Thoughts on standard of living, population, and the future of humankind.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Say wealth distribution occurs tomorrow and we all have exactly the same cash, the problem remains that infrastructure in some areas in vastly superior to others. Displacing huge numbers of people is unlikely, as is the huge collective investment in the poorer regions to create comparable standards.

Nothing helpful, I've just never really thought the idea of a wealth distribution via hacking idea through. I'd guess it would end badly but I'm unsure why.

Straight-up equalizing everyone's wealth would probably cause a level of hilarious fuckery too great for mere mortals to comprehend.

It would be horrifically disruptive, and is also not necessary.

This might sound like a shitty thing to say, but unless our species changes radically, society will always need reward inequality in order to function. We are fundamentally hierarchical animals, and without an established hierarchy, things fall apart and there's sheer ugliness until someone comes out on top. It's just what we do.

The idea is not so much to eliminate stress from the animals on the bottom and eliminate reward from the animals on the top, but to relieve stress from the animals on the bottom, and to alleviate hoarding by the animals on the top.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Here's the dilemma

Any restriction on population growth is an horrific infringement on the personal liberty of everyone to shit out enough screaming brats to wipe out all life on earth.

The choice is between mass sterilization (a fascist overfiend ripping the band aid off) or nature taking care of it for us (the way that makes option 1 look like an episode of the care bears)

The irony is, our complete resistance to the horrors of option one will lead us to option 2 as a default.

That's not the dilemma at all.

There is no need to try to restrict population growth; it restricts itself naturally when one condition is changed. That's what the OP is about.

Truth, and thanks for steering back on course...

I don't think universal high living standards is impossible, but if it is achieved then population growth will decline. If population grown declines, there won't be enough humans to adequately populate other planets, unless you knock the colonists' standards of living down and defeat the whole proposition of universal high living standards.

Yeah, exactly. Likewise, propositions that the planet can support 20 billion people inherently accept that humanity will have a collectively shitty standard of living for as long as it takes for us to reach 20 billion, because if the standard of living was high, we'd never get there.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Say wealth distribution occurs tomorrow and we all have exactly the same cash, the problem remains that infrastructure in some areas in vastly superior to others. Displacing huge numbers of people is unlikely, as is the huge collective investment in the poorer regions to create comparable standards.

Nothing helpful, I've just never really thought the idea of a wealth distribution via hacking idea through. I'd guess it would end badly but I'm unsure why.

Straight-up equalizing everyone's wealth would probably cause a level of hilarious fuckery too great for mere mortals to comprehend.

It would be horrifically disruptive, and is also not necessary.

This might sound like a shitty thing to say, but unless our species changes radically, society will always need reward inequality in order to function. We are fundamentally hierarchical animals, and without an established hierarchy, things fall apart and there's sheer ugliness until someone comes out on top. It's just what we do.

The idea is not so much to eliminate stress from the animals on the bottom and eliminate reward from the animals on the top, but to relieve stress from the animals on the bottom, and to alleviate hoarding by the animals on the top.

THIS!

Something seems to happen to the upwardly mobile ones as they accumulate power. They get addicted to it and this brings corruption and greed and most of the other deadly sins. Is it conceivable that this could ever change? The big guys are just are neurotic as the little guys. How the fuck does one even begin to imagine fixing this?

[Junkenstein]

A cull and re-distribution of wealth of the top 0.05% say every 25 years?

Get super wealthy, enjoy the good life and get snuffed, OR work to raise everyone's quality of life for about the same as the guy next to you?

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Heh we come in peace. Wed also like to purchase your planet for some beads and these here blankets.

It's our MANIFEST DESTINY.   

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

More on topic, Nigel/Cain what would you think is a possible achievable worldwide living standard? Education and basic literacy is key so I would guess that would be the main area to funnel resources to in the short/medium future.

Access to adequate nutritious food, secure shelter with enough room for everyone to have comfortable sleeping space no more than 2 to a bedroom, clean running water, at least one sanitary bathroom in each household, refrigerators, telephones, internet access, access to medical care that is within a decade of state-of-the-art and includes birth control, access to transportation, access to education through the highest levels, the opportunity to improve upon basic necessities through work, and adequate leisure time to ensure socialization and family nurturing for reduced stress levels.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Say wealth distribution occurs tomorrow and we all have exactly the same cash, the problem remains that infrastructure in some areas in vastly superior to others. Displacing huge numbers of people is unlikely, as is the huge collective investment in the poorer regions to create comparable standards.

