Idk if the paper addresses this, but supposedly the problem isn’t the amount of stuff, but rather its distribution on the planet and the logistics of moving it.
and also the necessity of surplus and accidental (necessary) waste:
you need spare parts, and some machines are critical… think of data centres: they often have many spare hard drives on hand to deal with failure, which means that there are more than 100% of the required drives in use… some of the workloads running in that data centre service very important workloads - for example because it’s fresh in everyone’s mind - handing SNAP payments… so what, you redistribute those drives so that we are using all that we have? no we certainly don’t… we eat the inefficiency in the case of redundancy (same argument could apply many more times over when you also think about things like mirrored drives, backups, etc: all of that is under-utilised capacity and “waste”)
the same is true for supermarkets: food that is perishable can’t just be allocated where it’s needed. it exists in a place for a period of time, and you either run out a lot or you have some amount of spoilage… there’s a very hard to hit middle ground with overlapping sell by dates, and overall these days were incredibly good at hitting that already!
… and that’s not to mention the stock on the shelves which is the same thing as spare disk drives!
i guess that’s all distribution on the planet
we could certainly do better, but it’s so much more complex than the fact that these things exist so it must be possible to utilise them 100% efficiently
yeah i tend to think today that food waste is actually a good thing because it creates buffers and prepares us for unexpected food shortages (such as during a volcano eruption)
I would argue we don’t actually need data centers. At least the vast majority of them only exist to maintain bullshit nobody needs and most people don’t even want.
Food can be canned, and remain nutritious and safe for much longer than fresh fruits and vegetables can be.
The argument isn’t that it would be easy, it’s that were the will there to do so, it is possible.
That logic is flawed too. The only thing preventing people in most areas to have access to such goods is the lack of industrialization, which is enforced by capitalist western nations through corruption, coups, or other less obvious methods like IMF loans and neocolonialism.
Countries that escaped this subjugation and industrialized, such as China or the USSR, essentially eliminated extreme poverty and multiplied life expectancy 2- and 3-fold in a matter of decades. If India, for example, had followed the Soviet example of rapid industrialization or the Chinese one, hundreds of millions of lives would have been saved from poverty.
We don’t need to produce things in the developed countries and distribute them, we need to allow them to industrialize themselves and to produce their own shit without being exploited
How would you propose India would have achieved this as a multi party democracy that requires consensus building that would not be necessary in either the USSR or China? Particularly as a nation with 123 languages, 30 of which have over a million speakers. Would you say democracy was a poor choice for India?
How would you propose India would have achieved this as a multi party democracy
By not being a bourgeois democracy. It’s exactly what I’m saying. Having a bourgeois democracy in which all partied represent capitalists (with the exception of Kerala, the province in India with a communist party in power and first to eliminate extreme poverty) is a hurdle to development. If India had had a communist revolution the way China or the USSR did, hundreds of millions of lives would have been spared from poverty.
Perhaps. Theres no way to know for certain but one wonders whether India would have remained India if that were how things played out. My suspicion is there would have been civil war and India would have broken up into 3 or 4 nations.
Kerala achieved remarkable progress in human development with land reform, workers protections, environmental protections and investments in public health and education. But the Kerala of today struggles with lagging industrial output and unemployment. A large amount of economic investment comes from remittances. The people are educated, and healthy, but can’t find work in their home state so they leave to another state, the middle east or the West and send money home to their family from there. Reform is desperately needed for the state to become more business friendly.
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in Korea it was difficult to get aid to the villages on the front for obvious reasons. so some smartass thought, “if we can’t bring the aid to the people, let’s bring the people to the aid”.
we shouldn’t allow a simple problem like logistics get in the way of saving lives.
“A simple problem like logistics,” is a phrase only uttered by those who have never worked in large scale operations.
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you have a great future in the field of logistics!
I guess you didn’t understand the hidden meaning behind my words that human life is a far larger goal than meeting logistical requirements.
that’s like saying that human life is a far larger goal than physics
you can’t just hand wave it away because you deem human life to be “worth it”. it exists and it’s a real problem, and it’s a complex problem even with unlimited money
that’s like saying that human life is a far larger goal than physics
no, it’s not. it’s literally saying saving a human life is a larger goal than logistics.
you can’t just hand wave it away because you deem human life to be “worth it”.
