Meh. I’ve seen a lot of these short essays about how after the pandemic we either should not or simply will not return to the status quo. It doesn’t really do anything to say “the economy doesn’t work” in 5 paragraphs and then say nothing else. Yes, lots of poor people are getting screwed. Some jobs don’t pay well despite the higher moral standing of directly assisting others. The environment looks pretty bad. But yo…
Show me you don't know who David Graeber is without saying you don't know who David Graeber is.
After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
111–120 of 253 posts
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first sentence is absolutely wrong and your second sentence is absolutely absurd. If you want to have a real conversation, maybe keep out the latest thing you watched on Netflix as a source of your bias. Global living conditions across multiple facets have DRAMATICALLY improved in the last 200 years. No, I am not talking about the last 10 or 20 years, I mean over many generations: https://ourworldindata.org/a-hi…
You can look at numbers on reports, or you can go and actually look at some of these run-down areas. It's actually kinda hard to do, my eyes were opened one day when I was trying to get from point A to point B in Colombia and I took a shared cab some 400 miles. Seeing it in person is way different than looking at pictures online, lemme tell you. It hits you that it's not just that part of rural Colombia that looks li…
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you expect a new country wise economic model to be purposed in this article? I believe the author was trying to say, "Poor people are getting screwed, some jobs dont pay well, the environment is bad, lets do something and not forget it." It is a solution? No. I don't think it is trying to be though. It's just trying to be a reminder that letting everything go back to the way it was is the easiest route forward an…
> Did you expect a new country wise economic model to be purposed in this article? No, I didn't, but I'm frankly growing tired of cookie-cutter article like this one that just enumerate problems that have existed since the literal dawn of civilization. The entire "economy bad" brigade is, as parent comment puts it, "r/im14andthisisdeep". They see problems everyone else sees, but they don't have any actual insight, ju…
But if you go looking for it, there is a wide array of work that has been done divising ideas for the systematic change we need to solve these problems. I have a whole bookshelf of authors proposing alternatives. Projects like The Next System project, and the Democracy Collaborate, have been working on divising ways to grow alternative systems with in the confines of the current one.
The challenge of course, remains funding. Because those with the wealth got that wealth through the current system and continue to benefit from the current system.
So actually making change is going to take either a mass popular uprising (electoral or otherwise) or enough people with enough wealth recognizing the problems and being willing to give up their wealth and power to solve them. Knowing that the solutions will forever disempower them and their peers.
Edit:
To provide some clarity of the sort of solutions on offer, I'll provide my favorite. Stop prioritizing capital, start prioritizing labor. Right now, Capital basically gets to call the shots - because we allow for any kind of contract in business formation and you can't start a business with out capital and we don't restrict what capital can demand. This allows capital to take advantage of that power imbalance at the time of business formation to demand control. If instead, we restricted what capital could demand to say - a reasonable interest on a loan - and legally structured businesses as institutions democratically run by those working in them, this would have the effect of empowering labor and disempowering capital.
People would still have the ability to make money from their money, but it would vastly reduce the current multiplier effects on the growth of wealth, and thus the tendency for wealth to concentrate. It would tend to spread wealth out to a much wider proportion of the population - because the people doing the work would get to vote for the leaders of their businesses, and those leaders then have a much, much strong incentive to take care of the people doing the work. Likewise, the people doing the work would have a much stronger incentive to take care of the communities in which they operate, because they are much more likely to live in those communities than distant investors. It has the effect of reconnecting businesses with their neighbors and communities in a much more real way, and empowering those involved in the business who are most aware of the effects it has to change those effects.
Would this system be perfect? Nope. It's really a pretty gentle refactor of the current sytem (though one with wide ranging effects). Would it be better? Yeah, I really believe it would.
There are many other effects this change would have - I've wanted to write a book on it for years, but haven't been able to find the time or bandwidth. Someday. If I ever get to take a long leave of absence or get to cash out, someday.
Another alternative you could consider, one I've played with as a thought experiment many times, what would happen if we simply banned people from making money directly from their money in all forms? It's a challenging thought experiment, because where do you draw the line? Money is just a representation of property, so how do you define money made from money versus, say, renting a machine you own? But it's a worthwhile thought experiment - could we devise a system where you could only make money by working, and not by simply owning property or holding wealth?
There are many more alternatives out there, from gentle refactors to whole rewrites. Some fleshed out, some just thought experiments. And everything in between. They should really - all of them - be a much bigger part of our public dialog than they are.
Further edit: Many threads are on-going but I've been at this all morning so I'm going to call it a day and go make lunch. I've appreciated the dialogs, and maybe I'll write that book some day. If I do find the time to write that book, I know exactly where to come to harden it against criticism. If I can convince a forum full of capital investors and would be capital investors that making capital investment illegal is a good idea, then I'll be able to convince anyone!
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Common misconception, examples are the 40hr work week and banning of payment in scrip in the 1800s. Another example is that monopolies require legislation or they have the effect of “seizing up” the dynamics of a functioning marketplace and turning toxic. Semiconductor patents being made public and telecom copper being made open to use by other companies are both pretty well understood examples of legislation that he…
What do you mean by the 40h work week as an example? Example for what? It was an idea by Ford, but I guess then the unions jumped on it? Who is forcing you to work 40h? I personally don't do that. You are free to negotiate your own contracts.
