What Would Constitute a "Meager Lifestyle"?

[Martin Hash]

Capsule Hotel.jpg

1. Multi-unit cubical or pod living which included utilities, a la Japanese tube hotels
2. Cheap data plan, mostly using Wifi
3. Government provided healthcare
4. Cheap clothes
5. Cheap food
6. Public transportation, better multi-passenger Uber, better yet multi-passenger self-driving cars
7. Cheap sports/entertainment
8. Gaming console
9. Cheap dope
10. ???

Of course, families with children would have different but similar requirements

[Ex-California]

Can you really imagine Westerners living in pods like that? Especially if the obesity epidemic continues?

[Martin Hash]

I'm an optimist.

[Speaker to Animals]

You really have a hard-on for dehumanizing poor people.

[Martin Hash]

I live like that now, less even. Who R U to say what's "dehumanizing"? That's SJW talk.

The folks who only want to work 2 days a week then surf, smoke dope & "do something meaningful" have that choice if the cost of living was appropriate. Want to have a 4 room cubicle, work 3 days. Want to live in the suburbs & drive a Subaru, then work for it mutterfukker.

[Speaker to Animals]

People are not meant to live in little cube boxes, digging and filling holes for no reason other than to humiliate themselves for being poor.

For a moment, imagine we live in a world where there exist only enough jobs for some fraction of society, and the rest are forced onto this welfare system you propose. They must live in little boxes like animals. In order to receive the privilege of feeding themselves and living in their boxes, they must go out each workday to dig a hole so the guy who lives in the box next to them can fill the hole the following day.

How long do you think that lasts before the people living in boxes burn the entire thing to the ground (literally)?

[Speaker to Animals]

I would suggest that, if we don't abandon the current economic model to accommodate technological advancement's effects on productivity and work in general, then we might as well go back to something barbaric (in the literal sense, not pejorative), since civilization in that case fails to work out. It only works for people lucky enough to get jobs, or who inherited wealth.

Another dimension to this I think falls into an evolutionary category. Social and cultural changes result in genetic changes in the human population that lives under those changes for many generations. The society you seem to describe would strongly select for intelligence and productivity in the capitalistic sense, which I am sure you think is great, but consider what it selects for extinction: genetic traits that predispose one towards art, culture, music, nurture, compassion, and so on. All the things that make being human worthwhile would be selected against in such a society.

We would be better off just deescalating civilization itself and transitioning to some form of future primitivism or barbarianism where, while we don't produce so much, neither do we live without technology. That's the only way I can see fixing this without changing the economic model of our civilization. You can have capitalism in some fashion if we become more barbaric.

Otherwise, we need to think about what economic system comes next in an environment where productivity is so high only a fraction of the population need work.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

I think the problem is you are being a little too literal Speaker.

There are tons of cheap housing options that I would find totally acceptable. I don't exactly like being crammed into a huge building full of people in a metropolis, but that is because crowds irritate me, and it isn't required here, where we have loads of space.

And the make work, as I understand it, could be much more edifying than aimless manual labor.

[Martin Hash]

People are not meant to live in little cube boxes, digging and filling holes for no reason other than to humiliate themselves for being poor.

For a moment, imagine we live in a world where there exist only enough jobs for some fraction of society, and the rest are forced onto this welfare system you propose. They must live in little boxes like animals. In order to receive the privilege of feeding themselves and living in their boxes, they must go out each workday to dig a hole so the guy who lives in the box next to them can fill the hole the following day.

How long do you think that lasts before the people living in boxes burn the entire thing to the ground (literally)?

You live off the State & have the audacity to tell others what you want so that they are essentially working for you?! Fuck you.

A society is nothing more than people agreeing not to kill one another, and to band together to fight off the tribe across the hill when they inevitably come to take your stuff. Lots of folks who are seeking control for themselves try to tie mysticism & subjective values to the deal ex post, but The Law doesn't allow parole evidence when adjudicating contracts.

No one is beholden to you. (You don't understand liberty, do you?)

[Speaker to Animals]

I think the problem is you are being a little too literal Speaker.

There are tons of cheap housing options that I would find totally acceptable. I don't exactly like being crammed into a huge building full of people in a metropolis, but that is because crowds irritate me, and it isn't required here, where we have loads of space.

And the make work, as I understand it, could be much more edifying than aimless manual labor.

I am not being too literal at all. I just pointed out that I think one viable alternative to this horrific future would be a deescalation of a highly urbanized civilization into smaller groups, which would entail in many cases probably relatively simple villages interspersed with some technology. For instance, you could have a cob village that is wired into the internet, has workspaces for members to do some freelance or contract work remotely, etc.

What Hash described was a world where people don't even have that choice because they can't afford the land or taxes or anything else. There exist no jobs for them, so they live on welfare, which means they get to live in a box while digging pointless holes all day.