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Great comment. The status quo is so bizarre. Human life has no inherent value unless it makes continuous contributions to "the economy". It would be economical

by fleddr 4y ago

Great comment. The status quo is so bizarre. Human life has no inherent value unless it makes continuous contributions to "the economy". It would be economically most efficient to drop dead on the day you retire. Thanks, human! All of this to keep a machine running that wrecks the planet and everything living on it, including ourselves. Probably some 50% of the economy is pure bullshit that nobody asked for, just keeping each other busy. At some point we lost the plot. The economy doesn't work for the people anymore and drastic productivity increases have somehow not really improved our lives in terms of freedom, time, physical/mental health, quite the opposite.

piloto_ciego 4y ago
Sometimes people fail to recognize that the oldest super powerful artificial intelligence is several hundred years old. It’s our economic system. It’s the software running on all our “wet ware” that convinces us to value productivity and money over human life, the environment, or happiness. It is the paper clip maximizer and it’s happily churning away. But we’re not maximizing paper clips we’re maximizing profits .
- jtr1 4y ago
  They all like to say the free market is the optimal computer of value until you compare it to runaway AI
- Dig1t 4y ago
  What does it mean to value human life? I would argue that the economic engine has given us ALL of the improvements in quality of life, and the fact that we live so much longer than we used to, IS valuing human life. There is no other way we could have given ourselves all of the amazing things (tech-wise) we have today. Why would we value the environment over human lives? That just seems like nature-worship.
  - studentik 4y ago
    > seems like nature-worship Why not?
ajmurmann 4y ago
> Probably some 50% of the economy is pure bullshit that nobody asked for, just keeping each other busy. Obviously this cannot be true. "The economy" isn't some magical object somewhere, but the emergent behavior from all our needs, desires and faults. If something is truly not wanted by anyone, nobody will pay for the work to get done. That's the magic of the invisible hand of capitalism. Doing stuff that truly nobody wants and getting paid for it is usually more of a feature of socialism and bureaucracies. There are cases where individual motive leads to macro behavior that's not desirable by any individual, those are the cases where we need to tax negative externalities or regulate, depending on the problem. These issues usually don't emerge though because nobody wants something but because too many wanting a thing creates side effects that nobody likes. The book Micromotived and Macro behavior by Thomas Schelling covers that nicely.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  > "The economy" isn't some magical object somewhere It's not magical, granted. "The economy" is a subjective state (eg metrics) that solely resides in the human mind, rather than a singular thing.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    Don't confuse the metrics with the thing itself. The economy is not metrics in the human mind. The economy is me liking Envy apples more than disgusting Red Delicious apples and buying Envy instead. The economy is an employee getting a good offer to fill a need a company has and going back to their current employer to find out who will pay them more / gets more value from them and it's willing to thus pay more. Things like the GDP just try to approximate the sum of all these actions and exchanges.
    - Supermancho 4y ago
      > The economy is not metrics in the human mind. It most certainly is and I have not encountered anything to indicate otherwise. Individual transactions are no more relevant than GDP is. These are individual metrics or acts that influence those metrics, which try to quantify aspects of an aggregate concept.
WalterBright 4y ago
> drastic productivity increases have somehow not really improved our lives in terms of freedom, time, physical/mental health, quite the opposite. Here's where the money went: https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/federal-spending-per-person-is-skyrocketing/ https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/federal-spending-per... And that doesn't include all the state and local government.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-debt-25-percent/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-debt-25-percent/ (25% of national debt was incurred during the last administration; half was COVID relief measures, the other half was tax cuts for the wealthy) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fiscal-deficit-idUSKBN1HG2RW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fiscal-deficit-idUSKB... (Republican tax cuts to fuel historic U.S. deficits: CBO) Sources at bottom of the first link. This doesn’t include healthcare cost inflation due to a grossly inefficient healthcare model. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-healthcare-changed-time/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe... https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Your thesis is the government consumption of the GDP has nothing to do with where the productivity improvements went?
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      You’re comparing decades of productivity going to capital to debt incurred within the last half decade (“Here's where the money went”). The US does have a lot of sovereign debt, no doubt, but that’s not why Labor isn’t seeing a greater share of the productivity gains since the 70s. A loss of collective labor power and 10% of the country owning 89% of public equities gets us here. To arrived at an improved end state, one would need more unions and labor organizing, as well as perhaps ratcheting down the work week to 4 days. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/ https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-gro... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-...
Aunche 4y ago
> Probably some 50% of the economy is pure bullshit that nobody asked for, just keeping each other busy. You mean that 50% of the economy is bullshit that you think nobody should ask for. You and I may agree that developer at an online gambling company is economically useless, but the their boss certainly doesn't and the gamblers probably don't either. Even if we accept your premise, you can't just assume that tanking the economy will only cut out the useless jobs instead of the useful ones. Useful jobs are perhaps more likely to survive, but that's not always going to be the case. During the next recession, people will more likely give up on a solar roof than give up gambling. > The economy doesn't work for the people anymore and drastic productivity increases have somehow not really improved our lives in terms of freedom, time, physical/mental health, quite the opposite. People's lives are objectively improving. It mostly just happening in Asia though. It requires a lot of money to build power plants, hospitals, and water towers, and much of that was financed by selling "useless" trinkets from the West.
andsoitis 4y ago
> The economy doesn't work for the people anymore and drastic productivity increases have somehow not really improved our lives in terms of freedom, time, physical/mental health, quite the opposite. If trees could just all agree to remain short, they wouldn't need to waste resources to outgrow each other to reach sunlight.
- sethammons 4y ago
  Watch or read The Hidden Life of Trees and you may have to rethink your imagery. It would appear trees may be "agreeable" with each other.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    Except Poplar. That's the Microsoft call centre scam of the tree world.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    thanks for recommendation!
grecy 4y ago
> Human life has no inherent value unless it makes continuous contributions to "the economy". What I love most of all about this is the fact "the economy" has only existed for a few hundred years. I wonder how modern humans found purpose for the previous 199,700 years?

