Human productivity has exponentially increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution. We produce far more food and clothing than can be consumed and there are more than enough homes for people to live in. Generic medicine can often be produced for pennies.
There is no reason that we as a society cannot guarantee at least a basic standard of living consisting of sustenance, a safe place to rest and relax, treatment for common ailments, etc.
We produce far more food and clothing than can be consumed
millions of people sarve to death despite this, what a shame this is for us as society
You’re forgetting the part where caring about people somehow needs to translate into power for someone. It’s sad and fucked, but that’s where we are.
Someone recently mused that if we provided a way for people to grift off of solving homelessness the problem would be gone. I don’t recall the details, but I thought it seemed true.
This is our only hope for climate change.
Things get better when solar out-competes coal and other fossil fuels. We’re just missing the deployment rate right now I think to be able to just stop fossil fuel use from growing.
But we could have reduced consumption instead and done this much, much faster. The economy might have needed to shift to deal with this and a lot of old industries should have been shut down within only a few years, but it would have had a major impact. Instead we wait for new industries to grow alongside the old, while still growing the old!
Basically if billionaires can capture carbon, they will probably use it as a way to make governments pay to clean the air, which is essentially an ongoing tax from a private entity to a public one, which could conceivably go on forever (or until people try to nationalize it).
I wish this community were more active.
I’d probably ponder about how the system exists to force evolution by weighing traits and whatnot, but the trait is money. It doesn’t matter what’s in your genes or your head. Money is all.
We actually do provide those things.
I’ve been homeless twice and when I was willing to ask and receive it without flinging shit or attacking people, I was provided with all of those things for free.
I live in the USA. Maybe in other places these things aren’t provided, but they were given to me in Boston and Denver.
Those are rich, educated, liberal cities, not typical of larges swathes of the U.S.
Most things die unless they do stuff to not-die
Except for plants. They’re lazy as fuck.
When was the last time you fixed any carbon, you lazy, entitled heterotroph?
They still do stuff, just a bit slower.
EIGHT HOURS A DAY I’M PHOTOSYNTHESIZING AND I HAVE TO COME HOME TO THIS?
12 for those hardworking tropical chads
(Did I use that right? It was uncomfortable.)
Try being a Cannabis plant in a grow box… forced into a grueling schedule of feeding and photosynthesis under lights so bright they could actually be on the surface of the sun. Forced to vegetate and create more leaf surface to photosynthesize even more while bathing in a constant flow of CO2. Only to have your reproductive organs chopped off and burnt. It’s not all fun and games if you’re Mary Jane…
I can relate.
I, too, want to just sit here and photosynthesis all day.
They do stuff, but they’re playing a city building game instead of an rpg
Yes, plants are autotrophs and can generate their own food from sunlight and the atmosphere. They still need some nutrients from the troposphere, like minerals, but they have it made.
Heterotrophs are where things get wild
And even when they do, they eventually still die.
It’s almost like we all deserve to be not alive, as evidenced by the fact that everyone is eventually not alive.
Ahhh yeah. I’m not allowed to do any of that stuff. I’m only allowed to work. Why can’t I do what’s natural instead?
The comment is saying work is natural…
Not when it’s for our owners.
Good thing you don’t have an owner then isn’t it?
Hundreds of thousands of our ancestors died to give us that, and that’s only if you count the most recent war fought against the ownership of people. There has been a lot of blood spilled so that you can live without an owner today.
You go on and think that. You’ll be happier.
You can do other stuff, it’s just highly beneficial to have food/water/shelter before you do other stuff
Being alive wasn’t my choice and I’m seeking compensation.
Being born wasn’t your choice, being alive is 🤓
It’s really not.
You can self-terminate at will
Tried that. It went worse than when Dolores tried pulling a trigger in Westworld, and I suspect for the same reason.
Hey man I think I know exactly what you mean. I tried it too, and the next day I realized this goes far deeper than I originally thought.
When I was a kid I had a friend who suddenly started describing the world as a system of “overlapping solipsisms”, and now that I know what I know, it makes me wonder if he also tried around that age.
We carve our living out of an uncaring and hostile universe.
