We are living in a false-scarcity society when we could be living in a post-scarcity one.
This a thousand times. The world is throwing away resources at an astounding rate while people are sick, homeless and starving because of numbers on digital ledgers. We need to drop the whole idea of money. It’s served its purpose, run its course and has since turned into a life on this planet threatening perversion.
I think money existed well before false-scarcity. It is the wrong enemy. I know close to nothing about economy so I would trust economists like Varoufakis and the like.
That’s true, but it’s served it’s purpose and it’s time has passed.
Well, yes. But that’d require fair, sensible distribution and use of available resources, and then how would we be able to support the ability of a handful of billionaires to subvert our democracies for their own gain? /s
This somehow completely disregards the most critical side-effect of overpolulation esepcially when you calculate in dying oceans and trees.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
The sustainable capacity was calculated to be around 2 billion. This is not affected by food output.
So farm less cattle and get away from fossil fuels.
So what you’re saying is that earth under 8-9 billion people isn’t sustainable and we need to start sacrificing our cars and meat due to overpolulation?
I mean those are good decisions anyway, I would 1000% rather take 30 minute nap on a train/bys or ride a bike/electric motorcycle on the way to work than sit in traffic for an hour. As for meat, I’m not vegan, but I could be if seiten was more common.
There is almost no public transport outside cities. I don’t remember the last time I had the opportunity to use one.
As for meat, I’m not vegan, but I could be if seiten was more common.
It’s not just meat. Milk, cheese and related products (pizza?), clothing, oils, gas production, ectera ectera. Even fertilizer for crops. I’d rather have sustainable earth population than give up things that make me happy
so you rather genocide billions of people than give up minor comforts ?
(hyperbole)
on a different note there are a lot of things that can and have to be changed to live sustainably but these changes have to be addressed systematically
How about “we should regulate our birth rates and constant population growth for your capitalist machine is not a healthy way forward for this planet for literally anyone living here except for the rich” instead of your “so you want a genocide?”
There is almost no public transport outside cities
Having public transit to drive you around would make 99.9999% of people happier than fighting the rest in traffic.
Japan has unmanned stations in the boonies where its just 1 line that splits at stations for trains to pass. They run regular service through tiny towns this way. Elsewhere and in the event more rural areas, buses and vans fill that role.
Bicycles and mopeds can move >10x more people per lane of road and requires <1/10th the pavement for parking. You dont understand what a blight cars are on urban development and human health until you’ve spent time in places with effective public transit.
The meat thing is a little more subjective, IDK how far off we are from being able to reasonably get rid of all animal products, but there are certainly areas it can be decreased without negatively affecting peoples standard of living.
Have you tried the alternatives lately? Impossible meat is indistinguishable from the real thing, and Quorn combined with some marmite or chicken flavoring is an excellent affordable alternative to beef and chicken.
Plant milks are pretty damn good, vegan cheese is getting close.
The others I’m a little surprised make you happier than alternatives. Plant fibers are the bomb for clothes, gas production is… Not something I associate with happiness. Mushroom leather is looking very promising as a replacement for animal leather.
Plant oils are easily as good as animal fats.
How does that quote go? Something like: the future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed.
We wanted Star Trek, but we got Shadowrun.
Where’s me cyberdeck
posted from my steamdeck
Touché…
it’s called a phone and it can tiktok speed up version family guy + subway surfer + minecraft parkour
I saw this infographic posted a few days ago and it’s a bit misleading. The percentages are based on biomass, not population. I also don’t remember what the original source is, and it looks like it got cropped off the one you posted here. If you remember the source, could you link it?
Oh I got it from here but I tracked it down with a Google search.
I can’t say if this is the original source but maybe. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study
Biomass VS population makes some sense though. Having a million ants would be sure, lots, but having a million elephants would be WTF wholy shit!
Yes, and combined with the data presented by OP, we can readily see that this absolutely does not need to be the case.
