No they don't want that, because it could lead to an uprising against them. They want us provided with the essentials in exchange for being dutiful workers, so we have something to lose.
Everyone should live in pods stacked together, eat insects, not drive our own automobiles around or fly places, we should be able to get our entertainment and everything to keep ourselves happy from their subscription entertainment services. Basically we are to consume as little as possible to barely keep ourselves alive and sane while they sail themselves around to pat one another on the backs at their climate and economic conferences on their billion dollar luxury yachts.
Actually no that would be stupid they don't have the time or patience to sail their yachts around. They have crew for that. They will fly in one of their handful of private jets and have the yacht meet them there.
People do this to themselves and willingly, no spooky evil capitalists behind the curtains are necessary.
People love money and what they can bring on the table, people often hate each other ie within families stiffed by peer pressure and expectations of mentalities formed in another very different era, people love discovering new countries and cultures. And so on and on.
Ie me - I love my parents, my childhood was normal, only later to find and compare with others to see how such childhood was... abnormally uncommon. But I very much prefer seeing them few times a year only, even though we love when they help with kids. Some of their opinions are very outdated, their ramblings are often out of touch with reality, they tend sometimes to spoil kids (even after setting boundaries), and overall generational gap is absolutely massive. It is a form of freedom. Make that 10x more in much more strict societies where pressure and expectations from parents on kids are massive and then they wonder why kids stay the heck away from them once adults.
And fuck local communities, for every good-hearted neighbor who just wants to socialize and help out and otherwise stays away from one's life, there is easily 5 or 10 who are the epitome of nimbyism, voyeurism or similar hobbies of people with empty lives, clueless on how world and people actually work but always with very strong opinions on everything and will to push those on everybody else.
> And I mean, you idea of local comunity is all about other people doing free work for you and then tolerating your peculiarities with no reciprocation.
When it seems to you like everyone around you is the problem, you may actually be the problem.
Maybe I phrased wrongly (not a native speaker) but what you say is incorrect. I am not free coasting on parents, in contrary my first years all my earning went into providing them a good home for rest of their lives, while living in tiny rental rooms. You have no idea from sort of poor background I come from, most western kids have no clue. It was a massive improvement of QoL for them that they would never be able to afford themselves and they still appreciate it massively. Since we live 1500km from them they help with kids literally few hours per year, not a burden for anybody involved.
But freedom to chose with whom we spend our time is a thing, no matter how much people like you try to force their righteous values that are the only proper true way (TM) on everybody else. I am old enough and over time met plenty of folks like that, be it religious or other forms, they are at the end the same as your comment.
I suspect that's beyond what the Hackernews crowd can cope with contemplating. Billionaires bad except on that subject in which case billionaires good and working class bad.
At that stage, owners will very likely have enough drones and robots at their command to not need to worry about petty things like flesh and blood uprisings.
All the value will be diverted. I don’t know if you noticed, but in the last few years, you’d have come ahead if you gambled on the stock, crypto or commodities market than if you busted your ass.
> Everyone should live in pods stacked together, eat insects, not drive our own automobiles around or fly places, we should be able to get our entertainment and everything to keep ourselves happy from their subscription entertainment services.
Yes of course capitalists love when economy is bad. Sorry, these dystopic visions do not pass even simplest smell test.
It’s less complicated than that. Externalities are when an individual profits but others pay the price. Think of climate change. And when a small number are so rich they control the government, so there’s nothing to stop them. It’s narrow incentives driving the whole thing.
They love it when the richest people do well. They dont care about how anyone else lives. The poorer other people are better they feel about winning.
Those you call "capitalists" love monopolies as long as they are theirs. They love captured market. They dont care about competition unless it is someone not them competing to provide for them on lower price.
As of now, billionaires dont want or need strong economy as a "middle class and lower class doing good". They want the "our wealth goes up, we are getting tax breaks, if lower class pays for it cool" kind of economy.
It is not realistic - we are consuming way more than any of the previous generations. Poverty is at an all time low and steeply dropped since the last century. We are curing diseases, people are living long. What's the pessimism about?
