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It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

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Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#181

Post by godelski »

xapata wrote: post #170
godelski wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cat almost never wants to go outside. She also isn't allowed outside. So is she captive or not? What if I let her out? She's still my pet and while I love her, she's captive. I'm not sure it would be different if she was an outdoor cat except her life expectancy would drop. Would you not define my cat (a pet) as captive?

For most pet cats, no. In my own experience with a pet cat, if he really wanted to run away, he could have. The opposite would happen. He'd sneak out when we weren't paying attention and then we'd accidentally lock him outside. We'd eventually hear the meowing and let him back in.

I find this odd, because despite my cat wanting to live inside, I find it very clear that she is a pet living in captivity. The fact she wants to live inside seems something more akin to stockholm syndrome or apathy. I think the difference is when it is humans we consider this kind of thing to be more Hukley-esk. My cat doesn't really have free will if I make her think she can go outside but I just give her that impression when she doesn't want to (good tactic to keep them from running out all the time btw. But why it is a good tactic is kinda the heart of this discussion).

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#182

Post by neatze »

john_moscow wrote: post #173
bccdee wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plenty of problems with this article, but I think it's a bit odd to consider dependency upon the institutions of - grocery stores - transportation - electricity - various repair-people such as electricians and plumbers - an employer - a well-regulated economy as "being a independent outdoor cat," but then suddenly once you're renting your clothes instead of buying them that's a bridge too far, and you're "capt…

It's not about that, it's about the power structure. Imagine a hypothetical small town with several owner-operated grocery store, a local power station, owner-operated service companies, etc. Each of the involved actors is knowledgeable about what they are doing. They are hard to replace, their experience is important, so they have more bargaining power and can charge higher for their work. The wealth is more or less…

You making great points, I never thought about this way, it is compelling idea.

If economics taught me anything is that there is always trade-offs; what are possible trade-offs when there is substantial constrains on monopolies, platforms, and aggregators ?

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#183

Post by marcusverus »

guenthert wrote: post #160
indymike wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting is that how much of the economy would have to lose most or all revenue for this model to work. Shrinking GDP is very hard to pull off.

> Shrinking GDP is very hard to pull off. ??? We easily managed this year.

We (in the US) had to add $3.3 Trillion in new debt spending to stave off an economic disaster. That's not what I'd call 'easily managed'.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#184

Post by Nasrudith »

ryaniscool wrote: post #122
tim333 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went through a comparable transition from most people working in agriculture and farming to that being automated away and people doing stuff that hadn't been much worried about before. Given human nature hasn't changed I imagine it will be similar.

That is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it would be the industrialization of western society led to 100 years of exploitation of non-industrial peoples and societies through colonialism and imperialism. With it came global power struggles between industrialized nations for control of resources and technology (WW1, WW2, Cold War, etc.) on a scale the world had never seen. If you live in the USA and Europ…

That forgets what happened before industrialization. What do you call the long history of peasantry, slavery, and conquest before industrialization if not exploitation? What do you call all of the wars for plunder if not wars for resources? Horrifyingly one hundred years of exploitation is /brief/ historically compared to thousands of years of it.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#185

Post by KMag »

guenthert wrote: post #160
indymike wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting is that how much of the economy would have to lose most or all revenue for this model to work. Shrinking GDP is very hard to pull off.

> Shrinking GDP is very hard to pull off. ??? We easily managed this year.

Too many years of declining GDP, and the government becomes a credit risk, forcing it to pay higher yield on the bonds it issues. Running government services on a balanced budget while GDP is still declining is tough.

Shrinking GDP one year is much different from it becoming the norm.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#186

Post by helen___keller »

motohagiography wrote: post #118

What the author describes is humans living in captivity. There is a cadre of people who argue, "really? you wouldn't survive a day outside this so-called captivity, tough guy" and then go on to justify how their various compromises are somehow moral. To me that whole line of argument is just indoors cats lecturing outdoors cats about how to manage the shame of dependency, which outdoors cats just don't have. If we do…

> What the author describes is humans living in captivity.

