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The fix is to produce more stuff. It's that simple. It might not be easy though. It would require us to focus on production, remove barriers, streamline regulat
by Nifty3929 4y ago
The fix is to produce more stuff. It's that simple. It might not be easy though. It would require us to focus on production, remove barriers, streamline regulations, encourage and actively celebrate production.
It seems these days we're ambivalent toward the production of stuff, or even antagonistic to it in many cases. So we have less stuff. Combine this with giving people more money and you get inflation.
- prottog 4y ago> It seems these days we're ambivalent toward the production of stuff, or even antagonistic to it in many cases. I cannot emphasize this enough. Wealthy Western nations have been wealthy for so long that people know how to cut up the pie in different sizes more so than they know how to bake more.
- scoofy 4y agoThe negative moralizing of other people existing is genuinely out of control in California. From housing, to transportation, to climate change, to conservation, the major cities just causally like to pretend that if we can may other people go away, it'll solve our problems. It's thrown around causally like it's the state of nature, or an actual workable solution to anything.
- rhacker 4y agoI think the basis for this feeling is that people keep moving here. We feel it when traffic gets worse, etc... Not really sure IF there's a real solution. The more people there are, the worse things get in small spaces. We have an entire country that is mostly empty.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoCalifornia is mostly empty too. It's larger than Japan and has almost 3x fewer people.
- dragonwriter 4y agoJapan actually has about 3.25× California’s population. OTOH, California has a lot more land area that is, say, desert than Japan does, so there’s that (it also has a lot more that is controlled by a separate sovereign; 47.7% of California is federal land.)
- prottog 4y agoThe federally-owned land in California is mostly deserts and mountains. Besides, even if we're generous and say that half of California is too mountainous to live in and another quarter is too desert-y to live in, leaving only a quarter of the state's area suitable for habitation, that leaves roughly 40 million people living in roughly 40,000 square miles, or about a thousand heads per square mile. That's comparable to Israel or Belgium in terms of population density, and certainly not as though people are packing into Kowloon.
- rcpt 4y agoHell, even Los Angeles is mostly empty https://noparkinghere.com/ https://noparkinghere.com/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sampo 4y ago> I think the basis for this feeling is that people keep moving here. We feel it when traffic gets worse A city in Japan would build new dense neighborhoods and a new commuter rail line to serve them. A city in California would refuse to build new homes nearby, so people are forced to live in a far-away suburb and commute 2 hours by car. Then Californians complain about increasing traffic congestion.
- rhacker 4y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/movingtojapan/comments/7g9n6e/music_playing_and_loud_noise_in_apartments/ https://www.reddit.com/r/movingtojapan/comments/7g9n6e/music... https://www.reddit.com/r/ImTheMainCharacter/comments/11aqayg/dumbass_blasts_loud_music_in_a_quiet_train_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ImTheMainCharacter/comments/11aqayg... Japanese people are NOTHING like Americans. Stop saying CA should build like Japan unless you're willing to kick out the loud assholes.
- 76SlashDolphin 4y agoJapan may have a lot of problems but as a generally quiet person, I respect that attitude and wish it was more of a norm here in the UK.
- ericbarrett 4y agoConstruction zones in Japan have barriers erected around them with digital noise meters (in decibels). Painted next to the meters are the legal limits, and a phone number to call the authorities if they're exceeded. Try that in the U.S.!
- patrick451 4y agoYeah, but you can't move to the empty space either. People will complain that's a desert and nobody should be allowed to live there cuz water. Or that its uninhabitable because the current population is distasteful to coastal sensibilities. Or it's too hot and humid or too cold and windy. Or whatever.
- dehrmann 4y agoSo much of what supermarkets sell is commoditized that this doesn't work. Toothpaste is in a very different place than EVs.
- Nifty3929 4y agoCommodities need to be produced as well. The more we produce, the more we will have. Giving people more money does not produce any additional bread or tomatoes.
- andy_ppp 4y agoBut we didn’t give people more money, there was the largest in history redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. I really don’t believe supply is 100% the problem here and there’s just no need for 20% hikes on some goods. The compound interest on this is insane 1 -> 1.20 -> 1.44 -> 1.728 —> 2.0736 so more than doubling in cost every 5 years. People seem to think inflation is temporary but it seems much more stubborn and central banks are very scared of it, hence rate rises when the banks might collapse.
- moffkalast 4y agoThere's no incentive to produce more stuff if you can just price gouge your current supply for equal or more profit with less manufacturing investment. Especially for necessities like electronics or food where your entire supply will be sold regardless. You might say there's then an incentive to undercut, sure, but if you undercut too much you'll be left with no inventory as the rest of the manufacturers decide on fixed prices as a cartel (which has now become the norm in most industries). The trust busting has been nowhere to be seen in the last decades and the results are in.
- Nifty3929 4y agoWhy not? Surely if you can get away with price gouging, then you would want to price gouge on more stuff, right? Of course, there are diminishing returns here, because as you produce more stuff, you might be able to gouge less and less. But certainly there must be some max-profit equilibrium higher than the current price, if you are already able to gouge. Price gouging usually leads to producing more stuff, if it goes on long enough and you are allowed to produce more. Healthcare is an example where this doesn't work, because you aren't allowed to produce more stuff. You can gouge all you want, but can't provide any additional quantity of services. (See: Certificate of Need laws in the US)
- taurath 4y agoSupermarkets in my area have a near monopoly and don’t meaningfully compete anymore - they can charge whatever people will pay. It’s all owned by Kroger and the nearest non Kroger supermarket is a dozen miles away.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThere's a supply and there's demand. Prices will continue to increase as long as people demand the goods and are willing to pay the price.
- BirdieNZ 4y ago
- MagicMoonlight 4y agoYes yes fellow consumers. We should remove consumer protections and lower corporation taxes! Then I’m sure the companies will treat us better!
- andy_ppp 4y agoI know, the rich have never been richer and the poor keep getting poorer. Where is the trickle down we were promised?
- andromeduck 4y agoLet's tax our way out of a famine.
- bumby 4y agoThis constant dichotomy in rhetoric is toxic to finding solutions. Surely, it's not an "either/or" scenario.
- andromeduck 4y agoat the social level capacity matters a lot more than money but everyone wants to subsidise demand rather than facilitating supply
- bumby 4y agoAll you did is restate the same dichotomy. Complex systems in the real-world are almost always too complex for such a simplistic take. For example, just enabling additional supply can create second order effects in terms of perverse incentives to overproduce creating all sorts of knock-on effects. We can stimulate the supply of corn and end up with distorted food markets and high-fructose corn syrup as a near-ubiquitous food additive. All I’m saying is we need to be mindful of these systemic effects and creating a false dichotomy tends to turn a blind eye towards them.
- 4y ago
- bumby 4y agoWe have to be careful about how we define our utility function. I'd argue that it's not as simple as just "producing more stuff" but rather being able to focus on producing "more of the right stuff." All production increase is not the same, unless your goal is just "more GDP." Rather, I think what a lot of this discussion alludes to is that more blind production does not necessarily lead to better quality of life (what we really care about in general).