I can, because it is. If we don’t try everything to save a life and simply shrug the responsibility with the excuse of “sorry, but it’s just not logistically possible to save this person”, then what’s the point saving anyone?
it exists and it’s a real problem, and it’s a complex problem even with unlimited money
I think I see what happened here. you only read part of this chain. you clearly missed the part where I said,
if we can’t bring the aid to the people, let’s bring the people to the aid
logistics is a tool used to solve problems. stop using it as an excuse to let people die.
human life is a larger goal than logistics.
logistics isn’t a goal; it’s problem that you have to solve to achieve a goal
If we don’t try everything to save a life
human life does have a value cap: would you plunge the world into borderline starvation in order to save a single life? no? well then a single human life is worth less than the happiness of the entire human race… the bar is somewhere above that
you’re trivialising a lot of complex things… public health has similar questions where the value of life and health is measured in aggregate
sorry, but it’s just not logistically possible to save this person
literally what happens every day in public health… resources are not unlimited, and so you have to make choices and trade offs
you only read part of this chain
nope i read the whole thing, its just that
if we can’t bring the aid to the people, let’s bring the people to the aid
is still a logistics problem… public transport is a logistics problem, shipping is a logistics problem, air schedules are a tiny part of the air travel logistics problem
moving people and things to where they need to be at the time that they’re needed is logistics
logistics is a tool used to solve problems. stop using it as an excuse to let people die.
logistics is a problem space that you need to solve before you achieve outcomes: it comes before, not after and you can’t start without solving logistics problems
in terms of distribution of medicine and aid, it’s basically the only problem that needs solving: we have plenty of food, we have plenty of medicine, and not for profits aren’t wanting for these things… they’re wanting for ways to get it where it’s needed
Perfect timing, I got this notification just as I saw this post:
If you know, you know. If not, highly recommend checking it out!
It’s false that it requires planning. It only requires UBI.
While I support a UBI, it would also require planning. A UBI without pegging it to the cost of living, without price controls, and without significant changes to our policy around labor would be mind-boggingly bad.
“If you give people a 1000 dollars landlords will just charge 1000 more” is bullshit for a few reasons, but with that large a change to the entire economy it would dramatically change the way our society functions. We need to ensure that we do not accidently step into a position in which we replace poverty wages and automation of work with poverty UBI and automation of work. If the work is being automated, we, the workers, those upon whose back this entire civilization has been built, deserve to see the fruits of that labor. We need drastic change to the way this works, and a UBI is a not-insignificant part of that, but it is only part of it.
A UBI without pegging it to the cost of living, without price controls, and without significant changes to our policy around labor would be mind-boggingly bad.
Andrew Yang’s branding of UBI as freedom dividend was useful in addressing those issues, because it’s no longer about basic, and more about a shared dividend in prosperity, with tax revenue going up with inflation and so dividends going up along side it. UBI is a change in labour policy without planing: The freedom to say no to work, means better quality job offers. The less anyone else wants to work, the easier it is for anyone who wants to to be rich.
We need drastic change to the way this works, and a UBI is a not-insignificant part of that, but it is only part of it.
It’s actually all of it. If your labour is not needed, and profits happen anyway, then we all get a share of that. There is always entrepreneurship, education, retraining to pursue useful contributions to society.
Okay, sure, but how does any of this get billionaires to their next yacht?
It doesn’t?
So yeah, that’s not going to happen.
I fucking wish they’d spend the money on yachts.
At least the yacht sales man would get the billions and use it to buy a house, so the home owner would get the billions and use it buy a car, so the car sales man would get billions and use it buy cocaine, so the drug dealer would get billions and use it buy food.
Billionaires buying yachts would actually feed the poor. But they don’t. They just hoard it in their dragon lairs for no good reason.
This sounds a lot like “trickle down economics”
And we all know that’s worked great in the past.
Yes that’s it. Trickle down doesn’t work because they don’t buy enough yachts.
The proof is: If they actually bought yachts for all their money, they wouldn’t be billionaires anymore. Billionaires wouldn’t exist if trickle down worked.
If they spent every available dollar they had on yachts, then trickle-down economics would work. But, obviously they don’t.
On the other hand, if you hand a poor person $1000, it’s going to be spent almost immediately. Debts will be paid off, essential repairs will be done, groceries will be purchased, family members in need will be helped. That money won’t “trickle down” because there’s no “down” from there, but it will quickly spread across the economy.
There is some value in giving a rich person, or a rich company money. Poor people aren’t able to make investments in the future because they have so many pressing immediate needs. A person or company might put some money towards something that won’t pay off for years or maybe decades. So, there’s some value in that. With too much money, investments are no longer smart because it doesn’t matter anymore.
This makes rounds pretty often and it always gets mentioned in the comments that it doesnt figure in things like logistics and outlines a pretty bare-minimum living.
I think a much more achievable solution short and longterm is empowering womens rights and education to turn global population trend downwards, increase human rights and education in general to increase quality of life throughout.
Sadly that plan and the author’s plan are directly contradictory.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
But then rich ppl couldn’t use us to fulfill their endless ambitions.
am·bi·tion
A strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.
Lost me at the end there.
Oh cool. Glad they provided a linked source that we can’t read.
Images of text posts still suck.
they could have shared nothing at all, other people are often nice enough to search and post a link in the comments
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Seeing the chart that was posted from it, only if you’re approaching it from a really wealthy perspective. Keep in mind this is for literally every human on the planet-many of whom are sharing and still starving.
