3 ms·

I want to trade all the fancy shit I don't need for a ten hour work week and more time to do what I want, but annoyingly we've made artificial scarcities of ess

I want to trade all the fancy shit I don't need for a ten hour work week and more time to do what I want, but annoyingly we've made artificial scarcities of essentials like housing, and codified forty hour weeks as the norm, making this hard. You're right that it's more common in Europe. When I go back to the US life feels so insanely gluttonous. Driving a studio apartment three miles to get a coffee is lunacy

WalterBright 3y ago
> Driving a studio apartment three miles to get a coffee is lunacy It sure is. I have a cheap drip coffee maker that I drink from all day, at a cost of a few cents a cup. Dirt cheap.
- mfitton 3y ago
  A few cents a cup?! Where do you buy your coffee? I buy coffee at about 12 bucks a pound. A pound makes about ten carafes of 4 cups (tbh, I use the term cup loosely, because a mug for me is more like 1.5 to 2 actual measuring cups) each. I get to more like 30 to 40 cents a cup. It seems like there might be potential for major cost savings.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    Bloody hell, I live in a famously high cost country (Norway) and I can get perfectly acceptable coffee for half that price.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    I buy 12 oz bags of ground coffee for $7.99 last time I bought it, which is up from $5.99 it used to be. That'll last for a couple weeks, at 12 cups (actual cups) a day. Coffee is my cheapest vices. I love coffee. When the pandemic hit, I stocked up on coffee.
    - mfitton 3y ago
      Aha, maybe I'm putting dramatically too many grounds into my coffee, haha.
ReactiveJelly 3y ago
We could definitely build more housing. But "Meditations on Moloch" suggests that Malthusian traps might be inevitable. Why work ten hours when a political enemy like Russia or China might work 40 hours or 80 hours and then nuke you?
- philipkglass 3y ago
  An effective nuclear deterrent is very low cost compared to an effective conventional military force. With nuclear weapons you can credibly threaten to kill 20 million people in $enemy_country [1] at a cost smaller than that needed to maintain a crewed air force of moderate capability. In theory, global military spending could drop by 90% with equal-or-better prevention of state-on-state warfare if more nations replaced conventional military spending with spending on nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, nuclear deterrence only works against rational actors, by rational actors. It doesn't prevent irrational human behavior or accidents. So a heavily nuclear armed world would probably see a downturn in violence between states until one fateful year when an accident or miscalculation escalates to kill more people than every war of the past 200 years combined. [1] Terms and conditions apply: only valid for countries with population greater than 20 million.

WalterBright 3y ago

> Driving a studio apartment three miles to get a coffee is lunacy It sure is. I have a cheap drip coffee maker that I drink from all day, at a cost of a few cents a cup. Dirt cheap.

mfitton 3y ago
A few cents a cup?! Where do you buy your coffee? I buy coffee at about 12 bucks a pound. A pound makes about ten carafes of 4 cups (tbh, I use the term cup loosely, because a mug for me is more like 1.5 to 2 actual measuring cups) each. I get to more like 30 to 40 cents a cup. It seems like there might be potential for major cost savings.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Bloody hell, I live in a famously high cost country (Norway) and I can get perfectly acceptable coffee for half that price.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  I buy 12 oz bags of ground coffee for $7.99 last time I bought it, which is up from $5.99 it used to be. That'll last for a couple weeks, at 12 cups (actual cups) a day. Coffee is my cheapest vices. I love coffee. When the pandemic hit, I stocked up on coffee.
  - mfitton 3y ago
    Aha, maybe I'm putting dramatically too many grounds into my coffee, haha.

ReactiveJelly 3y ago

We could definitely build more housing. But "Meditations on Moloch" suggests that Malthusian traps might be inevitable. Why work ten hours when a political enemy like Russia or China might work 40 hours or 80 hours and then nuke you?

philipkglass 3y ago
An effective nuclear deterrent is very low cost compared to an effective conventional military force. With nuclear weapons you can credibly threaten to kill 20 million people in $enemy_country [1] at a cost smaller than that needed to maintain a crewed air force of moderate capability. In theory, global military spending could drop by 90% with equal-or-better prevention of state-on-state warfare if more nations replaced conventional military spending with spending on nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, nuclear deterrence only works against rational actors, by rational actors. It doesn't prevent irrational human behavior or accidents. So a heavily nuclear armed world would probably see a downturn in violence between states until one fateful year when an accident or miscalculation escalates to kill more people than every war of the past 200 years combined. [1] Terms and conditions apply: only valid for countries with population greater than 20 million.