Sure, but let’s remember that “working” is not the end-all, be-all of human existence. Some will stop working and care for an aging parent. Some will stop working and raise children. Some will stop working and make art. We have the opportunity to maximize human flourishing. Let’s not mistake where we’ve been for where we’re going.
Assuming both people are obtaining the same level of enjoyment, why is goofing around online considered "rotting" compared with streaming and doing art at home? I'm not trying to knock hobbies, but I think being alive and content is its own reward, even if the person is lacking a résumé of daily achievements to rattle off at dinner parties.
It isn't just about having something to talk about at a dinner party. It is about doing something productive and worth-while. There is a massive feeling of accomplishment from doing some that is productive. Having something interesting to talk about is an additional benefit. A good portion of those people that were pro-active and learned to stream, turned it into a side income. I wish I had done that. I was desperately trying to find a job after being laid off.
You get none of these benefits from watching Netflix on the sofa. In fact it is likely to make you miserable. A lot of people were negatively affected over COVID. A lot of people regressed into a shell and had a form of depression. I spoke to people mid lockdowns who were working from home and were saying "If I can't go out and enjoy myself, there is no point in earning this money".
I don't consider myself shy, but I find interacting in person now a lot more stressful than I did before COVID lockdowns.
There were other problems during COVID. A lot of people increased intake of booze. I am glad I had given up drinking the year before (I was an alcoholic) because I worry about what I would have been like. There was an increase in domestic violence in the UK (probably related to the increase in alcohol consumption). I am sure there are other issues I had forgotten about.
Productive, as defined by... the people who compile labor statistics, or what? Worthwhile, as defined by... the people who dominate the current cultural narrative?
Everyone who ever invented or discovered anything was engaged in "unproductive" activity.
For one, during Covid, most people were encouraged, if not required by law, to limit their interactions, and some were literally not allowed to leave the house. For years.
Secondly, just because UBI gives people leave to sit around at home, doesn't mean that binging Netflix or alcohol is somehow the fault of "not working."
I know many people whose life consists of working extremely hard, then going home and binging Netflix or alcohol or mairjuana until they pass out. Is that somehow better?
I didn't say it was a UBI problem. I was specifically replying about the effect that it had on people at the time.
> For one, during Covid, most people were encouraged, if not required by law, to limit their interactions, and some were literally not allowed to leave the house. For years.
Yes I know. I was one of those people. I ended up just ignoring the laws BTW and doing what I wanted when I worked out that they couldn't effectively enforce them.
> Secondly, just because UBI gives people leave to sit around at home, doesn't mean that binging Netflix or alcohol is somehow the fault of "not working."
I never said it was. I was specifically talking about what happened during COVID.
> I know many people who's life consists of working extremely hard, then going home and binging Netflix or alcohol or mairjuana until they pass out. Is that somehow better?
Yes, it is.
1) While working you are productive (or at least perceived to be). So at least in theory, you are benefit on society.
2) When you have a substance abuse problem like I did. Your life revolves around it. If you don't have to go to work, I would typically start drinking after lunchtime. Work gave me a break from drinking. As I alluded to in my previous reply in this thread, I am glad gave up drinking at the start of 2019, as I would have had 9 months to drink all day.
Sounds like you have a substance abuse problem and you're afraid that others will make the same mistake you did.
Saying that people's lives are better because they benefit society through their labour, while suffering from untreated addiction (a truly horrible thing), is quite fatalistic, to me. The substance abuse is a totally different issue from "not working." There are a million things to do other than go to the office.
> Sounds like you have a substance abuse problem and you're afraid that others will make the same mistake you did.
I had a substance abuse problem. I have been sober now 7 years.
As for whether I am afraid others will do the same? Yes I am afraid others will make the same mistake that I did. That is why I am warning against it.
> Saying that people's lives are better because they benefit society through their labour, while suffering from untreated addiction (a truly horrible thing), is quite fatalistic, to me.
You asked me whether I thought it was better and I gave you two reasons why I believed it was better. I believe it is be a completely honest assessment based on my own experiences. If you have a critique that is objective of my position I am willing to listen to it, but moralising about how my assessment I am not interested in.
> The substance abuse is a totally different issue from "not working."