Earning a living means doing your share of that.
That implies that we should all expect and deserve a status quo that is uncaring and hostile
It’s not we shouldn’t strive for a society that’s caring. It’s just that it isn’t a given. We have to work to have that kind of society.
Entropy is a bitch. Nothing lasts forever without doing work to maintain it.
That used to be the reality of life. It’s only very recently that we’ve produced machines that far outpace what humans can do. The reason we aren’t seeing the benefits is that a select few own those machines and have consolidated their wealth.
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Yep. It’s amazing how many people think all this should be handed to them. If everyone thought that no one would have anything.
There’s a certain balance we’ve yet to strike. Not necessarily having a living handed to you, but being in a situation where if a rough couple weeks knocks you out on your ass, you can meet your basic needs while you get back up on your feet.
We have tons of systems like this. The simplest example is that people can borrow money and pay it back later. We extend this option to people, without the government forcing us to at all, but we don’t do it when people are unlikely to be back on their feet after two weeks.
In terms of straight-up gifts, our society is absolutely full of that. On at least ten occasions I’ve lacked the ability to keep going, and have been given resources by public institutions, private institutions, and individuals.
The generosity of our society is off the charts. That’s why people don’t starve here.
First you suggest that taking out loans when you’ve fallen on hard times is a good solution, as if that wouldn’t just trap you in a neverending whirlwind of debt, then you use a personal anecdote about receiving gifts when you needed them to imply there’s not a problem with how our society functions.
It doesn’t take much reflection to realize your views come from a place of extreme privilege. Are you living under a rock or are you incapable of empathizing with others?
People always think they can slip in “food insecurity” to take the place of starvation.
I said nobody starves. I didn’t say it was effortless to get a perfectly balanced diet. I said nobody starves.
And I know for a fact, since I’ve worked for these systems myself, that the people who offer free food make a concerted effort to ensure the food they’re providing is healthy and balanced.
I ate like a king (far better, in fact, than most kings who’ve ever existed), for free at the Denver Rescue Mission for example.
I’m familiar with the fact that getting leafy greens is tough in our society. Not nearly as tough as dining them in nature, but tougher than opening one’s mouth and letting them flow in. The set of circumstances collectively called “food insecurity”, which could also be aptly called “not-yet-completely-effortless access to perfectly optimal diets”, is not at all the same thing as starvation.
So stop trying to equate these things. It doesn’t help.
In case there is any doubt or lack of clarity whatsoever, this is what I’m referring to when I refer to “starvation”: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*bPvQruhbsPKhRpxUi-sAEA.jpeg
It’s more like “you haven’t earned the right to have other people keep you alive”. I daresay it’s related to how, after 40ish years of working and raising a family and being a good citizen you can retire and have the bar for “staying alive” set a lot lower for most.
I’d amend that to: “You haven’t earned the right to have other people keep you alive after you grow up”
Sure, and we should define “growing up” as having mental capacity to provide for yourself. That’s kind of getting into the weeds here though.
This is about as on the nose as any take on the topic that I’ve seen. Holy shit, we’re telling people they don’t deserve to live. Some simple truths are profound when you say them out loud.
I think people may be seeing it the wrong way round or at least not taking into account the other side.
I’ve been unemployed two years since a mental breakdown. A lot of people may think I’m living the high life with nothing to do and just chilling. But it destroys you having no work! Everyday is a battle against the dark thought - “what’s the point in life if I’m not DOING something?”
You may think you’d do the hobbies you do at weekend - but you don’t. Not when you’re not working long-term. You just coast with every day exactly the same. Nothing has meaning. Weekends aren’t special Even something as simple as going to the library - I love books! But why bother? I can do that tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and I don’t go.
I’m not saying people need to be wage slaves and work dead-end jobs. But people have to work for their own sanity. It’s why a lot of retired people degenerate and/or go back to light work.
Some people don’t deserve to live, simple as. Point-in-case: Hitler
Hitler broke a vital and important contract with others. Live and let live. The moment they broke that implicit contract they totally opened a can of worms and whoopass upon themselves. They totally earned it
More folk need to understand about the contract of tolerance and the golden rule.
