How is this not the standard view?
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/22864214
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128 replies
Why do rich people get to replace human workers with robots and then tell humans they should get a job if they want to live
"Get a job"
"I would, but you're the one who provides jobs and you won't provide them"
The rise of steam power during the industrial revolution didn't just result in people working fewer hours. Workers were much more productive than before, but they didn't automatically get shorter work weeks.
Getting an 8-hour work day required the workers to form powerful unions and go on strike. Those strikes were broken up by private security and cops. People were killed. But, eventually, decades later, the rich people with power were forced to negotiate and 8 hour days were the norm.
I have known individual workers who had skills that were in high demand which gave them leverage. They negotiated deals like 4 day work weeks, or 30 hour work weeks because they could.
But, for the average worker to get a shorter work week, it's going to take collective action. It's probably also going to require that blood be spilled. Unless people are angry enough to getting beaten or maybe killed, nothing's going to change. Step 1 is joining a union.
The US government crushes unions routinely.
They were at over 45% of the work force in the 1940s-50s.
Now less than 10%, and most of those are cops ironically. The union busters have a union.
I don't think the government itself particularly hates unions. A lot of government workers are unionized. The problem is that rich people are either getting elected or are buying elections, and the rich-friendly reps are passing more and more laws that weaken unions.
I came across an article recently by some reporters who had "snuck in" to a police union meeting. It's interesting what they saw. One quote:
"When it comes to police unions, what we run across is the left is very suspicious of us because we’re police, and the right is suspicious of us because we’re in unions. We get it from both sides."
https://therealnews.com/beards-and-loathing-a-cop-union-convention-comes-to-las-vegas
Most governments hate unions because they stand in the way of their work: doing the oligarchs bidding.
Now tell them about the light bulb cartel and planned obsolescence.
I just bought an unbreakable Superfest glass on Etsy. When we start producing these things again we can revisit this conversation.
A lot of that extra hours is because of planned obsolescence. If products lasted longer, if products were repairable, less would need to be manufactured. If less needed to be manufactured, the less work we need to do.
I just commented something similar. These are the fruits of capitalism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
(or the grapes of wrath, as it were)
We really need a stakeholder centric economy and not a shareholder centered one.
The owners should be the shareholders, and the shareholders should be the workers. I think that makes sense. If everyone owns a stake in the company, it is in everyone's interest to work well. Who gives a shit about loafing and stealing from some anonymous corporate job where your wages don't depend on your contribution at all?
Capitalism
Capitalism is feudalism with more math.
Yes, because feudalism was famous for its short work weeks.
capitalism is an advanced form of feudalism
Sure, just like wood is an advanced form of metal.
The end goals and results are the same. That's what matters.
And that will always be true by necessity for capitalism, it is the inevitable end result, it will always end the same way and it will always end the same. With implosion.
Ah, so an airplane is an advanced form of motorcycle, because the end goal is transportation.
Similarly, an oven is an advanced form of garden because the end goal is to provide food to eat.
Feudalism and capitalism are both forms of government, so they're related, but one is not an "advanced form" of the other in any meaningful way.
No, that is you arbitrarily assigning random variables to the underlying proposition.
But yes, I agree that feudalism and capitalism are both forms of government, and I'd say that capitalism is the fruit of feudalism. It is feudalism in another shape. The purpose is to let the rich stay rich at the expense of everybody else. It is fundamentally incompatible with democracy, it stands in direct opposition to it.
The general societal stratification is the same, and acts similarly. It is feudalism with more math, but it's still a form of serfdom. It's like, capitalism says that it will solve everything, because on average everyone will have a better life.
The rich will make 1000, and you will make 1. Everybody wins, right?
The stratification, the accumulation of wealth, is the point. It is the mechanism by which the former feudal lords can whitewash their wealth- "look at us, we earned this money by smart investments. We are admirable! You could be like us! We aren't tyrants and kings and princes, we were just smart!"
And over generations everyone is like, yeah, that makes sense!
If money is power, then capitalism is a form of government, and in direct opposition to the rule of a democratic process and law and order.
