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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

gmalandrakis.com

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Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#551

Post by Windchaser »

inglor_cz wrote: post #429
toasty228 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many people suffer/die from obesity, diabetes and other lifestyle disease (lookup the main causes of deaths in the US, and their causes) ? All I'm saying is that there is a middle ground between "living in huts made of cow dung and dying at 35" and "75% of your population is obese and die from literal over consumption and lack of physical activity" > but in a democratic society, I doubt that this would be an…

At scale lucrative enough to stage coups in Latin America. Read up upon this. Let us not even go deeper to the Age of Sail. Large-scale trade and consumption of sugar, tobacco and cotton fueled slavery operations from Virginia down to Brazil, long before a lightbulb was even a thing.

I mean, the better point there would be "we could scale back on our cost of living, if we wanted to". That is what I figured the "we don't have to ship fruit around the world" was trying to get at, even if bananas are actually pretty cost-effective. (Still usually the cheapest fruit in $/lb)

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#552

Post by Windchaser »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #353
jameslk wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive

From people I know who traveled, the people in thatched huts are sometimes reported to be far happier than we are. And a lot of people in the US can't afford hospitals or antibiotics today.

It's one hospital, how much could it cost? $200 million?

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#553

Post by red-iron-pine »

jon-wood wrote: post #504
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks did not have kids during WW1 though: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalité_en_France#/media/Fich... :)

Was that out of choice or because all the men were at the front, far from the people they might otherwise have been having kids with?

don't forget all of the rationing, and disease, and terrifying uncertainty

there is always uncertainty, but not in the 60k people are going to die in a battle tomorrow level of uncertainty.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#554

Post by mrguyorama »

bediger4000 wrote: post #228
sosomoxie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'll have trouble maintaining their health because there will be fewer doctors and no specialists They are absolutely counting on AI curing cancer and robot doctors with the goal of eternal life, possibly in space. It's transhumanism or some variant of it (which by the way Jeffery Epstein and his friends -- these same billionaires) were very much into.

LLM AI won't give them a cancer cure, guaranteed.

It doesn't matter what reality holds. It matters what the moronic, drug addled, power hungry billionaires and Trillionaire believes, or believes has a nonzero chance if you gamble on it!

These assholes would burn the entire earth for a 20% chance of coming out slightly more powerful.

It's not about money, or a plan, or a goal. They just want everyone under their thumb.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#555

Post by Windchaser »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #434
stephc_int13 wrote: post #79

The idea of a consumer based economy has always appeared dumb to me. The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work. And the reason why having a large amount of people working is that human work has been producing a surplus basically since the dawn of civilization. This surplus is partially shared but tend also to "trickle up", contrary to some weird beliefs, as can clearly be seen almost everyw…

Who owns the machines and their output? I don't think anyone is saying that it wouldn't be great if we didn't have to work to survive and thrive. What they are saying is, based on current trends, we are more heading for one of those scifi dystopias than star trek.

In Star Trek, also, there was a huge world war with hundreds of millions dead. WW3, which almost killed humanity, before they united and created the sci-fi utopia.

The hard part is that we don't know if we'll ever get the utopia.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#556

Post by generic92034 »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #512
generic92034 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does human nature allow one member of the caravan having (a lot of) water, while everyone else goes thirsty?

yes? why is that even a question. you have enough money to buy a phone and spare time to comment, just like me, while people die of hunger and thirst in Sudan: 50 dollars would buy life saving medicines and water treatment. but i spent it on a Spotify subscription and some weed. also, i stepped over a homeless guy on my way into the grocery store last week.

Arguably Sudan is a different caravan. And the totally destitute in most industrialized countries are a small minority. So, currently people can keep the mindset that they still have a chance. Once that illusion shatters, expect violence (which might not achieve anything).

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#557

Post by red-iron-pine »

trolleski wrote: post #431
doctorwho42 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably referring to those with vast amounts of power and wealth at their disposal. There isn't some vast conspiracy. But generally it takes a certain kind of person to crave that type of wealth and power. So they tend to all pull in the same direction to keep and build upon said wealth/power. Thus can be viewed as collectively working towards the same nefarious state of things.

Yes, but sometimes they actually cooperate and coordinate, like we saw in the Epstein files. And the unpredictability actually has a name and it is "flooding the zone".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#558

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #464
datadrivenangel wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern civilization is ~2-3 years of correlated bad harvests away from major disaster. If food costs 20x what it used to, a good number of people will starve or die in the political turbulence that will follow...

Modern society has much better transportation. The odds of correlated bad harvests around the world are much worse than local bad harvest in the past. I guarantee every place on earth will have a bad harvest, sometimes two in the next 20 years, but since there is enough harvest overall we are fine.

[deleted]

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#559

Post by red-iron-pine »

bluGill wrote: post #414
soco wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this obsession with predicting the future comping from? Did humanity ever predict the future?`Yet it somehow thrived, brought us here and enabled us to complain about the lack of fortune-telling.

You cannot predict details of the future, but you can make enough predictions for reasonable purposes. The sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Between December and February next year it will drop below freezing, and snow. The weather will support a garden most summers (enough rain, not too hot or cold), but only if I'm planing specific plants that do well in my climate, there are some foods that will never work where…

i can buy a house because i can plan on having a job next year, and probably in the next 5 years.

i can have a kid because i can afford it, because i have a job, and my housing situation is stable

i can take time off to recover from illness because i won't get fired for being out of office for a week

i can pay for other life infrastructure like a car or a new roof because i know my pay and job is stable and i'm not going to move

i don't need to stockpile food water and ammo because the government will be mostly benevolent and effective, and disasters will be infrequent and mitigated.

i don't need to wear a bulletproof vest to go to work because my streets are reasonably safe, and i'm not going to get drafted to fight in a war.

etc. etc. etc.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#560

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #464
datadrivenangel wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern civilization is ~2-3 years of correlated bad harvests away from major disaster. If food costs 20x what it used to, a good number of people will starve or die in the political turbulence that will follow...

Modern society has much better transportation. The odds of correlated bad harvests around the world are much worse than local bad harvest in the past. I guarantee every place on earth will have a bad harvest, sometimes two in the next 20 years, but since there is enough harvest overall we are fine.

[deleted]
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