I think the implication is meant to be getting the living standard by your own effort instead of through dependency on a supporting figure like a parent.
Does it make people who can’t reach that standard for any reason not of their own failing feel shitty? Sometimes yeah, but it’s not like it’s to say that you’re earning the right to keep living itself.
I’m glad you said it, I read this and it bothered me. What about “steal a living” or “hunt a living” or “create a living”. I think the missing word is “for” you do these things “for a living”, that is to say, to get the resources you need to remain alive.
That said, I do get the message. The idea of living in a world so abundant but unfair that you live or die by what you can produce for someone else is pretty wrong
I say make a living, because it implies it being your project that you’re building up as you want and need to.
There are people in my family that would hear this and agree 100%. They think Musk is changing the world too and they will vote for Trump a third time.
Musk is changing the world. Some changes are good. Other changes are… not so good.
I mean, yeah, it’s true. Death is the default. If you do nothing, you just die.
By default, you don’t deserve to be alive. But you can’t earn it either. It’s a gift.
More like a punishment, except it’s not even deserved. There is way more suffering in life than pleasure, it is immoral to bring someone into this world, and you have absolutely no responsibility to your parents for doing that, rather the opposite.
Your mileage may vary. Yeah, there are a lot of bad things in life, but that doesn’t mean life as a whole is bad. You don’t get to make that call when there are so many people who enjoy life. Not even if you define life’s pleasures as merely relief from life’s needs and strains.
To be clear, I’m not saying you should be having kids. You’re fully within your rights to judge the circumstances of your own life and where your kid would end up to decide if it’s right or wrong. Obviously it’d be wrong to have a kid in the freezing arctic with no hope of escape or survival for more than a few years. But you can’t say having kids is unequivocally wrong for everyone in every circumstance.
And if you truly believe life is wholly bad, that might be a symptom of depression.
Oh, I think it absolutely is a sign of depression.
Life is hard, but I enjoy the vast majority of my time. Here’s my schedule:
- Get up to the sun shining most days, enjoy a breakfast with minimal effort, and dress in clothes I didn’t have to make
- Go to work in a temperature controlled environment with modern conveniences
- Get home, watch shows and play games while machines clean my clothes and dishes
- Go to sleep after listening to some truly great content on a modern marvel that fits in my pocket
Or I could tell it another way:
- Get up late because my phone kept me up at night, and eat crap cereal because that’s all I have time for
- Work in a soulless env with people I don’t like, taking breaks only to piss
- Microwave dinner because I’m too exhausted for anything else, and waste time on shows and gacha games because that’s all I have the energy for
- Doomscroll on my phone because I went to put off doing it all over again as long as possible
Most of life is about perspective. It turns out that you’ll find whatever you’re looking for, whether that’s joy or misery. If you can’t find the good, you’re probably depressed and should seek help.
Which is why it’s a good thing suicide is a human right we all deserve and have available to us, should we wish to take it.
I agree we don’t owe anyone else anything, which is why is see suicide as a right.
There is way more suffering in life than pleasure
If you (or anyome out there reading this) truly feel this way, please seek professional psychological assistance. At the very least make attempts to find a better living situation for yourself, if it’s your current conditions that are driving this belief.
This is blatantly disordered thinking, a sign of trauma, or a sign that there is something seriously wrong with the immediate conditions you are living in.
I’m not talking about the general doom spiral of the world as conditions, but things directly around you day to day. If you can’t live your day to day without awareness of the general doom spiral, see what choices you can make to limit your exposure to it (in short: stop spending so much time online and reading articles about how fucked everything is).
There are always choices available to you to improve the world around you and your position in it, no matter by how small a margin. I’ve been where you’re at, and things don’t have to suck forever.
I don’t want to misrepresent what you’re saying, so correct me if I’m wrong, but are you saying that there is really is much more suffering in life than pleasure, and that the internet simply makes you aware of that fact, and that to improve your mental health you should try and forget about it and shut your eyes to the horrors of this world - but that they really still exist?
Hallmark card platitudes are not a fitting replacement for philosophy.
