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“People simply empty out”

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Re: “People simply empty out”

#111

Post by enraged_camel »

enoch_r wrote: post #50
enraged_camel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"traditional slavery" which is man-made. So is capitalism. So is the corporate hierarchy. Heck, the society we live in right now is man-made. Why does that matter as an evaluation criteria? Yes, food and shelter have always required work. The difference is that they have required work by the person for the person. Or by the person for their family. Or by the person for their tribe. This meant that you worked only a…

> The cost of healthcare alone makes subsistence living impossible. What? It's perfectly possible to receive "subsistence healthcare" in today's society--just never go to the doctor or take any medicine. If you want to splurge, do some research online, and you'll gain knowledge leagues ahead of "subsistence" medicine.

I think you grossly misunderstood what I said.

What I meant by "subsistence living" is working enough to cover the essentials, and no more. These essentials include food, water, shelter, and healthcare.

The problem is the last one: it is astronomically expensive, which means that subsistence living still means working a ridiculous amount of hours.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#112

Post by sliverstorm »

enraged_camel wrote: post #106
sliverstorm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This meant that you worked only as much was actually needed - i.e. subsistence - and no more. You do know that in agrarian societies this meant 12 hours a day 7 days a week with no holidays ever? And that children worked in the fields instead of going to school? People don't subsistence farm because they don't want anything more than the bare minimum for survival. They subsistence farm because the bare minimum for su…

I'm not sure if your second paragraph necessarily leads from your first one. I have two questions for you that you should think about. Question 1: Why is it that, as our productivity increases, we find more things to "fill up" our workday, instead of working fewer hours for the same output (which would satisfy our needs)? Question 2: Forget about need. Do people actually want the things they are working for today? Or…

Question 1: Because people want more than they need. This is practically an axiom. You don't need much more than a pile of sticks to sleep under, food, and water, but I bet even you would agree this is not satisfying.

We aren't unique in this regard either. My cat needs air, water, and food. My cat wants attention, affection, and canned wet food.

Question 2: I wasn't socially conditioned to want the fan that keeps me cool when it is hot. I wasn't socially conditioned to enjoy beer. I wasn't socially conditioned to like literature. Sure, some people are working for things they have no real use or desire for, but IMO there are plenty of things that improve life beyond the truest basic needs, that are worth continuing to strive for. Amusement, art, intellectual pursuits, athleticism, etc...

Re: “People simply empty out”

#113

Post by outside1234 »

dictum wrote: post #68
johnrob wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a lot more. 4.31% per year is likely what the US government reports. They traditionally under report inflation (although to a greater degree over the past 20 years). The bundle of goods used to measure inflation does not include housing and energy, which have been the primary sources of rising living costs (not to mention medicine, which I only just considered).

What is the point of tracking inflation if you're not going to account for what's actually reducing (or increasing) the purchasing power of your currency?

Because it doesn't work in the government's favor and makes the deficit higher.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#114

Post by enraged_camel »

dcraw wrote: post #47
enraged_camel wrote: post #32

>>You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors." Some people balk at the idea of "wage slavery," primarily because they think it is so different from the traditional slavery that it should not be called that. But the question is, if you are doing something and the alternative is starvation and death, are you really a free human being? If you think about it for a…

Life cannot be sustained without effort. Does real freedom entail freedom from the demands of reality? The question I have is, whose obligation would you say it is to provide a job that you consider good enough?

>>Life cannot be sustained without effort.

In this day and age, sustaining life should not require 40+ hours of work per week.

As a society we are producing a ridiculous amount of surplus, and then conditioning ourselves to consume that surplus so that we can produce even more.

Where does it end?

Re: “People simply empty out”

#115

Post by wffurr »

ctdonath wrote: post #104
njharman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's about a system, capitalism, that gives most no choice in the matter.

The system isn't capitalism, it's life: you don't work, you don't eat. The author was one of the few whose work is both enjoyable on its own and worth enough to others to survive on, capitalism in the form of sponsorship. Capitalism at least gives a generally fair exchange of work for value; the alternatives amount to institutionalized theft.

Wow. Just wow. Simply amazing you can think that given the distribution of wealth in the world. The only reason the vast majority of us have to work to eat is because the vast majority of the proceeds from our labor go to benefit a tiny global elite.

For quite a long time now, the technical means have existed to provide the basics of life to every human being on the planet at a modest cost. And yet we don't – instead the vast majority of us continue to work hard to provide that global elite their "due".

Institutionalized theft? How about economic and social justice?

