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> We have FORCED scarcity as is, not REAL scarcity, already That's what Cuba thought, with the people coming together under worker solitary and political aware

> We have FORCED scarcity as is, not REAL scarcity, already That's what Cuba thought, with the people coming together under worker solitary and political awareness to create an explicit mandate to see the transition from forced scarcity to post-scarcity through. Ironically, many years later, there are few places with more scarcity. They had the tools. Yet, it seems they missed the nail. But they maintain the transition will happen any day now, so... We shall see. > We could also solve homelessness - we went to the moon. I don't know, the moon might be a nice place to visit, but is rather hostile as a place to live. You might want to give this a second thought. > The solution is... to build housing. A good idea in theory, but in practice requires people. We've completely failed to automate house production in any meaningful way despite a whole lot of trying. And who wants to subject themselves to that harsh environment when you can relax behind a computer screen instead? Construction is not exactly fun. I expect you aren't lining up to do it. I'm definitely not. The few who are willing to do it are booked up years in advance. They are already building as fast as they can.

thiagoharry 3y ago
Cuba is a place with little natural resources and that suffers with a criminal economical blockade. Even with these difficulties, it managed to become one of the countries in Caribbean with highest GDP per capita. Of course, the embargo causes scarcity and lowers a lot the Purchasing Power Parity despite the relatively higher GDP for the region. I do not know how is this in USA, but in my country (Brazil) we have more empty houses than homeless people (it's 11 millions of empty houses vs. 6 millions of homeless people). It shows that even if this supposed scarcity of houses are solved, capitalism will not allocate the resources in a way that maximizes human benefit, it insists in maximizing only profit and reproduction of capital. The headline in this news is a symptom: if a new tech makes possible produce more with less labor, we worry that capitalism will cut jobs, and the best news that we could receive is that it will not happen, perhaps because it will open more markets to compensate. We will never celebrate that now we will have more free time because the new tech will allow us to work less.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > Cuba is a place with little natural resources and that suffers with a criminal economical blockade. Right, real scarcity. You can't just wish post-scarcity into being. The USSR also made the same pledge under much the same conditions, all while being in control of most of the world's natural resources. But, still, scarcity prevailed. > capitalism will not allocate the resources in a way that maximizes human benefit Where humans are deemed beneficial then capitalism will allocate towards maximizing human benefit. Where humans are not deemed beneficial, you cannot system yourself out of that. Capitalism itself has no thoughts or feelings towards humans, only humans do. And, indeed, you are quite right that humans by and large hate other humans and will do all kinds of things to "keep them down". The legal system goes to great lengths to ensure that humans cannot be come beneficial. That’s not capitalism, though.

thiagoharry 3y ago

Cuba is a place with little natural resources and that suffers with a criminal economical blockade. Even with these difficulties, it managed to become one of the countries in Caribbean with highest GDP per capita. Of course, the embargo causes scarcity and lowers a lot the Purchasing Power Parity despite the relatively higher GDP for the region. I do not know how is this in USA, but in my country (Brazil) we have more empty houses than homeless people (it's 11 millions of empty houses vs. 6 millions of homeless people). It shows that even if this supposed scarcity of houses are solved, capitalism will not allocate the resources in a way that maximizes human benefit, it insists in maximizing only profit and reproduction of capital. The headline in this news is a symptom: if a new tech makes possible produce more with less labor, we worry that capitalism will cut jobs, and the best news that we could receive is that it will not happen, perhaps because it will open more markets to compensate. We will never celebrate that now we will have more free time because the new tech will allow us to work less.

randomdata 3y ago
> Cuba is a place with little natural resources and that suffers with a criminal economical blockade. Right, real scarcity. You can't just wish post-scarcity into being. The USSR also made the same pledge under much the same conditions, all while being in control of most of the world's natural resources. But, still, scarcity prevailed. > capitalism will not allocate the resources in a way that maximizes human benefit Where humans are deemed beneficial then capitalism will allocate towards maximizing human benefit. Where humans are not deemed beneficial, you cannot system yourself out of that. Capitalism itself has no thoughts or feelings towards humans, only humans do. And, indeed, you are quite right that humans by and large hate other humans and will do all kinds of things to "keep them down". The legal system goes to great lengths to ensure that humans cannot be come beneficial. That’s not capitalism, though.