In my correct opinion.
People cut heads off nobility to get better conditions, and had to keep doing variants of it and fight for their lives for two hundred years until we finally broke free from it- only to have to slave for half the time of the day
They had more holidays and time off than we do now. Most of their work was seasonal, they were worked almost to death at harvest time for example.
Their "holidays" were "holy days" where they had to go on long pilgrimages, etc. It wasn't the day where they sat at home and did fun things, they were the days where their religious duties trumped their farm work duties. And, when it came to their "time off" those were the times when they were mending pots and pans, sewing up holes in clothes, and other housework that they didn't have time for when they were out in the fields.
I fail to see where the original comment highlights that feudalism is the next best option? Unless they edited their comment?
It's nothing about "the next best option". The problem is they seem to think that capitalism caused this issue, when really it has been a part of every form of government that has ever existed, and was significantly worse under feudalism.
K
Actually it was... Typically you only worked for your lord around 3 days a week, the rest of the time was yours to toil your own fields, and even then there was a lot of down time. The church mandated more time off than modern companies give...
I have read that with our current productivity we should have a 4-day workweek and much higher salaries. But all the gains go straight to the top.
I believe it's already possible with a 20 hour work week.
I know I only put in about 20 hours of work into a 40 hour work week...
It’s meant to make dollars, not sense.
In a better world, we’d be paid much more for less work. No loss of jobs to AI, company would just keep on employees to cover for others to take long vacations. CEO and executive team won’t make 300x more then their average employee
Because the American workforce in general are a bunch of morons. I remember when I was a corporate guy everyone would walk around with their heads down and when you would ask someone you were friendly with how are you their immediate response would be "so busy so so busy." They would ask how I was and I would say "well I'm not busy like you and I'm happy I'm not busy like you." And they would look at me like hush how dare you say that if I'm even seen next to you saying that I could be fired.
Just imagine if America decoupled healthcare from your job and people actually had the ability to choose where they really wanted to hang their hat for their daily billionaire chores. I think the workforce would dramatically change and there would be a lot of happier people. But since America was founded on Puritan values I don't think happy is part of the lexicon when it comes to work.
Yep. I'm a communist but let's be fair, this is not even a problem with capitalism. It's not a win-lose situation where the oligarchs make money off of your misery. It's a lose-lose where your misery causes lower productivity and the only thing that fuels it is a shitty, psychotic culture of dominance, obedience and puritan values.
Yes, decoupling healthcare would be a stark change, which is scary so we can’t do that. Also, it would nuke the Ritchie Riches’s hold on competitive hiring so … more propaganda.
Sixty hours a week? Tell me you're Ametican without telling me that you are American.
And if you complain, you are not a "team player". That's how you end up on the next layoff list.
What?! You took a couple days off last year?! I know we have "unlimited vacation time", but team players don't take time off. Believe it or not, straight to the layoff list.
I've had three days off this past year besides weekends, only one sick day
I'm still poor
With my socialist European collective bargaining agreement I would only be working 5 months in a year if that was my usual workweek
I've been arguing this for years. I'm 10x minimum more efficient since I got into IT almost 2 decades ago, there is no end in site, no slowdown. Just more work work work. So much shit is instant and only takes a few moments when it's not. No way we need to work this much.
Ok so is this story, I think it's from the book Freakonomics, but I can't remember. So I'm paraphrasing:
Monsanto (or similar) goes to like Vietnam or Cambodia (or whatever).
They say, use our GMO rice, it will double your yield per year.
They say, great!
A year later Monsanto comes back, and finds the Vietnamese have only planted half their fields.
"Why did you only plant half the field?"
"Because with your seeds, we can work half as much".
I tried half assedly find the original story but the other cheek couldn't be arsed.
And we only live once. And our lives fucking suck because of a greedy few. Our short time alive is being wasted so some piece of shit can make billions or conquer 20 countries or any other pathologically despicable goal like that. And I mean pathological. These people are not sane, and society glorifies their mental illness.
