cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/22864214

https://mastodon.world/@jeffowski/112860220580543291

5.5 years later and life still sucks

The system is built on eternal growth. Slowing down is not an option.

It would be crazy if this was true.

So, if you have that, you’ll be happy. And I don’t want you to be happy because I’m happy when I am the one who is most happy. That’s why.

The guillotine was invented in France over less income inequality.

We are social animals. When the herd exhibits general acceptance it triggers something in our brains to do the same. It is why billionaires are funding data centers to flood social media with the opinions and leans they want the public to have.

I can’t remember the researcher name, but among the many studies on this topic there have been a swath done in public waiting rooms with confederates (the name given to actors working for researchers). This is a reproduced experiment.

Waiting room. Smoke starts to trickle out of the ventilation system. How long til someone leaves? Turns out, it’s more likely for the room to clear faster if the confederate gets up sooner and leaves. Then the standard cascade effect happens as the herd takes the hint and everyone leaves. In some cases, it gets to the point where the room becomes hazy and people don’t leave til the confederate initiates.

None of life is a single variable scenario, but it’s worth digging into the variables known to influence us as people.

Learned helplessness is another item I believe is more relevant today than at the time of the now illegal, though famous, experiments performed on dogs.

Everyone else is working these jobs, so it must be ok.

That's the neat part: you don't! You need to work a lot and barely survive so rich people can get richer and have more power and status, silly.

been the plan all along. Smith knew what he was talking about.

Propaganda. Effective propaganda.

...just wait till AI and robotic are completely integrated...

And the “myth of rugged individualism”, which is a political science/journalism way of saying rich people sold a bullshit idea of American culture being largely reliant on people not accepting help or cooperation from other people or the govt so rich people can avoid putting in their fair share.

At this point power and status bores them, they’re at the stage where they have to kill some of the poors for sport and sadistic pleasure to feel something other than disdain for their spouses and children.

They’ll kill that myth the second it’s not profitable.

But what if I could be a parasite one day?

Because capitalism, which is broken by design. The artifical scarcity is deliberate, just like the suffering.

Somebody rich said something. They're obviously smart because only smart people, like me, get rich (some day!). Therefore, I agree that the poor are taking way too much! The rich deserve it more!

The 40-hour workweek was standardized by socialists in the early 1900s. 8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, and 8 hours for whatever else you wanted to do during the day. Obviously, that's been exploited. I work 68 hours a week and still can't afford health insurance, and my job doesn't offer it.

there is another way

The answer is because we haven't figured out how to organize society so that wealth and power don't consolidate.

And also if we did, it would be challenging to get there.

How Business Worked did a recent video Killing the Host which discusses why the ultra-wealthy engage in destructive behavior that kills the society they depend on.

One simple thing would prevent hoarding of wealth and power: outlawing private ownership of the means of production.

But yes, getting there would be challenging.

Progressive taxation on wealth and income

Absolutely. Also, it's built so that those at the top hoard all the wealth and resources and use that advantage... to hoard all the wealth and resources.

Because the rich have the money for propaganda, buying politicians and owning the media.

Wealth and power still consolidate to use that wealth to influence governance to reduce and remove taxation on wealth.

Because the rich can't stand it if their wealth doesn't grow. Their piece of the pie can grow because the entire pie is growing or by taking a bigger piece. These days the pie doesn't grow like they want so they're taking more of everybody else. That means you have to work more for less.

Your lazy work produces like 20 times what is used to produce few decades ago. Just by efficiency of systems and existence of digital spreadsheets. It's also wasted in logistics steps because that's cheaper than being efficient.

Yup. European style social democracy is slowly being dismantled, in France & other countries. That's the root of why protests are erupting there

Let's not forget that before one wage was enough for a family of four a car and a house.

Today a single wage gets you a room in a shared apartment.

Maybe this isn't very "lemmy" but I think the bottleneck isn't really money, but the stuff you want.

In Australia the main problem with the "housing crisis" is that all efforts to resolve it are on the demand side, and very few on the supply side. Giving first home buyers grants and discounts is great, but that increases demand and increases the price. Removing some of the ridiculous tax benefits to owning multiple properties is great, and has reduced demand somewhat, but it hasn't solved the problem.

To really solve the housing crisis you need a house for everyone that aspires to own one.

In the last decade, having the people able to build the houses has been the real bottleneck. All of the able tradespeople are already building houses. We can't build a million more in a year just because everyone has the money to buy them.

I mean, we have some in the past, in the Victorian era, the UK invented the idea of Council Houses, houses given to those who earn less than a certain amount of money per year, which you live in until you reach a threshold of earnings that you have to move out

They built over 2 million of them in 1880-1950

There was a lot of progress until quite recently. Current retirees saw truly mind boggling changes during their lives. My mother (born in the 1940s) grew up in a house with no electricity and no running water. Now she's retired and she can browse facebook on her mobile phone. My "father in law" bought his first house when he was in his twenties, paying cash with money saved from his first job. Their generation was not exploited and abused the way young people are today. They got to work less and less and managed to retire comfortably. Then political class broke their contract with voters and next generations are significantly worse off than previous ones (less intelligent as well) but a lot of people are still living comfortably enough not to complain. The way people participate in politics also changed. Polarization won over organization. Young people try to fight but without proper structures and strategy it quickly turns into violent lashing out and nothing is achieved. Is it going to change? Probably not. People in charge will keep exploiting divisions among us to further dismantle the system.

