They aren’t valuable to markets, but like I have neighbors who are treasured by the community and genuinely bring joy to everyone. But no, I guess they aren’t economically important. I actually don’t like how every soul has been reduced to an efficiency metric, surprised how much I find forums like this accept that framing.
True as well. I've had similar communal experiences where you get a taste of the old way, the way humans would have operated when we lived in tribes. And on that level I think we are capable of valuing each other as beings - the instinct to look out for each other kicks in.
But this modern society we live in... it's just not structured that way anymore. Most of us live in little silos now: our job and our atomic family.
And we've become so used to depending on it that it looks very unlikely to change until/unless shit hits the fan. Your average person doesn't know how to grow their own food or build their own shelter, and even if they do it's far less convenient than just getting a paycheck and relying on the supermarket.
It's often amazing to me that the whole edifice of it functions as long as it does. Sometimes when I'm in the CBD here in Melbourne, I sit there marveling at the thousands of people I see wandering the streets, all of whom are somehow employed by someone to do something such that they have enough money to keep afloat.
> Your average person doesn't know how to grow their own food
And, you know the sad part? A lot of places don't allow you to even try to learn. For example, my current place that I rent has a yard (it's a nice little trailer home), but I'm not allowed to have a garden. They even chopped down the nice tree that was growing in the yard when I first moved in.
Oh, I can certainly try to grow stuff inside in containers, but that means I gotta get containers (which I can't afford) and I get an increased risk of bugs & dirt being in the house (not a fan thanks).
Not really. Only if you discount all external effects on the environment. There are more productive agriculture systems with more yield per sq* but more manual input, but less side effects. E.g. permaculture.
A $10 plastic container doesn't have nearly enough space for sustenance farming. Neither does a typical city home's garden. And for health reasons they're not going to let you raise animals (there are pretty funky diseases you and your neighbours can get from even just poultry, never mind pigs and cattle)
You can certainly grow various fun things in buckets - tomatos, herbs, etc. But you can't survive on it. Not with a small city garden.
And that's the point - in pre-industrial times, you had to survive off what you could grow, and you had a lot more land, which you used most of to grow your own food, and used most of your own time to grow food, and you were fucked at the first bad harvest (though you would likely have been part of a social contract where your local landowner took a portion of your crops to cover for these eventualities)
In post-industrial times, peasants found they could work in factories and earn much more than they could selling a portion of their crop. Countries stopped being 90% farmers. Normal people could specialise, not just the landed gentry who didn't wonder where their next meal was coming from.
And here we are typing to each other on websites.
It's sad if the city or your landlord won't let you have a garden. Gardens are wonderful things. You should try and grow something. But we're in a discussion context of "people don't even know how to grow their own food any more". Thank goodness for that, because if we did, we'd be spending all day tending to our crops, living in abject poverty, at constant risk of starvation, and we'd have no time for computers. Thank goodness for modern agricultural practise.
The person I replied to wrote about indoor gardening. So sustainability was always out of the question. Besides, you dont have to go back to preindustrial times. My parents had enough "land" to grow food for us. It basically ended around 1985 when they finally realized it was far easier to just buy stuff at the supermarket, because, as you already mentioned, growing your own food is very time consuming. Around that time, almost everyone I know stopped to try to be self-sustaining.
Nah, it's okay. I'm not gonna be homeless thankfully. My bills are getting paid, food is on the table, and so forth. But that also means I don't really have much money for nonessentials. For example, my _monthly_ "Fun" budget? Only $8.10.
What can I say? Retail does not provide a living wage.
When we lived in tribes, people knew who did what job, and those who were taking more than they were contributing were punished harshly.
Money is merely a mnemonic device serving the same purpose, to mark those who did more good than received.
Average person does not know how to grow food and build shelter not because getting paycheck is convenient but because it is more efficient. If we do not want money, supermarkets etc. we'll be back to 10 mln people that the tribal way of life could sustain.
Being employed to get money is not really different from searching prey or edible roots, what is different now is that billions of people who were supposed to die because they couldn't find what to eat, or couldn't get along with their tribe, stay alive and complain that they did not receive more free stuff from complete strangers.
Ha! I grew up in a rural area, "communal" if you may. And leaving that hellhole of dishonesty and depression was one of the most important moves in my life. I guess it really depends on how you deal with communal life and how much you are able to ignore people who think they have the right to comment your lifestyle/situation. Well, maybe I am too harsh, and this phenomenon isn't obvious to non-disabled people. But the amount of patronisation I usually get in communal situations makes me LOVE my urban life.