Billionaires are OCD patients with Financial Hoarding Disorder. They have no need that for that much money, and no amount will EVER satisfy their mental illness. They will literally kill millions in order to accumulate more.
They need to have their hoard confiscated, and given mental health treatment, and if they don't respond to the treatment, then they need to be institutionalized for being a danger to society.
Why would they surrender the power to have any vacation they want at nearly anytime and buy our politicians to push whatever narrative they like? They are dragons, and they live for status and power — the rest of us be damned.
There was a lot of progress until quite recently. Current retirees saw truly mind boggling changes during their lives. My mother (born in the 1940s) grew up in a house with no electricity and no running water. Now she's retired and she can browse facebook on her mobile phone. My "father in law" bought his first house when he was in his twenties, paying cash with money saved from his first job. Their generation was not exploited and abused the way young people are today. They got to work less and less and managed to retire comfortably. Then political class broke their contract with voters and next generations are significantly worse off than previous ones (less intelligent as well) but a lot of people are still living comfortably enough not to complain. The way people participate in politics also changed. Polarization won over organization. Young people try to fight but without proper structures and strategy it quickly turns into violent lashing out and nothing is achieved. Is it going to change? Probably not. People in charge will keep exploiting divisions among us to further dismantle the system.
The system is built on eternal growth. Slowing down is not an option.
And the “myth of rugged individualism”, which is a political science/journalism way of saying rich people sold a bullshit idea of American culture being largely reliant on people not accepting help or cooperation from other people or the govt so rich people can avoid putting in their fair share.
A better name for that that, one which I apply to myself, is “toxic independence”. It covers more issues, I think, because it includes people who don’t see themselves as rugged individualists, but just ordinary people surviving as best they can.
They’ll kill that myth the second it’s not profitable.
Absolutely. Also, it's built so that those at the top hoard all the wealth and resources and use that advantage... to hoard all the wealth and resources.
The 40-hour workweek was standardized by socialists in the early 1900s. 8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, and 8 hours for whatever else you wanted to do during the day. Obviously, that's been exploited. I work 68 hours a week and still can't afford health insurance, and my job doesn't offer it.
Let's not forget that before one wage was enough for a family of four a car and a house.
Today a single wage gets you a room in a shared apartment.
Though it's not as idyllic as you think, people were worked to the bone still, it just wasn't spread out, basically every man was like a Black Company Worker
That's just stupid people electing someone who speaks good. I studied in the "best" school, was not the one with highest grades, still was smarter than 90% of those A graders to not believe in bullshit politicians or system. It is wherever you go they are everywhere and you are stuck in this broken world and broken system. Such a shame because humanity achieved many incredible things
I would argue that you're not thinking about working hours at a high enough level. The notion that someone can tell you that the negotiation for labor exchange is hourly is just simplifying the negotiation. For example, I make $70 an hour after you calculate it annually, but I'm not an hourly employee. I also work from home, which is a net positive because I'm a more laborious worker when I do this which is a benefit to the employer, and it's a stress reducer for me, which is a benefit to me, the employee.
But there's a secondary aspect of this situation which is that I do not have someone else "watching" me and making sure I'm working all the time. That concept is antiquated. It isn't that there's X amount of hours of work to do in a day, it's that there's Y amount of labor that needs to be done, but we don't know what that Y variable is. We fundamentally understand the overarching goal - it might be something like, how can we increase efficiency? But it's a problem solving concept where we need to utilize time (labor) to think up strategies to how we can solve that problem while connecting objective information to those strategies so we can better understand how they can even be implemented.
After all, if I can increase my own efficiency by 5% but doing so requires 6 months of my time, that isn't going to have a payoff for many years and is likely not in the best interest of either myself or the business.
In addition, working more hours doesn't correlate to more work getting done. One man might push a boulder up a hill in 8 hours while another might be able to do it in 6, or even 4. Do you want to pay them both the same amount? Would you want to be paid the same amount if you were the man pushing the boulder in 4 hours as the man pushing in 8? Of course not.