Nothing helpful, I've just never really thought the idea of a wealth distribution via hacking idea through. I'd guess it would end badly but I'm unsure why.

Straight-up equalizing everyone's wealth would probably cause a level of hilarious fuckery too great for mere mortals to comprehend.

It would be horrifically disruptive, and is also not necessary.

This might sound like a shitty thing to say, but unless our species changes radically, society will always need reward inequality in order to function. We are fundamentally hierarchical animals, and without an established hierarchy, things fall apart and there's sheer ugliness until someone comes out on top. It's just what we do.

The idea is not so much to eliminate stress from the animals on the bottom and eliminate reward from the animals on the top, but to relieve stress from the animals on the bottom, and to alleviate hoarding by the animals on the top.

THIS!

Something seems to happen to the upwardly mobile ones as they accumulate power. They get addicted to it and this brings corruption and greed and most of the other deadly sins. Is it conceivable that this could ever change? The big guys are just are neurotic as the little guys. How the fuck does one even begin to imagine fixing this?

Well, once again I'm thinking about Sapolky's babboons.

What we have right now is a society that places the highest status emphasis on the hoarding of wealth. This is the culture that we have developed. We know from history that this is not an inherent human state... some cultures have placed the highest status emphasis on giving away wealth. People who hoarded their wealth had lower power-status than those who gave it away. It seems to me, then, that it would be possible for us to make a social shift toward one where individuals gain power and status by having many well-paid employees, by showing that the regions in which they operate have high standards of living, or by paying a large amount of taxes, for example, rather than by having a high profit margin. 

What I don't know is what would need to happen for that kind of cultural shift to take place.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

There are a million good ideas for how to equalize living standards to a point where population growth is no longer explosive and dangerous to the species. The problem is that equal living standards violate the most powerful individuals' ideas of self-preservation. And, since they're the most powerful, those ideas never get implemented and population growth continues to expand. It almost lends credence to the conspiracy theories of the New World Order and violent population control. After all, if the powerful want to remain powerful, they have to find a balance between being offensively wealthy and avoiding a complete overpopulation crisis. One assumes that they have access to fairly decent science, and they realize that one way to avoid overpopulation is to quit letting so many people languish in poverty. On the other hand, there's no evidence that they're interested in trimming the wealth gap at all, or even in allowing it to persist at current levels. Killing off millions of people on a constant basis is probably the only mechanism available to them that doesn't require them to share their wealth and power with the unwashed masses.

[Ben Shapiro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7PZVYG57UQ

Capitalism will always exist as long as someone doesn't want to work, or just doesn't want to create something.

This guy is spot on Utopias being worthless, just leaving the best technology available for the next generation versus forcing the future children into a useless outdated box. I agree with him certain things should never be for profit: Medicine,Education, Food (crops),water.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7PZVYG57UQ

Capitalism will always exist as long as someone doesn't want to work, or just doesn't want to create something.

This guy is spot on Utopias being worthless, just leaving the best technology available for the next generation versus forcing the future children into a useless outdated box. I agree with him certain things should never be for profit: Medicine,Education, Food (crops),water.

Dunno.  I can see medicine and education being a tax-driven thing, but it's gonna be hard to get farmers and farm corporations to produce for no profit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7PZVYG57UQ

Capitalism will always exist as long as someone doesn't want to work, or just doesn't want to create something.

This guy is spot on Utopias being worthless, just leaving the best technology available for the next generation versus forcing the future children into a useless outdated box. I agree with him certain things should never be for profit: Medicine,Education, Food (crops),water.

Dunno.  I can see medicine and education being a tax-driven thing, but it's gonna be hard to get farmers and farm corporations to produce for no profit.