Re: “People simply empty out”

#116

Post by wffurr »

enraged_camel wrote: post #111
enoch_r wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost of healthcare alone makes subsistence living impossible. What? It's perfectly possible to receive "subsistence healthcare" in today's society--just never go to the doctor or take any medicine. If you want to splurge, do some research online, and you'll gain knowledge leagues ahead of "subsistence" medicine.

I think you grossly misunderstood what I said. What I meant by "subsistence living" is working enough to cover the essentials, and no more. These essentials include food, water, shelter, and healthcare. The problem is the last one: it is astronomically expensive, which means that subsistence living still means working a ridiculous amount of hours.

Don't forget that the rent is too damn high. Shelter don't come cheap.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#117

Post by [deleted] »

sliverstorm wrote: post #103
enraged_camel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"traditional slavery" which is man-made. So is capitalism. So is the corporate hierarchy. Heck, the society we live in right now is man-made. Why does that matter as an evaluation criteria? Yes, food and shelter have always required work. The difference is that they have required work by the person for the person. Or by the person for their family. Or by the person for their tribe. This meant that you worked only a…

This meant that you worked only as much was actually needed - i.e. subsistence - and no more. You do know that in agrarian societies this meant 12 hours a day 7 days a week with no holidays ever? And that children worked in the fields instead of going to school? People don't subsistence farm because they don't want anything more than the bare minimum for survival. They subsistence farm because the bare minimum for su…

[deleted]

Re: “People simply empty out”

#118

Post by [deleted] »

ritchiea wrote: post #92
enraged_camel wrote: post #32

>>You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors." Some people balk at the idea of "wage slavery," primarily because they think it is so different from the traditional slavery that it should not be called that. But the question is, if you are doing something and the alternative is starvation and death, are you really a free human being? If you think about it for a…

I agree that wage slavery exists but let's be serious, slavery in many societies, including the US was a brutal existence that included beatings & intentional separations of families, often even if you as a slave were compliant in the system. If you weren't compliant you were subject to torture and/or a violent death. The cruelty of slavery stretches far beyond the lack of freedom you're describing here.

[deleted]

Re: “People simply empty out”

#119

Post by jessedhillon »

orofino wrote: post #96
VexXtreme wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hence the somewhat curious (and I think, very American) idea of the "Golden Years". If you put your head down and work hard, taking no vacations, until you're age 65, then you flip 180 degrees in the other direction and retire into a life of full-time leisure. So if you live long enough, it really won't be a waste; you cash it in all at the end! And this exact kind of thinking is what the societal overlords want yo…

I always kind of shake my head at this. On a board with many people making 100k+ per year, who are the "societal overlords" you're referencing. Sure there are people that make much more than that, but anything beyond 80k allows a person to save quite a bit and "quit" the rat race earlier if they like.

Indeed. It never seems to never occur to some people that emergent behavior, arising from the (mis)alignment of incentives in a complex system, can give rise to behavior so bizarre and purpose-directed that it all seems deliberate -- as yet is nonetheless emergent. The whole system is a fractal, all the way to the top -- there are many uber-wealthy folks whose experiences are subjectively as miserable as Bukowski's was.

You just can't believe it because you believe in a magical hierarchy with the free ones on top -- but so do the ones way up there. My god, if you're even able to leave a comment, you're already better off than 99% of people alive today!

The "rat race" is a subjective, elective construct and, by definition you cannot escape it a long as you subscribe to it. The people you think have escaped it, or control it, are also trappe by it, no matter how hard that is for you to believe. The only ones who have truly escaped are the ones who have had a fundamental shift in the way they conceptualize work, career, goals, desires and everything.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#120

Post by tanzam75 »

johnrob wrote: post #53
revelation wrote: post #3

$100 are about $650 in todays money [1]. [1]: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100%24+from+1969

It's actually a lot more. 4.31% per year is likely what the US government reports. They traditionally under report inflation (although to a greater degree over the past 20 years). The bundle of goods used to measure inflation does not include housing and energy, which have been the primary sources of rising living costs (not to mention medicine, which I only just considered).

> 4.31% per year is likely what the US government reports. They traditionally under report inflation (although to a greater degree over the past 20 years).

Quite the opposite, in fact.

The US government has traditionally overreported inflation, because the CPI was not hedonically-adjusted until the year 2000.

The Billion Prices Project at MIT provides an independent measure of inflation, and it tracks the CPI quite well. (Note, though that Billion Prices uses a different basket that does not include services. Thus, it will not match exactly.)

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