And do you always receive additional reward each time your labor correlates to some kind of improvement? Well no, of course not. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you can go years without seeing anything outside of your salary. The reason is simply because life and human relationships and interactions are complicated and there's a lot more going on than you're going to give credit for.
I make a decent income, but I also have to prove my value to my company. What I do can be in no small part measured, so if I'm not producing value, the business won't want to keep me on the payroll, and if someone cheaper - thus, less credentialed/experienced - can do much of, or even all of the value I can provide, they will just swap me out for that person, and rightly so. Wouldn't you leave a company who's only paying you $40 an hour for work that another would pay you $70 for?
Most of the people complaining about why we still have to work so much isn't seeing the bigger picture, and likely works a shitty job where the average employee needs to be monitored and probably doesn't have the expertise to be doing anything that isn't more or less transactional (meaning, you are asked to specifically perform very informed tasks like on a conveyor line). This is just a byproduct of people without high-level modern skills complaining that they're sick of pushing boulders up hills all day every day.
I mean, I haven't pushed boulders up hills for 20 years.
Yes, it’s antiquated because we used to be factory workers, where we’d just have a start-stop time because we weren’t automatons that could work anytime. The factory had a beat because product Z takes N steps.
But a cashier is basically in a sales factory; they mediate sales between shoppers and the department store. So, your “antiquated” is just a privileged perspective.
I've worked as a cashier many times in my life. I would not say that my perspective is privileged.
That said, I will continue to argue that it is antiquated. I'm talking about from the perspective of the business as well, mind you. The notion that we have to pay someone who stands at a register for X number of hours Y salary per hour is antiquated. There are so many other ways to handle that kind of trade for labor. Per person who goes through your line, for example, or just salary.
The problem is though that like it or not, the kind of people (this is a generality, mind you) who end up working a cash register for any length of time don't often have the same kind of mentality to hold the ability to provide high value to a business. If your biggest value is your ability to scan items, there isn't a position I can hire you for in my structure where I can't find simply far too many others with more experience and skill who will provide more value. It goes back to, can you push that boulder up the hill in 4 hours, or does it take you 8? I don't want to hire two people who it takes 8, I want to hire 1 that can do what both of you can do combined. The fact that you have to compete with that other person isn't unfair, it's just rational.
I used to work for an internet retailer where we had this thing happen that we called the 50/50/50 rule. Every year we would hire a bunch of warehouse workers. The company even invested in a bussing system that would drive these individuals to and from work every day and the pay was very fair for a warehouse role of this caliber. Everyone we interviewed had to take two tests. The first test was a VERY simple math and reading test. We're talking adding and subtracting of 2 digit numbers and basic multiplication and division and simple reading. The second was a more complex test but I'd have placed it around an 8th grade level, at most. Of those we interviewed, 50% failed the first test, of those that passed that, 50% failed the second, and of those who did not, 50% didn't show up to work the first day.
Keep in mind I took the tests and scored 100% on both and this was before I ever went to college.
Like it or not, there ARE calibers of people in this world. We want to think of everyone as equal, but they're just not. Everyone should be treated equally under the law, but that doesn't make them equal. If you are someone who cannot pass a simple math and reading test, and by simple I mean like 2nd grade stuff here, then I can't hire you - not for the simplest job we have a need for.
There's a firm point with what I'm saying here: Many businesses find that it makes more sense to pay hourly to a casher because if not, the casher is a lot more likely to not show up for work, not do their job when they do, and not do it correctly when they do their job than someone in my field. Same with the kinds of people who applied during my anecdotal warehouse example. Police were called every week due to fights and illicit drug use as well.
Again, there simply ARE calibers of people and there's nothing you're going to do about that. If that's not you and you work at a register all day, then I've confidence you won't be for long and maybe that antiquated way of trading for your labor will change, as it should.
I hate how the word "privileged" comes with a passive aggressive moral accusation. We all operate in the circumstances of our times.
