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Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

> incentivize work being done and problems being solved.

Work on more and more meaningless tasks and resolve more and more meaningless problems

Once upon a time money moved with a purpose, now the purpose _is_ moving the money

I agree with the sentiment that there is significant absurdity hiding beneath all the economic abstraction around employment and investment, which obscures the origin of money as a requirement. The way I see it (and this is a rather centuries old observation) is that the economic system is set up so that most of the population requires earning money for their survival. Earning money is a social requirement not a biological one. But if the resources are cheaper now that money is more valuable, what is the problem with earning less money for one's work? The problem is that some people would rather keep charging the same for what they sell. If one doesn't own much, then one can't afford waiting for a better deal. In this situation having power means owning money, houses, land, machinery and little debt. This makes workers require the same salary in order to survive and perform their jobs, this contributes to the (abstract pseudo-)problems of less employment, less consumption, less debt obligations being fulfilled. The real problems is on the one hand the resources required for survival being out of reach, and on the other resources, machinery and skills going to waste. For many, directly tackling the real problems may come dangerously close to disregarding social requirements. Hence, we keep talking about this problems in abstract terms, so that important members of society can live off the rent, by convincing the rest, by whatever means necessary, of the survival-money exchange rate. Money is a peaceful mean to make them follow orders.

I'm not going to act as if the current American system is perfect, hell I'm not trying to argue any of that - I'm just explaining why a small amount of inflation is healthy.

This is a hyperbolic argument.

We're more productive than any time in human history

Yet we work as much, if not more, both in term of hours per week and total years of work.

Productivity for the sake of productivity is the same as moving money for the sake of moving money. It would be nice if it translated to real world improvement in quality of life, which the average westerner hasn't experienced since at least the 70s.

I think there have been many widespread improvements for average westerners in the last 50 years.

Internet, smart phones, better and cheaper consumer electronics, microwave ovens, highly reliable/low maintenance automobiles, very affordable air transportation, more comfortable/efficient/pervasive HVAC, many medical advances, wide variety of foods (some not so good for you, but others are) in most grocers, and scores of additional things I haven’t thought to list.

Yes, we might work a few more hours per week than 50 years ago us did, but that’s evidence that we’d prefer more comforts over more free time.

What percent of westerners would give up all of those things in exchange for a full migration back to 1975? I think it’s under 5% and probably way under it.

> Internet, smart phones, better and cheaper consumer electronics, microwave ovens, highly reliable/low maintenance automobiles, very affordable air transportation, more comfortable/efficient/pervasive HVAC, many medical advances, wide variety of foods (some not so good for you, but others are) in most grocers, and scores of additional things I haven’t thought to list.

These are extremely marginal "improvements" if you compare them to central heating, penicillin, food sterilization, running water, electricity. Most of the ones you cited come with heavy drawbacks that can't be eliminated (ecologically, socially, &c.). Most of the food is junk food (diet cause 30%+ of cancers), most transportation systems are extremely wasteful and a major cause of pollution (which causes another 30% of cancers), globalisation killed local economies/communities, people are lonelier than ever, teen suicide is through the roof, the internet became a big distraction machine. Of cours tech as a whole comes with nice things, especially medically, but when you look at the whole thing and weight the pros and con it's hard to miss the plethora of cons.

I personally don't wake up thinking about how great everything is but thinking about how I can opt out of most of it

> What percent of westerners would give up all of those things in exchange for a full migration back to 1975? I thinks it’s under 5% and probably way under it.

Stockholm syndrome imho + they'd give all of that away in a heartbeat if they could get a 1970s house, food, etc. while working 3 hours per day, which is what technocrats were promising if we followed their automation dreams, instead we work as long, are more isolated, more depressed, are less fulfilled, but sure enough we have 4k netflix and smartphones more powerful than the entire early NASA .

Also it's not a full migration back to the 70s, it's using modern tech to live sustainably and giving up and the impossible quest of infinite growth.

But I guess it's too late to even discuss that, virtually no one even talks about alternatives anymore, just buy your iphone X max pro 14 and forget about your dreams while doom scrolling the social media of the year while patting your own back about how productive and efficient the whole system is !

The question of "how many average westerners would choose a full migration back to 1970s?" is directly relevant to (and perhaps the defining question for) "has life for an average westerner improved since then?"

> Yet we work as much, if not more

Speak for yourself. People are perfectly able to move to bumfuck and live at a 50s quality of life while working less, they just don't want to.

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