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RE: The Time We Live In is The Winter of the World
Even though we still have many issues, I believe our world is improving because poverty is being reduced and people are having mostly better lives than before thanks to medical and technological innovations.
I believe our world is improving and will continue to do so.
The middle class of today have lives better than Kings from 300-400 years ago
All that you say is true, but at what cost? We have 'externalized' the cost of those gains in the form of planetary destruction. We still make products that are meant to break or even worse are broken on purpose (e.g. Apple killing your i-phone or slowing it down so you'll buy a new one.) Only to keep our "economy" going and the profits flowing to the already wealthy, who don't get to undergo the negative effects because they live in the areas where everything is still pristine.
We could make products that last for decades but that means the rich don't get their yearly profits and you don't get that funky new color fridge etc. I used to work for Phillips and did calculations on when a device should break. I wont bore you with the actual calculations, but it is always the cheapest part that is designed to break, and that part makes production more expensive as well. With that knowledge i repaired quite a few devices by taking parts out, they usually last "forever" after that.
It all comes down to this:
IF they would make fridges that last for 30 years, they wouldn't need to produce more than a couple a day. And where's the profit in that or the jobs?
With the technology we have today and more importantly the robots and automation possible in the near future we could let robots do the work for us. But that would have to mean that the robots work for everyone, not just some rich #$^#. It would also mean that everyone would have to get some form of basic income, possibly supplemented by doing human work for humans, in short services. And since necessity is the mother of all invention it is usually the poor man that invents, it would be wrong if the rich would be the only ones to benefit from it. Many of the products we use on a daily basis have been invented in garages by people trying to get ahead, only to be bought up by the Googles and Facebooks of this world. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Everything is already paid for in some way, by the blood, sweat, tears, creativity of our ancestors.
And everything is owned these days, everything. So now we are at the point where it is easier to make money with money than with your hands and money is power. Two Billion jobs will be automated away in the next ten years, yes billion with a B. The current way of doing things and even the "system" are unsustainable. Everyday more jobs can be automated away and everyday more people are born, this leads me to conclude that there are only two likely outcomes:
And looking at the world today I don't have much faith that we we will do the second, I don't see billionaires clamoring to share vast amounts of their wealth, i rather see the oposite. Soon we will have 2 classes, the rich ruling class and the poor, no more middle class. And I know new jobs will also be created, but look around you, how many jobs have been split into two with the addition of meaningless tasks like bureaucracy while the wages are under pressure. How many people do you know that have 2 or 3 jobs and still can't make ends meet? I know quite a few in the US. And even if they give everybody a basic income, that won't help because it will soon be worth less than needed to live because of inflation. And I think they know it, that's why the taking away of our freedoms and the militarization of the police and the surveilance state... I am sorry if I broke your bubble, or maybe not, we need to face this problem before it faces us. We need to change a lot of things.
I wrote this on the fly and this is a complicated subject. I have been thinking about this for a very long time and am working on a more comprehensive analysis and a sollution. I will post this at some point in the future.