[cirrus3]

The article seems to answer the question right up front.

> as we’ve gotten richer and built more technology, we’ve developed a machine not for ending our wants, not for fulfilling them, but for generating new ones, new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition.

> You can’t solve the problem of scarcity with our current system because our current system is designed to generate endlessly the feeling of more scarcity within us. It needs that. And so we keep working harder and harder and feeling like we have less and less, even amidst quite a bit of plenty, at least, for many of us.

[hiram112]

I hear this trope all the time, that if I just avoided my Starbucks and IPhone, Netflix and Spotify subscriptions, I could live like a King on 10 hours per week job, in our modern land-of-plenty utopia.

But that's baloney. A 3BR average home in my city is now 6x median income, and that's with average households being 2 full-time workers instead of 1. And this isn't some 3k sq ft McMansion - another common strawman - it's the same dumpy house that a single earner easily afforded at 3x salary 40 years ago.

All the other big-ticket items that I spend 80% of my salary on have increased at similar rates.

A lot of Americans do overspend and are obsessed with keeping up with the Jones. You realize that when you go to the grocery store and 1/2 the cars in the parking lot are $50k SUVs and gigantic pickups.

But even if you're a modest person making $50k a year in a medium COL city, the cost of the new Iphone or flat screen TV you bought is inconsequential to the expenses you can't avoid - housing, health care, education, transportation, etc. All of these have almost doubled in price relative to the income of a single full time worker in the last four decades.

[cirrus3]

Yep.. this article is trope trope trope city, don't bother.

[themodelplumber]

> our current system is designed

Do people really believe this language is accurate or likely to be helpful? What are we going to do, locate the designer and thwart their evil plan? Or attempt to locate the blueprint?

It seems to me that this kind of wording gives way too much credit to human consciousness.

[Mandelmus]

It's a collective design that's been arrived at iteratively over many generations but it's still designed insofar that it's composed of countless consciously created and refined incentive structures, cultural norms, legal constructs, and institutions that in concert further our current system.

[themodelplumber]

> it's composed of countless consciously created and refined incentive structures

So you don't suppose there's much unconsciously created and refined structure to it?

We hear so much about anxiety and pressure being rampant in modern society. I just wonder why mention of these (and other, unwanted, disavowed) forces is always left out of all the design talk. It seems to me to be the perfect setup for the worst parts of tomorrow's "design"...

[cirrus3]

He obviously doesn't. He is leaning hard on his highly questionable algorithmic narrative and has no actual clue on how real life works for many people or any exposure to it off his keyboard.

It is sad for everyone really knowing these people exist.

[Mandelmus]

That escalated quickly. From disagreeing with my comment to lamenting I exist is a bit of an extreme jump, wouldn't you say?

[cirrus3]

Mandelmus that is a lot of meaningless words to avoid the recognition that there are systematic objectives in play to repress others. "collective design" is stupid fancy term and you will look dumb saying that in person to anyone in real life.

[Mandelmus]

I'm not trying to avoid that recognition at all! But somebody put those systemic objectives and incentive structures into place. The fact that societies like the ones described in the podcast have such different incentive structures is proof that it's possible for humans to collectively design a different system, rather than assuming it's all just fallen from the heavens, i.e. the inevitable outcome of immutable "human nature".

[cirrus3]

Mandelmus

blah blah blah. Stop. Think like a human capable of empathy and less like an algorithm for once. Society is not as simple as the hardest problem you have or will ever have to think about. And guess what, you would not pass that interview.

[Mandelmus]

I did not mean to come across as unempathetic, on the contrary! My view is that only if you admit some level of design in our inhumane system can you even expect that we can change anything about it. If it were all automatic, doesn't that make it basically inevitable and merely 'natural'?

[tolbish]

Would "built" have sufficed?

[themodelplumber]

Was it built Ford tough? Who built it, why, how? Do we even think we have satisfactory answers to these questions (especially in the broader scope)? Do we want tomorrow's "thing we built" to be better?

[barnaclejive]

^ this

[trixie_]

The machine is way more than superficial stuff. Our government, legal process, financial system, medical, communication networks, food production, media, on and on - are part of the machine.

Machines require maintenance. And at this point the machine is so big we can barely keep it going at 40 hours a week. Automation may save us, but it seems like we automate just enough to open up new capability that itself requires maintenance.

[barnaclejive]

This is one of the few non-self-focused views I have seen posted on this thread.

So many other people are jumping to discuss the topic in terms of other people like themselves or better off.

The "machine" is very much way more than superficial stuff.

Some gears in the machine are being set aside as non-functional, but the machine is so large that it still keeps "working" without those gears, and ignores the potential net-win if we cared enough to get them back in play.

It is like paying down technical debt. Sure, you can run your system as-is and pay the bills, but ideally you'd optimize for memory and CPU and pay less in the long-run. It is a hard problem to take on as we all know given other priorities and the perceived low cost of doing nothing about it right now.

Those gears are not RAM or CPU though, they are your fellow humans, and we need to act as such. I am sickened by by some of the comments here boiling this all down to an out-of-touch algorithmic and/or privileged viewpoint.