Combine these again with food waste data and you will see that the majority of those animals will be slaughtered only for the products made from them to wind up being thrown away without ever having been used. We (capitalist owners of industry) demand the slaughter of these animals en masse knowing full well that most of what comes from the act won’t sell simply because there is a slim chance that it might sell, and we (society as a whole which has the capability of governance) have failed to make it cost prohibitive to do so. It’s fucking disgusting.
There is absolutely no justification, other than to chase the profit incentive which I do not consider valid, for our practices in animal husbandry that have led to the overpopulation of certain species.
Yeah the picture doesn’t really present the issue. The 60% livestock isn’t comparable to wild life. It’s much worse than that.
I could also say that 100% of bricks are man made and there are no wild bricks.
Similarly, live stock is a product, that shouldn’t and wouldn’t exist in the first place. It does not represent animals in a way that is comparable to wild life that have full lives.
The 60% livestock does not live long happy lives. It’s constantly being replaced by new livestock.
So sure at any given moment there might be 60% mass of animals classified as livestock, but if we were to count the actual number of animals over a year, it would be closer to 100%.
I wonder how much of the problem would be avoided if the top personal CO2 emissions per capita were capped at Scandinavian upper middle-class level since 1970 (imported CO2 included). Flying on vacation only occasionally, comfy car yes, SUV just if needed, nice modern house yes, wasteful lack of insulation no, buy what you need and treat yourself to some fashion, electronics etc. yes, mindless consumerism no. Just a comfy standard of living.
I wonder if the mindless consumerism in certain countries with insane emissions per capita makes up a big part of the problem, or if the sheer number of “decent standard of living” would have pushed us over the edge anyway.
We have already enough resources for everyone. It is just that the 1% is hoarding all of it.
What are “Decent Living Standards?”
I’d bet that they’re at least one step down from what the usual Westerner is accustomed to.
I bet you are basing your concept of the “usual” Westerner on your own experience, and you might be surprised at how the actual average person lives even in the “West”.
But to answer your question, the article defines decent living standards as:
nutritious food, modern housing, healthcare, education, electricity, clean-cooking stoves, sanitation systems, clothing, washing machines, refrigeration, heating/cooling, computers, mobile phones, internet, transit, etc.
Nutritious food is unavailable to an alarming number of Americans, transit is a mess and almost exclusively car-centered, healthcare and education are severely stratified along economic conditions, and almost everything on that list is a commodity. The USA has sanitation systems almost everywhere, but that’s just because rich poop and poor poop all smells like poop. Wherever the wealthy can isolate their own sanitation, they do.
Out of that the US lacks health care for all, and it lacks transit pretty much everywhere outside of the large cities. Even the cities pretty much have nothing that reaches all the way out to the suburbs.
Where I live, you have to have a car to have a decent quality of life. People give up their homes before they give up their cars. So transportation needs to be addressed in order to have the quality of life promised. Most of the places that are food insecure are all about politics and bad people blocking food resources rather than the food not being available.
Jesus christ dude give it a rest.
Easterners have running water, they have cell phones, they make trash that goes to landfills, they also have A/C systems, they drive cars
When I read “West”, I read “developed world”.
Japan, South Korea, Tawain, etc, are as developed as the West. Most of China is now too, but there are billions more that aren’t developed.
“Global north” is probably a better term to describe level of development. “West” also includes a cultural component.
Westerners eat meat everyday, nearly everyone drives cars everywhere, they buy heaps of cheap clothes and electronics made by slave or near-slave labor, they drink coffee and eat chocolate grown by the same. They go on expensive, polluting and disruptive globetrotting vacations. You think all that and more will stick around in a more equitable society?
I’m sorry I wasn’t inclusive enough in my chastising, Commissar. It’ll be the same story for them, too.
That’s exactly what the article proposed:
'Drawing on recent empirical evidence, we show that ending poverty and ensuring decent living standards (DLS) for all, with a full range of necessary goods and services (a standard that approximately 80% of the world population presently does not achieve) can be provisioned for a projected population of 8.5 billion people in 2050 with around 30% of existing productive capacity, depending on our assumptions about distribution and technological deployment. "
So if you and everyone are willing to live on 30% less “money”, worldwide poverty would be eliminated.