In theory yes, in reality no. One will exacerbates the other.
> There are a million things to do other than go to the office.
Sure there are. But unfortunately I have a mortgage and bills that need paying.
>Sure there are. But unfortunately I have a mortgage and bills that need paying.
Hence the UBI.
>In theory yes, in reality no. One will exacerbates the other.
Big big big assumption that doesn't match my reality very well. People who keep active, have a social life and are happy are at less risk for addiction. Not people who "have a job." Those are not the same things.
>You asked me whether I thought it was better and I gave you two reasons why I believed it was better. I believe it is be a completely honest assessment based on my own experiences. If you have a critique that is objective of my position I am willing to listen to it, but moralising about how my assessment I am not interested in.
It is not "better" for people to go to work day in and day out as a way of paying back society while slowly killing themselves with addiction. The better thing is to treat the addiction, not get them working.
Which requires someone else to work to pay for those things. I don't believe other people should pay my mortgage and bills. Those are my responsibility.
I chose to buy a house. I chose to buy a car. I chose the 1 gigabyte virgin media broadband package. Nobody forced me to choose them. Therefore it would be irresponsible and immoral to expect someone else to pay the bill.
> The better thing is to treat the addiction
This assumes that addiction is a disease and a not a choice. I firmly believe it is a choice. I choose to drink excessively in the first place. I made the choice to stop drinking. I chose to stay sober.
As for the rest of what you wrote. You really need to go back an re-read what I said. You asked me which is better between two scenarios. I stated that one was better than the other with a rationale.
You seem to be arguing something else entirely now. I am not sure really what you are arguing against. Certainly not statements I've made in this thread.
>Which requires someone else to work to pay for those things. I don't believe other people should pay my mortgage and bills. Those are my responsibility.
Then you've made the choice to not pursue other things that will make you happier than "working." Yet my point initially was that working is not anywhere close to the only way that people can stay active and away from "rotting."
No one is saying a UBI needs to pay for a 3 story house and 1 GB internet. If you want more than the basics, you know what to do...work!
>This assumes that addiction is a disease and a not a choice.
No, this assumes that many people will need help quitting an addiction.
>You asked me which is better between two scenarios.
Both scenarios are grim and best avoided. The better solution is to help solve the problem, not to act like work is a cure-all, or that a marginal improvement in the form of societal contribution (or "max time away from drink") is sufficient. For many people, work is the reason they drink, or do drugs, or have anger issues. A proper UBI helps people maintain a healthy lifestyle without having to put themselves in a position where they are stressed and powerless for the rest of their working life.
> Then you've made the choice to not pursue other things that will make you happier than "working".
It not about being happier. You didn't read what I said. I said they were my responsibility. You fundamentally don't understand what I am trying to tell you.
> Yet my point initially was that working is not anywhere close to the only way that people can stay active and away from "rotting."
I never said it was. Like many replies of the replies I've had on my initial reply in this thread they have conflated doing something productive, with going to work. Going for a cycle is more productive than Netflix, learning crotchet is more productive than Netflix.
> No, this assumes that people will need help quitting an addiction.
If you don't wish people to misunderstand you, then you shouldn't use language that implies that you believe it to be a disease.
> Both scenarios are grim and best avoided. The better solution is to help solve the problem, not to act like work is a cure-all.
I never said work was a cure-all. You keep on adding things I never said.
You asked me what is better between two scenarios was. I gave you an answer which I thought was better between the two with a rationale.
> For many people, work is the reason they drink, or do drugs, or have anger issues.
No. That is one of the excuses they use to justify their poor choices. I know because I used the same justification.
The reason they have drink, drugs or anger issues is because they choose to.
> A proper UBI helps people maintain a healthy lifestyle without having to put themselves in a position where they are stressed and powerless for the rest of their working life.
So you proclaim. I believe the opposite is likely to happen in the long run. I know what the (negative) affects of welfare are in the UK and UBI IMO will make things worse.
Look guy, your initial post was about how people sat around watching Netflix during Covid and how that's terrible for you and unproductive.