Yes, basically all of these missives and thought experiments implicitly exclude retail while studiously avoiding admitting that this is the case. Retail stores need to be open a sufficient number of hours at the right time(s) of day to capture their potential customers. Unless you're not able to handle your checkout line or your restocks for whatever reason, "efficiency" doesn't really enter into it. Not in the sense of employee time, anyway. Maybe the world's best 7-11 clerk could check out a thousand customers in an hour but just because he can that doesn't mean it makes sense to close the store at 4:00 PM or only keep it open three days out of the week.
Edit: And to add to this before anyone pops out of the woodwork to state the obvious, this does not preclude the store from having more employees who work shorter shifts. In fact, this is often already the case not for any altruistic reason (to put it mildly) but rather to prevent anyone from achieving full time status such that the company would then owe them benefits.
Working for time is standard because working for a production quota was too easily gameable by the employer as it was used to pay workers less than a survivable wage and then claim it's their fault for not working hard enough. It's not antiquated.
That's the neat part: you don't! You need to work a lot and barely survive so rich people can get richer and have more power and status, silly.
At this point power and status bores them, they’re at the stage where they have to kill some of the poors for sport and sadistic pleasure to feel something other than disdain for their spouses and children.
there is another way
It's starting to come to everyone. Wait a few years while the true sleeping giant, the people, start to churn inside while waking up.
I didn't know we had time travelers from the 1920s on Lemmy!
We really need to start firing rocket launchers at billionaire SUVs
Because the rich can't stand it if their wealth doesn't grow. Their piece of the pie can grow because the entire pie is growing or by taking a bigger piece. These days the pie doesn't grow like they want so they're taking more of everybody else. That means you have to work more for less.
The pie grows when you're more productive. Are you more productive when you work 60 hours per week, as opposed to say 35 hours per week? I highly doubt it, at least on average across industries.
We know you're more productive with less hours. That's been tested and studied. But the rich also can't stand you having fun and being in control of your own life.
It doesn't mean anything to be more or less productive doing more or less hours.
They see it this way: if you are 100% effective for 30 hours and then 20% effective for the other 10 hours, that's still overall more than if you would just do the 30 hours.
There was a joke post (I hope) about some CEO giving people a 4 day work week and productivity went up. They then cancelled the 4 day work week because "imagine what they could do with 5 days", using the experiment as a baseline for producitivity.
Because the billionaires captured the government. AI is being used as a pretext to force many workers into a 996-style grind rather than freeing them. At the very worst, the techbros want to manufacture consent for eugenics, and reduce the population to 1 billion or less.
We are social animals. When the herd exhibits general acceptance it triggers something in our brains to do the same. It is why billionaires are funding data centers to flood social media with the opinions and leans they want the public to have.
I can’t remember the researcher name, but among the many studies on this topic there have been a swath done in public waiting rooms with confederates (the name given to actors working for researchers). This is a reproduced experiment.
Waiting room. Smoke starts to trickle out of the ventilation system. How long til someone leaves? Turns out, it’s more likely for the room to clear faster if the confederate gets up sooner and leaves. Then the standard cascade effect happens as the herd takes the hint and everyone leaves. In some cases, it gets to the point where the room becomes hazy and people don’t leave til the confederate initiates.
None of life is a single variable scenario, but it’s worth digging into the variables known to influence us as people.
Learned helplessness is another item I believe is more relevant today than at the time of the now illegal, though famous, experiments performed on dogs.
Everyone else is working these jobs, so it must be ok.
As we all know, after the horse was replaced by the widespread adoption of motorized vehicles, it was free to roam the greenest plains with whichever herd they wanted, with the motorized vehicles serving them for a change, and all the feeding and stable infrastructure remaining in place to serve their needs.
People say they plan revolutions to eat the rich, but because they only ever inherently meant the rhetoric to serve themselves, they will only end up carrying out revolutions to eat themselves.
No, the horses were sent to WW1 and it wasn’t pretty.
Now, to be fair, that's hardly the horses' fault.
Shell charred horse meat isn't half bad tho.
The answer is because we haven't figured out how to organize society so that wealth and power don't consolidate.
