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How to Make Trillions of Dollars

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Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#121

Post by matwood »

momotomo wrote: post #39
matwood wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The things you own end up owning you" - Fight Club The book/movie takes anti-consumerism to a grand finish, but I think there is a definitely a continuum and that most people are too far towards the consumerism side. The real problem is that people equate having stuff with happiness. My issue is I look at people who have a lot of stuff and they seem to spend all their time and money on maintaining said stuff. Owning…

The maintenance aspect is the biggest hidden cost I think. Your last point is interesting - one of the guys that used to mentor me in meditation often said that the attachment to not having things is just as painful as the attachment to having things. It's a true point.

That's an interesting point to the attachment of not having things. I might have been on that path until a previous girlfriend brought me back towards balance in the other direction. She convinced me to buy a couch and replace my plastic deck chairs. :)

I was thinking more along the lines of how people act differently with stuff. A personal example would be my dslr camera. I purposely bought the least expensive that I could get away with, but still have the basic features I wanted (used nikon d60 if you're curious). I take it everywhere and use it all the time because I don't worry about it getting broken or banged up. Obviously I'm not going to toss my camera out the window, but I'm also not going to go nuts if bangs on a rock while I'm hiking. Things are just things.

Contrast this with a friend of mine who bought a d3 (~$10k!) and a bunch of lenses that go for over $2k. He rarely ever uses the camera. It's like he's afraid to mess it up. In my mind his camera is owning him rather than him owning a camera.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#122

Post by chopsueyar »

momotomo wrote: post #39
matwood wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The things you own end up owning you" - Fight Club The book/movie takes anti-consumerism to a grand finish, but I think there is a definitely a continuum and that most people are too far towards the consumerism side. The real problem is that people equate having stuff with happiness. My issue is I look at people who have a lot of stuff and they seem to spend all their time and money on maintaining said stuff. Owning…

The maintenance aspect is the biggest hidden cost I think. Your last point is interesting - one of the guys that used to mentor me in meditation often said that the attachment to not having things is just as painful as the attachment to having things. It's a true point.

I have heard the somewhat crude expression, "If it fucks, flies, or floats, rent it."

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#123

Post by acqq »

jacoblyles wrote: post #35
mmaunder wrote: post #11

Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy i…

>"Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. Bullshit. A society based on the principles of the free market will create unprecedented human health and prosperity[1]. Anti-capitalists are anti-human. I wonder if the billion or so people that climbed out of poverty over the last decade thanks to global capitalism would change Chomsky's mind a…

> A society based on the principles of the free market will create unprecedented human health and prosperity

Only for a limited time as the natural resources are also limited. We don't have another Earth. The total standard of living existing now for humanity is not sustainable.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#124

Post by Tycho »

Personally I have no problem with consuming stuff for entertainment.

I just don't kid myself that consuming a poem through oral tradition in a field without electricity would be somehow more noble/satisfactory.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#125

Post by Tycho »

anthonyb wrote: post #115
jacoblyles wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You couldn't pass a minimum wage law in Victorian Britain that would raise the Victorians' living standards to that of today. Labor simply wasn't productive enough to sustain living standards like ours. People were poor because society as a whole was poor. All a minimum wage law does is allow a society to shift its chosen point on an unemployment/wage tradeoff curve. However, increases in labor productivity shift tha…

Nobody said anything about raising living standards to that of today. I'm not sure exactly how you got there, and I'm also not sure how you or the overcoming bias article you linked got to free markets causing the reduction in poverty. The free market's been around for a bit longer than six years, so I'd say it's more likely to be a rise in technology (particularly mobile phones and solar power) rather than global ca…

From what I understand, there were child labour laws, and when they passed the result was that children were no longer able to work in the respectable factories, so instead they ended up in dangerous, illegal establishments. Of course, child labour in general was nothing new.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#126

Post by hxa7241 »

jacoblyles wrote: post #35
mmaunder wrote: post #11

Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy i…

>"Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. Bullshit. A society based on the principles of the free market will create unprecedented human health and prosperity[1]. Anti-capitalists are anti-human. I wonder if the billion or so people that climbed out of poverty over the last decade thanks to global capitalism would change Chomsky's mind a…

Chomsky is not anti-capitalist in the sense of proposing some particular complete replacement of it (as one might infer from your comment). He carefully avoids what is not well understood. Would you say capitalism is perfect? No, of course not. Then surely you will allow people to criticise it.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#127

Post by loewenskind »

Yzupnick wrote: post #67
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, taking all that in to account and conceding that it is (1) true, and (2) a real problem how will we do better?

True, the basic problem I have seen with people that present views such as Chomsky's is that I have yet to see an alternative to free market capitalism that doesn't have worse problems (in my opinion) than any problem pointed to by those such as Chomsky.

And we never will so long as we never try.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#128

Post by jsilver608 »

moultano wrote: post #57
jacoblyles wrote: post #32

Hey guys, it has been too long since our last self-righteous anti-consumerist circle-jerk. This one is good! You can smell the smarminess right through the screen. We live in a time where the individual has more freedom to do what he wants with his life than ever before. When people live longer, survive perviously unsurvivable diseases, and can get by with the least work. When the glorious knowledge produced by human…

>I guess it makes them feel better about themselves to imagine the great majority of the population are rubes and they are some wise sage. On the contrary, I identify with the article because I know how stupid I am. I know how manipulatable I am. I know how easy it is to hijack by overclocked-monkey-brain instincts. I know how subject I am to addictive behavior. I know how far I am from my ideal self. I know how much…

"manipulate people against their interests and to destroy the environment."

What system doesn't do this? If it's not a corporation manipulating people against their interests, it's the government.

"a person freely making a bad decision of their own volition is not moral insulation for offering them that bad decision in the first place."

If a person can't freely make a bad decision, it means they have less freedom. It's also interesting, because many "bad decisions" are subjective. Would you consider allowing a woman to have an abortion a bad decision? How about drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or eating fatty foods?

All of these in one way or another are bad decisions, but I wouldn't want to be prevented from making them.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#129

Post by loewenskind »

matwood wrote: post #121
momotomo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The maintenance aspect is the biggest hidden cost I think. Your last point is interesting - one of the guys that used to mentor me in meditation often said that the attachment to not having things is just as painful as the attachment to having things. It's a true point.

That's an interesting point to the attachment of not having things. I might have been on that path until a previous girlfriend brought me back towards balance in the other direction. She convinced me to buy a couch and replace my plastic deck chairs. :) I was thinking more along the lines of how people act differently with stuff. A personal example would be my dslr camera. I purposely bought the least expensive that…

Well, personally my strategy is to try and get things to pay for themselves. I bought the most expensive camera I could in the hope that some day I could sell a few photos. Passive income is, after all, the holy grail. So if I'm taking photos for a hobby anyway, maybe this hobby can start paying for itself. I wouldn't want to engage in an expensive hobby that didn't even have that potential.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#130

Post by loewenskind »

momotomo wrote: post #34
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty brave and inspiring. I am not sure I could do that again, I've 'rebooted' a couple of times and it takes a long time to find a new path. And inevitably you always end up with lots of stuff again, it has a way of creeping up on you. Emigrations are a good way to realize what you can do without. And then a few years later you look around and wonder how it happened again.

Yeah, the maintenance part is possibly the hardest aspect. It's also killed typical socialization in my own home, except for people that genuinely enjoy just sitting, sipping tea and talking. I was pretty stuck anyhow (progress wise), so if it takes a couple of years to gain new momentum, I feel it's time well spent. A few people asked if I was heading overseas, the more people that do, the better an idea it sounds l…

Is sitting around a TV socializing?
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