331–340 of 395 posts
Americans in particular tend to have a highly entitled and confused "time is money" view governing their existence that enables them to do nothing except when paid by employers, which obviously results in doing absolutely nothing in retirement.
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i think people trying to argue that we would be more productive is a symptom of the productivity disease. where all we value is productivity and thats the only way we can justify more non-work time. i personally just think we should all have more time to do what we want, whether that is being productive on personal projects, talking to people, playing games, or doing nothing. happier people right? why should 10% of t…
I was all with you right up until the class conflict stuff. Nobody's enslaving anybody. Well that's not true, we're mostly enslaving ourselves. There are endless easy opportunities in life. For instance go teach English in Saudi Arabia and you'll earn around $60k a year which doesn't sound like much until you account for the fact you pay 0% in taxes and have a cost of living well under $1k a month. Just live frugally…
I'm not saying some people shouldn't do this, but everybody can't. I (mid 40s male living in Canada) used to be a huge proponent of living beneath your means and did in fact sock away 20% of my income into investments. But the K shaped job market, real estate market, and cost of living in general has made that far harder to do today. I had a dirt cheap apartment in downtown Toronto ~2004-2007 before I bought a place, managed to have a fun youth AND save by simply not participating in lifestyle creep (the number of young people I knew that blew money on fancy German cars and other bling as tech salaries started to grow still makes me shake my head).
But that same apartment I rented for $700/month is now $2500 and requires a letter of employment (read they only will rent to professionals) to apply for.
Allegedly my great grandfather was building a deck at the age of 90. This might also be survivorship bias. I’d like to say people need purpose and challenges. This is probably why rates of depression tend to be much lower in “poor” countries where people have to depend on each other more. In the west everything is an abstraction. If you would imagine a baker in a small town, if she doesn’t feel like baking that day,…
To your point about automation, I'm increasingly wondering whether the "post-labor economy" would be anywhere near as idealistic as it's typically presented. If people aren't working, they're presumably not paying taxes, and without taxes, there's much less incentive for a government to make choices in the people's best interest. Or put another way, perhaps there's no representation without taxation.
https://pnhp.org/news/gilens-and-page-average-citizens-have-...
You can argue we're already there. Politicians don't do anything for their constituents if big money disagrees.
I still remember when Obama was first elected and we thought we'd get something close to European style health care. Nobody was like oh gosh, golly I'm getting a subsidy to afford for profit health care insurance.
From technological point of view robo communism is very possible. I just don't know if it's what we're going to get.
The alternative is an endless spiral downward. You have fast food restaurants in NYC where outsourced customer service takes orders. Having a robot flip patties isn't hard. You could end up turning 6 jobs into 1.
Which on its surface is a good thing. Food service is ultimately a very dangerous job, and wouldn't it be great if those other five people could be working on art or something else.
We need to rethink what makes a person valued. I'm not religious, but from that angle, as a child of God you have inherit value.
This value exceeds any network you can seek to obtain.
Then again, economics isn't a simple thing.
The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…
I actually have the same fear. I love computers and I don't know what I'll do once I retire. Problem solving on computers is like oxygen to me.
Interestingly rich people who've never worked a day in their life dont have this problem... I wonder what the link could be
I think employment may set us up for rapid cognitive decline when we finally become unemployed. As in, working 40+ hours a week makes us over-value "vegging out", which sets us up for failure post-employment.
Interesting. As soon as work is done I'm either outside walking, in the garden or workshop etc. I did a PhD which actually did consume my whole life until I finished it. Every job I've had since then seems so easy in comparison. I'm never "vegging out".
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Yeah I work from home. Except for 1-2 short zoom calls a day or talking with my wife, who also works from home, I can go pretty much the whole week without talking to anyone. I try to make sure I go out with friends at least once on the weekends, though, to sort of make up for it. But I do wonder if that's going to be a bad thing for me later in my life. But I also play a lot of board games, including somewhat compli…
I used to think that working from home was the best thing since sliced bread, when I got to stop going to the office due to COVID. But during the five years that I worked from home, I suffered a precipitous decline in overall health. It is too easy to stumble out of bed minutes before work starts, spend the day on Zoom calls, then spend more time behind the computer wrapping things up, and then veg out on the sofa af…
Interestingly rich people who've never worked a day in their life dont have this problem... I wonder what the link could be
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More than 10% of 18-25 year olds are considered NEETs. They haven't experienced anything but sitting at school for 25 hours a week with zero responsibilities. Yet none of them do anything useful with their free time. Funnily, this affects both poor and rich kids equally
> More than 10% of 18-25 year olds are considered NEETs. They haven't experienced anything but sitting at school for 25 hours a week with zero responsibilities. Being dumped by absent parents and having lack of pointers/goals in life is not > raised to be empowered by creation and creativity, having generous allowances to experiment and not burdened with work or brain rot. in my book.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i think people trying to argue that we would be more productive is a symptom of the productivity disease. where all we value is productivity and thats the only way we can justify more non-work time. i personally just think we should all have more time to do what we want, whether that is being productive on personal projects, talking to people, playing games, or doing nothing. happier people right? why should 10% of t…
> its all about class struggle That's the foundation of Marxist theory. In America, however, anyone can become wealthy.
its mostly luck, not merit ;)