
  Isn't the point of standing on the shoulders of giants that we should reach farther and greater heights than they ever could? To seek to provide for your children is human - and to provide for others in general is human as well. So what happens when the provisions of the past exceed the demands of the present? Do we grow our demand, as we've done so many times? Or do we seek to alleviate our struggles and strive for growth for it's own sake, rather than for the sake of our own survival? I prefer the 2nd option
namlem 4y ago
Because if no one had to work, nothing would get done, and we would not have the abundance of food and goods that we do. All that stuff is made by the labor of others.
- sweetheart 4y ago
  That's a logistical issue. The point of concern is that the person I was responding to said that merely wanting to live in a world where you are handed everything is childish. Why would wanting to be able to have access to everything you need for a happy life at 0 cost ever be childish? We are all born worthy of a life free of struggle. If we can ever obtain that, we deserve it, regardless of how hard we worked for it. I don't understand this mindset of "you gotta _earn_ happiness/safety/security, etc."
edanm 4y ago
You're mixing two different things. I agree with you - if we could live in a world where we didn't have to work, that's great! That's the desired outcome IMO. But you also ask: > Why do we need to earn those things? Are they not inherent within us? And if I'm understanding correctly, the reason we need to earn these things is because right now, we're not living in a world in which we can stop working. The world doesn't just hand us what we need without toil, unfortunately.

M4v3R 4y ago

Because at the end of the day you need to obtain food, clothing, shelter and other necessities to even survive to the next day, not even mentioning doing anything for pleasure. Either through labor of your own, or by doing labor to earn money to buy these for you possibly your family. Thinking that "human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life" is childish - the world doesn't owe us anything, and if we want to continue living on it we have to earn it.

neoromantique 4y ago
It is getting increasingly easier to provide these essentials as time goes on, so why is it unimaginable that there might be a day when those are default, and not something that you need labour for?
- generalizations 4y ago
  Yes, it's increasingly easier. The ratio of (people consuming) / (people producing) has been growing massively. However, it's impossible for (people producing) to reach zero. And, unless (people producing) = 0, there will always be a cost to the goods produced, and (people consuming) has to pay that.
trial3 4y ago
this approach, to me, feels even more childish and lacking in nuance than “human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life” the “world” may not owe anyone anything, but do we as individuals, groups, tribes, governments, and a species owe each other some attempt at that? how does this view extend into discussions about marginalized, disabled, the idea of social safety nets?
snowwrestler 4y ago
It’s a challenging time in human history because we’re now capable of producing enough food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities for every human on Earth. That will only get more true as population growth slows while innovation continues to drive productivity improvements. But we’re still culturally in the mindset you’re describing: that we must each individually wrest life out of the wilderness day by day. As a result we seem to be inventing more and more complex and bizarre ways of forcing that reality to still exist. Like pointless YouTube challenge videos done solely to provide ad inventory so well-off people can sell things to other well-off people.
- itsyaboi 4y ago
  >we’re now capable of producing enough food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities for every human on Earth This should come with a footnote that it's only possible due to slave labor in third world countries. A much smaller subset of people would be buying iPhones if they were $5000.
  - blep_ 4y ago
    iPhones are not food, clothing, or shelter.
    - itsyaboi 4y ago
      Many would consider them an "other necessity", if we're being pedantic.
- Orothrim 4y ago
  We aren't inventing more and more complex ways of forcing that reality to still exist. That reality does still exist, it's close to not existing, maybe only another 300-400 years, but it's still 100% true right now. You are ignoring the massive logistical challenge of getting all those things to all those people and spreading all that knowledge to get production happening. Additionally, our current system is built on a 100 leaning towers of pisa. Look at Ukraine, it gets invaded and our global supply of food is massively impacted, many people are going to starve and freeze to death over the war in Ukraine this winter who have never set foot in Ukraine or Russia.
wruza 4y ago
There is no shortage of ways to devalue labor though. We all know people who work and would be not rich but prosperous enough, if not the economy system they live in held them hostage. Arguing that income disparity is their fault is neither humane nor logical. Childish is an expectation that people must spend their childhood, teen age or adult mental health on learning hard how to dig themselves out of a pit that they never had a choice not to be born into, when your favorite system at some point makes it adequate for them to present you a knife and to ask for your wallet to just survive, or to participate in a humiliating activity if they have no courage to do the former. It’s up to us to decide how it all should work, not to some trivial natural limitations.
bestcoder69 4y ago
> Thinking that "human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life" is childish - the world doesn't owe us anything, and if we want to continue living on it we have to earn it. That's just, like, your opinion, man. But, IRL there are plenty of people that require care-taking, who we never expect any labor from.
- bryan_w 4y ago
  Isn't that survivorship bias? There are plenty of people that required care-taking and died of exposure. It seems there's a capacity limit to the safety net and if you go over it, starvation ensues.