You don’t need a stove and oven and microwave and toaster and air fryer and induction cooktop and two and a half cars per person and the bicycle you don’t use or the exercise equipment and the slap chop and the ninja or the fucking second fridge in the garage where you keep all the sports equipment that’s degrading every day into uselessness that never gets you know, used. God forbid you share with your neighbors. They might have cooties. Have to buy your own shit, brand new, full retail, with the bullshit insurance package
I’ve been living on my bicycle for a few months now, and honestly. What a single person actually needs is so vanishingly small it’s disgusting we let anyone go hungry or cold.
It’s odd that schools and hospitals are listed by area and not capabilities though. I don’t give a shit if it’s a golf course sized hospital, I want them to have supplies, equipment, and people trained to properly use them.
Too hard to put an easy number on? What stats are disparate in a plastic surgery suite vs an inner city gunshot wound floor? Tbh, I’d rather be treated at the latter, they’ve had more practice
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That’s only 30% of our production and also assumes 8 and a half billion people. As we’ve seen in developed countries the population will decline and stabilize around 4-5 billion. So accounting for future development and technological advancement we could all live wonderful lives
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“The people doing the production.” Which ones are those? The ones mining resources for far less than this amount? The people living well above this standard are largely doing it off the back of exploiting people living far below this standard.
… And?
We can always give a little more. Plus what do you think the other 70% is doing?
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This comment made me chuckle.
Thanks. I need that.
On one hand, thanks for finding it?
On the other, OC here ain’t wrong
Neither statement is incorrect. Not sure why anyone is bothered enough about this to down vote it.
Blocked :3
Well, yes.
If you‘re not profitable, you‘re nothing. As a business entity or a person. And the profitable ones take as much as they can and leave a lot of people out in order to accomplish that.
Yeah, we’ll get right on that as soon as we figure out how to provide fucking water to that many people.
Life expectancy in pre-communist China and pre-communist USSR was less than 30 years of age, and a big factor of that was lack of access to clean drinking water. Soviets doubled life expectancy between 1929 and 1959 while surviving a Nazi invasion in the middle, China achieved similar results later.
This can absolutely be done, we just need to let countries industrialize instead of exploit them through neocolonialism.
And what does that have to do with our cities draining aquifers that take 1,000 years to refill? What does that have to do with huge chunks of our civilizations living in deserts?
Please go explain to the 15,000,000 people in Tehran, or the 25,000,000 dependent on the Red River, that socialism will, somehow, provide water.
By any metric, which “huge chunks” of civilizations live in deserts? Deserts are inhospitable and the vast majority of people don’t live in them. The major problem in access to clean, drinking water worldwide isn’t availability of water itself, but lack of development.
Tehran is a very special case because the city is 1200m above sea level, how many multi-million cities are located in arid plateaus?
There is enough fresh water for all those people, it just is not conveniently distributed around the globe. Thats said with that extra 70% left over, there are plenty of resources to build and power desalination plants where necessary.
We could also rethink the ways we use water like using grey water or rain water for things like toilet flushing etc.
it just is not conveniently distributed around the globe.
Don’t you dare think of taking away the boomers recreational fishing cabins.
/s
We already have the means. Hell, we can even desalinate ocean water into potable drinking water if needed.
Capitalism just means we’ve decided societally that it’s too cost prohibitive so fuck those people, we’ve got artificial scarcity to maintain for profits.
And how will you contain the mountains of salt?
Hmm, can’t think of anything to do with that with a need for food globally. Not like it preserves food or… oh wait, it does exactly that.
If you put as much effort into considering ways this could be done as you do looking for excuses why it can’t, we’d have already solved world hunger.
Correction, Capitalism just means capital has decided that its effective to invest YOUR capital to wage war and impoverish entire nations so OUR use of capital can gain modest returns for the shareholders of the fewest percentage of capital holders.
living creatures that cooperate deeply will always outperform those that don’t, rugged individualism may look attractive but you’ll never reach the stars alone
Does forcing people to do what you want also count?
I don’t disagree with you, but why, then, did evolution land on making us so damn greedy and selfish?
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Now if 70% of the population could read this.
I guarantee you that 50% of those would go out of their way to defend the interests of the rich assholes
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But how could people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk maintain their living standards?
Did anybody think about the billionaires?
Lol
Bravo
I’ve got a little motivational poster in my cubicle that simply asks ‘did I do my part to make the line go up today?’
I look at it when I’m sad and it cheers me up.
“No, I definitely didn’t.” ::smile::
Yes. You can provide no value at all and the answer is still yes.
The answer continues to be yes if the value you provide is in the negatives.
Shareholders deserve nothing.
Those morons don’t even appear to live particularly well honestly.
But the world exists to satisfy the every growing ambitions of the people who can gain control of those resources. They don’t exist for humanity, life or the planet, but for the egos of the powerful. /s, but not really
