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[Saede Riordan]

The wealthy would be well advised to invest in seeking a financially healthier population. Impoverishing the other classes tends to lead to them eventually deciding to try other means for improving their lot than the legal, never a good thing for the class with the most to lose. And despite the attempts by some to believe otherwise, capitalism is not a system that tolerates cronyism forever. Continue to deprive your workers of enough to live on, and you will find that none can afford what you sell.

The issue is, with automation, you don't necessarily need to sell anything, hell, where you don't necessarily even need workers. When your entire top to bottom production chain is automated from raw materials to finished product, you can just leave the people behind like you would a worn out factory. I think this could create a very dangerous Elysium-esque schism in the population, where the very rich basically tell the rest of us to fuck right off and die. If they have everything they need, and the process of them getting everything they need doesn't require us anymore, what value do we have, to them?

The problem with capitalism is that it relies on the assumption that those with the money need those without it to generate their wealth. But if they don't need us, then capitalism falls apart. This is maybe not so immediate a problem, but its going to become more and more of a problem over time. Its already starting to become a problem now. If Walmart could automate every one of its stores, do you think the Walton's would lose any sleep over firing every one of their employees? I doubt it. Even when the situation becomes such that no one can afford to buy anything, then those things will just stop being sold. We'll be sold goods of less and less value, given less and less to work with. Look at places like the dollar stores that are all over the place. Selling crap that by many accounts should never have been made in the first place. Things made poorly because that's all people can afford. As we can afford less and less, the value of the products being sold to us will decline further and further.
We will be scraped and scraped until there's nothing left to take from us. And then, while we die in the streets, our foreclosed homes sitting empty, those who were wealthy enough to raft themselves onto the ship that is complete automation? They'll just sit back and watch. They'll inherit the future that should have been meant for all of us, because they were too selfish and too focused on the short term to share and in the long run it just won't affect them. They won't have to live with it. We will.

Be wary of saying "post-scarcity". Scarcity is, in many ways, logically necessary in this universe. Even if everyone could have a galaxy to themselves, that would not mean that several someones wouldn't want a particular galaxy over others. What we are entering is a period where people are being systematically deprived of the ability to make enough money to support themselves, and where the protections on workers have largely been stripped away. If we had continued the pattern established earlier in the century, we would probably be down to a 30 hour work week. Of course, with globalization (which, if we want to be fair, is necessary), we probably couldn't do that, but we certainly wouldn't be working longer and longer hours for less and less.

You're right of course, that unless we all had entire universes to ourselves or some other such impractical nonsense, we can't make everything available to everyone, but what we can do and in my mind, should do is make enough available to everyone. Of course, we all might have different ideas of what is enough. What does someone need to survive? What does someone need to thrive and live happily as a human being? What do we consider living well and do we as a society want to make sure everyone lives well? If we could make sure everyone had food, housing, clothing, and medical care by putting them all in grey prefabricated concrete blockhouses, would that be what we want? Would we be okay with that? Do people need more then that? Do they need communications, access to the internet, the ability to express themselves and explore creative and scientific endeavours?

I believe that the best society we can hope to achieve is one where someone has the resources to dedicate their lives to working on something they enjoy. Taking on tasks they feel passionate about, not because those tasks need to get done but because the people doing them want to be doing them. We should be fostering a society where scientists and engineers and inventors and artists and innovators are cherished and supported. A society that encourages people to pursue the things they are passionate about, instead of the things that the system requires in order to function. The increasing levels of automation are going to eventually reach a point where nothing needs to get done. Where no one will need to collect the trash and deliver the mail and work in the factories. Because the trash will collect itself, the mail will deliver itself, the factories will run themselves. This may seem like some sort of insane pipe dream but I believe it could be something we achieve in as little as 30 to 40 years. We are approaching a threshold now, where the systems we had in place because things required people to do them start to leave the people behind. And yes, as you said, we have to ask ourselves, do we serve capitalism, or does it serve us? In the past, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. The work got done, a tremendous amount of wealth was generated, and people who would have had nothing were able to live very well. But now that system has run its course, and is accelerating past us. We are approaching the point where capitalism no longer serves us, and we merely serve it. Acting as organic cogs just waiting to be replaced by synthetic parts. 

I would note that we do not have other economic systems that could potentially work in place of capitalism.

