331–340 of 528 posts
> If your worth is not determined by your productivity, then what remains of you underneath it all? Everything else. You are worth so much more than your productivity. I'm glad I never got sucked into the protestant work ethic, since defining yourself based on your labour and the value you generate from that sounds woefully narrow-minded (this doesn't feel like quite the right word, but close enough). It's probably h…
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You are failing to analyze the system corectly. "Have enough" is a static steady state. "Produce enough" now and in the future is a dynamic constraint. The mechanism is economic surplus, to have the producers (productive people who produce needed goods and inputs to such) create more than they need. This generally requires increasing and maintaining productivity to have surplus. Once you have a surplus the absolute m…
> the cost of distributing it has been increasing at a far higher rate than the rate of increasing surplus. Is it? Or is it that an increasing proportion of total income ends up going to the people who find ways of hiding it such that it does not get distributed.
> If your worth is not determined by your productivity, then what remains of you underneath it all? Everything else. You are worth so much more than your productivity. I'm glad I never got sucked into the protestant work ethic, since defining yourself based on your labour and the value you generate from that sounds woefully narrow-minded (this doesn't feel like quite the right word, but close enough). It's probably h…
Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc. while you airily define ‘productivity’ as reading the classics and spending time with friends?
If we valued time with friends, helping each other, and making sure everyone can live a vibrant life, we'd spend them on that. If we don't, they go toward status and class distinction.
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Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc. while you airily define ‘productivity’ as reading the classics and spending time with friends?
Stephen Hawking wouldn't exist in our society if we didn't care for people like him.
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We are producing enough excess that we can spare enough of those things to those who are unable to take care of themselves, and we have for a number of years.
No, we're not. It just seems like there's excess because the costs of running social programs are being paid with runaway debt. Those bills will eventually require settling, and it will become obvious how much excess there really is.
I think part of the lie is that we live for and unto ourselves. We instinctively know it's not true, yet for much of our lives we live as if it is. Until one day we find out what we knew all along. When you suddenly become unable to "give anything" to others and become the one who must be given to, you feel a disconcerting sense of loss and powerlessness. I don't think it really has anything to do with capitalism.
I've felt worthless for a long time. Sucked at school, suck at university, jobless. But something about the things I do has given me comfort. Trying to make music, trying to draw. And just doing the things another version of me would look at and think "that's nice" I've also been a social outcast for a while now. But putting my creative works out there makes me feel like I'm building the tools to appreciate myself an…
I’ve found that if I start something new, say learning to carve wood, I might compare myself to others in an unhealthy way, not improve as fast as I want to, or something else, and sorta psych myself out of it. I wonder if changing the framing from “doing” to “trying” would help
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You could take away 100% of billionaires capital to redistribute and end up in the exact same place in 4 years.
You would not end up in the same place because then you'd be in a world without billionaires, so you would not have people who can too easily just buy every politician and law they wish for their own perpetuation. That alone would be a massive win.
What worries me are the god knows how many "billionaire equivelent" entities and institutions that swing their dicks around in the same manner but do so with the sociopathic ruthlessness of corporations and governments.
Peter Thiel may be evil but he'll almost certainly never knowingly instigate genocidal war in a foreign land for marginal benefit to his interests whereas that's exactly the kind of thing that nonhuman entities do because no person is singularly responsible.
hEDS and POTS, which is what the author claims to suffer from, are not good reasons for a disability. hEDS is responsive to particular supplements, especially methylfolate, etc., so build up your stack. For me, POTS was caused by a PPI drug, and eventually remedied upon discontinuation of the drug in combination with daily exercise. Afaik, there is no genetic basis for POTS, and if it there were one, it would be unli…