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.