Maybe its time to change that. Its been 150 years since anyone proposed a radically new economic model. The models we have, the systems we have, are all made under the assumption that people are a critical step in creating the things we need. But that's more and more rapidly ceasing to be the case. Capitalism, communism, even socialism. These are becoming increasingly outdated systems built upon premises that no longer apply in our automated and global world. I think its time for something new. Everything is on the table. For the sake of our futures, and our children's futures. We have to be willing to put aside our parents tools, and start to construct our own.

[Streya]

The issue is, with automation, you don't necessarily need to sell anything, hell, where you don't necessarily even need workers. When your entire top to bottom production chain is automated from raw materials to finished product, you can just leave the people behind like you would a worn out factory.

I guess that's one way to create a post-scarce society, eh? Just boot-strap the process off the labor of others 

[Ava Starfire]

The primary issue, it seems to me, is that any future solutions are of no use to those in dire straits at this very moment. Yes, I think it is likely that technological advances will eventually balance themselves out to the point of making human existence less costly instead of merely making corporate existence less costly, but this is of no comfort to someone currently struggling to exist.

One cannot preach individualism for the present but community for the future. Either you are willing to structure society for the community in this moment or you are selling platitudes for the future in order to placate the justified indignation your current individualism causes in those around you.

This.

So much this.

Marry me? Seriously?

THIS.

Can I quote this?

[Vikarion]

The issue is, with automation, you don't necessarily need to sell anything, hell, where you don't necessarily even need workers. When your entire top to bottom production chain is automated from raw materials to finished product, you can just leave the people behind like you would a worn out factory. I think this could create a very dangerous Elysium-esque schism in the population, where the very rich basically tell the rest of us to fuck right off and die. If they have everything they need, and the process of them getting everything they need doesn't require us anymore, what value do we have, to them?

A good question, to which I think there are a couple responses.

The first is that, essentially, the rich could almost be said to have reached this point already. Most wealth is in the hands of a very few. They don't need us for most things. Why do they continue to seek wealth? Well, because they don't just want to be richer, they want to be better. Better than the other guy, better than the competitor. Why? Because we're humans, we wouldn't have made it this far as a species if we weren't competitive. If we're lucky, that'll get us into space. Of course, then you have to deal with the ones who aren't competitive, just greedy...

So, to the second, let me point out that if none of us can buy things from Wal-Mart, something very bad is going to happen to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart won't suddenly be able to get income from somewhere else - it will fold, and all the people who owned parts of Wal-Mart will be in financial trouble insofar as they were exposed to it. The rich, even those in the financial sector, base their economies on us, on our consumption. Who is going to buy the iPods, the cars, and so forth, that make the rich, well, rich?

And that's not to mention the fact that automation cannot actually handle many of the tasks necessary for the rich to survive, from custom craftsmanship to raw resource extraction.

But suppose you are right. Suppose that every job that humans can do is automated. What then? Well, the fun thing is that if you can do that, then there's no reason that you can't use that automation to make your own life better. So the rich have 3d printers? So what? I and my friends will get one together, and print ourselves what we need.

And yet, I agree that your worries are valid. Not because capitalism is failing us - not that we have much of capitalism in the United States anymore - but because I take issue with this statement, in an odd way:

They'll inherit the future that should have been meant for all of us, because they were too selfish and too focused on the short term to share and in the long run it just won't affect them. They won't have to live with it. We will.

There is no such thing as a future that is meant for all of us. There are no such things as innate human rights. There is no such thing as justice. There is no principle that the powerful violate, no over-arching ideal.

But there is power. The point of what we see, for most of those who would exploit us, is power. Financial power, political power, the exercise of power. That's why your proposed future is possible, because it won't be automation that crushes us, if it comes in the manner you speak. Give free people that sort of access to technology and they'll be colonizing the asteroid belt, if that's what it takes to find a job. If automation crushes us, it will be because those who utilize it saw it as an opportunity to remove the threat that the majority of humanity could always exercise: that of simple non-compliance.

So we only have those rights which we fight for. And that is a political problem, not an economic one. Capitalism works, or, at least, welfare capitalism does. Why isn't it working? Because it is sabotaged by those with personal interests in getting rid of it.

=======

To your second point: what do we owe people, simply for being people?

Nothing. It neither breaks my heart nor picks my pocket if someone in the Sudan dies from starvation. Or, to put it in the Adam Smith analogy, if you were to find that you were going to lose your leg tomorrow, your would likely be far more upset by that than by the fact that several thousand children died today, in rather excruciating circumstances. Some will deny this, but the test of caring is in action, and few if any sacrifice everything they love and enjoy just to save lives they do not know.