And also if we did, it would be challenging to get there.
How Business Worked did a recent video Killing the Host which discusses why the ultra-wealthy engage in destructive behavior that kills the society they depend on.
Progressive taxation on wealth and income
Wealth and power still consolidate to use that wealth to influence governance to reduce and remove taxation on wealth.
Yup. European style social democracy is slowly being dismantled, in France & other countries. That's the root of why protests are erupting there
Karl Marx observes in Das Kapital the capitalist always seeks to capture government and undo taxation and regulation. And as profits trickle towards the capitalist their influence on officials increases, accelerating the flow of gains, which grows at an exponential rate.
They can seek what they want. There's no need to give in
One simple thing would prevent hoarding of wealth and power: outlawing private ownership of the means of production.
But yes, getting there would be challenging.
Something something capitalism
Because it is not true.
Scarcity can absolutely be artificially created. Just look at the diamond industry. But I suspect that is not the kind of scarcity this meme is referring to.
There is a reason the 1% exists, and scarcity is certainly part of the equation. We live on a planet with finite resources, and there are people who seek to accumulate and hoard those resources, along with the wealth and power that come with controlling them.
However, the 60-hour workweek referenced in this meme is not an inevitable consequence of scarcity. It is a consequence of how our economic system prioritizes corporate profits, investor returns, and perpetual growth over the well-being of workers.
A company can be profitable and still be considered a failure if it does not generate enough profit to satisfy investors. Revenue growth is not enough. Profit margins must increase. Returns must keep climbing. And when the pursuit of ever-increasing profits takes precedence over everything else, workers are expected to sacrifice more of their time and energy to sustain it.
That is the real rot: an economic system that treats the failure to maximize profits as though it were the same thing as losing money.
Scarcity is real, but it does not explain or justify every form of inequality. The concentration of wealth and power is also a consequence of who controls resources, how ownership is structured, and what our economic institutions reward.
Until we address both the limits of our finite resources and the systems that allow wealth and power to become increasingly concentrated, we will continue to see extreme inequality. The problem is not simply that there isn't enough to go around. It's also that the people who control the most are incentivized to keep accumulating more.
Because capitalism, which is broken by design. The artifical scarcity is deliberate, just like the suffering.
Propaganda. Effective propaganda.
Somebody rich said something. They're obviously smart because only smart people, like me, get rich (some day!). Therefore, I agree that the poor are taking way too much! The rich deserve it more!
Maybe this isn't very "lemmy" but I think the bottleneck isn't really money, but the stuff you want.
In Australia the main problem with the "housing crisis" is that all efforts to resolve it are on the demand side, and very few on the supply side. Giving first home buyers grants and discounts is great, but that increases demand and increases the price. Removing some of the ridiculous tax benefits to owning multiple properties is great, and has reduced demand somewhat, but it hasn't solved the problem.
To really solve the housing crisis you need a house for everyone that aspires to own one.
In the last decade, having the people able to build the houses has been the real bottleneck. All of the able tradespeople are already building houses. We can't build a million more in a year just because everyone has the money to buy them.
It's frustrating how there's no way to say "anything people need should be provided free or at-cost" without sounding like a loony radical, but it's true.
If businesses could figure out how to make you pay for the air you breathe, it would come in a variety of qualities and flavours, and I would have been banned from r/air long ago.
The profit incentive can barely even be trusted with stuff we don't need. Never let necessities turn a profit.
You have been banned from c/Conservative.
I just explained why everyone can't have a free house though.
I'm aware that I'm essentially calling for a global restructuring of society when I say this, and I'm used to the fact that it's not likely to occur.
Glancing at the first numbers to come up in searches, it seems like there are about 3 Aussies for each residential dwelling currently in existence. It seems like there's already about enough to share, if these weren't unequally allocated. Just saying!
This might shock you but some people dont want to share a house.
The statistic you're looking for is how many vacant houses there are. Spoiler: there's not enough.
If there were, prices wouldn't be what they are. Just saying!