> There is a cadre of people who argue, "really? you wouldn't survive a day outside this so-called captivity, tough guy"

I don't understand, this piece is fiction so by definition we're all surviving outside that 'captivity', unless you're trying to extend it to say that all of modern society is also captivity

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#187

Post by lukeramsden »

neatze wrote: post #182
john_moscow wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about that, it's about the power structure. Imagine a hypothetical small town with several owner-operated grocery store, a local power station, owner-operated service companies, etc. Each of the involved actors is knowledgeable about what they are doing. They are hard to replace, their experience is important, so they have more bargaining power and can charge higher for their work. The wealth is more or less…

You making great points, I never thought about this way, it is compelling idea. If economics taught me anything is that there is always trade-offs; what are possible trade-offs when there is substantial constrains on monopolies, platforms, and aggregators ?

Things that rely on insane scale to work completely cease to exist, along with the innovation they leave in their wake. Whether this is a bad thing or not is probably subjective.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#188

Post by Nasrudith »

papreclip wrote: post #113
tim333 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went through a comparable transition from most people working in agriculture and farming to that being automated away and people doing stuff that hadn't been much worried about before. Given human nature hasn't changed I imagine it will be similar.

Industrial agriculture has had disastrous consequences in the form of overpopulation, we just haven't felt them yet. Global warming and every other problem caused by overpopulation are all a result of industrial nitrogen fixation and large scale farming producing enough food.

Blaming nitrogen fixing or industrial agriculture for global warming is objectively wrong. The Romans were causing significant rise in atmospheric carbon levels just through the sheer scale of many small fires and deforestation. About the only sources of fossil fuels released were methane ignorantly released from mining and maybe Greek fire if the theory that it really was surface deposits of crude petrochemicals is correct.

Population capacities and thus overpopulation aren't fixed things meaning overpopulation is relative to conditions. It would be absurd to call algae overpopulated if they thrive just fine at concentrations in one epoch with different population conditions just because it would cause red tide in another epoch.

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#189

Post by MontyCarloHall »

neatze wrote: post #182
john_moscow wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about that, it's about the power structure. Imagine a hypothetical small town with several owner-operated grocery store, a local power station, owner-operated service companies, etc. Each of the involved actors is knowledgeable about what they are doing. They are hard to replace, their experience is important, so they have more bargaining power and can charge higher for their work. The wealth is more or less…

You making great points, I never thought about this way, it is compelling idea. If economics taught me anything is that there is always trade-offs; what are possible trade-offs when there is substantial constrains on monopolies, platforms, and aggregators ?

Certain things are only possible at scale. Take Amazon as an example. Its vast scale and vertical integration means that I can purchase something often much more cheaply than any smaller competitor can offer it, and have it shipped and arrive on the same day for a nominal fee (something totally unthinkable even 10 years ago).

So while middle class jobs running mom-and-pop retail stores are lost, we may gain a commensurate decrease in the cost of goods. I’m not an economist, so I can’t begin to speculate whether this is a net economic gain. Is it better to have more higher paying jobs but more expensive goods, or fewer higher paying jobs and cheaper goods? Is this a false dichotomy? It’s interesting to note that inflation in the price of pretty much all consumer goods has dramatically lagged income inflation over the last 20 years[0], suggesting that net consumer savings have indeed been substantial.

[0] https://www.patientrightsadvocate.org/price-changes-on-selec...

Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)

#190

Post by chmod775 »

Yetanfou wrote: post #97
chmod775 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provides housing and food at no cost to those who need it. Expand on that and you're at what the author is describing. I personally wouldn't bet money on "this will never happen", would you?

> What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provides housing and food at no cost to those who need it. Who needs free housing? Who gets to decide who needs free housing? Need I remind you that this often comes down to "the poorest" and "some of the richest"? Here in Sweden the latter category in the guise of…

> No, this is not a vision of the future. It is the preface to yet another dystopic novel where the thing which was supposed to make everybody happy ended up in yet another brave new world.

It can be both.

I'm not sure what to do with your response if I'm being honest. It reads like a blog post with your thoughts on the original article, not on anything being discussed in this thread specifically.

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