On the other hand, perhaps I should care quite a lot. That child might have been a possible Einstein, or his death might spark a revolution that could harm my interests, or there might be innumerable other advantages that might accrue to me if he lived. If it costs me nothing, why wouldn't I want him to live?

So, perhaps we are not obligated to save a life, or to make it better - just as you are not obligated to jump into an ice-cold lake to save a drowning man - but it does seem pretty decent of us to give it a shot, so long as it doesn't cost us too much. Fortunately, you have posited a society in which helping others costs us essentially nothing. And, given that little fantasy, which I admit would be nice if true, it would naturally follow that we could help everyone as much as possible. Nothing, being an infinite, allows for infinite help if the cost is nothing.

Well, what becomes the currency in that case? The currency becomes ideas and inventions, art and science. If the trash collects itself, then what people will want and pay for are better and more artistic trash collection methods, as well as aforementioned limited-by-nature items (coastline property, for instance). Capitalism will still exist, only the products will change. Even given infinite resources, time and ideas will still be limited.

Maybe its time to change that. Its been 150 years since anyone proposed a radically new economic model. The models we have, the systems we have, are all made under the assumption that people are a critical step in creating the things we need. But that's more and more rapidly ceasing to be the case. Capitalism, communism, even socialism. These are becoming increasingly outdated systems built upon premises that no longer apply in our automated and global world. I think its time for something new. Everything is on the table. For the sake of our futures, and our children's futures. We have to be willing to put aside our parents tools, and start to construct our own.

To this I am tempted to point out that almost every time someone in charge has taken the above seriously, quite a lot more people have died than was strictly necessary. But I think a more...reasonable approach is in order.

I'm not a Marxist, because I have studied Marx, and his theories do not correspond to reality. But he had good historical points, as well as sociological ones, and one point he made, whether he knew it or not, was that capitalism was an organic system.

That is to say, capitalism was not designed. It grew out of the feudal and mercantile eras without anyone particularly coming up with the idea that it should. In fact, many did not think it should. Yet, it triumphed anyway. It triumphed because it was the most efficient and natural method for people to relate to each other economically.

So to say that capitalism is outdated or founded on any premises is, I think, to miss the point. Capitalism isn't a system that anyone sat down and chose, it is a system that arose despite the efforts of many to squelch it. It did not beat out socialism, feudalism, Marxism, corporatism, and other systems because it was imposed - although it can be imposed - it beat out those systems because it was simply what people did when not acted upon by state control of property. We are very fortunate that it can be harnessed to collective aims. We were very stupid, as a species, to think ourselves capable of over-riding it.

Now this is the mistake people make: when I say that capitalism should serve us, and not we it, I do not mean that we are free to institute whatever economic system we wish. We are not, unless you are willing to embrace a forcible control of people that must expand beyond any terror of automation you might care to name. You could no more suspend the laws of natural selection than you can change economic behaviors by fiat.

Yet, the laws of evolution did not cause us to shrug, decide that whatever bad happened was necessary to the natural order, and thus remain ever in stasis. Rather, humanity found that it could tailor certain organisms, by those same laws, to its own ends. Similarly, we live by economic laws that entail capitalism, and will continue to entail it as long as limited goods (of any particular kinds) exist, but that does not mean that we must live tooth and claw economically. Capitalism, like natural selection, is an engine of titanic and incomprehensible power, subtle and brutally strong, but if we are aware of it, if we understand it, it can make us unimaginably better off.

But the ability to do that is a political decision. It has always been a political decision, a decision about power. And capitalism is not uniquely corruptible. Feudalism was, in essence, one long continuous barbaric orgy of exploitation. Slavery lasted for thousands of years, and not always for pure economic convenience. Socialism, fascism, and attempts at communism are already infamous for their callous treatment of humanity. No, whatever economic system we have, it will always be susceptible to the weak, pathetic mirror of our will to compete and dominate - that is to say, our fear, our terror of defeat, our sadism, and our desire to crush the other in the vain hope that by doing so we will be exalted.

[Saede Riordan]

The issue is, with automation, you don't necessarily need to sell anything, hell, where you don't necessarily even need workers. When your entire top to bottom production chain is automated from raw materials to finished product, you can just leave the people behind like you would a worn out factory. I think this could create a very dangerous Elysium-esque schism in the population, where the very rich basically tell the rest of us to fuck right off and die. If they have everything they need, and the process of them getting everything they need doesn't require us anymore, what value do we have, to them?