I just thought you could make your point without calling other people cringe for disagreeing. I agree the average now is better than any century before, while also agreeing there's many interests of the type the comment you replied to illustrates, trying to either reduce personal freedoms or perpetuating a certain order of things. Both things can be true and they are both realistic view points, specially because there's multitudes of people all with their own priorities fighting for their own ideal futures and a few of those have a crazy amount of power.
Mat and protein consumption peaked around 20 years ago too.
> Poverty is at an all time low and steeply dropped since the last century. We are curing diseases, people are living long. What's the pessimism about?
It's not pessimism, it's reality. The ruling class are demanding we reduce consumption while increasing and flaunting theirs. That's just what is. If you're denying that or think it's pessimism I really don't know what to tell you.
That's because of efficiency gains. Easily explained by the fact that consumption over all other products increased.
>Mat and protein consumption peaked around 20 years ago too.
Meat consumption is not a realiable indicator of anything in developed countries. It is the same in Netherlands as well. But increased dramatically in India and develping countries.
>It's not pessimism, it's reality. The ruling class are demanding we reduce consumption while increasing and flaunting theirs. That's just what is. If you're denying that or think it's pessimism I really don't know what to tell you.
What's the proof that we reduced consumption? Without cherrypicking?
Go repeat that to the nearest homeless guy. Wealth inequality is rising rapidly, and around a billion people on this planet still can't eat as well as they should.
Not true of at least several major indicators of consumption vs previous generations according to data I posted in other thread.
> Life expectancy is at an all time high.
> How do you explain this?
The more important question is, how do you believe these things you wrote disprove the comment that the rich and ruling class wants us to reduce our consumption, even if they were true?
Because they do. Up until some time maybe around the end of the cold war, progress and development of countries were measured by (among other things) metrics like energy consumption, meat and protein consumption. The consumption based metrics have basically disappeared and the mantra these days is that we are consuming too much. We should minimize meat, energy consumption. There are many proposals to tax such things directly or indirectly, or even just outright limit the amount of animals that are farmed and so on.
I agree that poverty rate flatlined in USA but world poverty (counting India and China) reduced dramatically in the past 20 years. How do you explain this?
>Not true of at least several major indicators of consumption vs previous generations according to data I posted in other thread.
You posted energy consumption per capita which was due to efficiencies.
>Because they do. Up until some time maybe around the end of the cold war, progress and development of countries were measured by (among other things) metrics like energy consumption, meat and protein consumption. The consumption based metrics have basically disappeared and the mantra these days is that we are consuming too much. We should minimize meat, energy consumption. There are many proposals to tax such things directly or indirectly, or even just outright limit the amount of animals that are farmed and so on.
I don't know why you insist on licking rich people's boots for these. None of these good thing came from them.
I'm telling you: around a billion people are still hungry, and that number has been stable for 50 years. In the face of massive, global wealth inequality, this is unacceptable to me.
I have agency and I'm very happy with my lot. I'm not "blaming" anybody for anything. But unlike you I am not in a naive infantile delusion about what the ruling class are and want and work toward.
The difference between an observation and blame is, blame implies moral judgement and the implication that "it ought to be different". It is clear from this post and other posts that this is your agenda.
If you don't claim that it ought to be different, what are you arguing about?
You're the one arguing!! What TF are you arguing about??
Why don't you start by explaining how "not everything is getting worse / some things are getting better" addresses in the slightest what I wrote, or somehow proves that what I wrote is wrong. That would be a good start.
Everyone should live in pods stacked together, eat insects, not drive our own automobiles around or fly places, we should be able to get our entertainment and everything to keep ourselves happy from their subscription entertainment services. Basically we are to consume as little as possible to barely keep ourselves alive and sane while they sail themselves around to pat one another on the backs at their climate and economic conferences on their billion dollar luxury yachts.
Actually no that would be stupid they don't have the time or patience to sail their yachts around. They have crew for that. They will fly in one of their handful of private jets and have the yacht meet them there.