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Comment by BSOhealth | Hacker News Reader

Probably not "incredibly stupid"

But, "the economy" is generally just a descriptor for what people need/want, and what they're willing to do for it.

A phrase like "slaves of the economy", with the implication that someone should be entitled to escape that condition, is about as ridiculous as thinking you are a "slave to nutrients" or a "slave to oxygen" or any other physical constraint. You can't escape it; you have to eat--what are you willing to do to get food?

However, what I think you're probably more upset about, and what you probably should instead be phrasing it as, is economic manipulation. That is something that can legitimately be unjust. Power and information are some tools to manipulate or benefit from economic conditions to a greater extent than others, and therefore have more boats or leisure time or political positions (or food or N95 masks or jobs etc etc)

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I understand GP's post in a different way - While I consider economic indicators to be very important, I think they fail to measure properly "quality of life" while ate the same time being used as surrogate for it.

For example, a public park may be a great asset to the people that live around it. But it generates little to none in terms of GDP. Privatizing it and turning it into a parking lot has more economic activity, while making the lives of people meaningfully worse.

That we don't have good measurements to reconcile that contradiction is what turns us into "slaves of the economy"

Feels like a cousin of the McNamara fallacy: what can't be (or simply isn't) measured may as well not exist. (Probably most people who have encountered OKRs are familiar with this). RFK (the original one, not the brainworm one):

> The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

> That we don't have good measurements to reconcile that contradiction

We do have many measurements to reconcile that.

We know how much particulate air pollution from fossil fuel combustion increases health care expenditures. We know how not having save places to exercise outdoors affects general health and results in sedentary lifestyle diseases.

But most of our decisions, individually and as a society, are predicated on short term convenience and gratification, not long term health, so we ignore the measures we already have.

Yeah, but the rhetorical justification for all the crap stuff is the economy.

It's weird to me that we organise our lives based on one social science and ignore all the others.

> It's weird to me that we organise our lives based on one social science and ignore all the others.

40-50% of most countries production goes to government projects, so no we don't ignore everything else than capitalism. We are about 50-60% capitalist at most.

Note that government projects also need you to work, work is a part of every system, it isn't capitalism that forces you to work people are forced to work in socialist and communist states as well.

> 40-50% of most countries production goes to government projects, so no we don't ignore everything else than capitalism. We are about 50-60% capitalist at most.

Sorry, I don't get how this relates to what I said. I mentioned that it's surprising that we use one model of the world to organise our society (i.e economics) and you countered that the government is part of the economy (which is trivially true, but doesn't really relate to my point). Can you help me understand what you mean here?

When someone complains about "the economy", they aren't complaining about the abstract idea of an economy, they're complaining about a particular economy (usually the one they live in). One could literally be a "slave to this economy" in a slave-based economy, or figuratively in an economy where other people own the land (for example) and force them to work.

But that makes these claims of "slavery" even more absurd. Would you have to do more or less living as a subsistence farmer? Would you have better or worse quality of life?

That's an easy one: no way in hell, it'd be SO much worse. Our society can only exist with extreme specialization.

Hell, if we take into account that the land available couldn't even remotely support the people living on it (~2km2 per person per year), so there'd be a famine under those conditions and you'll what's being suggested as "alternative" is effectively extreme suffering followed by death for 95%+ of the population, maybe 99%+.

Subsistence farming is orthogonal to slavery. A farmer could be free, and a slave could do specialized work. Even in the antebellum South, there were slaves doing advanced work, like James Derham who worked as a doctor.

Most people on this site are beneficiaries of this economy, fortunate to have many options and resources. Not everyone is so lucky.

I'd like to think it would be possible to build a specialized, prosperous economy without economic exploitation, but we certainly aren't there yet.

> But, "the economy" is generally just a descriptor for what people need/want, and what they're willing to do for it.

It’s not exactly about what people want, but rather what capital needs to grow and increase its value. Most people have no say in these decisions and are left with only two options: comply or starve.

This is a simplistic point of view. The economy is a particular arrangement of productive forces. Our slavish, irrational devotion to one particular arrangement is what makes us "slaves" to it.

Naturally, power is expressed through whatever arrangement is decided upon, and therefore "manipulation" is guaranteed to benefit those with the power to change the system. Since the number of people who benefit the most, and therefore have the most power, is very small then it stands to reason that your information imbalance arrises from the exclusivity of this arrangement.

For example: the owners of retailers, restaurants, and other such businesses decided that they will not accept prolonged lockdowns. Therefore, the entire system acquiesced to their demands. Consequently, one million people died in the United States alone.

So, we are "slaves to the economy" because all of the decisions are made for the benefit of the ~2% of people who own a business. Those who were allowed to isolate, such as tech workers and such, just let this happen without anything more than a "tsk tsk", and that was because ultimately those people wanted a coffee delivered to their front door and 10% gains on their portfolio (yes, I hate my co-workers). Self interested people enabled by a comfortable, morally bankrupt middle class that tosses the working poor to the wolves for a chance to sell their carcass - that is "the economy"

Now, "the economy" said recently that this middle class can go stick it where the sun doesn't shine, and forget about work from home. Guess this allegiance to "the economy" really did get us nowhere, huh?

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