flerchin 4y ago

The folks working on farms, few though they are in the modern world, deserve compensation. What will the people not working on the farm do to deserve the fruits of their labor? Whatever it will be, will be work. Same for the folks building houses, and all the rest of modern infrastructure that we depend upon to live.

jerojero 4y ago
I don't think anyone is saying we shouldn't compensate people doing labour that is required. I think the problem is that we don't really have a societal model that is doing its hardest to cover these needs first before other ones. If we used the money we spend on, say, entertainment or high-end mobile phone industry on R&D regarding farms and food yield and distribution we might see lots more advancements in this area. But that's not really something that is desirable in our modern economies; for people in the USA and most of the developed world we don't really need to invest any more in solving hunger because we are really not hungry anymore. And the ones that are hungry we don't really acknowledge as a big problem, although they exist. Housing on the other hand, it's really interesting to think of this problem because acquiring a house has gotten much more difficult even though our capabilities to build houses have increased so much. This seems to be a problem in how we are deciding the prices of houses rather than a pure "we need to pay for materials and construction costs". So although these people deserve to be compensated, we are in no way paying the "right" prices. I reckon for food we are actually paying less money than we should be paying for some products (counting externalities that are derived from our current methods of production) and for housing we are paying more than the actual material and labour cost of the construction. All in all, it seems prices and cost of living is kind of whacky in modern societies.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "If we used the money we spend on, say, entertainment or high-end mobile phone industry on R&D regarding farms and food yield and distribution we might see lots more advancements in this area." There are massive sums invested in agricultural R&D. Some of this does include a focus on poorer markets. We also heavily subsidize many crops to be competitive on the global market, thus exporting to poorer nations (overall that might be a bad thing, stunting their economic growth).

prepend 4y ago

> Why is it childish to want a life in which you don’t need to labor to have everything you need to be happy? The same way it’s childish to want my parents to provide for all my needs. Or to want dragons to be real. It’s not realistic and is counterproductive to being creative and providing for myself. We can’t all be trust fund kids, thankfully as all the ones I’ve known have been insufferable.

colinmhayes 4y ago

People aren't born worthy of anything. Thinking otherwise is childish. We need to earn things because they're not unlimited. Living a happy peaceful life means consuming things, if you don't provide things back no one is going to give you anything to consume.

sweetheart 4y ago
> People aren't born worthy of anything. Thinking otherwise is childish. The entire fields of early childhood development and mental health counseling firmly disagree with you.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  I'm not sure what this means. It'd be nice if people had free access to mental health counseling, but guess what, mental health counselors require payment. If you want things you need to work for them. Until robots do everything that will remain reality.
msmenardi 4y ago
Isn't the point of standing on the shoulders of giants that we should reach farther and greater heights than they ever could? To seek to provide for your children is human - and to provide for others in general is human as well. So what happens when the provisions of the past exceed the demands of the present? Do we grow our demand, as we've done so many times? Or do we seek to alleviate our struggles and strive for growth for it's own sake, rather than for the sake of our own survival? I prefer the 2nd option

namlem 4y ago

Because if no one had to work, nothing would get done, and we would not have the abundance of food and goods that we do. All that stuff is made by the labor of others.

sweetheart 4y ago
That's a logistical issue. The point of concern is that the person I was responding to said that merely wanting to live in a world where you are handed everything is childish. Why would wanting to be able to have access to everything you need for a happy life at 0 cost ever be childish? We are all born worthy of a life free of struggle. If we can ever obtain that, we deserve it, regardless of how hard we worked for it. I don't understand this mindset of "you gotta _earn_ happiness/safety/security, etc."

edanm 4y ago

You're mixing two different things. I agree with you - if we could live in a world where we didn't have to work, that's great! That's the desired outcome IMO. But you also ask: > Why do we need to earn those things? Are they not inherent within us? And if I'm understanding correctly, the reason we need to earn these things is because right now, we're not living in a world in which we can stop working. The world doesn't just hand us what we need without toil, unfortunately.