You and your neighbors might mutually provide joy for each other, but there is a third party in this exchange: the massive industrial complex that provides the food and shelter you need to live. Unfortunately the industrial complex does not accept joy as a form of payment, so this whole system isn't going to work out.
It does not work as long as you stay strongly intertwined with the capitalist complex, correct. But I'd argue that in basically every region of the world, you have the choice. It may be harder or easier, but you have it.
the capitalist complex is strongly intertwined with reality and power.
You have the choice to stick your head in the sand for a while and try to ignore it, but eventually your sand castle will get bulldozed by a group of people that don't.
Yes, if you try to force a material value on everything, you will get a material value.
I would pay a shit ton to have loving and supporting friends, but this is not how it works. Because loving and supporting friends don't want money in exchange, but your true love and support.
This works for "good" neighborhoods if you replace "good" with "low-crime", as people with a higher income tend to do less crimes, if we count out tax evasion and other anti-society behaviours.
But this is not what it's about. You reap what you sow. You try to increase your value for people to like you and want to be friends with you? This can work, but the price for it is (1) purely extrinsical motivation which more often then not does leave you feel empty and (2) friends who will leave you as soon as your worth decreases, e.g. with age or illness, or if a different person with more value comes around and offers their friendship.
> But no, I guess they aren’t economically important. I actually don’t like how every soul has been reduced to an efficiency metric, surprised how much I find forums like this accept that framing.
Efficiency is the metric of nature. Thinking about human life in any other terms than input and output is objectively a luxury, afforded only to societies with surplus resources. Calling it "framing" feels a little disingenuous.
Okay, so when you, BobbyJo, become too old or unwell to work; other people should just shoot you in the head and take your stuff, right? It would only be efficient. Or does this 'harsh reality" only apply to other people?
Modern society has the luxury of surplus resources at the moment, and we are able to take care of the old and weak, which we indeed choose to do. If/when that ceases to be the case, the harsh reality will apply to everyone, me included, yes.
Another thing humans are arguably good at is making a longer term plan and investment: if we see that old people simply get shot, we won't be investing surplus value into our retirement funds — at least not of the same sort. Perhaps we'll be building fortresses when younger, accumulating wealth to be able to pay soldiers to protect us etc...
Wait, that's exactly what has happened, except it has evolved into a more systemic solution (our taxes and social contributions pay for police, courts; bigger accumulated wealth allows for more options...).
Those factories won’t be run by Chinese automakers they’ll be shut down with the corresponding loss of jobs and secondary industries.
Gotta say I was annoyed at the time but deprecating the Australian car manufacturers last decade means we have no scruples about allowing cheap as chips Chinese EVs through the door and I’m loving it.
I trust my cool as hell Pakistani immigrant neighbors 10000x more than Bill gates, or Mark Zuckerberg or any other 'native born' pedophile associated oligarch. Sorry if thats woke :(
Christians are clearly a powerful voting bloc in the US and support reactionary politics by a vast margin. Many of them see these wars as fulfilling end time prophecy and you know it. Muslim opinions in the US aren't anywhere near as influential in national elections and do actually shift on material conditions (see Gaza & Harris in the Midwest). Like get real, you will never see a christian at an anti-war protest.
source - grew up in a baptist church, grandfather was a pastor
This right here is the bigotry/double standard I'm talking about that is accepted here. 'Muslims are a death cult and you know it' is not acceptable speech, but you proudly just made the same claim, only towards Christians.
The majority of Christians are not in an end times death cult, and the size of a religious voting block in the USA doesn't change that fact. Again, we use language to separate moderate Muslims from minority extremist views normally referred to as Islamist here, but Christians are an end times death cult who don't protest war (pretty sure the Pope is on record as being anti-war).
I talked about how we refer to different religions with a bigoted double standard here, not Muslim/Christian voting influence. You followed with the very bigoted:
"Like get real, you will never see a Christian at an anti-war protest."
HN has a bigotry/stereotyping/double standard problem towards Christians. Bigotry against a religion as a political weapon/lashout is wrong.
I think you are misunderstanding the situation "The majority of Christians are not in an end times death cult" sure maybe, but the majority of people in the "end times death cult" would loudly and proudly proclaim they are christians and represent christians. It is a failing of "real christians" to not reject and excise this.