A good question, to which I think there are a couple responses.

The first is that, essentially, the rich could almost be said to have reached this point already. Most wealth is in the hands of a very few. They don't need us for most things. Why do they continue to seek wealth? Well, because they don't just want to be richer, they want to be better. Better than the other guy, better than the competitor. Why? Because we're humans, we wouldn't have made it this far as a species if we weren't competitive. If we're lucky, that'll get us into space. Of course, then you have to deal with the ones who aren't competitive, just greedy...

So, to the second, let me point out that if none of us can buy things from Wal-Mart, something very bad is going to happen to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart won't suddenly be able to get income from somewhere else - it will fold, and all the people who owned parts of Wal-Mart will be in financial trouble insofar as they were exposed to it. The rich, even those in the financial sector, base their economies on us, on our consumption. Who is going to buy the iPods, the cars, and so forth, that make the rich, well, rich?

That's because the economy right now is based on consumption. But I mean, lets look at what the rich are hailing as the ultimate way to make the economy work. 'Trickle down' economics. The corporate puppet that has become the Republican party supports it because it makes their funders happy. I don't think the rich are stupid. They have a lot of power and a lot of very smart economists to advise them. Trickle down clearly doesn't work for generating wealth, it deprives the lower classes of their purchasing power and thus deprives the wealthy of the markets they use to generate their wealth. This doesn't make sense, and I can't think that those very wealthy people with their very smart economists would just be blindsided by it. Clearly they have some ulterior motive for extracting all the wealth out of the lower and middle classes.

And that's not to mention the fact that automation cannot actually handle many of the tasks necessary for the rich to survive, from custom craftsmanship to raw resource extraction.

But suppose you are right. Suppose that every job that humans can do is automated. What then? Well, the fun thing is that if you can do that, then there's no reason that you can't use that automation to make your own life better. So the rich have 3d printers? So what? I and my friends will get one together, and print ourselves what we need.

Except that you don't own the 3d printer, or the raw materials. And if every job is automated, you'll have no income, no purchasing power, and never be able to buy the raw materials or the printer, or the electricity it needs to operate, or the internet required to get the open source plans for what you want to print. And that's the other insidious thing. The people who still have the jobs won't think they need to prepare for the jobless future, so they won't help economically prop up those who have lost their jobs, and won't see it as worth their time until they too are thrown off the bus.

And yet, I agree that your worries are valid. Not because capitalism is failing us - not that we have much of capitalism in the United States anymore - but because I take issue with this statement, in an odd way:

They'll inherit the future that should have been meant for all of us, because they were too selfish and too focused on the short term to share and in the long run it just won't affect them. They won't have to live with it. We will.

There is no such thing as a future that is meant for all of us. There are no such things as innate human rights. There is no such thing as justice. There is no principle that the powerful violate, no over-arching ideal.

But there is power. The point of what we see, for most of those who would exploit us, is power. Financial power, political power, the exercise of power. That's why your proposed future is possible, because it won't be automation that crushes us, if it comes in the manner you speak. Give free people that sort of access to technology and they'll be colonizing the asteroid belt, if that's what it takes to find a job. If automation crushes us, it will be because those who utilize it saw it as an opportunity to remove the threat that the majority of humanity could always exercise: that of simple non-compliance.

So we only have those rights which we fight for. And that is a political problem, not an economic one. Capitalism works, or, at least, welfare capitalism does. Why isn't it working? Because it is sabotaged by those with personal interests in getting rid of it.

You make a good very good point here, and I think it validates even further what I said above.

To your second point: what do we owe people, simply for being people?

Nothing. It neither breaks my heart nor picks my pocket if someone in the Sudan dies from starvation. Or, to put it in the Adam Smith analogy, if you were to find that you were going to lose your leg tomorrow, your would likely be far more upset by that than by the fact that several thousand children died today, in rather excruciating circumstances. Some will deny this, but the test of caring is in action, and few if any sacrifice everything they love and enjoy just to save lives they do not know.

On the other hand, perhaps I should care quite a lot. That child might have been a possible Einstein, or his death might spark a revolution that could harm my interests, or there might be innumerable other advantages that might accrue to me if he lived. If it costs me nothing, why wouldn't I want him to live?