That is definitely not what is presented in what you quoted.
Out of our current productive capabilities (how much money is “created” if you want), we would only need 30% of it to get 8.5 billion people to a “decent living standard”.
That isnt a 30% reduction, it’s only needing to make 30% of what we already are doing.
That’s the same thing. The paper is arguing against the need to increase production vs redistribution of what is currently produced.
That isnt a 30% reduction, it’s only needing to make 30% of what we already are doing.
Where does that 30% come from? They are explicitly saying that their analysis isn’t about increasing production of anything. Redistribution means taking away from the rich developed population to give to the poor. They said take 30% and redistribute it. If you are on Lemmy, that includes you.
That is not my interpretation on the paper. It’s not taking 30% and spreading it. It’s we only ever needed to be making 30% of our total being reasonably distributed for everyone to reach those standards.
“Provisioning decent living standards (DLS) for 8.5 billion people would require only 30% of current global resource and energy use, leaving a substantial surplus for additional consumption, public luxury, scientific advancement, and other social investments.”
It’s not taking 30% and spreading it. It’s we only ever needed to be making 30% of our total being reasonably distributed for everyone to reach those standards.
I don’t understand what you mean by those two sentences. They seem to be in conflict with each other.
You have 100 coins. To say we need to be making 30% of our total being reasonably distributed means you now have only 70 coins.
"leaving a substantial surplus for additional consumption, public luxury, scientific advancement, and other social investments.”
You had 100 coins and now you have 70. You can still buy luxuries but 30% less than what you had before it was redistributed.
I think my sticking point is that it’s not 30 of your coins, necessarily. This is probably where I’m going wrong, but I might only have 100 coins, but there’s a multitude of people that have 1,000 coins, and some still that have 10,000 coins.
I feel like I’m muddling up production/living standards and just plain wealth, but not every individual would need to give 30%. There would be a total amount equaling 30% that is re-allocated.
The article was about production, not wealth. While Bezos certainly uses 1000x the production compared to a regular person, he doesn’t use the 1Billion times that his wealth represents. He doesn’t eat 1B cheeseburgers every day. So while you’d get more out of the 30% of extremely wealthy, it wouldn’t be proportional to their wealth and there’s only .1% of the population that’s in that category.
If we take all the type of living standards into consideration from all over the world
Then I guess the median living standards would be the living standards of the middle class people of countries like Indian, Brazil and all (the developing countries basically)
“I have a magical reality-changing glove. Should I change the nature of beings to want to share for the benefit of all? Nah, I’m gonna remove a random half of them from existence. It’s clearly the ONLY thing I could possibly do to solve the problem! I’m so smart and awesome!”
yeah the false dichotomy represented by Thanos is the propaganda.
The problem is a combination of intrinsic psychological biases of those with means. Once they reach a certain threshold, they become driven to keep accumulating until they own everything. Gotta catch 'em all.
This threshold is likely different for everyone, and may not be related to other thresholds of accumulation, such as:
- When you have everything you want, except to upscale your stuff.
- When you make more money than you can spend on personal expenses, including renting Venice for a wedding.
- When you make more then you can spend [on large business transactions, unrelated to the] threshold where you can’t possibly spend all your income without purchasing billion-dollar companies
Some capitalists are self aware enough to recognize the impulse is not sustainable, (also that profits are better had with happy workers) which often comes from having risen to wealth from more modest means. (But not always).
At any rate, rich dudes who drop billions into massive public improvement projects are rare, and when they do they tend to see it as revenue source, or at least something to exploit to improve their brand image.
So the next step for society is to discover a sociological technique that allows rich guys to think I have enough, to drop their surplus into the hands of the community (say the general fund of the local governing body)
That or accept that we are too simple a species to navigate some very imminent great filters. We may not count as a space-faring civilization that might encounter other space-faring civilizations.
