3 ms·

> 60-70% of the world's population is useless (if you killed all of them tonight, tomorrow there would be no visible difference at all). No difference visible

by gjm11 13y ago

> 60-70% of the world's population is useless (if you killed all of them tonight, tomorrow there would be no visible difference at all). No difference visible to you, perhaps. I'm thinking it might be visible to their friends and families. It would certainly be visible to them, were it not for the accident that you're contemplating killing them rather than, say, just permanently disabling them. If you view people solely as units in the economy -- devices for providing goods and services that other people will pay money for -- then it may be true that 70% of the world's population is "useless". But if you take a look you may notice that most people do other things besides providing goods and services for money. No one is paying me when I read my daughter a bedtime story, listen to a friend who's having relationship difficulties, or bake chocolate chip cookies to take to a party. Those activities may (or may not) be less valuable per hour than my highly paid day job, but if you think they are useless then I think you are looking at the world through a filter that blocks out some important things.

Sarien 13y ago
I think you make a very important point that I haven't seen in any of the other comments: There are lots of goods that are not traded within the economy. The original comment is valid, many people are not relevant to the economy and indeed there are lots of articles on how we are all just wasting our time in meaningless jobs. Some studies have even found that certain jobs (like investment banking) have a net negative creation value. Isn't the kind of activity like reading your child a story, working for free in a social group and the entire maker movement targeted at the kinds of goods that are both great and beautiful and desirable but also non-essential? Exactly the kinds of goods that people will stop paying for when they have less money to spend. So maybe we just need to find a way to distribute the essentials and some money differently so that we can all work on beautiful but useless things instead of trying to get us all the kind of job that everybody will immediately admit they don't even want. Just some random thoughts. ;)
waps 13y ago
I think it varies. I have been walking along the 90% unemployment regions of Brussels a few years ago, and just knocking on a few random doors just "oh sorry you're not Tom" excuse for a look around, sometimes a conversation (I worked - and was bored to death - in the area, so for a month, that was my lunch hobby) (you wouldn't believe just how fertile ground conspiracy theories find here. Especially for a European country). I hate to say it but unless I got entirely the wrong impression, you're wrong. For most of these unemployed their friends and families would take weeks or months to notice. Hell, the staff at the local supermarket will probably notice before friends will. You see the same in the paper. They're isolated, unemployed, and there's large numbers of them. So it happens quite regularly that one of them dies - and if it's for a dumb or catchy reason, the papers go after it. Carbon monoxide poisoning is always reported. Someone who was ill - and this is a country with nearly-free healthcare before you say money - and didn't go to the hospital at all, then died, or someone who was seriously ill, but with little symptoms at first, got sent home, then died in their sleep. There's usually at least some mention of how they arrived at this conclusion and it tends to include how they were found. Depressingly often it's the smell or a loan collector, or- less often, thankfully - panicked kids who found this happened to their sole parent, then did something like running screaming outside, attack a police officer (not seriously, but enough to get them to "tell their mam"). Even if they have friends and family, that someone disappears from these neighborhoods without telling anyone is not exactly a rare event, usually related to crime they committed, so it does not raise any alarms. So no, in most cases I don't think it would be visible at all. Some areas in large cities that nobody really goes voluntarily to would go quiet. And yes, the supermarket would notice.

by gjm11 13y ago

Sarien 13y ago

I think you make a very important point that I haven't seen in any of the other comments: There are lots of goods that are not traded within the economy. The original comment is valid, many people are not relevant to the economy and indeed there are lots of articles on how we are all just wasting our time in meaningless jobs. Some studies have even found that certain jobs (like investment banking) have a net negative creation value. Isn't the kind of activity like reading your child a story, working for free in a social group and the entire maker movement targeted at the kinds of goods that are both great and beautiful and desirable but also non-essential? Exactly the kinds of goods that people will stop paying for when they have less money to spend. So maybe we just need to find a way to distribute the essentials and some money differently so that we can all work on beautiful but useless things instead of trying to get us all the kind of job that everybody will immediately admit they don't even want. Just some random thoughts. ;)

waps 13y ago

I think it varies. I have been walking along the 90% unemployment regions of Brussels a few years ago, and just knocking on a few random doors just "oh sorry you're not Tom" excuse for a look around, sometimes a conversation (I worked - and was bored to death - in the area, so for a month, that was my lunch hobby) (you wouldn't believe just how fertile ground conspiracy theories find here. Especially for a European country). I hate to say it but unless I got entirely the wrong impression, you're wrong. For most of these unemployed their friends and families would take weeks or months to notice. Hell, the staff at the local supermarket will probably notice before friends will. You see the same in the paper. They're isolated, unemployed, and there's large numbers of them. So it happens quite regularly that one of them dies - and if it's for a dumb or catchy reason, the papers go after it. Carbon monoxide poisoning is always reported. Someone who was ill - and this is a country with nearly-free healthcare before you say money - and didn't go to the hospital at all, then died, or someone who was seriously ill, but with little symptoms at first, got sent home, then died in their sleep. There's usually at least some mention of how they arrived at this conclusion and it tends to include how they were found. Depressingly often it's the smell or a loan collector, or- less often, thankfully - panicked kids who found this happened to their sole parent, then did something like running screaming outside, attack a police officer (not seriously, but enough to get them to "tell their mam"). Even if they have friends and family, that someone disappears from these neighborhoods without telling anyone is not exactly a rare event, usually related to crime they committed, so it does not raise any alarms. So no, in most cases I don't think it would be visible at all. Some areas in large cities that nobody really goes voluntarily to would go quiet. And yes, the supermarket would notice.