Sidebar - I wish others wouldn't downvote people I'm just trying to have a normal conversation with. Makes everything feel needlessly strained and rude. It always feels like people are crowding around trying to make simple disagreements into fights, doesn't it?
Other than getting private equity out of housing (easy answers first, shadow banks shouldn't own houses) it seems like we should be able to come up with a way to create a lot more highly basic housing at high speed and minimal cost, even if the housing was a bit brutalist it'd have a cooling effect on the cost of mid-range homes.
Of course, at some point we butt up against the fact that when your economic system treats real estate as an investment, you can't also undermine that subtle class system without damaging your economy. At some point the way we do things just depends on a maximum sustainable amount of suffering to keep the markets ticking along.
I agree.
Planning policies that promote lower cost housing.
I like the idea of condos which are exclusively owner occupied. Like renting to a tenant for more than 3 months or something is prohibited.
Also developments exclusively for tiny homes.
Also I feel as though, in the era of work-from-home, small country towns where land is as cheap as dirt, should be more desirable.
I think there's a lot of scope the build out the lower end and take the heat out of the upper end.
I know a guy who lives in a condo like that in Seattle, apparently the building is managed as a co-op. I think it's a model that has promise in urban settings or in more remote work zones, an idea I really like by the way. As soon as remote work started to become feasible at scale I started asking myself when you'd start to see a flight from cities.
I think a lot of people are really set in the mindset of wanting to live where stuff happens, but I could see a case for housing developments in cheaper areas geared more towards young parents - build what they need and maybe a train into town, and there's no reason it couldn't work. People still want to have kids, but it has to be made more economically realistic.
Combine that with tiny houses, wind and solar development, all mixed in with allotments, and I think you could make a case for that as a development model that works. It'd be really spread out, but it's hardly as if a place like Australia lacks room. Run trains and trams through it, and you'd hardly need that many roads even.
In Australia we try with the supply side too. There are ugly-as-fuck housing estates going up all the time. The problem is there are no restrictions on who can buy, so investors, both domestic and foreign, buy up huge numbers of houses before aspiring home owners have a chance to get in to the market. It's fucked.
Merely building estates and houses is not a supply side policy to solve the problem, building houses is just the market ticking along.
We have significant barriers to foreign investment in the form of additional duties and other taxes.
The federal governments recent changes have made property investment less attractive.
None of this has solved the problem, but perhaps these measures are part of a change in the long term trajectory.
I mean, we have some in the past, in the Victorian era, the UK invented the idea of Council Houses, houses given to those who earn less than a certain amount of money per year, which you live in until you reach a threshold of earnings that you have to move out
They built over 2 million of them in 1880-1950
Yeah. This style of housing was very unpopular in Australia because it created ghettos of welfare dependent families.
Social security does most of the heavy lifting now.
Yes we have homeless people, but this is a complex problem requiring a lot more social services than simply "a house".
Segregation was common policy back then, but nowadays mixed social housing projects aren't that hard to conceive.
So you'd put a mixed group of poor and uneducated people in the same place?
What a great idea. I can't possibly imagine how that could produce any unintended outcomes.
Those idiots in the government right?
No, I'd put a group of educated/uneducated, poor/wealthy, native/immigrant, ... people in the same place.
Educated and wealthy people don't want to live in these places. I think that's obvious.
Like everybody else, they don't want to live in ghettos. If there are no ghettos, nobody has to.
Ghettos are not built, they are a result of segregating poor/uneducated/... people into certain areas. If there is no segregation and people from all demographics live in the same area, ghettos do not form and everybody can live in a nice neighborhood.
You don't do segregation at all, it's that simple.
UK council houses, until the 1950s when they started building ghettos basically, were just interspersed into the middle of normal housing estates, completely indistinguishable, like 1 in every 10 houses
As I said in my other comment:
They're not just low cost, they're none-profit, that's the point
The only thing is that if you get too much income, they'll kick you out and pass it on to someone who needs it more
Well, they used to, then Thatcher introduced "Right to Buy", as a way to destroy the council housing system cause she was Tory scum, which is "if you live in a council house for 10 years you may buy it"
Your lazy work produces like 20 times what is used to produce few decades ago. Just by efficiency of systems and existence of digital spreadsheets. It's also wasted in logistics steps because that's cheaper than being efficient.
