Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

A society isn't things, and most of the things in society are optional; people need way less than they consume, and the things they consume are ephemeral too. The reason consumerism is encouraged is that modern society has enough productivity to satisfy the basic needs of every person in it, with a lot of productivity left over. If people didn't consume the non-essential things that other people produce, there would be no need for their effort. Living like the Amish could solve that problem but then no one would be exploring, innovating, discovering, and certainly not landing on the moon. If the human psyche was satisfied with video games, fast food & working on their novel, society could add those simple things to its list of essentials and be done with it; but people need goals, they need ambition, they need success & failure, or they get restless & dissatisfied. It doesn't take long for aimless protests in the streets demanding ever more esoteric things.

The question is: what do people do? Traditionally, people were employed in manufacturing, so getting those jobs back, even if it requires a subsidy, is important. However, even then, robots are supposed to take everyone's job, but Amazon is fully automated yet people still shop & eat where other people are, so the service industry obviously isn't going anywhere. Talk of an Information society has been around for a few decades but it turned out to be nothing doing nothing; people need to feel what they’re doing is something, or at least feel the time between what they are doing is something; therefore, society needs to subsidize parks, art, concerts, fairs, celebrations, and promotion of jobs workers can be proud of doing, whatever the cost.