So, perhaps we are not obligated to save a life, or to make it better - just as you are not obligated to jump into an ice-cold lake to save a drowning man - but it does seem pretty decent of us to give it a shot, so long as it doesn't cost us too much. Fortunately, you have posited a society in which helping others costs us essentially nothing. And, given that little fantasy, which I admit would be nice if true, it would naturally follow that we could help everyone as much as possible. Nothing, being an infinite, allows for infinite help if the cost is nothing.

Well, what becomes the currency in that case? The currency becomes ideas and inventions, art and science. If the trash collects itself, then what people will want and pay for are better and more artistic trash collection methods, as well as aforementioned limited-by-nature items (coastline property, for instance). Capitalism will still exist, only the products will change. Even given infinite resources, time and ideas will still be limited.

You're absolutely right that our ability to care for people decreases with distance. As much as it pains me to know that people are starving and dying and getting shot, I'm not willing to throw away everything I have to help them (though I have been sort of seriously considering joining the Peace Corps). Dunbar's Number is a bitch like that. However, we're also rational agents, capable of looking at the situation, with thousands of people dying of starvation and dehydration and poisoned water and sectarian violence and go 'I don't approve of this'. If we create a situation such where it takes very little more then this to start bringing about change, it'll happen. We're not there yet of course, but we can dream. The question becomes then, how do we get to there from here. How do we cross that gulf from artificially induced scarcity to manufactured abundance? Because that's the crux of it. We have the tools to start building that world today. We have the resources and the technology, its just that its all controlled by those with vested interests in keeping the rest of us in check to maintain their power.

Maybe its time to change that. Its been 150 years since anyone proposed a radically new economic model. The models we have, the systems we have, are all made under the assumption that people are a critical step in creating the things we need. But that's more and more rapidly ceasing to be the case. Capitalism, communism, even socialism. These are becoming increasingly outdated systems built upon premises that no longer apply in our automated and global world. I think its time for something new. Everything is on the table. For the sake of our futures, and our children's futures. We have to be willing to put aside our parents tools, and start to construct our own.

To this I am tempted to point out that almost every time someone in charge has taken the above seriously, quite a lot more people have died than was strictly necessary. But I think a more...reasonable approach is in order.

I'm not a Marxist, because I have studied Marx, and his theories do not correspond to reality. But he had good historical points, as well as sociological ones, and one point he made, whether he knew it or not, was that capitalism was an organic system.

That is to say, capitalism was not designed. It grew out of the feudal and mercantile eras without anyone particularly coming up with the idea that it should. In fact, many did not think it should. Yet, it triumphed anyway. It triumphed because it was the most efficient and natural method for people to relate to each other economically.

So to say that capitalism is outdated or founded on any premises is, I think, to miss the point. Capitalism isn't a system that anyone sat down and chose, it is a system that arose despite the efforts of many to squelch it. It did not beat out socialism, feudalism, Marxism, corporatism, and other systems because it was imposed - although it can be imposed - it beat out those systems because it was simply what people did when not acted upon by state control of property. We are very fortunate that it can be harnessed to collective aims. We were very stupid, as a species, to think ourselves capable of over-riding it.

Capitalism arose yes, after 200,000 years of it not arising from hunter gather society. Sure its been with us for the entirety of our journey out of the stone ages, but I think its a bit of a stretch to say it is innate to human nature. It is a very good system yes, but its a system that can, and is, easily manipulated by those in power. Maybe you're right though, maybe I have a more jaded view of capitalism because what I see people call capitalism is really nothing but a tarted up oligopoly with big 'capitalism' 'freedom' and 'patriotism' stickers branded all over it. However, I think something else to note is that while capitalism did evolve, the times continue to change. The world that capitalism evolved within, where individuals make good and sell them locally, is by and large no longer the case. Globalisation has disrupted the supply and demand so much that all the demand can be supplied by relatively few people, who rake in all of the wealth generated on the backs of those they can pay very little. I think its important that we continue to let our economic system evolve, and not get stuck on capitalism. There is not 'best' in evolution, evolution doesn't work like that. There is only best suited to its environment, and I posit that capitalism is no longer fit for the environment it operates out of, and needs to evolve to fit the changing world.

Now this is the mistake people make: when I say that capitalism should serve us, and not we it, I do not mean that we are free to institute whatever economic system we wish. We are not, unless you are willing to embrace a forcible control of people that must expand beyond any terror of automation you might care to name. You could no more suspend the laws of natural selection than you can change economic behaviors by fiat.

