381–390 of 449 posts
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> People need much more that wheat and widgets Infinitely more, according to orthodox economics, which is why post-scarcity is not a coherent concept within the framework of orthodox economics. The idea that there is a point of finite abundance where the basic relations of economics break down is, at best, highly speculative and completely undemonstrated.
A significant portion of our economy is post-scarcity. Software, movies, tv, books, video games are all non-scarce goods forced to fit into a scarce framework through IP law. They are distributed horribly inefficiently as a result. The replicator would transform most physical goods into IP so perhaps a better economy would be structured around efficient and equitable IP creation and distribution, with the few remaini…
No, it's not.
The economy is the system of distribution of scarce resources. Anything that is actually post-scarcity isn't part of it.
> Software, movies, tv, books, video games are all non-scarce goods forced to fit into a scarce framework through IP law.
No, they aren't. They are goods based around something with a high initial fixed cost and a low marginal cost. IP law exists to incentivize people paying the fixed costs. That's not post-scarcity.
> The replicator would transform most physical goods into IP
It might change most novel physical goods to having more of their costs as fixed costs, but high initial fixed costs are already a significant thing for novel physical goods and already addressed by IP law.
> In the 22nd, an iPhone is >95% IP
The 22nd is as much speculative future (or fiction) as the 24th.
While there's clearly a lot in the whole $1/day thing, it's not as clear cut. If you live in Sweden on $30 a day and pay $900 a month in rent, that leaves you with just 31 cents a day. Meanwhile if you live in India on $5 a day and pay $50 a month in rent you'd have $3.35 a day left over, and $3 in rural india goes a lot further than $3 in Sweden. Those are of course extreme examples, and the levels of poverty in pla…
I wonder if there were some sort of metric that could account for parity in the power in purchasing between two locations?
Jason Hickel (the degrowth advocate; a term that infuriates me) is a genius and writes very well. His critique of the end of poverty is very eye opening. I still feel the cognitive dissonance. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30083807
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> I'd rather be poor in any european country Bulgaria welcomes you
Bulgaria has free healthcare and university education. People in Bulgaria are also very unlikely to be killed by police or die in a mass shooting. Bulgaria also has less people incarcerated per capita than the US. Bulgarian workers get mandatory 20 day of PTO a year. I could imagine lot of people who would think they are better off there than in the US. E: There's of course a lot of things that aren't great about Bul…
Capitalism leads to unequal development at all scales. Be it between nations or inside their borders.
That can be justified with vague meritocracy or hard racism/classism. Whatever floats your boat. But it has nothing to do with individuals, the reality lies within the capitalist mode of production in itself which is fundamentally based on the inequality between social classes. Those who have no means of subsistence sell their work. Those who have the means buy their work. Profit is the product of the exploitation of this social relationship.
Poverty is not only an income measure, it is also relative to your society. You cannot solve this gap without addressing how this mode of production functions.
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This is a survey of drug use, not cause of homelessness. Many people use drugs after they've become homeless because of how terrible and pointless it is. Check out the interviews.
This reminds me of a survey that was done in Seattle about of homeless were from out of the county or not, and the data collected found most of them squad they were housed in pioneer square before becoming homeless. Anyone who knows Seattle would find that very fishy (it would be like most homeless in LA saying they were housed in skid row). Surveys in the homeless community are extremely unreliable, but I guess that…
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> do you feel inferior to rich people? do you feel superior to poor people? what hogwash. i reject this axiom that inequality is bad. > people don't hate inequality - they hate unfairness. You seem to contradict yourself in the span of two paragraphs. Inequality is OK (according to you) if it is fair. So rich people are superior to poor people? (It’s not about “feeling” inferior in any case. It’s about having enough…
> So rich people are superior to poor people? Some people have higher earning potential than others. Does that make them superior?
That’s a common wrong presumption that these “poor people are actually rich” people have: that the world is fair.
It’s also a popular assumption on message boards populated by high-income folks for obvious reasons.
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That isn’t a solution either, because individuals and businesses with the money will simply snap-up the real estate. Discouraging multi-ownership and preventing residential ownership by business mes needs to happen as well.
Discouraging investment in housing will have exactly the opposite effect that you intend.
Upfront investment by building-out to provide supply is the policy that we need.
Yet current policies favor rent-seeking and parking-funds in desirable areas, leading to properties that owned but actually vacant (e.g., most of London or Vancouver Island).
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That isn’t a solution either, because individuals and businesses with the money will simply snap-up the real estate. Discouraging multi-ownership and preventing residential ownership by business mes needs to happen as well.
Put in anti-vacancy laws with a sufficiently punitive penalty. Then all that property goes on the market regardless of who snapped it up.
I feel that would cause more problems than it would solve.