It's frustrating how there's no way to say "anything people need should be provided free or at-cost" without sounding like a loony radical, but it's true.

If businesses could figure out how to make you pay for the air you breathe, it would come in a variety of qualities and flavours, and I would have been banned from r/air long ago.

The profit incentive can barely even be trusted with stuff we don't need. Never let necessities turn a profit.

Though it's not as idyllic as you think, people were worked to the bone still, it just wasn't spread out, basically every man was like a Black Company Worker

“myth of rugged individualism”,

A better name for that that, one which I apply to myself, is “toxic independence”. It covers more issues, I think, because it includes people who don’t see themselves as rugged individualists, but just ordinary people surviving as best they can.

Sixty hours a week? Tell me you're Ametican without telling me that you are American.

The pie grows when you're more productive. Are you more productive when you work 60 hours per week, as opposed to say 35 hours per week? I highly doubt it, at least on average across industries.

And if you complain, you are not a "team player". That's how you end up on the next layoff list.

What?! You took a couple days off last year?! I know we have "unlimited vacation time", but team players don't take time off. Believe it or not, straight to the layoff list.

You have been banned from c/Conservative.

In Australia we try with the supply side too. There are ugly-as-fuck housing estates going up all the time. The problem is there are no restrictions on who can buy, so investors, both domestic and foreign, buy up huge numbers of houses before aspiring home owners have a chance to get in to the market. It's fucked.

Yeah. This style of housing was very unpopular in Australia because it created ghettos of welfare dependent families.

Social security does most of the heavy lifting now.

Yes we have homeless people, but this is a complex problem requiring a lot more social services than simply "a house".

I just explained why everyone can't have a free house though.

Merely building estates and houses is not a supply side policy to solve the problem, building houses is just the market ticking along.

We have significant barriers to foreign investment in the form of additional duties and other taxes.

The federal governments recent changes have made property investment less attractive.

None of this has solved the problem, but perhaps these measures are part of a change in the long term trajectory.

I'm aware that I'm essentially calling for a global restructuring of society when I say this, and I'm used to the fact that it's not likely to occur.

Glancing at the first numbers to come up in searches, it seems like there are about 3 Aussies for each residential dwelling currently in existence. It seems like there's already about enough to share, if these weren't unequally allocated. Just saying!

Segregation was common policy back then, but nowadays mixed social housing projects aren't that hard to conceive.

This might shock you but some people dont want to share a house.

The statistic you're looking for is how many vacant houses there are. Spoiler: there's not enough.

If there were, prices wouldn't be what they are. Just saying!

So you'd put a mixed group of poor and uneducated people in the same place?

What a great idea. I can't possibly imagine how that could produce any unintended outcomes.

Those idiots in the government right?

Sidebar - I wish others wouldn't downvote people I'm just trying to have a normal conversation with. Makes everything feel needlessly strained and rude. It always feels like people are crowding around trying to make simple disagreements into fights, doesn't it?

Other than getting private equity out of housing (easy answers first, shadow banks shouldn't own houses) it seems like we should be able to come up with a way to create a lot more highly basic housing at high speed and minimal cost, even if the housing was a bit brutalist it'd have a cooling effect on the cost of mid-range homes.

Of course, at some point we butt up against the fact that when your economic system treats real estate as an investment, you can't also undermine that subtle class system without damaging your economy. At some point the way we do things just depends on a maximum sustainable amount of suffering to keep the markets ticking along.

Because the American workforce in general are a bunch of morons. I remember when I was a corporate guy everyone would walk around with their heads down and when you would ask someone you were friendly with how are you their immediate response would be "so busy so so busy." They would ask how I was and I would say "well I'm not busy like you and I'm happy I'm not busy like you." And they would look at me like hush how dare you say that if I'm even seen next to you saying that I could be fired.

Just imagine if America decoupled healthcare from your job and people actually had the ability to choose where they really wanted to hang their hat for their daily billionaire chores. I think the workforce would dramatically change and there would be a lot of happier people. But since America was founded on Puritan values I don't think happy is part of the lexicon when it comes to work.

Whatever injustices you as an American face is nothing compared to the slaves making the electronics you use and the clothes you wear.

The people who have an unfair slice of the pie includes yourself.

If we reset this thing to fair you would probably have less than you do today, yet those who are above you would pay more of their wealth to facilitate that cohort of slaves I was talking about getting a fair quality of life comparable to yours.

I guess my point is that in a world of starving, fat, fatter, and fattest cats, you’re a fatter cat. You being anyone here commenting including myself.

No, I'd put a group of educated/uneducated, poor/wealthy, native/immigrant, ... people in the same place.