4 ms·

This is one of the most dystopian and depressing things I've ever read. Quit your dreams and be productive for the Economy, peasant.

llamaimperative 2y ago
Is it equally dystopian if you consider that “be productive for the economy” is shorthand for and quite closely related to “do something of value for your fellow community members?” (Yes obviously there are extreme and very visible edge cases, but 99.999% of things normal people get paid to do is something valuable for their neighbor)
- fulafel 2y ago
  A lot of things that your neighbor may like are still net negative (see the ongoing climate catastrophe and think about fossils production, air travel, etc).
- lz400 2y ago
  The word valuable is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I don't personally consider the legions of people working in filling my eyeballs with advertisement valuable, but it certainly makes a lot of money.
- ludston 2y ago
  Are athletes are working themselves to injury for the sake of improving the lives of the people around them? I do not see this. Athletes are competing for themselves: for fame, money and to feed their egos. I do not see the virtue in athletics given that being an entertainer, and being powerful and fit are intrinsically rewarding enough. I'd much rather we were funding musicians and artists, but only a fraction of funding goes to these in comparison to the behemoth that is sports.
  - zeroCalories 2y ago
    Athletes serve as aspirational figures that drive interest towards sports that keep people healthy. There is an ugly skinny-fat / fat-fat hatred of sports born from post-war folklore about jocks and nerds.
    - Nursie 2y ago
      > Athletes serve as aspirational figures that drive interest towards sports that keep people healthy. No, they don't. The olympics in particular have been shown not to have any sort of lasting effect on host countries or the world in general. AFAICT this whole thing is a fallacy dreamt up as part of the justification for spending billions on games.
- RugnirViking 2y ago
  > 99.999% of things normal people get paid to do is something valuable for their neighbor My intuition is that you will find a small and decreasing number of people agree with or believe this
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Sure, but that's because they're wrong. Consider the counterfactual. In order for it to be true that many people are paid for work that isn't valuable, it'd have to be true that many people are willingly parting with their money for no reason at all. That does happen, of course, and it's so special we think highly of people when they do it (it's called charity). Just because people can't reason about the transmission of value throughout a complex economy doesn't mean it's not happening. In fact that's the beauty of currency and market economies: it doesn't need to be comprehensible to anyone outside of the transaction.
    - tsupiroti 2y ago
      "GDP measures everything except that which is worthwhile"
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        This is irrelevant, I'm not talking about GDP. I'm saying that people generally don't pay money for things they don't value, ergo when people are paid money, it's for things that other people value.
        tsupiroti 2y ago
        That's exactly what GDP measures: how much money people have paid and gotten paid for things.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        Right... and GDP being a bad metric (for most decisions) doesn't have any relevance to the discussion. It doesn't imply anything about the thing it measures. By analogy, good engines produce power. A speedometer measures the engine's power under a set of conditions. However, a speedometer is not (by itself) a good way to measure an engine because there are other factors you care about. The fact that a speedometer is a bad measure of engine power does not mean that engine power is unimportant or bad. If I said, "high max speed means good engine," or "high GDP means economy is working well," your comment would be relevant. I did not say that. I said "the overwhelming majority of transactions in an economy are of mutual benefit to the transactors."
olyjohn 2y ago
Man you guys got trolled by the parent comment so hard.

llamaimperative 2y ago

Is it equally dystopian if you consider that “be productive for the economy” is shorthand for and quite closely related to “do something of value for your fellow community members?” (Yes obviously there are extreme and very visible edge cases, but 99.999% of things normal people get paid to do is something valuable for their neighbor)

fulafel 2y ago
A lot of things that your neighbor may like are still net negative (see the ongoing climate catastrophe and think about fossils production, air travel, etc).
lz400 2y ago
The word valuable is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I don't personally consider the legions of people working in filling my eyeballs with advertisement valuable, but it certainly makes a lot of money.
ludston 2y ago
Are athletes are working themselves to injury for the sake of improving the lives of the people around them? I do not see this. Athletes are competing for themselves: for fame, money and to feed their egos. I do not see the virtue in athletics given that being an entertainer, and being powerful and fit are intrinsically rewarding enough. I'd much rather we were funding musicians and artists, but only a fraction of funding goes to these in comparison to the behemoth that is sports.
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  Athletes serve as aspirational figures that drive interest towards sports that keep people healthy. There is an ugly skinny-fat / fat-fat hatred of sports born from post-war folklore about jocks and nerds.
  - Nursie 2y ago
    > Athletes serve as aspirational figures that drive interest towards sports that keep people healthy. No, they don't. The olympics in particular have been shown not to have any sort of lasting effect on host countries or the world in general. AFAICT this whole thing is a fallacy dreamt up as part of the justification for spending billions on games.
RugnirViking 2y ago
> 99.999% of things normal people get paid to do is something valuable for their neighbor My intuition is that you will find a small and decreasing number of people agree with or believe this
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Sure, but that's because they're wrong. Consider the counterfactual. In order for it to be true that many people are paid for work that isn't valuable, it'd have to be true that many people are willingly parting with their money for no reason at all. That does happen, of course, and it's so special we think highly of people when they do it (it's called charity). Just because people can't reason about the transmission of value throughout a complex economy doesn't mean it's not happening. In fact that's the beauty of currency and market economies: it doesn't need to be comprehensible to anyone outside of the transaction.
  - tsupiroti 2y ago
    "GDP measures everything except that which is worthwhile"
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      This is irrelevant, I'm not talking about GDP. I'm saying that people generally don't pay money for things they don't value, ergo when people are paid money, it's for things that other people value.
      - tsupiroti 2y ago
        That's exactly what GDP measures: how much money people have paid and gotten paid for things.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        Right... and GDP being a bad metric (for most decisions) doesn't have any relevance to the discussion. It doesn't imply anything about the thing it measures. By analogy, good engines produce power. A speedometer measures the engine's power under a set of conditions. However, a speedometer is not (by itself) a good way to measure an engine because there are other factors you care about. The fact that a speedometer is a bad measure of engine power does not mean that engine power is unimportant or bad. If I said, "high max speed means good engine," or "high GDP means economy is working well," your comment would be relevant. I did not say that. I said "the overwhelming majority of transactions in an economy are of mutual benefit to the transactors."

olyjohn 2y ago

Man you guys got trolled by the parent comment so hard.