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> What if $7 trillion was spent eliminating economic disparities, enriching our learning institutions, fostering individual and community well-being, and ultima

> What if $7 trillion was spent eliminating economic disparities, enriching our learning institutions, fostering individual and community well-being, and ultimately drawing us away from digital technology and media as the panacea of social-control which is monopolizing our time and attention These are largely not problems money can solve. Economic disparity is systemic, and changing the system would be nearly free if we knew how to change it to alleviate such disparity. Community well-being has more to do with involvement than money. Getting away from electronics is not only free, but will save you money. People just choose not to, and money isn't going to fix that. Schools could use more funding though. I'm with you there.

__loam 2y ago
I don't know, spending a trillion dollars on housing development would probably solve a lot of problems.
- duped 2y ago
  Or a trillion dollars on just teachers. Not "education" but teachers themselves. Hell the effective altruists would say giving a trillion dollars to people would be pretty effective.
imtringued 2y ago
>Economic disparity is systemic, and changing the system would be nearly free if we knew how to change it to alleviate such disparity We already know how to do that and it has already been tried with great success. The reality though is that humans simply aren't ready for it. You can see the hypocrisy in real socialist countries. They could adopt the system and become the heroes of humanity overnight and yet they decided to oppress their citizens and await the collapse of their poorly thought out system instead. If the people claiming to fight against capitalism don't actually want to fight capitalism then expecting people who like capitalism to end it is even more hopeless. You said changing the system would be nearly free. In theory it is. You could end capitalism with an investment of less than a billion dollars. Probably twenty million if you can get volunteers on board for ten years and even less if you could do it in a country with less expensive bank regulations. Yet I do not see such things happen. Nobody is actually trying. When you tell people the solution all I see is their inner capitalist who rejects the idea because they didn't actually care about their current life being shit, what they wanted is for the remote chance of being rich occurring to them to be worth the sacrifice of a life in poverty to keep them complacent. They would never choose a two times better life if it meant giving up becoming rich. Both the communists and capitalists are willingly harming themselves and making their lives worse and they accept that. It is utterly pointless, but here we are. There is a lever you could flick to end it, but they don't. In a way the economists are correct. The problem is that people aren't selfish enough.

__loam 2y ago

I don't know, spending a trillion dollars on housing development would probably solve a lot of problems.

duped 2y ago
Or a trillion dollars on just teachers. Not "education" but teachers themselves. Hell the effective altruists would say giving a trillion dollars to people would be pretty effective.

imtringued 2y ago

>Economic disparity is systemic, and changing the system would be nearly free if we knew how to change it to alleviate such disparity We already know how to do that and it has already been tried with great success. The reality though is that humans simply aren't ready for it. You can see the hypocrisy in real socialist countries. They could adopt the system and become the heroes of humanity overnight and yet they decided to oppress their citizens and await the collapse of their poorly thought out system instead. If the people claiming to fight against capitalism don't actually want to fight capitalism then expecting people who like capitalism to end it is even more hopeless. You said changing the system would be nearly free. In theory it is. You could end capitalism with an investment of less than a billion dollars. Probably twenty million if you can get volunteers on board for ten years and even less if you could do it in a country with less expensive bank regulations. Yet I do not see such things happen. Nobody is actually trying. When you tell people the solution all I see is their inner capitalist who rejects the idea because they didn't actually care about their current life being shit, what they wanted is for the remote chance of being rich occurring to them to be worth the sacrifice of a life in poverty to keep them complacent. They would never choose a two times better life if it meant giving up becoming rich. Both the communists and capitalists are willingly harming themselves and making their lives worse and they accept that. It is utterly pointless, but here we are. There is a lever you could flick to end it, but they don't. In a way the economists are correct. The problem is that people aren't selfish enough.