291–300 of 316 posts
So that you can still go to work, and procreate- Win-win for the masters.
Additionally I would not take Musk as the voice of reason, as he has demonstrated borderline behavior if not complete irrationality on this kind of issues in the past (and why should he have a word in this anyway?).
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Not in most of Europe. Most of the CEE along with Western European countries like Netherlands and Ireland have ass-in-seat requirements for American companies to unlock FDI subsidizes when opening a GCC. Additionally, management culture in London as well as Paris is very hybrid work oriented. There is a decent proliferation of WFH roles in Europe, but those are the same roles in the US anyhow - we're posting those in…
As a German living in Germany, I had the impression most companies here are anti-WFH. It got better with COVID, but you still have to dig, to find something 100% remote.
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If people want their government services to continue to work without destroying the economies that support them, it absolutely is a political issue.
Oh, and how do you propose politics is even able to have an impact? Force people to have sex with each other? It may be an ideology but I don’t think this is a red/blue topic and certainly not a legislative one imo. It is more of a geographical issue and a byproduct of industrialism that isn’t really reversible, you just hope the ride down is more of a slope and not a cliff.
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Unfortunately, much of the US, and elsewhere, has been taken in by decades of successful American propaganda promoting and romanticizing the suburb after the War. The taste for the suburb, like the taste for cars, is very entrenched in many people's minds. In our vapid consumerist culture, they have become elevated to virtual rites of passage: buying a car and buying a suburban house are marks of manhood and adulthoo…
Your solution to "the stupidity of the housing markets in cities" is to increase their demand, and to make housing overall more unaffordable? Sorry, no, I'm not going to raise my family of six plus a dog in a high rise. Encouraging happy, productive families by subsidizing suburbs is good.
You're not thinking systematically. Increased demand isn't the only variable. Consider also how gov't and the market respond to increased demand and need, especially if the paradigm of normative human settlement changes. Social pressure forces changes. Diffusing pressure allows gov'ts to kick the can down the road, which is what led to the suburban debacle.
> I'm not going to raise my family of six plus a dog in a high rise.
Where did I say you must live in a high rise? Urban development isn't limited to high rises. Small towns and cities exist, yes? It's a question of density and particular patterns of urban planning that enable a healthy social environment. Traditional urban planning did a far better job of that than the suburb.
And btw, what's the problem having a large family in a high rise? Living in a high rise actually reduces the maintenance costs (both in terms of time and money). Owning a suburban house comes with more overhead. In well-designed cities, there is ample green space. In a landscape dotted with cities, you are also within reach of more expansive natural landscapes that haven't been spoiled, scarred, and deformed by sprawling suburbs.
> Encouraging happy, productive families by subsidizing suburbs is good.
I assure you: the suburb is neither good for families nor productive. They are extraordinarily wasteful. Children are shackled and isolated at home, because getting anywhere requires driving. Parents are then burdened with the task of driving their children everywhere or making arrangements. You can't do or buy anything without driving. People waste countless hours commuting. And as I already wrote, it is very expensive to maintain suburban utilities. It takes a lot more energy to keep the suburban machine running. Suburbs are basically on gov't welfare funded by city tax payers.
This naturally comes off as entitled: entitled not to live in a high rise (which, as I said, is not necessarily entailed by the word "city", so rather moot) and entitled to subsidies that drain resources from cities. Why don't suburbs pay for the luxury of their own existence? Funding them is not a matter of the common good, nor is it charity. It's exploitation of others to satisfy a private fetish and fantasy, one that incidentally harms the common good.
I encourage you to visit Strong Towns[0]. There's plenty of material there that targets a popular audience that covers this subject. You might find these ideas less threatening than the urban boogeyman of your mind.
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Nail guns are tools, just like hammers. However, you have to know how to use it and to know how to adjust the pressure for the depth you need. It also costs money, much more than a hammer. And you can't use normal nails, you have to have a specific cartridge of nails, and you must know how to adjust it, and ultimately to not die. Now compare it again.
I think it's a fair comparison; experienced carpenters who've learned to work fast with a hammer, now asked to be 10x more productive while using a new tool they don't have experience with. It probably got more than a few a bit bothered.
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Yes, ignore the natural experiment that is unfolding before our very eyes, and gain nothing at all from the war that is causing it. Like the saying goes: lemons -> lemonade
There's no lemonade to be found here at this time. What there is to be found are a bunch of tone-deaf people who seem utterly ignorant and indifferent to the war's reality.
Finding good among the bad is such a commonplace occurrence that my native tongue, English, has many metaphors for it. I already mentioned making lemons into lemonade; there is also "every cloud has a silver lining," "every dog has his day," "light at the end of the tunnel," and "April showers bring May flowers"
I suspect you would respond, "but Mayflowers brought genocidal white settlers!!!!"
That's your problem, not mine.
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I don't think this is true, do you have a cite for this other than stories that make national news like Amazon's HQ? Even if it happens for more than outlier examples like that, this would only happen for huge companies that can meaningfully move the economy of large urban centers. So maybe top-5 level huge companies in mid-market cities, but 99.9999% of companies wouldn't qualify for that.
Alright, let's agree that it only happens for the top 5% of companies. Then the leadership of those companies come out and make big announcements on how WFH is dead. ... everyone else follows because, "Amazon's doing it.."
I don't think any companies move into cities with agreements they will meaningfully increase foot traffic in large urban centers, certainly not with any sort of true repercussions if they don't. That just simply does not happen.
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>I don't think Musk and Andreesseen are who most people would associate with the concept of pronatalism. Musk is for sure. Doesn't he have like 100 kids because he's constantly trying to get women to become pregnant by his sperm?
I associate the concept of pronatalism with also wanting to be involved in your kids' lives, which Musk seems to have no interest in.
Visible elements of pronatalism are largely focused on assigning a particular family role to women and trying to increase the supply of a particular kind of desirable baby (often white, but sometimes focused on IQ selection and other eugenic elements).
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If people want their government services to continue to work without destroying the economies that support them, it absolutely is a political issue.
Oh, and how do you propose politics is even able to have an impact? Force people to have sex with each other? It may be an ideology but I don’t think this is a red/blue topic and certainly not a legislative one imo. It is more of a geographical issue and a byproduct of industrialism that isn’t really reversible, you just hope the ride down is more of a slope and not a cliff.
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I associate the concept of pronatalism with also wanting to be involved in your kids' lives, which Musk seems to have no interest in.
You can't be as deeply involved in your kids' lives if you've got 8 of them. There is a reason why every large family has sibling-parents. Visible elements of pronatalism are largely focused on assigning a particular family role to women and trying to increase the supply of a particular kind of desirable baby (often white, but sometimes focused on IQ selection and other eugenic elements).
The eugenics part doesn't match my experience at all. I've never seen any evidence that people who are having large families are motivated by that.