First off, a heck of a lot of those things that you are calling productive, are really just physical activity. Going for a bike ride is good for you, literally. The sense of achievement is just a side effect. If you had a pill that could replicate the effects of a 30 min bike ride, people would sit around eating those pills. And they'd be extremely healthy and happy.
Secondly, Covid was a time when people were culturally and legally obligated to stay inside and keep away from other people.
UBI does not come with those constraints. So no, it's not the same. People will not sit around watching Netflix at the rate they did during Covid. Because they are not compelled to stay inside the house at the risk of being deemed a menace to society.
I did read what you said and I do understand. You said that you can't go do things other than go to the office because you chose an expensive lifestyle. Congratulations. UBI will not cover that and it shouldn't. It is a universal BASIC income.
Saying addiction requires treatment for many people does not imply it is a disease. Addiction treatment existed before the disease model and I don't think of it as a disease in the same way as cancer etc. So that's your own conflict that you're projecting onto me. Much of addiction treatment is treating emotions and rationales that addicts may not even be aware of anymore, sometimes purposefully, sometimes not.
>No. That is one of the excuses they use to justify their poor choices. I know because I used the same justification.
That's your experience with one drug (alcohol). Frankly, it comes across as naive. Many people can not quit by themselves, even if they want to. Not to mention hard drugs like heroin, crack, meth, benzos. You really are trying to say that years of use of those drugs can be stopped by just "deciding?" For every individual? Simply untrue.
>which I thought was better between the two with a rationale.
I get it, believe me. Im saying your rationale is simplistic and that both choices are subpar and neither should not be acceptable.
> Look guy, your initial post was about how people sat around watching Netflix during Covid and how that's terrible for you and unproductive
No it wasn't. I suggest you re-read it. I was talking about people generally. I actually didn't speak that much about my own experience. I actually talked about what generally happened over COVID in my original reply.
> I did read what you said and I do understand. You said that you can't go do things other than go to the office because you chose an expensive lifestyle. Congratulations. UBI will not cover that and it shouldn't. It is a universal BASIC income.
Again you inserted things that I did not say. I never said I can't do other things. I don't live an expensive lifestyle. The only thing I said I need to go to work to pay the bills.
> That's your experience with one drug (alcohol). Frankly, it comes across as naive. Many people can not quit by themselves, even if they want to. Not to mention hard drugs like heroin, crack, meth, benzos. You really are trying to say that years of use of those drugs can be stopped by just "deciding?" For every individual? Simply untrue.
No it isn't naive. It is literally what every recovered addict says. "You have to want to quit". Whether people should get help or not has nothing to do with the justifications of why they abuse substances.
> I get it, believe me. Im saying your rationale is simplistic and that both choices are subpar and neither should not be acceptable.
I don't think you do. You didn't even bother reading what I said properly. So I think we will leave it there.
> It is about doing something productive and worth-while.
Uh-huh. What percentage of software engineers jobs are "worthwhile"? Working on Amazon's nth hosted OSS SaaS? Making better DRM? Revamping your bank website to the latest javascript framework?
From reading your comments, it appears you value physical activity over sedentary activity and disagree with the disease model of addiction because of your own experience and belief system. Frankly, individualized belief systems that don’t exhibit generalizable or interrogatable attributes aren’t very interesting. You’re absolutely free to put up walls around your beliefs and experiences and tell us to keep out, but don’t be surprised when the intellectually curious start knocking on other doors.
It's all rotting if you're simply consuming and not part of goods & services production. The cash creation resulted in more money chasing less goods & services, and inflation lagged behind but steadily resulted.
Being alive and content is orthogonal to what's rightly predicted - GDP falling off a cliff, with standards of living plummeting and inflation exploding as everyone does more consumption to talk about at dinner parties while even less than ever is being produced.
The human body is simultaneously decaying and regenerating constantly, but calling it "rotting" mischaracterizes the process. About 330 billion cells are replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells.
There is nothing particular to labor that changes this, people age at about the same rate whether they are engaged in "working" or not.
Huh? Everyone I knew either worked during that time or was looking for work after getting laid off. (And the vast majority were still working.)
> had basic income and such taken care of
Huh? The COVID checks weren't that regular and didn't cover that much. You mean collecting unemployment, which also requires proving that you're looking for work?
