3 ms·

Ah, yes. I read a good book about stories like this: The Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs.

by sdsd 2y ago

Ah, yes. I read a good book about stories like this: The Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot.

bpodgursky 2y ago
The United States has more material surplus than any country in the history of the world. This is a really bad example because you could try to make the case that per-capita income doesn't accurately capture the difficulty obtaining education/healthcare/housing, but no serious person is contesting we have access to a vast quantity of high-quality consumer goods for peanuts.
- ARandomerDude 2y ago
  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/analogy https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/analogy
- bbor 2y ago
  I’ll contest that! By what metric do we have access to a vast quantity of high quality consumer goods? Medicine, housing, and food are some consumer goods that many Americans have trouble affording. Plus, the number of Americans with replicators is 0; we’re an extremely, extremely underdeveloped nation in that regard, and have lots of room to move up. No, I wouldn’t rather live in China/russia/medieval Europe/on a desert island/whatever, to cut off any confusion there. I’m just saying “we’re rich comparatively” isn’t very useful in this case
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    "We're rich compared to [real things]" is much, much more useful than "we're poor compared to [sci fi novels]"
    - bbor 2y ago
      This would be true if we hadn't been living in a sci-fi novel for the past few decades/centuries... I think looking forward is a critical step at this inflection point in our path.
  - its_ethan 2y ago
    Rich is always, by definition, a relative/comparative term. As evident by you making _comparative_ statements about what Americans have to.. fictional machines from star trek? Saying comparative statements about wealth aren't useful is... even less useful? What are we supposed to do, gauge things by an absolute scale? That becomes useless pretty quickly unless it's updated to be _relative_ to some new standard (aka being comparative). So the metric by which Americans have an improved "access to vast quantity of high quality consumer goods" would be, from the article, the fact that Americans have had their purchasing power increase by 3% relative to other nations, which saw purchasing power of their citizens decrease. Things like housing and medicine are generally going to be expensive at any point in time (due to supply/demand and cost of development, respectively) but the increase in purchasing power outlined in the article is a pretty good (not perfect) proxy for Americans ability to acquire consumer goods.
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    Ironically, the reason we feel like we don't have enough healthcare is that there's so much more of it available.
llamaimperative 2y ago
Are you accusing someone (who?) of falsifying data? Where/when/why/who/how? It's not like the indicators are in some confusing disagreement. Everything points toward the economy being ridiculously hot. Of course there's one glaring exception: the people's vibes. Of course, vibes are highly malleable by media, culture, and internet commentators ambiguously gesturing toward the a gargantuan fraud with tens of thousands of individuals quietly acting in concert.
- its_ethan 2y ago
  Yea I really like the quote the OP references, but it's not clear to me who is playing the role of the "ministry of plenty"? The author? The fed? And what stats referenced in the article are they accusing of having been retroactively revised (aside from the common minor adjustments that trail headline news by ~1month, which would already be included in the stats this article references).

by sdsd 2y ago

bpodgursky 2y ago

The United States has more material surplus than any country in the history of the world. This is a really bad example because you could try to make the case that per-capita income doesn't accurately capture the difficulty obtaining education/healthcare/housing, but no serious person is contesting we have access to a vast quantity of high-quality consumer goods for peanuts.

ARandomerDude 2y ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/analogy https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/analogy
bbor 2y ago
I’ll contest that! By what metric do we have access to a vast quantity of high quality consumer goods? Medicine, housing, and food are some consumer goods that many Americans have trouble affording. Plus, the number of Americans with replicators is 0; we’re an extremely, extremely underdeveloped nation in that regard, and have lots of room to move up. No, I wouldn’t rather live in China/russia/medieval Europe/on a desert island/whatever, to cut off any confusion there. I’m just saying “we’re rich comparatively” isn’t very useful in this case
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  "We're rich compared to [real things]" is much, much more useful than "we're poor compared to [sci fi novels]"
  - bbor 2y ago
    This would be true if we hadn't been living in a sci-fi novel for the past few decades/centuries... I think looking forward is a critical step at this inflection point in our path.
- its_ethan 2y ago
  Rich is always, by definition, a relative/comparative term. As evident by you making _comparative_ statements about what Americans have to.. fictional machines from star trek? Saying comparative statements about wealth aren't useful is... even less useful? What are we supposed to do, gauge things by an absolute scale? That becomes useless pretty quickly unless it's updated to be _relative_ to some new standard (aka being comparative). So the metric by which Americans have an improved "access to vast quantity of high quality consumer goods" would be, from the article, the fact that Americans have had their purchasing power increase by 3% relative to other nations, which saw purchasing power of their citizens decrease. Things like housing and medicine are generally going to be expensive at any point in time (due to supply/demand and cost of development, respectively) but the increase in purchasing power outlined in the article is a pretty good (not perfect) proxy for Americans ability to acquire consumer goods.
- maxerickson 2y ago
  Ironically, the reason we feel like we don't have enough healthcare is that there's so much more of it available.

llamaimperative 2y ago

Are you accusing someone (who?) of falsifying data? Where/when/why/who/how? It's not like the indicators are in some confusing disagreement. Everything points toward the economy being ridiculously hot. Of course there's one glaring exception: the people's vibes. Of course, vibes are highly malleable by media, culture, and internet commentators ambiguously gesturing toward the a gargantuan fraud with tens of thousands of individuals quietly acting in concert.

its_ethan 2y ago
Yea I really like the quote the OP references, but it's not clear to me who is playing the role of the "ministry of plenty"? The author? The fed? And what stats referenced in the article are they accusing of having been retroactively revised (aside from the common minor adjustments that trail headline news by ~1month, which would already be included in the stats this article references).