Is it a Hallmark card platitude because it’s short or because it sounds cheery? Why can’t it be actual philosophy? Logically, there’s no way for you to earn a shot at life before you’re alive. Since it’s always given undeserved, earning it is entirely irrelevant. There’s no way to earn it, even by living perfectly. If you could earn it, you could earn a second life. I’m not talking about “oh wow, you’re such a good person” kind of earning it. Being a good person won’t earn you the throne of England either.
A good thing given undeserved is a gift.
Imagine thinking anyone ‘deserves’ to be alive when literally everyone ends up dead.
Like if someone deserved to be alive, wouldn’t they…you know, stay alive?
You are making a confusion between society (especially the government) doing whatever is reasonably possible to keep people alive as long as they can and being able to defy the second law of thermodynamics.
Yes
This post sucks because it suggests people deserve anything. It’s just religious garbage to make people think they are special because they can’t handle reality
I disagree with your conclusion though, it’s just that nothing matters. If things did matter then staying alive wouldn’t matter
I’m sorry you feel that way.
I don’t understand what there’s to feel sorry about
I’ve got plans later. Dying would seriously mess up my schedule.
Or and hear me out, the universe we live in isn’t going to cater to you. It has nothing to do with what you deserve. What an absurd tweet.
That’s certainly what people who expect you to earn your living think. Most of them have inherited their money.
And that fact you’re salty about that shows that you clearly do believe people have some responsibilty to earn their income, rather than laying idle.
You’re under the mistaken belief that people are inherently lazy and need to be compelled to work.
That’s not true, and has been proven again and again.
But the owner class doesn’t want people with free time to plan how to overthrow them, so you have to spend half your waking life making someone else rich.
When left to their own devices, as the pandemic showed, people explore many creative and productive activities.
people are inherently lazy and need to be compelled to work
I don’t believe I ever said that? but to bite the hook anyway:
Certainly people can be creative without compulsion, but that’s a different thing from ‘Work’ in the economic sense. How many of the ‘owner class’, as you call them, take up as hobbies an essential role like Nurse, Farmer or Carpenter? How many even shirk a prestigious roles as managers, designers or artists that can nonetheless be of benefit?
Certain activities essential for society are simply too unpleasent to be done in the quantity needed without compensation (I will not say compulsion) being offered.
Ok first: A very large part of human effort is busy work, there have been several studies you can easily find on google scholar.
As for the ‘owner’s class’ hobbies. Time for an education: Have you noticed that the VAST majority of successful streamers are trust fund kiddies? Something to consider.
I used to be part of a consulting team in Boca Raton that specialized in digital house audio before any of the current ‘smart house’ revolution. Nearly ALL of our clients were wealthy, or very wealthy, because that’s the only people who could afford to drop $30k on a server rack just to store their massive vinyl collection.
And every fuckdamn one of them and their kids had a ‘hobby’. A lot were charity workers, some painters, some carpenters, a few were teachers in high end private schools.
But ALL of them did something, and they worked less hours and had access to better resources than a hundred people who could have done it better with less if they had the opportunity.
THAT IS WHERE THE PETITE RICHE SEND THEIR KIDS! Art jobs, entertainment jobs.
Did you ever consider that the most prestigious school for the arts in the entire united states caters almost exclusively to trust fund kiddies with a tiny handful of charity cases that show exceeding talent?
Sure you’ll never find the kid of a millionaire framing out low cost housing but you DO se them fill their tiktok channels with bespoke art that they make more on the streaming than the selling.
And guess what? If you don’t have a way to cover the YEARS it takes to make it, then you have to juggle a 40 hour job and COMPETE with the trust fund kiddies who DON"T HAVE TO and have professional studio and production help.
I have to stop now I’m starting to see red.
How many more underprivileged talented, more appealing people are losing marketshare to highly funded outrage media content creators?
No, I believe society has a responsibility to make sure the most vulnerable of us, such as the disabled who can’t earn an income, survive.
Why don’t you?
I do, that is included in the term ‘responsibility’, a parent, teacher or guardian has the responsibility the ensure the welfare and safety of the children under their care. Yet, we do not jail anybody if (for example) a child in their care develops cancer.
Likewise, all people have an obligation to do what they can, but are not to be blamed if they are unable to for no fault of their own.