It’s all part of the history of people getting together to negotiate for their own contracts, worth reading about: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_labor_law_in_the_...
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#115Meh. I’ve seen a lot of these short essays about how after the pandemic we either should not or simply will not return to the status quo. It doesn’t really do anything to say “the economy doesn’t work” in 5 paragraphs and then say nothing else. Yes, lots of poor people are getting screwed. Some jobs don’t pay well despite the higher moral standing of directly assisting others. The environment looks pretty bad. But yo…
Did you expect a new country wise economic model to be purposed in this article? I believe the author was trying to say, "Poor people are getting screwed, some jobs dont pay well, the environment is bad, lets do something and not forget it." It is a solution? No. I don't think it is trying to be though. It's just trying to be a reminder that letting everything go back to the way it was is the easiest route forward an…
Coming from a publication like theanarchistlibrary.org, purporting a new system is implicit. And the following quote: "to create an “economy” that lets us actually take care of the people who are taking care of us. " - with economy in quotes removes ambiguity on that question.
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see what communism has to do with everyone needing to be employed full time. That's just what they made of it in the USSR etc. > Communism: a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.
>I don't see what communism has to do with everyone needing to be employed full time. That's just what they made of it in the USSR etc. Like your definition says: and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs. That equates to everyone working. There's very few exceptions, usually like you lack arms and legs or something extreme to allow you not to work. Afterall, how do you stop 'You w…
Well, if there's no money (because it's not necessary), there wouldn't be a UBI anyway? Communism is supposed to come after socialism and before anarchy, in theory. First you build an egalitarian society with a mindset of peaceful cooperation, then you get them to all work together for the greater good, and finally you dissolve the 'taskmaster' of the state, as society is perfect and no longer needs it.
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first sentence is absolutely wrong and your second sentence is absolutely absurd. If you want to have a real conversation, maybe keep out the latest thing you watched on Netflix as a source of your bias. Global living conditions across multiple facets have DRAMATICALLY improved in the last 200 years. No, I am not talking about the last 10 or 20 years, I mean over many generations: https://ourworldindata.org/a-hi…
You can look at numbers on reports, or you can go and actually look at some of these run-down areas. It's actually kinda hard to do, my eyes were opened one day when I was trying to get from point A to point B in Colombia and I took a shared cab some 400 miles. Seeing it in person is way different than looking at pictures online, lemme tell you. It hits you that it's not just that part of rural Colombia that looks li…
It sounds like you saw real poverty and it woke you up to your immense wealth and comfortable existence, so kudos on that. You took the wrong leap though and decided that your life is the default state, when in fact it is in an incredible aberration of history. For millions of years every person was poor, then a few were rich, then more were rich, and now you're one of them.
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first sentence is absolutely wrong and your second sentence is absolutely absurd. If you want to have a real conversation, maybe keep out the latest thing you watched on Netflix as a source of your bias. Global living conditions across multiple facets have DRAMATICALLY improved in the last 200 years. No, I am not talking about the last 10 or 20 years, I mean over many generations: https://ourworldindata.org/a-hi…
You can look at numbers on reports, or you can go and actually look at some of these run-down areas. It's actually kinda hard to do, my eyes were opened one day when I was trying to get from point A to point B in Colombia and I took a shared cab some 400 miles. Seeing it in person is way different than looking at pictures online, lemme tell you. It hits you that it's not just that part of rural Colombia that looks li…
You're advocating for ignoring research and data in favor of anecdotes. You're not even trying to argue in good faith.
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#119It's strange to see this upvoted on HN of all places. Some marxist inspired ramblings with no clear conclusion. Fact is that the free enterprise system works very well when you let it work and this is backed by a lot of empirical data.
Common misconception, examples are the 40hr work week and banning of payment in scrip in the 1800s. Another example is that monopolies require legislation or they have the effect of “seizing up” the dynamics of a functioning marketplace and turning toxic. Semiconductor patents being made public and telecom copper being made open to use by other companies are both pretty well understood examples of legislation that he…
We dont want either to be exploitative or abusive, but the ideology that the “free market” is our savior and that “government bad” is just played out un-nuanced propaganda at this point
Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first sentence is absolutely wrong and your second sentence is absolutely absurd. If you want to have a real conversation, maybe keep out the latest thing you watched on Netflix as a source of your bias. Global living conditions across multiple facets have DRAMATICALLY improved in the last 200 years. No, I am not talking about the last 10 or 20 years, I mean over many generations: https://ourworldindata.org/a-hi…
You can look at numbers on reports, or you can go and actually look at some of these run-down areas. It's actually kinda hard to do, my eyes were opened one day when I was trying to get from point A to point B in Colombia and I took a shared cab some 400 miles. Seeing it in person is way different than looking at pictures online, lemme tell you. It hits you that it's not just that part of rural Colombia that looks li…
Wow, in the past 200 years, we've seen the eradication of smallpox, treatment for Tuberculosis, vaccines for pneumonia, all issues plaguing humanity for pretty much all of recorded history.
A rural farmer in Nigeria can access price data in real time using a cell phone, while democracy in India allows dozens of politicians from every state argue on live TV simultaneously to get their views heard.
What, pray tell, can you say that the world isn't a better place