5 ms·
We're retiring later and later, working more per week, purchasing power is going down, quality of goods is going down, life expectancy is decreasing, child mort
by lm28469 8mo ago
We're retiring later and later, working more per week, purchasing power is going down, quality of goods is going down, life expectancy is decreasing, child mortality is increasing, teenage suicide is increasing, illiteracy is increasing, &c.
But trust us this time we'll do incredible things, the same things but more of it, faster and cheaper, will automatically make things amazing!
- lstodd 8mo ago[flagged]
- anamexis 8mo agoRetirement is the withdrawal from active working life, i.e. having a job. It is not a US concept.
- samf 8mo agoRight, and a nice thing about software is that retirement doesn’t mean you have to stop doing what you used to do. I’m retired (I know, I’m very lucky), and I’ve done as much or more coding since retirement than I did in my job. But to be fair, AI has really changed how I’m going about things, and I’m not sure what the future is going to bring. I really worry about my adult children and their careers.
- lstodd 8mo ago[flagged]
- WJW 8mo agoNot having a job anymore is very different from not "doing things" at all.
- xantronix 8mo agoThe notion that one's economic output is equal to one's worth as a person seems pretty wrong-headed, when considering what the purpose of life is.
- coldtea 8mo agoOnly if your life is so insignificant and your interests and social circle so narrow that your paid gig determines the whole of it and is your sole purpose.
- lstodd 8mo agoBut if it ain't so, there is effectively no retirement?
- lm28469 8mo agoSo you're telling me that if you won $1b tomorrow you wouldn't know what to do besides continuing your 9 to 5 until you die?
- coldtea 8mo agoIf you work most jobs, whether cognitive or manual labor, after some point you can't do them anymore, due to physical and cognitive decline, medical issues, and the plain fact that you can do that shit as a hobby if you really like it, but you shouldn't need to go to some fucking office or greet people in your local Walmart in your late 60s and 70s just to survive. We call this stopping of work at that point retirement. How about that?
- lm28469 8mo agoIt's the part where you stop being a wage slave and can enjoy some freedom, I know, such an alien concept
- cheema33 8mo ago> We're retiring later and later, working more per week That may be true. But, if somebody offered me a time machine to travel back in time and live at any point in history, would I take it? Hell no. > purchasing power is going down That is not a new thing. > quality of goods is going down Phones are better. Computers are better. Cars, planes, washing machines ... > life expectancy is decreasing On the whole, this is not the case. > child mortality is increasing Globally? > illiteracy is increasing Globally? You seem to have a negative view of things. And sure, many things are not great. But the examples you gave are not it.
- pixl97 8mo agoYa some people don't know the difference between their country falling apart versus the world falling apart.
- trgn 8mo agoWhat does it matter the world gets better when your neighbors do worse?
- travisjungroth 8mo agoThe other people in the world who aren’t your neighbors are also people.
- wolvesechoes 8mo agoBut no one in their right mind cares more about other people in the world more than about himself and those closest to him.
- tredre3 8mo agoIf all but one of my neighbors were improving, why would I focus on the one that insists on repeatedly shooting itself in the dick?
- lm28469 8mo ago
- deepsun 8mo agoCrime rates going down and down. Purchasing power grows everywhere in the world (but we want much nicer things now, so don't feel it). Travel is more accessible that it ever was in humanity history. Information keeps getting more and more accessible. And literacy rates are increasing. I don't know why you say it's not, just google "literacy rates trend".
- paulryanrogers 8mo agoEfficiency gains have primarily benefited the capital owners. Workers ability to buy essentials like housing and healthcare have not gotten worse, not better. I can cover every wall of my living space in flat screen color television more cheaply than feed, house, heal, and educate another child in my family.
- martin-t 8mo agoI started reading about the industrial revolutions and the evolution of capitalism recently. And it is my understanding that something similar was happening around the second industrial revolution - normal people barely making a living while owners of massive factories and other "means of production" getting richer rand richer. That's why communism got so popular in some places and why after capitalism won, it demonized communism so much that people now think those are the only two options and communism is the bad one so capitalism must be the good one. There are other options like mutualism or market socialism and people (including me until recently) have never heard of them. Cooperatives exist and most people don't even know what that word means. We need a system where ownership of both the means of production and more importantly the product goes to the workers. If production is more effective with an assistant ("manager") overseeing them, then can hire one and negotiate his salary collectively. If they need an investment, they can quantify the risk and agree how much the investor gets in return after how long but it should not give the investor a massive chunk of or complete ownership - at most it should give small ownership according to his hourly rate compared to other workers.
- deepsun 8mo agoNo, travel and information accessibility and crime rates benefited everyone.