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Do you know how to grow vegetables, how to produce antibiotics, how to diagnose and treat diabetes, how to operate a farm, how to build up and run an electrical

Do you know how to grow vegetables, how to produce antibiotics, how to diagnose and treat diabetes, how to operate a farm, how to build up and run an electrical power grid, how to build a fridge, a TV, a car or a motorcycle? No? The “economy” allows you to trade something that YOU are capable of into an imaginary representation of currency which you can trade in return for things you need but are incapable of doing yourself. And it does that so well and so effectively, that mankind has achieved a quality of life unseen in human history. Children don’t randomly starve to death during a winter, your mom doesn’t just randomly die from an infection any more and we have a pretty chilled live compared to our ancestors 10 thousand years ago I believe. Yeah, I don’t know what the economy has given me in return either.

dottjt 1y ago
I guess the issue regarding the OP is that there needs to be some kind of balance. It's great that we have all these things, but it's at the cost of ever-increasing productivity and time. Perhaps in the modern age this trade off no longer seems fair, at least at current proportions.
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  There is a balanace, the size of entertainment markets, like video games, shows that
  - dottjt 1y ago
    I would describe that more as a distraction or a cope in response to something, not as a balance. With balance you wouldn't need excessive entertainment to begin with. It'd be like saying we have cigarettes to deal with stress or mental health professions to deal with excessive expectations of society. They don't address the cause in the first place.
    - Braxton1980 1y ago
      What is the balance referring to then, what is the stress
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  It’s bullshit that I’m not able to watch Netflix all day and write poetry. My ancestors worked hard. So many people are so rich. The government should tax billionaires and give it to me
  - mid-kid 1y ago
    What an incredibly toxic way to view dissatisfaction with modern day hustle culture. There's an incredible amount of activities that contribute to society but aren't valued with money - only with wellbeing.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  No, I think the issue is a bit different. You used to start out at an entry level job, and work your way up to something better. You could see how to get to "better" from where you were, and what it would take. When you got to "better", you were glad for the improvement. Yeah, the guy owning the factory had it a lot better than you. But as long as he gave you a route to a better life, that was good enough for almost everybody. What changed? In my view, three things. First, the route to "better" is a lot narrower these days. People are a lot less convinced that they can get there from where they are. Second, people don't expect to have to work their way up. They expect to have it all on day 1. They expect instant success. When they don't get it, they get discouraged. Third, people are finding that the promise is empty. A better job gets you a nicer apartment that feels just as empty as the previous one did. You're just as lonely there. Your job feels just as much like a soul-crushing grind as it did, maybe more so. In some fundamental way, the stuff you can buy with money isn't enough. People don't know where to find it, but they kind of expect that their job will give them what's missing. And it doesn't.
  - d3ms 1y ago
    There was always a subsection of the population that didn't get to experience any of this opportunity. Now that slice is growing. The fact that your vapid consumerism doesn't give you pleasure makes sense since your position is more precarious today than it was yesterday. What is the point of such things when they are not permanent?
dheera 1y ago
Currency as a way to trade value and skills is a beautiful invention, and that is to be credited for a lot of modern quality of life. But everything else in the economy (extreme taxation, medical care, housing) has become increasingly predatory over the decades. > how to diagnose and treat diabetes Take this as an example. The "economy", as a machine, has learned to subsidize corn syrup, infiltrate every food with forms of sugar including what children eat at school (fuck chocolate milk, PB&J sandwiches, canned fruit in sugar syrup, none are healthy), then profit off of them when they get diabetes later in life. Insurance-scam them by making them pay premiums per month but still not cover their medical costs in full, make them pay for any preventative care they want to have because a doctor didn't "prescribe" it and it wouldn't be profitable to prevent disease. Make healthy food expensive, so that you can get as many people to get diabetes as possible. Lobby against having kitchens in schools so that they are forced to serve even more unhealthy shit. This is what capitalism as a machine has learned. Diabetes shouldn't even be such a pervasive thing. It's highly preventable. It is in fact of the most preventable of common diseases. The economy machine, however, has realized that diabetes is profitable for the people who own and control the machine (Wall Street, insurance companies, banks). This is just one example, but the entire system has become predatory.
- Braxton1980 1y ago
  >extreme taxation Can you provide an example of this?
  - dheera 1y ago
    1. In my career so far, I have paid enough taxes to buy 3 houses in cash but I still can't afford 1 house in cash. The machine says "you can buy a house with debt" which is yet another way to create a way to extract money from me when I should have just been able to buy 1 house in the first place. Most of the population has been brainwashed to think "I must pay my taxes, I must go into debt" and hasn't opened their eyes that the system is broken in the first place. 2. The company is taxed when they pay me, I pay taxes on that money again, and then I pay taxes yet again when I buy stuff with it (most of that money is being used to pay someone else's taxes), and then in some cases yet again just for owning it. It's frankly bonkers. 80%+ of money I make for the machine goes to paying taxes of sorts. I see very little of it. Yeah, the country needs money to support infrastructure, you say. Fine. For what the US provides its citizens, it really doesn't need that much. There are countries that tax at similar rates to the US. They have well-developed railway systems, almost free healthcare, free university, they control crime effectively, they're delivering actual value to the citizens. If you dig into it, the US is a massive money laundering scheme -- the economy has learned to tax the fuck out of citizens without actually returning that value to the citizens themselves.
user32489318 1y ago
There’s a difference between “knowing how to”, “been able to” and make financial sense to do it. What you’re describing is a “society”, ie everyone has a dedicated purpose, that’s similar to yours “knowing how to” and “been able to”. Do you really need a monetary systeem, ie economics, around this? I’m not making a case for North Korea/Soviet Union, but do we as a humanity really need a lever (money) to push the society forward
alecst 1y ago
I recently read a book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabloona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabloona) about a "modern" (1930s) man who sought out the Eskimos to check out their way of life. They have nothing you describe -- no agriculture, no antibiotics, no farming, no electricity. (The fridge, however, they got covered.) They are quite happy that way. Certainly happier than the people around me in NYC. Perhaps quality of life is about more than just material goods.
- spwa4 1y ago
  > Perhaps quality of life is about more than just material goods. With subsistence agriculture the US can support maybe 2-3% of it's current population. The EU is (far) worse on this front. And with the Eskimo's way of life it can support 0.01%. So what about that little problem? And this can't be fixed without changing that lifestyle ... That this superior way of life is suffering and death for nearly everyone never seems to get discussed for some reason.
- nkurz 1y ago
  I read Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins a couple decades ago and it's stuck with me ever since. I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned online before. It's high on my list of books that should be top-rated classics, but as far as I can tell it's basically unknown. If you've never heard of it, seek it out, it's fabulous! Edit: Since alecst has obviously already read Kabloona, I might as well give a few more that are on that "list": Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker, Goatwalking by Jim Corbett, and Hyssop by Kevin McIlvoy. Maybe you'd like one of them too.

