4 ms·

Every culture, going back thousands of years has young people taking care of old people. We've just made the system so efficient that you don't have to talk to

Every culture, going back thousands of years has young people taking care of old people. We've just made the system so efficient that you don't have to talk to the old people and wipe their poo.

carlosjobim 3y ago
I'm not against taking care of older people, and you have to make an effort to interpret my post like that. Every culture has also had older people stepping down at some point to let fresh blood take the charge and carry the burden. In Western societies we don't see that so much anymore. Instead it seems the old prefer to see things rot than to let younger people take over. With land, farms, houses, businesses, etc. If younger people got an honest chance all would benefit, including the old. Instead young people are mostly seen as people to exploit or ignore. It is not difficult to look up history. The current old people who hold power in small and in large, when you look up their history, they all got help to start their ventures. Very few of them are self made, so why the act?
- mellavora 3y ago
  Sounds like you are discussing the demographic pyramid. 100 years ago, life expectancy was roughly 40 years. Death cleared out the old.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    I think that is a misunderstanding of life expectancy. Death didn't clear out the old 100 years ago, it was infant and child mortality that pulled the average down.
CapstanRoller 3y ago
Young people took care of old people because there was a larger social contract in place: old people's responsibility was to build an environment in which their successors could thrive, so that later everyone could share in that thriving. >We've just made the system so efficient It's only efficient at robbing the young. One half of this social contract, the young-giving-to-old, was formalized (and forced) while the other half, old-building-for-young, was utterly abandoned. There's a great meme about this: "no take, only throw!"[0] Eating all the seed corn[1] will eventually lead to famine. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eat_one%27s_seed_corn#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eat_one%27s_seed_corn#English

Every culture, going back thousands of years has young people taking care of old people. We've just made the system so efficient that you don't have to talk to the old people and wipe their poo.

carlosjobim 3y ago

I'm not against taking care of older people, and you have to make an effort to interpret my post like that. Every culture has also had older people stepping down at some point to let fresh blood take the charge and carry the burden. In Western societies we don't see that so much anymore. Instead it seems the old prefer to see things rot than to let younger people take over. With land, farms, houses, businesses, etc. If younger people got an honest chance all would benefit, including the old. Instead young people are mostly seen as people to exploit or ignore. It is not difficult to look up history. The current old people who hold power in small and in large, when you look up their history, they all got help to start their ventures. Very few of them are self made, so why the act?

mellavora 3y ago
Sounds like you are discussing the demographic pyramid. 100 years ago, life expectancy was roughly 40 years. Death cleared out the old.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  I think that is a misunderstanding of life expectancy. Death didn't clear out the old 100 years ago, it was infant and child mortality that pulled the average down.

CapstanRoller 3y ago

Young people took care of old people because there was a larger social contract in place: old people's responsibility was to build an environment in which their successors could thrive, so that later everyone could share in that thriving. >We've just made the system so efficient It's only efficient at robbing the young. One half of this social contract, the young-giving-to-old, was formalized (and forced) while the other half, old-building-for-young, was utterly abandoned. There's a great meme about this: "no take, only throw!"[0] Eating all the seed corn[1] will eventually lead to famine. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eat_one%27s_seed_corn#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eat_one%27s_seed_corn#English