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The Poison We Pick

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Re: The Poison We Pick

#131

Post by Thriptic »

ryandrake wrote: post #101
Thriptic wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you isolate the party people and the lushes, you are left with people who simply feel like they don’t count. Correct, which is why fixing income inequality will not solve this problem. Giving someone basic income or access to safety nets doesn't give them the meaning derived from earning a living through hard work and creativity, it doesn't bring back all the friends that moved away, it doesn't replace fallen…

This seems like a step closer to a world where society pays half of people to dig holes and the other half to fill them in, all because of this inescapable idea that a living is something that must be earned. Fixing income inequality might not give people meaning, but it might free them from financial constraints and give them the opportunity to go out and find that meaning, rather that being trapped in this cycle of…

Long term I agree, we need societal change, but changing perceptions about the meaning of work is a multi-generational problem. We need a solution which is going to fix this problems over 10-20 years. It's going to be far easier to get traction if you are providing things which conform to peoples' existing belief systems, rather than dictating to them that their belief systems are wrong and need to change.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#132

Post by [deleted] »

ArcticUnicorn wrote: post #58

"It’s been several decades since Daniel Bell wrote The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, but his insights have proven prescient. Ever-more-powerful market forces actually undermine the foundations of social stability, wreaking havoc on tradition, religion, and robust civil associations, destroying what conservatives value the most. They create a less human world. They make us less happy. They generate pain." Thi…

[deleted]

Re: The Poison We Pick

#133

Post by maratd »

api wrote: post #116
maratd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ever-more-powerful market forces actually undermine the foundations of social stability, wreaking havoc on tradition, religion, and robust civil associations Is there an actual example of this? I can't think of a single one.

The escalating offensiveness of media due to the fact that offensive speech gets attention and therefore makes money?

Let's agree that this is happening. Is there any evidence that this is going to "undermine the foundations of social stability, wreaking havoc on tradition, religion, and robust civil associations"?

People have been saying nasty things since forever. Some even in this thread =) Is there any evidence that it is "wreaking havoc" on our social fabric?

Re: The Poison We Pick

#134

Post by iamcasen »

naeemtee wrote: post #97
chrisgd wrote: post #54

I think almost all problems we discuss every day: political divide, millennial job prospects, student loan debt, drug crises can be traced to wealth inequality. At it's core, all these problems evolve from unfettered capitalistic pursuits. The middle man taking their cut of student loans and having no means to resolve that debt through bakruptcy. No growth jobs that offer no safety net. For profit schools, prisons an…

Singapore has one of the world's highest income inequalities and faces virtually none of those problems. Distilling it down to "income inequality" is reductionist, political scapegoating.

Singapore is also an extremely authoritarian state. Possession of drugs can get you the death penalty, or state sanctioned torture and beatings.

Kinda apples to oranges when you compare to the US.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#135

Post by panarky »

sgentle wrote: post #120

Rather than place the blame on a lack of structure, community or spirituality, I see this as just a natural consequence of a system optimised at every turn for economic output. I've heard a lot about a singularity doomsday scenario where a paperclip-maximising AI realises people are much less useful as paperclip constructors than they are as paperclip ingredients. Surely it can't be so hard to see that the productivi…

The global economy already produces enough for every man, woman and child.

The surplus increases every year.

Every year, fewer and fewer people need to work full-time in mind-numbingly boring jobs to produce what the population needs.

So why do we keep up the fiction that everyone needs to waste their lives doing unnecessary work?

It's time to imagine how we could achieve a post-work society where more people could realize their potential, instead of being tied down to meaningless, mindless and unnecessary drudgery.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#136

Post by smogcutter »

sgentle wrote: post #120

Rather than place the blame on a lack of structure, community or spirituality, I see this as just a natural consequence of a system optimised at every turn for economic output. I've heard a lot about a singularity doomsday scenario where a paperclip-maximising AI realises people are much less useful as paperclip constructors than they are as paperclip ingredients. Surely it can't be so hard to see that the productivi…

Enter UBI: an allowance from our masters, so that people can continue to consume when there's nothing left for people to produce.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#137

Post by chrisgd »

naeemtee wrote: post #97
chrisgd wrote: post #54

I think almost all problems we discuss every day: political divide, millennial job prospects, student loan debt, drug crises can be traced to wealth inequality. At it's core, all these problems evolve from unfettered capitalistic pursuits. The middle man taking their cut of student loans and having no means to resolve that debt through bakruptcy. No growth jobs that offer no safety net. For profit schools, prisons an…

Singapore has one of the world's highest income inequalities and faces virtually none of those problems. Distilling it down to "income inequality" is reductionist, political scapegoating.

It is a bit simplified, as all online treatises need to be, but less reductionist than picking one counter example without any thought.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#138

Post by andrewjl »

foxbarrington wrote: post #94
noahdesu wrote: post #48

The first thing I did when I opened this article was search for "rat", and was happy to see it there. From the comments I saw I had a hunch it might be: I recently finished a really powerful chapter in the book "Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs" which describes an experiment involving rats that ostensibly shows that addiction isn't about the chemical, but rather it's about the environme…

In addition to rat park[0], there's also been an amazing study wrt to Viet Nam vets[1]. Only 5% of soldiers relapsed to heroin use in the first year of returning home. Compared to a traditional 90% relapse rate when addicts treated in the US return to their homes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/05/3718949...

I find the rat park experiment intriguing, but have there been any further studies or attempts to replicate the results?

Re: The Poison We Pick

#139

Post by andrewjl »

panarky wrote: post #135
sgentle wrote: post #120

Rather than place the blame on a lack of structure, community or spirituality, I see this as just a natural consequence of a system optimised at every turn for economic output. I've heard a lot about a singularity doomsday scenario where a paperclip-maximising AI realises people are much less useful as paperclip constructors than they are as paperclip ingredients. Surely it can't be so hard to see that the productivi…

The global economy already produces enough for every man, woman and child. The surplus increases every year. Every year, fewer and fewer people need to work full-time in mind-numbingly boring jobs to produce what the population needs. So why do we keep up the fiction that everyone needs to waste their lives doing unnecessary work? It's time to imagine how we could achieve a post-work society where more people could r…

Easy answer, the narrative embedded into our worldview (and in the worldview of many if not most decision makers) is that without work and the kind of structure it brings, people cannot be functional members of society. It plays itself out both externally and internally.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#140

Post by slfnflctd »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #129
slfnflctd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> curious to see what America's 3.5 million truck drivers do when they lose their jobs over the next ten years That is a rather optimistic projection of the rollout of Level 5 autonomy. The total number of heavy trucks sold worldwide was less than 400k in 2014, and no one has full Level 5 yet (if it can even be done large scale at a profit), so I would adjust those expectations. Most 'displaced' truckers should be ab…

> Most 'displaced' truckers should be able to find work unloading automated long-hauls into smaller short-hauls and driving them during a lengthy transition period. If a million truckers lose their long-haul trucking jobs, how do a million short-haul trucking jobs simultaneously come into existence? Many long-haul truck already go to distribution centers on the outskirts of metro areas so the long->short-haul transfe…

Cheaper, mostly-automated long haul trucking should lead to an overall increase in its usage, meaning there will be more long haul trucks to unload than currently, which will then require even more medium sized trucks (multiple per load) to transfer to. This is a simplified version of the prevailing current theory as I understand it, and it seems fairly solid to me.

There's no denying that full Level 5 across the board would lead to very large disruption, but it's a little too early to call how it will play out yet.

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