The saying is "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Even the disabled, in almost all cases, have considerable ability. In many cases it might not be enough to cover their cost of living, and the state must subsidize them, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be encouraged from giving back what they can however.
In other words, that child does not need to earn their living. That disabled person does not need to earn their living. They are alive through no fault of their own and society has a duty to keep them alive as much as they can.
Life is not earned. You do deserve to be alive.
No.
In the case of the child, they are expected to earn their living upon adulthood. In the case of the disabled person they are expected to earn their living in the event of a suitable cure or accomodation.
No one, neither me nor you has an inalienable right to be alive, how could we when it is a right that one day nature will in no uncertain terms, deny us?
You might as well declare space flight a human right.No one, neither me nor you has an inalienable right to be alive
I mean… The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (plus, you know, murder laws) may disagree with you. But have fun with your libertarianism.
Look you live in whatever imaginary land where we’ve reached some star trek utopia where everyone’s needs are meet; and I’ll touch grass and live in the real world where a vast majority of the planet would kick your ass out for not contributing, and those that would let you live and eat off their work probably live is some of the most impoverished conditions you deal with.
Pragmatic thinking is dead replaced by this vapid rhetoric. You can support you fucking fellow person while expecting them to contribute.
My imaginary land, which I admit is imaginary, is one where we all agreed that people have a basic right to survive and the idea that someone “deserved to die” was not a thing.
But it sure would be nice if the wealthy people who ran this world didn’t make you think it was. Which they apparently have done.
The Star Trek utopia WOULD be fantastic… everyone does what they are good at / enjoy, and their basic human needs are met. The people with some issue that can be corrected thru technology, such as a visor to correct blindness, can perform equally well if not better and can contribute to society. The downfall will be the people who just absolutely cannot contribute in any way still have their basic needs met. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t… but the general idea that “they don’t contribute so why should I have to contribute” WILL be there for some to use as an excuse to try to game the system to get something for nothing. Then someone that is contributing, doing what they are good at / enjoy, looks up one day and realizes that where they used to only “have to work 10 hours a week” they now have to work 20 hours a week to continue to support the incapable, which is good, but also to support the lazy “if he doesn’t then why should I” group, which is not good… then even more people jump on the if it’s free it’s for me train. Then before you know it you have one person working 60 plus hours a week, instead of 10, to have their basic needs met while supporting 4 others that refuse to contribute AND the one that really is incapable of contributions. And when that one person expects greater compensation for their workload or just naturally acquires greater compensation thru hard work they are demonized for their greed and wealth accumulated from their hard work. Meanwhile more people line up with their soft hands out for more free stuff. IF everyone pulled equally to the best of their ability that would be great… but they won’t. There will always be people who work harder to get more. There will always be people who work less and expect the same as the one working hard. There will always be people who won’t work at all and still expect someone else to supply them with their basic needs plus a McMansion, new car, cell phone, and and and… Meanwhile there are people, who thru no fault of their own cannot contribute, struggling to have their needs met because there are so many freeloaders in the system that available resources are stretched too thin. . .
Maybe if everyone would do their part and work to the best of their ability doing what they are good at / enjoy to have their basic needs met…
True… However within this universe we have constructed a society that is capable of doing this very thing if we choose to. It’s people with attitudes like yours though, that prevent that from happening.
Our society exists entirely to shield the individual from the horrors of the universe. However our society also only has the power to do so because of individual contributions. Now I’m all for making our society efficient enough that we can create a safety net at the lower end. But we must take care, because the more a group is removed from this give-and-take the less bargaining power they have to change how the society is run. This is already happening and it’s kind of inevitable that it will get worse, so we’d better figure it out now.
I think people seeing their own responsibility as natural instead of artificially imposed would go a long way toward helping people be happy.
No, our society is not capable of keeping everyone alive without effort.
I don’t know how that could make any sense to you, but whoever it is that said that to you needs to be treated with skepticism from now on.
Or hear me out, humanity has collectively solved nearly every resource shortage problem but poverty is artificially created to compel people to work for others.
It should be a human right not to starve to death, do you disagree?