I think it’s totally fair to ask who is supposed to pay for that. I don’t want the guy who grows the food I eat to stop and go paint, I like eating more than I like him painting. There are plenty of jobs that aren’t fulfilling in the slightest, they are just a means to a paycheck, but are absolutely vital to society. And if those people quit to go make art, we’re all screwed. I don’t think that’s an unfair ask to have a comprehensive answer to.
If those jobs are really absolutely vital, in a basic income regime they would be well paying enough to entice people to earn the extra disposable income.
Relative to goods with elastic demand, food prices will rise faster because we have to eat. Food prices are also sensitive to its input prices, which also have inelastic demand.
Precisely. There’d likely be a large wealth transfer back towards boring and less skilled jobs if we couldn’t rely on large numbers of people literally having no choice but to take any job they can get.
I struggle to understand how anyone could consider that a bad thing other than for completely selfish reasons.
You are writing in the comments section of a website devoted to the discussion of companies and technologies that have changed the entire world. Technologies that, many suppose, will change the entire nature of labor, specifically.
And yet you ask, "but how will we maintain the world as it is today?"
Invent a better tomorrow. That's what you're here for.
We could call the better tomorrow a great leap forward.
I jest, but smartphones and web apps have not changed that people need ever-more food, clothing, housing, energy on an ongoing basis while the brave new world is being designed and implemented.
no, its better to complain that people don't want to work anymore.
I wonder what all these "hackers" tradespersons relatives thought of them in 1999. Probably that they were useless computer geeks who would never amount to anything, because they hate "work."
Considering a large portion of the contributors have names originating in a script and language that has no relationship whatsoever to English’s already arbitrary letter ordering, this list configuration is as good as any.
My friend group got busted for gaming AR and we were banned from it. The interface allowed us to sort the books by points, so we took the top 10 books, split them up among us, summarized them, took the tests, and gave each other the answers. The jig was up when they printed a leaderboard and we were all way ahead with an absurd number of points. They took them all away and we weren’t allowed to participate anymore.
I gamed AR in the early '90s when it was much simpler. I was in elementary school, and they counted a book as a certain number of pages read (as certified by a parent), the multiple of which increased as you grade number increased. So in third grade every 30 pages counted as a book. So I read my family's complete collection of Dr. Seuss books, as well as my own, like the Boxcar Children. By the end of the program I'd read "93" books.
All of language is tenuous overlap between speaker intent and listener interpretation. In this instance, how do you interpret the definition of capitalism for this context? Better to add meaning.
In cases like these it's sufficient to substitute "capitalism" for "crony capitalism". However, the people making these statements are unlikely to ever agree that there can exist a non-crony-capitalism.
Every, and I mean every, technology company scours social media. Amazon has a team that monitors social media posts to make sure employees, their spouses, their friends don’t leak info, for example.
Why is obesity the only disease that taking medicine for is “cheating”? Which is more important: instilling your particular version of “discipline” into people, or saving billions in healthcare costs and millions of lives from suffering?
People grew up making fun of others for being overweight. Suddenly a medication making it treatable (and possibly providing an explanation for why the prevalence of obesity skyrockets in developed countries) validates the idea that it's a medical condition.
Relatedly: it validates that people are assholes for making fun of others who are overweight. And not many people like feeling like an asshole.
Cheat code was probably not the best term for it, I'll admit. I don't fault anyone for chosing to try GLP-1s and the cause of obeseity isn't particularly on the individual given the prevailance of ultra processed foods and car transportation in our society. That all being said, regaining most, if not all, the weight has been a historical issue around weight loss treatments because they're not durable. The way we're proceeding with GLP-1s feels short-sighted and potentially unethical if we're setting people up for rebound failure to line the pockets of big pharma.
Would you say the same about blood pressure medications, diabetes medications, cholesterol medications, thyroid hormone replacement, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety medications, immunosuppressants, DMARDs, corticosteroids, anticonvulsants, Parkinson’s medications, multiple sclerosis treatments, blood thinners, and heart failure medications? All of them set people up for rebound failure if they stop taking them for the chronic condition they started them for.
