CONSOOOOOOOM
OBEY CONFORM SUBMIT
We operate under the depression-era assumption that per-capita GDP is some kinda gold-standard metric for evaluating how well a country is doing economically. In reality per-capita GDP is just tracking the trash changing hands. We also overemphasize transactionality because of this. It’s somehow much better from an “economic perspective” to have everyone buying new shirts every week even if it’s the same people buying and then tossing the same fast fashion junk in the trash.
When you consider other metrics we could be judged by such as the OP is kinda pointing at here, our country looks way fucking worse on the leaderboard.
We ought to use the measures of the material conditions of our population to drive policy rather than how much currency has changed hands and how many worthless transactions have occurred.
This concept has a name. Artificial Scarcity.
Not enough memes. Besides that, definitely agree.
It is true that there will never be enough to satisfy the greediest among us. Unless there’s some kind of global revolution this will continue until the end
We all lie to ourselves in various ways - like thinking we need a supercomputer in our pocket so we can see what’s trending while we sit on the toilet.
“The problem with the American economy is too many pocket computers”, I say while sitting on the toilet in the Bigger Bombs factory at Raytheon.
Yeah if somebody actually said that it would be dumb, and so is pretending they did.
We don’t have a resource problem, we have a distribution problem.
Resources are constantly being wasted to accelerate the wealth transfer up the chain.
The first thing you say is absolutely correct but I have no idea what you mean by the second
Food being wasted instead of given out. Clothing slashed and tossed away. Housing boarded up and left vacant in the name of investing.
All in the name of maximizing sales and profit. Resources hoarded and wasted.
30% of the worlds resources would be sufficient to meet everyone’s needs if properly distributed.
But it’s not because corporations see a homeless man taking a sandwich out of the trash as a lost sale.
The problem is even if you do give away excess food, next growing cycle, you’ll still adjust to grow less. And there won’t be excess. So donating food is good, but it’s not a long term solution to the distribution problem. Same with houses and clothes and whatnot
Or in a resource based economy, production would be decided by the needs of the community at various scales and not driven by sales or profits.
I think the ideal is a system that provides UBI, Nutritious food distribution, needs based housing, universal healthcare, and job services that provide aptitude testing, training and placement.
If 30% can meet our needs, the other 70% should be sufficient to provide the system and framework and enough left over for consumption, luxury and still have room for meritocracy advancement.
What’s the current wealth distribution? 10% holding 85% leaving the rest of us 15% only half of the 30 we need.
Shout-out to too good to go - an app that aims to minimize food waste by letting restaurants and grocery stores sell “surprise bags” of food at 1/3 to 1/2 off!
Good mythical morning has a few episodes featuring these!
My colleague brought us doughnuts from here today. She got them last night but they were still plenty fresh.
That’s capitalism baybe. The expectation of infinite growth in a finite system based around the infinite sales of infinite products that have a price because they say they are finite.
There’s a house on my way to work that’s vacant. I saw an ambulance there about two years ago; I’m betting that the owner died, because it’s now entirely overgrown, with weeds and grass completely overtaking the yard and driveway.
How many of the ‘empty houses’ are places that were abandoned and are in such disrepair that they’re not safe for habitation, and how many of them are places that are second houses and/or bank-owned rentals?
For reference, the house I live in right now was repo’d around 2010, and my partner and I bought it in 2018; it had been vacant for almost a decade, and required a lot of work, almost as much as it cost, to get it safe. And it still needs work; I need to shore up the floor that’s sagging, and the exterior walls need to be opened up from the inside and be fully sealed b/c I can feel breezes inside when it’s windy outside.
There’s no reason to believe that a formerly homeless person wouldn’t put in the effort on a house restoration project if given the chance to live in it permanently.
Brings to mind the barbecue speech
How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for 9/10ths of the people to eat. The only way you’ll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub he ain’t got no business with.
man this man that. If I lived in the time people were all referred to as men I would probably go crazy and blow up the world.
american rhetoric: okay, imagine you have 10 steaks right?
Lots of less expensive housing in the suburbs and country, go live in them. The reduced noise and air pollution is great.
Air pollution can be just as bad if you live near big farms in a poorly regulated air quality state.
Also you’ll socially rot.
Yea not in cali
A house in the suburb for both norcal and socal is about 1.5m, unless you’re looking at the ghetto
Hell even washington is like 1m ish for a house in the suburb
A house in the suburb for both norcal and socal is about 1.5m
A 3br 3ba 2,155sqft home in the suburbs elsewhere is $350k. It was literally the first one I looked up, these are everywhere. Here is another, a 3br 4ba 2,864sqft in the suburbs in a completely different state for $352k. Again, this was literally just the second one I looked up, these things are everywhere. Spending $1.5m on a house is crazy talk.
Crazy to talk about “cheap housing” and look to the suburbs in the year 2025. That ship sailed decades ago.
That’s before you start pricing in the time-value of an hour or more a workday trapped in traffic.
pfff. wrong.
1 third of all ppl have access to a washingmachine. there not enough resources to build one for everyone. or cars etc…
Couldn’t we just share laundromats and busses?