Yet, the laws of evolution did not cause us to shrug, decide that whatever bad happened was necessary to the natural order, and thus remain ever in stasis. Rather, humanity found that it could tailor certain organisms, by those same laws, to its own ends. Similarly, we live by economic laws that entail capitalism, and will continue to entail it as long as limited goods (of any particular kinds) exist, but that does not mean that we must live tooth and claw economically. Capitalism, like natural selection, is an engine of titanic and incomprehensible power, subtle and brutally strong, but if we are aware of it, if we understand it, it can make us unimaginably better off.

But the ability to do that is a political decision. It has always been a political decision, a decision about power. And capitalism is not uniquely corruptible. Feudalism was, in essence, one long continuous barbaric orgy of exploitation. Slavery lasted for thousands of years, and not always for pure economic convenience. Socialism, fascism, and attempts at communism are already infamous for their callous treatment of humanity. No, whatever economic system we have, it will always be susceptible to the weak, pathetic mirror of our will to compete and dominate - that is to say, our fear, our terror of defeat, our sadism, and our desire to crush the other in the vain hope that by doing so we will be exalted.

That's a very poetic sort of cynicism there. I'm not sure I can disagree with it, but by the same token, I believe that our will to compete and dominate are products of the worlds we were raised in, not some innate property of humans. The human mind is incredibly malleable, and we have gotten out of it what we have put into it. We've put into it competition for resources, war, greed, racism, sexism...none of these things are innate. No one is born a racist, its something taught, its a learned behaviour. And it can be unlearned. Maybe we're too far gone, but our children, and their children? They still have a chance, if we decide to get off the cycle of violence that we've been party to.

[Jace]

The primary issue, it seems to me, is that any future solutions are of no use to those in dire straits at this very moment. Yes, I think it is likely that technological advances will eventually balance themselves out to the point of making human existence less costly instead of merely making corporate existence less costly, but this is of no comfort to someone currently struggling to exist.

One cannot preach individualism for the present but community for the future. Either you are willing to structure society for the community in this moment or you are selling platitudes for the future in order to placate the justified indignation your current individualism causes in those around you.

This.

So much this.

Marry me? Seriously?

THIS.

Can I quote this?

Sure.

Edit: To the quote bit, I mean. >.>

[Louella Dougans]

Supposedly, the combined wealth of the richest 85 people in the world, is greater than the combined wealth of the poorest 3.5 Bn people.

[Vic Van Meter]

Supposedly, the combined wealth of the richest 85 people in the world, is greater than the combined wealth of the poorest 3.5 Bn people.

To be fair, the poorest 3.5 billion people in the world make our homeless in the U.S. look like they're living in the lap of luxury.

[Saede Riordan]

Supposedly, the combined wealth of the richest 85 people in the world, is greater than the combined wealth of the poorest 3.5 Bn people.

To be fair, the poorest 3.5 billion people in the world make our homeless in the U.S. look like they're living in the lap of luxury.

Its still not right. If what Vikarion says above about there being no objective morals and us having to impose our ideals on the world if we want them to come about, then I definitely think we need to impose some sense of justice for the downtrodden. It isn't right for people to have to live like that.

[Lyn Farel]

Heh lol. I am in a situation that made me think of this this morning again. Weirdly, I have a job and earn a bit above the minimum wage with a master degree (which means the minimum wage since I pay standard taxes where minimum wage people do not). So I am looking for somewhere to live, you know, because with my little salary i'm very happy to have, I am supposed to be able to afford by myself my own apartment.

But the lol thing is that even with a salary, you can't find somewhere that is cheap enough for your salary not to choke to death. What is the most ludicrous in that situation, is to earn your life with a job, and still be "homeless" (I do not live in the street lol, i'm grateful to have other alternatives...), because those fucking rents are stupidly expensive, and even if you can manage to pay them, the owners won't let you in because you don't earn 3 times the rent per month. 

Fucked up world.

[Vic Van Meter]

Heh lol. I am in a situation that made me think of this this morning again. Weirdly, I have a job and earn a bit above the minimum wage with a master degree (which means the minimum wage since I pay standard taxes where minimum wage people do not). So I am looking for somewhere to live, you know, because with my little salary i'm very happy to have, I am supposed to be able to afford by myself my own apartment.