by fleddr 4y ago

piloto_ciego 4y ago

Sometimes people fail to recognize that the oldest super powerful artificial intelligence is several hundred years old. It’s our economic system. It’s the software running on all our “wet ware” that convinces us to value productivity and money over human life, the environment, or happiness. It is the paper clip maximizer and it’s happily churning away. But we’re not maximizing paper clips we’re maximizing profits .

jtr1 4y ago
They all like to say the free market is the optimal computer of value until you compare it to runaway AI
Dig1t 4y ago
What does it mean to value human life? I would argue that the economic engine has given us ALL of the improvements in quality of life, and the fact that we live so much longer than we used to, IS valuing human life. There is no other way we could have given ourselves all of the amazing things (tech-wise) we have today. Why would we value the environment over human lives? That just seems like nature-worship.
- studentik 4y ago
  > seems like nature-worship Why not?

ajmurmann 4y ago

> Probably some 50% of the economy is pure bullshit that nobody asked for, just keeping each other busy. Obviously this cannot be true. "The economy" isn't some magical object somewhere, but the emergent behavior from all our needs, desires and faults. If something is truly not wanted by anyone, nobody will pay for the work to get done. That's the magic of the invisible hand of capitalism. Doing stuff that truly nobody wants and getting paid for it is usually more of a feature of socialism and bureaucracies. There are cases where individual motive leads to macro behavior that's not desirable by any individual, those are the cases where we need to tax negative externalities or regulate, depending on the problem. These issues usually don't emerge though because nobody wants something but because too many wanting a thing creates side effects that nobody likes. The book Micromotived and Macro behavior by Thomas Schelling covers that nicely.