'If <religion x> isn't awful then why aren't more of <religion x> followers in my timeline calling out <someone else>'s actions? Those people of that religion are complicit because they don't vocally enough denounce <someone else/trait I assigned them> in the way I require therefor they and <religion x> too are responsible for <random thing/person/trait I assigned>'
isn't really the 'I'm not bigoted on this' reply you might think it is. It's more just the bog standard 'this is why I am bigoted against X group' justification of bigotry.
Would it surprise you to learn I am a christian, have been my entire life? Maybe not the kind of "christian" you are/are think of though...which I guess was my point entirely. I'm more of a "respect and love thy neighbor kind of guy", than a "we should love our new christ Donald Trump, and go to war on everyone else" kind
OK. I'm not really christian (but grew up catholic) but know a lot and they are all like you. All hate Trump. All seem to hate war (but they do do fundraisers for Ukraine so I don't know if that is supporting war, it's not to me). And all work hard supporting our poor rural community. There's trump christians here too, but they don't define the religion or mean you can make blanket christian belief claims.
Condemning a religious group based on a few is bigotry. We criticize it when it happens to Muslims, but seem to support it for Christians. Demanding a group denounce other peoples actions or a trait you define to be 'inherent to them' is classic bigotry. Saying a religious group is your political enemy has never led to anything good in history. 'I think trump supporting evangelics who want to bring about armageden blah blah' could be a valid point but 'Christians are a doomsday death cult' isn't.
Fuck it you guys are right, let's endorse bigotry against religions/groups. That should work out great.
Evangelicals aren't all Christians and 80% isn't all. But fuck it, assigning traits we don't like to all members of a community? That is 100% cool for Hacker News discussions. Trash take from all of you. But I'm glad you went hard so it can't be denied.
Hacker News has a blatant bigotry problem against Christians.
the people currently making decisions may not be christian but are certainly beholden to christian zionist, their largest voting bloc are reactionary suburban white evangelicals
Absurd. There are very few Christian zionists amongst Christians, and a dwindling number of Christians overall, most especially in the suburbs. Christian zionists are almost entirely poor uneducated (hence their misreading of scripture) rural southerners who have effectively zero political power outside very small regional elections where international politics have no relevance.
Evangelical pastors laying hands on Trump and praying for his success in his holy war against Iran. I don't know the overlap between Christian Zionism and evangelicals in the US, but I'm sure it's not zero.
Christian fundamentalists are influencing US policy to a noticeable degree. Nobody's saying it's the only factor.
“Christian fundamentalists are influencing US policy to a noticeable degree.”
Prove it. Cults that use Jesus’ name are not representative of Christianity. The Waco cult, Theosophy, etc.
Israel influences our policy and I can provide copious evidence of that by naming Israeli affiliated zionists in the cabinets of the past 3 or 4 presidents and by the activity of groups like AIPAC which happen to fund some of the cults that endorse Christian Zionism. The numbers and facts are quite clear.
Great point, thanks god we’re eliminating the majority of the creative arts industry with dogshit ai slop so people with actual talent can be redeployed to DoorDash or whatever (I guess until driverless cars can take that over?)
I've been shocked by how much my rural / politically red city (pop ~80k) here in California has moved on this issue over the last 5 years. Doubled the allowed meters per lot, super relaxed ADU rules and city + developer funded 5 over 1's in the renovated city center for some impressive density. Also all the new construction for restaurants or whatever in the area requires adding apartments above. Not to mention a massive initiative for safe bike paths from the commercial areas to the park trails. They also bought some longtime closed hotels and converted them to housing for homeless. Really big stuff and huge quality of life improvements.
I keep hearing about the potential of "new jobs" coming from ai but can anyone actually describe one? My gut says they will be something similar to converting middle class knowledge workers to do DoorDash drivers or trained artists becoming dog groomers. What a cool future, at least my parent's can watch racist ai slop videos on their iPads.
It's simply a case of looking back and deciding this technical revolution is identical to the ones preceding it. Thus jobs destroyed will be replaced with new jobs, it always happens that way.
Of course past performance is no guarantee of future success...
95% of human farmers lost their jobs because of industrial revolution. What happened then? No jobs were created and we still have 95% unemployment, right?
This is assuming the conclusion. The entire question is whether we are the horses or every other example of humans in the past who found other employment that was inconceivable previous to the technological revolution that rendered their old job irrelevant.
I couldn’t believe how much more alert and awake I would feel after lunch when I quit meat and dairy. Also highly endorse avoiding refined sugar and reducing sodium. Wish I had switched to this diet earlier in life