There are a couple ways to approach this. One is the way we already approach it, which is farm subsidies. The other way is the "State Farm", on which farmers are government employees producing food. I am not a huge fan of either approach, to be honest, although I think a mix of State and competing privately-owned farms would probably work. I think a standard-of-living stipend and food vouchers would work well.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

We won't make any serious progress until there's a hell of a lot more automation. If there was equal pay and equal access to education, and everyone had an equal shot at escaping the lower classes, do you think we'd still have a million people breaking their backs 12 or 16 hours a day in manual labor, when they could more easily hitch a ride through free education and get a white collar job? A lot of people might choose to still work in construction or farming or maintenance out of a genuine love of the craft, but just as higher living standards tend to discourage population growth, they tend to discourage manual labor. It's a sad reality that many of the snags that keep people at the bottom end of the economic scale can't disappear, or we'd lose too much of the manual work force. Automation, robotics, and other future technologies might fix that (while also making it okay that our population growth is declining), but again that's all unknown at this point.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't know if I agree with that. I'll think about it for a while, but what I'm thinking about is that even in places where education is free, there are always people who would rather take those lower-end jobs, provided they pay enough to live on. There are people who like manual labor, or who are simply not cut out for school, or who don't feel passionate about it, or who would rather have the short-term reward of a paycheck now than go to school for years for a better paycheck later.

I think that if you make the lower classes livable, there will always be people willing to live in them. The problem is, the upper classes have no incentive to make the lower classes livable, so they spend all their time discouraging the lower classes from demanding higher wages or wealth redistribution.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I don't know if I agree with that. I'll think about it for a while, but what I'm thinking about is that even in places where education is free, there are always people who would rather take those lower-end jobs, provided they pay enough to live on. There are people who like manual labor, or who are simply not cut out for school, or who don't feel passionate about it, or who would rather have the short-term reward of a paycheck now than go to school for years for a better paycheck later.

I think that if you make the lower classes livable, there will always be people willing to live in them. The problem is, the upper classes have no incentive to make the lower classes livable, so they spend all their time discouraging the lower classes from demanding higher wages or wealth redistribution.

Good points. There probably will always be people who choose the lower classes, especially if it's an honest choice (unlike what we have now), we can manage to eliminate the stigma of lower classes, and somehow make the lower classes' primary concern convenience instead of survival.

But most of the world's lower classes exist in undeveloped nations where demanding higher wages and wealth redistribution isn't even an option. They're even worse off than the poorest people in America. Not only do they struggle with the same decisions we do about risking what little they have to gain a little more, but they also lack the luxury of being the most important consumer base of the people profiting from their poverty. For an economy like Rwanda, for example, where there just isn't much wealth to redistribute in the first place, how would you make lower classes livable there? Obviously by redistributing wealth from developed nations - populated by people who would be risking their own sustainable living standards if they shared. Certainly the wealthy, who already begrudge the people of Europe and America for taking too much, aren't going to allow the rest of the world to get that close to them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't know if I agree with that. I'll think about it for a while, but what I'm thinking about is that even in places where education is free, there are always people who would rather take those lower-end jobs, provided they pay enough to live on. There are people who like manual labor, or who are simply not cut out for school, or who don't feel passionate about it, or who would rather have the short-term reward of a paycheck now than go to school for years for a better paycheck later.

I think that if you make the lower classes livable, there will always be people willing to live in them. The problem is, the upper classes have no incentive to make the lower classes livable, so they spend all their time discouraging the lower classes from demanding higher wages or wealth redistribution.

Good points. There probably will always be people who choose the lower classes, especially if it's an honest choice (unlike what we have now), we can manage to eliminate the stigma of lower classes, and somehow make the lower classes' primary concern convenience instead of survival.

But most of the world's lower classes exist in undeveloped nations where demanding higher wages and wealth redistribution isn't even an option. They're even worse off than the poorest people in America. Not only do they struggle with the same decisions we do about risking what little they have to gain a little more, but they also lack the luxury of being the most important consumer base of the people profiting from their poverty. For an economy like Rwanda, for example, where there just isn't much wealth to redistribute in the first place, how would you make lower classes livable there? Obviously by redistributing wealth from developed nations - populated by people who would be risking their own sustainable living standards if they shared. Certainly the wealthy, who already begrudge the people of Europe and America for taking too much, aren't going to allow the rest of the world to get that close to them.

No, they won't do it voluntarily, that's true. They would have to do it under pressure from governments under the control of an informed populace, which is also unlikely.

Meaning that the most likely outcome of the path we're currently on is environmental and economic collapse.