6 ms·

Well said. I can't but wonder how the system evolved: The workers build, the scientists study & discover, the engineers design and improve, and everything they

Well said. I can't but wonder how the system evolved: The workers build, the scientists study & discover, the engineers design and improve, and everything they produce is sold for X amount of money while they are being paid Y amount of money. X - Y = P (profit) which goes to the capital owners who can spend it on the goods produced by the others without much participation at the production effort. Also I find it amazing that after all the advancements, discoveries and increases of productivity, the working class has to work 8 hours a day for longer number of years then the previous generations. The retirement age only increased in the last 50 years. Why do we need to work more if today we produce more, faster and cheaper than few years ago.

zanny 14y ago
The fruits of the labors of past generations are being filtered into 3 areas - the lowest common wage earner in the world that can do the grunt work the cheapest (Chinese, or Illegals, etc) the wealthy, who control all investment and funding, and governments that can freely tax and deficit all they want. We don't "need" to work more. The USA produces a substantial excess of food, even past the excessive eating habits causing the obesity epidemic, and we sell electricity to Canada and Mexico since we are completely self sufficient there as well. Almost all of our electrical infrastructure is 40+ years old, grossly outdated, but the initial costs are effectively gone. The cost of power is just the million year old dead plants to make it. The problem is we have no social construct to distribute these non-scares resources in any way but through exchanges that treat them as scarce. And we still have farmers toiling in fields and operators of power plants that need to be compensated for their labors. The system really evolved to combat Communism. The powers that be ran with the propaganda wars of the 60's and turned the USA hyper-consumer with tons of debt to combat Russia's ideology. Everyone jumped on board because socialism and the "other" were irrationally dubbed wrong and thus we must do the opposite. Also, food is becoming more expensive faster as the reality that only 1% of our population produces the resources we need to survive and prosper sets in. Make that 2%, 1% to make food and power and 1% to maintain infrastructure (poorly) and keep a functioning supply chain in place. The rest of us? Effectively useless, and where we should be trying to invest the largest fraction of unbounded intellectual freedom to innovate and create in history to get us some freakin starships and immortality and super AI, we squander it with an outdated economic model that has millions sitting at desks twiddling thumbs or manning store counters because they have no choice if they want to eat and have a bed. In the end, the best things we can aspire to are just not profitable enough for the system in place, so we wallow with a population grossly underutilized.
- aaronasterling 14y ago
  One doesn't have to buy into the system you describe. I basically sleep on the beach on Maui and mostly eat for free. In many ways, it's a good life :)
  - zanny 14y ago
    I want in on this free food! Living on the beach doesn't sound like it has good internet connectivity though.
    - aaronasterling 14y ago
      Internet connectivity is over rated. I bet my wall paper is swanker than yours.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  While I think you're way out in the ozone with the idea that consumerism evolved as a reaction to Communism, the rest of your post is really well-stated. Our political system is geared toward promoting the idea of near-zero unemployment, where the goal we really should be working towards is near 100% unemployment.
  - brandall10 14y ago
    "While I think you're way out in the ozone with the idea that consumerism evolved as a reaction to Communism". A few months back I would have said the same thing. Then I watched this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self It actually appeared to start post WWI, just the Cold War accelerated the effect.
    - CamperBob2 14y ago
      You don't think that what we call "consumerism" is just a Darwinian imperative? The idea that the guy with the most bling gets the most chicks is older than the ascent of Man, never mind Communism.
tempuser09 14y ago
Another freakishly depressing fact is that even if tomorrow we found a new technique of splitting the water with only the half of the energy obtained from recombining it (free energy !!!) the state would tax the freaking water or the technology or the distribution of this technology, GRADUALLY to a such extent that we (I mean the masses, not the oligarchy) would need again 9to5 jobs only to pay the freaking taxes !!!

zanny 14y ago

The fruits of the labors of past generations are being filtered into 3 areas - the lowest common wage earner in the world that can do the grunt work the cheapest (Chinese, or Illegals, etc) the wealthy, who control all investment and funding, and governments that can freely tax and deficit all they want. We don't "need" to work more. The USA produces a substantial excess of food, even past the excessive eating habits causing the obesity epidemic, and we sell electricity to Canada and Mexico since we are completely self sufficient there as well. Almost all of our electrical infrastructure is 40+ years old, grossly outdated, but the initial costs are effectively gone. The cost of power is just the million year old dead plants to make it. The problem is we have no social construct to distribute these non-scares resources in any way but through exchanges that treat them as scarce. And we still have farmers toiling in fields and operators of power plants that need to be compensated for their labors. The system really evolved to combat Communism. The powers that be ran with the propaganda wars of the 60's and turned the USA hyper-consumer with tons of debt to combat Russia's ideology. Everyone jumped on board because socialism and the "other" were irrationally dubbed wrong and thus we must do the opposite. Also, food is becoming more expensive faster as the reality that only 1% of our population produces the resources we need to survive and prosper sets in. Make that 2%, 1% to make food and power and 1% to maintain infrastructure (poorly) and keep a functioning supply chain in place. The rest of us? Effectively useless, and where we should be trying to invest the largest fraction of unbounded intellectual freedom to innovate and create in history to get us some freakin starships and immortality and super AI, we squander it with an outdated economic model that has millions sitting at desks twiddling thumbs or manning store counters because they have no choice if they want to eat and have a bed. In the end, the best things we can aspire to are just not profitable enough for the system in place, so we wallow with a population grossly underutilized.

aaronasterling 14y ago
One doesn't have to buy into the system you describe. I basically sleep on the beach on Maui and mostly eat for free. In many ways, it's a good life :)
- zanny 14y ago
  I want in on this free food! Living on the beach doesn't sound like it has good internet connectivity though.
  - aaronasterling 14y ago
    Internet connectivity is over rated. I bet my wall paper is swanker than yours.
CamperBob2 14y ago
While I think you're way out in the ozone with the idea that consumerism evolved as a reaction to Communism, the rest of your post is really well-stated. Our political system is geared toward promoting the idea of near-zero unemployment, where the goal we really should be working towards is near 100% unemployment.
- brandall10 14y ago
  "While I think you're way out in the ozone with the idea that consumerism evolved as a reaction to Communism". A few months back I would have said the same thing. Then I watched this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self It actually appeared to start post WWI, just the Cold War accelerated the effect.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    You don't think that what we call "consumerism" is just a Darwinian imperative? The idea that the guy with the most bling gets the most chicks is older than the ascent of Man, never mind Communism.

tempuser09 14y ago

Another freakishly depressing fact is that even if tomorrow we found a new technique of splitting the water with only the half of the energy obtained from recombining it (free energy !!!) the state would tax the freaking water or the technology or the distribution of this technology, GRADUALLY to a such extent that we (I mean the masses, not the oligarchy) would need again 9to5 jobs only to pay the freaking taxes !!!