Supermancho 4y ago
> "The economy" isn't some magical object somewhere It's not magical, granted. "The economy" is a subjective state (eg metrics) that solely resides in the human mind, rather than a singular thing.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  Don't confuse the metrics with the thing itself. The economy is not metrics in the human mind. The economy is me liking Envy apples more than disgusting Red Delicious apples and buying Envy instead. The economy is an employee getting a good offer to fill a need a company has and going back to their current employer to find out who will pay them more / gets more value from them and it's willing to thus pay more. Things like the GDP just try to approximate the sum of all these actions and exchanges.
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    > The economy is not metrics in the human mind. It most certainly is and I have not encountered anything to indicate otherwise. Individual transactions are no more relevant than GDP is. These are individual metrics or acts that influence those metrics, which try to quantify aspects of an aggregate concept.

WalterBright 4y ago

> drastic productivity increases have somehow not really improved our lives in terms of freedom, time, physical/mental health, quite the opposite. Here's where the money went: https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/federal-spending-per-person-is-skyrocketing/ https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/federal-spending-per... And that doesn't include all the state and local government.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-debt-25-percent/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-debt-25-percent/ (25% of national debt was incurred during the last administration; half was COVID relief measures, the other half was tax cuts for the wealthy) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fiscal-deficit-idUSKBN1HG2RW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fiscal-deficit-idUSKB... (Republican tax cuts to fuel historic U.S. deficits: CBO) Sources at bottom of the first link. This doesn’t include healthcare cost inflation due to a grossly inefficient healthcare model. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-healthcare-changed-time/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe... https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Your thesis is the government consumption of the GDP has nothing to do with where the productivity improvements went?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    You’re comparing decades of productivity going to capital to debt incurred within the last half decade (“Here's where the money went”). The US does have a lot of sovereign debt, no doubt, but that’s not why Labor isn’t seeing a greater share of the productivity gains since the 70s. A loss of collective labor power and 10% of the country owning 89% of public equities gets us here. To arrived at an improved end state, one would need more unions and labor organizing, as well as perhaps ratcheting down the work week to 4 days. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-growing-employer-power-have-generated-a-productivity-pay-gap-since-1979-productivity-has-grown-3-5-times-as-much-as-pay-for-the-typical-worker/ https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-gro... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-...

Aunche 4y ago

> Probably some 50% of the economy is pure bullshit that nobody asked for, just keeping each other busy. You mean that 50% of the economy is bullshit that you think nobody should ask for. You and I may agree that developer at an online gambling company is economically useless, but the their boss certainly doesn't and the gamblers probably don't either. Even if we accept your premise, you can't just assume that tanking the economy will only cut out the useless jobs instead of the useful ones. Useful jobs are perhaps more likely to survive, but that's not always going to be the case. During the next recession, people will more likely give up on a solar roof than give up gambling. > The economy doesn't work for the people anymore and drastic productivity increases have somehow not really improved our lives in terms of freedom, time, physical/mental health, quite the opposite. People's lives are objectively improving. It mostly just happening in Asia though. It requires a lot of money to build power plants, hospitals, and water towers, and much of that was financed by selling "useless" trinkets from the West.

andsoitis 4y ago

> The economy doesn't work for the people anymore and drastic productivity increases have somehow not really improved our lives in terms of freedom, time, physical/mental health, quite the opposite. If trees could just all agree to remain short, they wouldn't need to waste resources to outgrow each other to reach sunlight.

sethammons 4y ago
Watch or read The Hidden Life of Trees and you may have to rethink your imagery. It would appear trees may be "agreeable" with each other.
- happymellon 4y ago
  Except Poplar. That's the Microsoft call centre scam of the tree world.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  thanks for recommendation!

grecy 4y ago

> Human life has no inherent value unless it makes continuous contributions to "the economy". What I love most of all about this is the fact "the economy" has only existed for a few hundred years. I wonder how modern humans found purpose for the previous 199,700 years?