dottjt 1y ago

I guess the issue regarding the OP is that there needs to be some kind of balance. It's great that we have all these things, but it's at the cost of ever-increasing productivity and time. Perhaps in the modern age this trade off no longer seems fair, at least at current proportions.

Braxton1980 1y ago
There is a balanace, the size of entertainment markets, like video games, shows that
- dottjt 1y ago
  I would describe that more as a distraction or a cope in response to something, not as a balance. With balance you wouldn't need excessive entertainment to begin with. It'd be like saying we have cigarettes to deal with stress or mental health professions to deal with excessive expectations of society. They don't address the cause in the first place.
  - Braxton1980 1y ago
    What is the balance referring to then, what is the stress
monero-xmr 1y ago
It’s bullshit that I’m not able to watch Netflix all day and write poetry. My ancestors worked hard. So many people are so rich. The government should tax billionaires and give it to me
- mid-kid 1y ago
  What an incredibly toxic way to view dissatisfaction with modern day hustle culture. There's an incredible amount of activities that contribute to society but aren't valued with money - only with wellbeing.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
No, I think the issue is a bit different. You used to start out at an entry level job, and work your way up to something better. You could see how to get to "better" from where you were, and what it would take. When you got to "better", you were glad for the improvement. Yeah, the guy owning the factory had it a lot better than you. But as long as he gave you a route to a better life, that was good enough for almost everybody. What changed? In my view, three things. First, the route to "better" is a lot narrower these days. People are a lot less convinced that they can get there from where they are. Second, people don't expect to have to work their way up. They expect to have it all on day 1. They expect instant success. When they don't get it, they get discouraged. Third, people are finding that the promise is empty. A better job gets you a nicer apartment that feels just as empty as the previous one did. You're just as lonely there. Your job feels just as much like a soul-crushing grind as it did, maybe more so. In some fundamental way, the stuff you can buy with money isn't enough. People don't know where to find it, but they kind of expect that their job will give them what's missing. And it doesn't.
- d3ms 1y ago
  There was always a subsection of the population that didn't get to experience any of this opportunity. Now that slice is growing. The fact that your vapid consumerism doesn't give you pleasure makes sense since your position is more precarious today than it was yesterday. What is the point of such things when they are not permanent?

