Kind of unrelated but sorry that you are currently unmedicated. I have found that it's nice to take a break of like one day from my medication but, in line with the point of the article, I find life too difficult to handle unmedicated for more than a day at a time.
I’m going to take it a step ahead and say no one has ever wanted to work the kind of hours most people work. Left to their own devices people might work 15 hours a week but very few would voluntarily work 40-60 hours per week. It’s always been about it being a necessity for survival.
He talks about that in the article, but people did less work than they do now when all they did was survival. We are working more than people who were at subsistence levels.
I think the "work" he talks about was unpaid and enforced. Stuff armed people forced you to do, that took up time you needed for your subsistence farming.
I don't think that's true. There are some subsistence societies, blessed with abundant resources and neighbors with no interest in taking them, where people worked less. In many societies people worked more. (And of course, in all premodern societies, it was common to have famines where many of your neighbors would starve to death because they couldn't get enough food no matter how much they worked.)
I’m a little more nuanced on this. I personally think paradigm shifting changes come from having insane capital and being able to fund those large scale changes (and it’s not just the US. That’s literally how east Asia developed their economy. The analog for very rich people was the state in China and India is basically currently following the same model as the other Asian countries). Only billionaires or very large corporations have that sort of capital. All of that to say we definitely need very rich people in society but at the same time you cannot have one person literally have more wealth than 50% of the country that is insane.
Confiscate all billionaire liquidity and distribute it as a dividend today and you get a one-time $$$ payment for every citizen. Liquidate all their assets and you get another $$$ payment, but you've dismantled businesses which have massively raise the standard of living accross the country (next day delivery of goods, ubiquitous home internet) and ended many jobs. You've also dis-incentivized a lot of people future ambitions.
each technological advance increases wealth inequality. Problem is not wealth inequality its things getting worse for ppl low on totem pole vs getting better.
I am sure ppl wouldnt mind inequlity if things were getting cheaper, healthcare being more accesible ect. Thats what AI promised but never delivered. Nothing has gotten cheaper like predicted.
People don’t mind mild inequality. Some people have more, that’s fine. When it’s extreme it’s a problem. 100% we need to make sure everyone is taken care of before we worry about if someone can have even more money than they will ever need.
No, it’s definitely the insane amounts of inequality we have today. The inequality is why there is less money flowing through the economy, why folks with incredible amounts of wealth can buy media outlets and attempt to buy elections to further their interests to hinder attempts to make things cheaper for average people. The inequality gives them their power, it’s the whole point.
Absolutely. Lack of effective enforcement of anti-trust and consumer protection laws are major factors in rising costs of everyday people. Corporations and oligarchs get to do whatever they want and suffer no consequences for it, because Citizens United gives power to those with the most wealth.
There’s a reason why half the country would vote for a democratic socialist now.
Maybe raising the minimum wage was never a good idea and we should instead consider a wage cap that taxes heavily those that make above some insane figure everyone should be happy with... $10m a year? That seems generous enough for now until someone turns the money printer back on.
"Free ride" is what big biz and especially big AI are getting, the government reduces their taxes, pays for the bailouts and gets saddled with the debt which is then passed to... those who elect it.
I don't think that very many people are getting a free ride. I'm sure it happens but it's not common.
I do think there are a lot of people, like the OP, who think people should be. They view the structure of modern society and the lack of free rides as something that "boomer, petite-bourgeoise types" have imposed on us, rather than a reflection of underlying realities.
Actually they just expect people with over a billion dollars to pay a lot more tax. And seeing as those people built so much wealth by raping society and exploiting people and through corruption I'd say it's the least that should happen to them.
I have a similar disdain to high levels of unnecessary cursing in something written, like the trend of "The Fucking Weather" style things, but I think this wasn't particularly noticeable. I would stick with it to the end.
I also found it refreshing - particularly given the semi lobotomised LLM slop we're seeing most articles written in nowadays. It's nice to see someone's actual tone coming through even if it is peppered with profanity!
As people have specialized more and more we spend more time on a much more narrowly defined set of tasks
And we spend a lot more time per week doing just those tasks
Let's assume this is true. It must be compared to how many people's ambitions will have been awoken.
How does this follow? Liquidating assets means selling them to a buyer... who can continue to operate the business.
There’s a reason why half the country would vote for a democratic socialist now.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6178694-voters-support...
I do think there are a lot of people, like the OP, who think people should be. They view the structure of modern society and the lack of free rides as something that "boomer, petite-bourgeoise types" have imposed on us, rather than a reflection of underlying realities.
I found it refreshing compared to polished corpo speak, and I think it aligns with the message the author wants to convey.