This is not a new idea. Fourth International–Posadism opined that developing communism (or a refinement thereof) would be a prerequisite for space colonization. I’d argue changing from capitalism is a prerequisite for societal sustainability more than a couple of centuries from now.
Our problem is distribution. It’s a hard problem to solve but it’s much better than the easy solution.
The problem stopping distribution to where stuff is needed is money, the people who have it, the people who owe it, the funny patterns it makes on stock markets, in hedge funds etc.
Money was ok as a means to allow people to exchange their different trades into things they need to live. But it has moved so far beyond that it has become ridiculous.
Does anybody have sources around this stat? I fully believe it, but I’d like to have references to point to for myself in the future
There’s a source in the image. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493
Oh good to know i just don’t know how to read
If you live in the US, have you considered running for office?
Resources aren’t evenly distributed naturally, some area may not have enough resources.
It takes more resources to get more resources, we may be measuring 30% of total resources, but not 30% of resource capacity.
I’m fine with population control, but it should be implemented willingly at an individual level, and pushed via education and community acceptance. I catch a small amount of flak for not having kids, but wife catches a lot more.
Not sure what you’re trying to say, but the paper assumes current population trends and means 30% of currently available resources in 2025 would be enough to give everyone a decent living standard (DLS) in 2050. We have everything we need to do this right now.
A replacement birthrate leads to a more stable society. The elderly who are unable to work and ill need to be cared for. If ever fewer young and able people have to take care of ever more elderly, it won’t have a good outcome. Not having children of your own is being a burden on society.
Not having children of your own is being a burden on society.
damn, don’t replace anti-natalism with forced natalism. Thanks.
No force involved. Lots of people are drags on society in different ways without that being illegal.
Friend, social pressure is a form of coercion.
A replacement birthrate leads to a more stable society
Only if you assume that the amount of production for a hour of labor stays the same. Workers today accomplish much more in a given time period than workers 65 years ago. The problem is that value is horded instead of being made available to the people that created it.
Feeding an elderly person, washing them, changing their diapers takes the same amount of time as it did 150 years ago. Due to better health care and longer lives, the total cost of elderly health care and pensions eat up a lot of that productivity gain.
That’s certainly not true. We now have washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, kitchen machines, gas or electric stoves, food delivery services etc. All this makes carrying for others easier. Plus being more efficient at paid work could be translated into less working hours, thus more time to care for others instead of more money captured by capitalists.
Nope. Absolutely wrong. You can cook food faster than you could 150 years ago using microwaves, induction cook tops, non-stick pan and other advancements in kitchen tech. Modern care aids reduce the time it takes to wash a person, and allows them to wash themselves much later in life before they need partial or full assistance. Modern adult diapers come off easier, seal better, and absorb more, so they have fewer blow-outs and it takes fewer wipes to clean up a person.
Edit: let’s also add that better productivity in other areas enables fewer people do more work, which (should) free up a larger portion of the population for elder-care.
You realize 150 years ago was the year before the telephone was invented, right? Most houses didn’t even have electricity back then.
I was an in-home caregiver before COVID, and we certainly didn’t have to warm water on a wood fired stove to bathe the clients with. I didn’t have to scrub the laundry with a washboard, we had a laundry machine. I could call 911 without interrupting CPR, which wouldn’t have been possible even 50 years ago.
If ever fewer young and able people have to take care of ever more elderly, it won’t have a good outcome.
It takes fewer resources to care for elderly than raise children. Not raising a child means there’s a surplus to care for the elderly. Then the elderly die leaving more surplus behind. It’s not only a theoretical based on money but we have all of history that shows this truth. For example WW2 killed the most productive members of society leaving only the elderly to be cared for. The result was a global economic boom.
It’s over, I’ve made you into the Adidas tracksuit wojak and me into the cute nonbinary vibes wojak
How do we know who to give food to of people aren’t competing against each other to hoard as much wealth as they can?
Earlobe to bellybutton depth ratio. If the number is odd, you get tacos. If it’s even, you get tacos. Other options also available.
