We had an exercise in school of estimating how much it would cost for the current McDonalds/Subway/Taco Bell biz model to cover the whole population. Fun exercise in realizing how unsustainable things are.
my feeling is that we could support more people
at a much higher level of comfort and wellbieng
with a small fraction of the resourses used today
that is not implimentable, one because there is no clearplace to start , and that most people are bastards in one way or another, you, me, the other bastard, just that little bit untrusting, looking for advantage, dreaming of our indivual ambitions,
and by times hungry, bored, mean, bastards, who only get worse if there is pressure to be all saintly and save the world, cause you know, it would be fine to go ahead and save the world and shit, but they want you to be all fucking polite about it, WHILE ,you do it
So if somehow the USA was gung-ho for this kind of thing, all we'd need is peace and a spirit of communal sharing in places like East and Central African nations, Pakistan, Kashmir, India, Palestine, Israel, rural China, Russia, Ukraine, the Balkans...
...oh right. So we'd have to go and "induce" communal sharing using our military. So lots of people would die in the name of an authority asserting that everyone will share everything, except the resources involved in killing, because then we couldn't make sure everyone shares. So we don't share those resources.
> Strategies for development should not pursue capitalist growth and increased aggregate production as such, but should rather increase the specific forms of production that are necessary to improve capabilities and meet human needs at a high standard, while ensuring universal access to key goods and services through public provisioning and decommodification.
Literal. Communism.
The abstract embodies, I suspect unironically, literally every gripe, criticism, fatigue and disdain people feel for both the current scientific and academic establishment and the plethora of Malthusian narratives that permeate our public discourse today. If you don't understand how people can be "anti science" when it comes to climate change and the like, just read the remainder of the abstract after my quote. The last two words of it are "global south". These issues and these terms, once viewed as legitimate with genuine concern, are now viewed as nothing more than the dog whistles and manipulative strategies of ambitious tyrants to most people. Double down if you want to lose what little credibility you have left.
So your argument it’s simply not possible to feed and maintain decency for 8B people?
Communism tried it, failed therefore not possible.
The global west hyper-capitalism doesn’t seem to be fixing the problem either, and as there isn’t a third way possible.
QED.
Good to know, I’ll go on partying like there is no tomorrow.
Thanks to large corporations, shareholder interests and various other self-interested minorities, there will be no third way since that would imply the rich would have to give some of the pie away to the poor.
Now what part of the current destructive systems haven’t we got under control? Or better asked, what parts of the system are god given and can’t be changed? Are we making societal rules, norms and laws or are these given to us by the universe - unalterable?
The fact is that this entire mess is self inflicted. But it’s the best we can do and therefore we’re stuck with it.
Lack of imagination and courage to do something different could also be a cause.
It's a highly disturbing sign of the times that "this is just communism" no longer works universally as an argument. That it needs to be qualified now, suddendly, even here on a forum for startups -- even though almost everybody over the age of 30 knows it does not work like they know that the sun rises in the morning.
Of course, it's no less alarming that there's also a growing population who is incapable of understanding "that's nazism dude, don't do that".
I didn't make an argument. I simply made an observation. But I'll make one now: it's not possible with communism. This has been empirically tested, at the expense of millions of human lives. I'd say in light of that that there is no need for further hand wringing on this topic.
Is it possible some other way? I don't know. I do know that life expectancy worldwide has been going up since the 70s, as has quality of life and quality of nutrition. Maybe what we are already doing works?
We had an exercise in school of estimating how much it would cost for the current McDonalds/Subway/Taco Bell biz model to cover the whole population. Fun exercise in realizing how unsustainable things are.
my feeling is that we could support more people at a much higher level of comfort and wellbieng with a small fraction of the resourses used today
that is not implimentable, one because there is no clearplace to start , and that most people are bastards in one way or another, you, me, the other bastard, just that little bit untrusting, looking for advantage, dreaming of our indivual ambitions, and by times hungry, bored, mean, bastards, who only get worse if there is pressure to be all saintly and save the world, cause you know, it would be fine to go ahead and save the world and shit, but they want you to be all fucking polite about it, WHILE ,you do it
So if somehow the USA was gung-ho for this kind of thing, all we'd need is peace and a spirit of communal sharing in places like East and Central African nations, Pakistan, Kashmir, India, Palestine, Israel, rural China, Russia, Ukraine, the Balkans...
...oh right. So we'd have to go and "induce" communal sharing using our military. So lots of people would die in the name of an authority asserting that everyone will share everything, except the resources involved in killing, because then we couldn't make sure everyone shares. So we don't share those resources.
...hey wait this scenario is ringing a bell.
The USSR tried it already.
This is literal communism dressed up as science.
> Strategies for development should not pursue capitalist growth and increased aggregate production as such, but should rather increase the specific forms of production that are necessary to improve capabilities and meet human needs at a high standard, while ensuring universal access to key goods and services through public provisioning and decommodification.
Literal. Communism.
The abstract embodies, I suspect unironically, literally every gripe, criticism, fatigue and disdain people feel for both the current scientific and academic establishment and the plethora of Malthusian narratives that permeate our public discourse today. If you don't understand how people can be "anti science" when it comes to climate change and the like, just read the remainder of the abstract after my quote. The last two words of it are "global south". These issues and these terms, once viewed as legitimate with genuine concern, are now viewed as nothing more than the dog whistles and manipulative strategies of ambitious tyrants to most people. Double down if you want to lose what little credibility you have left.
So your argument it’s simply not possible to feed and maintain decency for 8B people?
Communism tried it, failed therefore not possible.
The global west hyper-capitalism doesn’t seem to be fixing the problem either, and as there isn’t a third way possible.
QED.
Good to know, I’ll go on partying like there is no tomorrow.
Thanks to large corporations, shareholder interests and various other self-interested minorities, there will be no third way since that would imply the rich would have to give some of the pie away to the poor.
Now what part of the current destructive systems haven’t we got under control? Or better asked, what parts of the system are god given and can’t be changed? Are we making societal rules, norms and laws or are these given to us by the universe - unalterable?
The fact is that this entire mess is self inflicted. But it’s the best we can do and therefore we’re stuck with it.
Lack of imagination and courage to do something different could also be a cause.
It's a highly disturbing sign of the times that "this is just communism" no longer works universally as an argument. That it needs to be qualified now, suddendly, even here on a forum for startups -- even though almost everybody over the age of 30 knows it does not work like they know that the sun rises in the morning.
Of course, it's no less alarming that there's also a growing population who is incapable of understanding "that's nazism dude, don't do that".
I didn't make an argument. I simply made an observation. But I'll make one now: it's not possible with communism. This has been empirically tested, at the expense of millions of human lives. I'd say in light of that that there is no need for further hand wringing on this topic.
Is it possible some other way? I don't know. I do know that life expectancy worldwide has been going up since the 70s, as has quality of life and quality of nutrition. Maybe what we are already doing works?
3 replies →