But the lol thing is that even with a salary, you can't find somewhere that is cheap enough for your salary not to choke to death. What is the most ludicrous in that situation, is to earn your life with a job, and still be "homeless" (I do not live in the street lol, i'm grateful to have other alternatives...), because those fucking rents are stupidly expensive, and even if you can manage to pay them, the owners won't let you in because you don't earn 3 times the rent per month. 

Fucked up world.

It's weird like that.  Now that women are in the workplace, rents and housing prices have inflated because people are earning enough money between them.  It really leaves single people, or couples with one stay-at-home partner, out in the cold.  I make about 2300 dollars a month, which isn't anything to sneeze at.  If I lived on my own, I'd be shelling out half of that for a one-bedroom apartment and my Wrangler alone.  Not counting internet, utilities, or food, just rent and car would be about a thousand dollars a month.  God only knows how people with kids manage it.

Even when I was working at Target though and my wife and I were barely making it, I was happy to be in the U.S.  It's not the best place in the world to live, but there are a lot of places that have it way worse.  I spent almost an entire year's free time watching documentaries about failed states and underdeveloped nations.  I'm thankful every day that I didn't end up being born homeless in Haiti.  They've got it worse than anyone I know here.

[Ché Biko]

The question becomes then, how do we get to there from here. How do we cross that gulf from artificially induced scarcity to manufactured abundance? Because that's the crux of it. We have the tools to start building that world today. We have the resources and the technology,

Faith/trust. Our current economy relies on it, and for another one to prosper, enough people need to have faith in it.
A lot of people that are born into this economy almost see it like it's as much part of the world like gravity, and other economies are quite alien to them, if they've even considered there could be other ones.

The current concept of possession and abstraction of wealth are my biggest issues with our current economy.

[Vic Van Meter]

Supposedly, the combined wealth of the richest 85 people in the world, is greater than the combined wealth of the poorest 3.5 Bn people.

To be fair, the poorest 3.5 billion people in the world make our homeless in the U.S. look like they're living in the lap of luxury.

Its still not right. If what Vikarion says above about there being no objective morals and us having to impose our ideals on the world if we want them to come about, then I definitely think we need to impose some sense of justice for the downtrodden. It isn't right for people to have to live like that.

Did you ever think about the peace corps or something similar?  They don't give you much spending money, but they pay for food and lodging and send you out to help people.  A buddy of mine I went to school with graduated with me in 2008, right at the beginning of the credit crunch.  He went into the peace corps and ended up helping to design and build modular sun shelters in South Africa.

[Elmund Egivand]

The question becomes then, how do we get to there from here. How do we cross that gulf from artificially induced scarcity to manufactured abundance? Because that's the crux of it. We have the tools to start building that world today. We have the resources and the technology,

Faith/trust. Our current economy relies on it, and for another one to prosper, enough people need to have faith in it.
A lot of people that are born into this economy almost see it like it's as much part of the world like gravity, and other economies are quite alien to them, if they've even considered there could be other ones.

The current concept of possession and abstraction of wealth are my biggest issues with our current economy.

Let us not forget that our society as it is now seems to fail to understand that money, by itself, has no value. It only has value for as long as you can use it to buy something. The value of money scales in proportion of the amount of goods available for purchase. Seriously, what the hell? Why are you hoarding all that money for its own sake?

[Vikarion]

Supposedly, the combined wealth of the richest 85 people in the world, is greater than the combined wealth of the poorest 3.5 Bn people.

To be fair, the poorest 3.5 billion people in the world make our homeless in the U.S. look like they're living in the lap of luxury.

Its still not right. If what Vikarion says above about there being no objective morals and us having to impose our ideals on the world if we want them to come about, then I definitely think we need to impose some sense of justice for the downtrodden. It isn't right for people to have to live like that.

Hey now. I never said there was no objective morality. As long as we can admit that we want to get away from the worst possible world, as long as we are forced to admit that our well-being is a desired end, objective facts about how humans can and should behave can be determined.

What I said is that there are no human rights, no mandated principles, no karma or justice. That is to say, it is a bit of a near-dialectical question, with my intention to point out that the world, as the world, does not carry anything within it that would dictate what humans ought to or ought not receive. You have no right to health, to food, to shelter, or even to life. These things are seized, wrested from the environment. It is not different because we now live in skyscrapers, cities, and towns.

Therefore, rather then "the future that ought to have been ours", we are better to say "the future we should have taken for ourselves".