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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

by 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.

by bbor 2y ago

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.