dheera 1y ago

Currency as a way to trade value and skills is a beautiful invention, and that is to be credited for a lot of modern quality of life. But everything else in the economy (extreme taxation, medical care, housing) has become increasingly predatory over the decades. > how to diagnose and treat diabetes Take this as an example. The "economy", as a machine, has learned to subsidize corn syrup, infiltrate every food with forms of sugar including what children eat at school (fuck chocolate milk, PB&J sandwiches, canned fruit in sugar syrup, none are healthy), then profit off of them when they get diabetes later in life. Insurance-scam them by making them pay premiums per month but still not cover their medical costs in full, make them pay for any preventative care they want to have because a doctor didn't "prescribe" it and it wouldn't be profitable to prevent disease. Make healthy food expensive, so that you can get as many people to get diabetes as possible. Lobby against having kitchens in schools so that they are forced to serve even more unhealthy shit. This is what capitalism as a machine has learned. Diabetes shouldn't even be such a pervasive thing. It's highly preventable. It is in fact of the most preventable of common diseases. The economy machine, however, has realized that diabetes is profitable for the people who own and control the machine (Wall Street, insurance companies, banks). This is just one example, but the entire system has become predatory.

Braxton1980 1y ago
>extreme taxation Can you provide an example of this?
- dheera 1y ago
  1. In my career so far, I have paid enough taxes to buy 3 houses in cash but I still can't afford 1 house in cash. The machine says "you can buy a house with debt" which is yet another way to create a way to extract money from me when I should have just been able to buy 1 house in the first place. Most of the population has been brainwashed to think "I must pay my taxes, I must go into debt" and hasn't opened their eyes that the system is broken in the first place. 2. The company is taxed when they pay me, I pay taxes on that money again, and then I pay taxes yet again when I buy stuff with it (most of that money is being used to pay someone else's taxes), and then in some cases yet again just for owning it. It's frankly bonkers. 80%+ of money I make for the machine goes to paying taxes of sorts. I see very little of it. Yeah, the country needs money to support infrastructure, you say. Fine. For what the US provides its citizens, it really doesn't need that much. There are countries that tax at similar rates to the US. They have well-developed railway systems, almost free healthcare, free university, they control crime effectively, they're delivering actual value to the citizens. If you dig into it, the US is a massive money laundering scheme -- the economy has learned to tax the fuck out of citizens without actually returning that value to the citizens themselves.

user32489318 1y ago

There’s a difference between “knowing how to”, “been able to” and make financial sense to do it. What you’re describing is a “society”, ie everyone has a dedicated purpose, that’s similar to yours “knowing how to” and “been able to”. Do you really need a monetary systeem, ie economics, around this? I’m not making a case for North Korea/Soviet Union, but do we as a humanity really need a lever (money) to push the society forward

alecst 1y ago

I recently read a book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabloona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabloona) about a "modern" (1930s) man who sought out the Eskimos to check out their way of life. They have nothing you describe -- no agriculture, no antibiotics, no farming, no electricity. (The fridge, however, they got covered.) They are quite happy that way. Certainly happier than the people around me in NYC. Perhaps quality of life is about more than just material goods.

spwa4 1y ago
> Perhaps quality of life is about more than just material goods. With subsistence agriculture the US can support maybe 2-3% of it's current population. The EU is (far) worse on this front. And with the Eskimo's way of life it can support 0.01%. So what about that little problem? And this can't be fixed without changing that lifestyle ... That this superior way of life is suffering and death for nearly everyone never seems to get discussed for some reason.
nkurz 1y ago
I read Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins a couple decades ago and it's stuck with me ever since. I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned online before. It's high on my list of books that should be top-rated classics, but as far as I can tell it's basically unknown. If you've never heard of it, seek it out, it's fabulous! Edit: Since alecst has obviously already read Kabloona, I might as well give a few more that are on that "list": Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker, Goatwalking by Jim Corbett, and Hyssop by Kevin McIlvoy. Maybe you'd like one of them too.