[mantas]

Just like nowadays.

There's a famous columnist-wannabe-politician in my country. A part of one of his columns stuck with me. It was along the following lines:

> Just think what would happen if people stopped caring about saving for the latest iPhone. And got into philosophical debates instead. What a terrible world would that be.

Looking at context, it was 100% not sarcasm.

[Liquix]

Having trouble understanding the context in which this is not sarcasm. Would you mind linking the column if possible?

[kortilla]

Depends on how you interpret the “stop saving” part of the phrase. If it’s just for an iPhone sure, it’s definitely sarcasm. If it’s a comment about not saving money at all and just scraping by enough to sustain and argue philosophy, then there are a lot of people that would agree with the non-sarcastic take.

The phrase would have been better replacing “saving for” with “coveting” or something that better disambiguates a statement against materialism from one supporting selfish financial recklessness.

[mantas]

It was the later. I linked the article in a comment in adjacent comment if you're interested.

Good tip on saving for vs coveting.

[mantas]

The column is in Lithuanian. Hopefully deepl or google translate does good enough job.

The title translates to „The world, which doesn't need a newer iPhone, is destined for wars and genocide“

https://www.delfi.lt/news/ringas/lit/romas-sadauskas-kvietke...