I wouldn't group those together at all for the sake the argument. Take antidepressants for example. We're at the point of reexamining if we actually understand the consequences of long term usage of them. My personal experience was that my long term usage definitely came with issues and it's taken me a few years to feel like my emotional range has returned to a stabe baseline after going off them. I likely would have been better off using them short term. Depressiom is also quite similar to obesity in the sense that helping people develop the durable non-medical interventions while being treated with drugs would go further than just treating them with drugs alone.
Contrast this with Parkinson's which is a neurodegenerative disease with no known non-pharmacutical treatments and even the pharmacutical ones lose effectiveness as it progresses as they only treat symptoms, not the disease itself.
Sure, but the bigger question is: does this matter?
If we think about it longer than, say, 5 seconds, we will realize no, it does not.
Your particular desire for punishment is not really relevant to anything. That's not how medicine operates, and that's a good thing. You're attempting to make a moral argument here. Moral arguments are usually stupid and worthless - try making a different argument.
We prescribe alcoholics with medicine to help them curb their alcohol intake, but if they do not learn the discipline to not drink then they can end up back where they started after getting off the medicine. But I don't think either drugs for alcoholism or obesity should be denied to anyone. However there are other tools to supplement with to help learning discipline.
>However there are other tools to supplement with to help learning discipline.
The current FDA guidelines support your assertion that GLP1s should be prescribed in addition to other tools to help people change their eating habits.
What the FDA does not prescribe is moralism, which is what “help learning discipline” tends to imply. If you didn’t intend to frame your argument in terms of moralism, you might consider a different word choice.
In English, we “instill discipline” in children. When we talk to and about adults, we talk about the confluence of factors that influence habits and help people change them. Discipline implies that an adult, who is otherwise fully functioning and subject to the demands of the world, is lacking an essential attribute. Whatever you might feel about this explanation, we already observe from science and medicine that “instilling discipline” on its own has not stalled the obesity epidemic.
Good point.
The main root cause of obesity is too many calories. Usually, obesity and the symptoms / diseases that come with it improve / go away when eating less calories. Does any human technically need medication to eat less calories?
> Does any human technically need medication to eat less calories?
Chronically obese people, who are prescribed GLP1s to enable them to eat fewer calories. Are you interested in the reasons why people are unable to eat fewer calories without medication? It’s a pretty fascinating problem, one that intersects genetics, environment, and culture.
Yes. Gut microbes has already been shown to have a great impact on how we metabolize by what med we take, what we eat or drink and intake from our environments (micro-plastics, etc).
There is no single main root cause for obesity. We just combine it as one because there isn’t a lot of long term research or funding for it right now. There is a lot of sigma against obesity and people keep blaming other people instead.
Thyroid hormone disorders have been linked to cause weight gains. This can’t be fixed by simply eating less, it can literally do far more damage.
Medications have been linked to cause weight gain as side effects. This wouldn’t do anything to eat less until they stop taking meds and for some, they cannot do that.
Americans’ increasing desire for sweets have increased the sugar content in all of our food including the fruits and vegetables over time. We’ve intentionally bred our healthy stuff to be sweeter. So eating less can make us even more hungrier because we go into sugar crush without realizing it. Changing diets is difficult without us doing all sorts of calculations of finding the right cheap healthy food at the right store and that is you are lucky enough to have any.
Around once a year I look for a distro that works on a laptop w/fractional scaling and hibernate. I’ve already done that once this year, if Zorin can handle that then maybe 2026 will my personal year of the linux desktop
It can be calculated, based on statistics of how many people die before reaching fertility.
But given that the statistics have wide error bars, and there are so many other intervening factors, "a bit more than two" is just as good a way to calculate it.
Well, generally it is "how many people do you need to replace the 2 people that created those people". So the baseline is 2 since you need 2 parents and to replace them you'd need 2 children in an ideal world but since not every child survives long enought to themselves be part of this cycle the .1 comes in.
I've thought about it a bit in the meantime .... In the UK only about 30 children per 100,000 die before age 18 so that would be much less significant than the fact that only about 49% of children are female. Taken together, those facts would imply that you need about 2.0414 children per woman, so 2.05 would be more than enough. So how do we get to 2.1? Perhaps the 2.1 is for other countries with higher infant mortality?