But what if I could be a parasite one day?
Because the rich have the money for propaganda, buying politicians and owning the media.
5.5 years later and life still sucks
The guillotine was invented in France over less income inequality.
So, if you have that, you’ll be happy. And I don’t want you to be happy because I’m happy when I am the one who is most happy. That’s why.
Yup, that point was reached when we started using fossil fuels. You can't eat information so we're way past the point of why we don't already have a leisure society.
Humans are physically mammals, but mentally we're more like eusocial insects with specific subtypes of individuals.
...just wait till AI and robotic are completely integrated...
been the plan all along. Smith knew what he was talking about.
It would be crazy if this was true.
The business owners are all globalists and keep comparing citizens in advanced western countries to starving kids in somalia.
The beatings will continue until we throw the globalists to the curb.
Whatever injustices you as an American face is nothing compared to the slaves making the electronics you use and the clothes you wear.
The people who have an unfair slice of the pie includes yourself.
If we reset this thing to fair you would probably have less than you do today, yet those who are above you would pay more of their wealth to facilitate that cohort of slaves I was talking about getting a fair quality of life comparable to yours.
I guess my point is that in a world of starving, fat, fatter, and fattest cats, you’re a fatter cat. You being anyone here commenting including myself.
Yeah, a lot of why the people in the west work so much, is because they consume so much. The lifestyle in the west is, on average, extremely extravagant. And before anyone gets defensive, yes much of this is systemic, but acting like its inescapable is defeatist. I guarantee if you live in the west you could spend way less money and still get by just fine. I know because I've been on the brink of homelessness before, and it teaches you a lot of how to save money. Much of the western working class is too caught up in the allure of consumption to realize the thing keeping them unhappy in many cases is that very consumption. It's a temporary solution to a permanent emotional problem. You don't need more things. You need human connection. I'm not saying it will solve all your problems but I guarantee you could find things to stop spending money on that you don't really need. There is an endless amount of free digital entertainment for example. Why would you pay for digital entertainment? Substitute one meal per day for rice. Learn to fix your devices instead of buying new ones. etc.
It’s amazing how much you can get by with very little and TBh how nice it actually is. Add in a few renewables to a home and a few other sustainable measures and it can be incredibly peaceful.
Same with repairing items. I recently replaced my vacuum motor. I was pretty pleased with myself.
The amount of people I know who are buy stuff after stuff just to feel something…anything; is crazy. As proud as I feel about my steps there are so many wasteful and handful people around me. It can feel frustrating.
Once you learn how to live comfortably on a small amount of solar it's fucking life changing tbh. It very much depends on the SIZE of your space, but if you live in a small travel trailer for example you can be very comfortable with like 800W of solar. And can get by with even like 200-400W if frugal. It makes you think about the electricity you use. Microwaves are great for example because they can heat things quickly. So you don't waste energy cooking for long periods to get something hot enough. And you can cook so much in a microwave if you get a reusable steamer. They even make special grill plates for inside them. Some brussel sprouts, white rice, and tilapia is a very healthy meal and can all be cooked easily in just a microwave for example.
Even something as simple as lighting can make a big difference. If you get some NiMH AA batteries and some puck light LEDs you can have lights at night for so little power it won't even be a concern.
This is very unlikely to be true just from a pure physical reality stand point. Like, if global communism or socialism or whatever was implemented but otherwise retained the logistics and infrastructure of the previous system, its genuinely likely the "fatter" cats would have better lives. Materially? Probably the same at worst. Psychologically? A million times better just because we'd have a "floor". We'd have better healthcare, housing availability/city & town planning, and transportation as well. The only thing we'd maybe lose is cheap trinkets, giant trucks, and 20+ variations of cheese puffs. Shit that doesn't matter.