Morticia Twoturbo
Flesh & bone by the telephoneWe have more than enough resources for everyone. We could easily feed the entire fucking world, and provide medical care, and housing.
But we choose not to, because a few want more than their fair share.
It is immoral to continue like this.
Giflian@minego and we're taught to fight amongst ourselves for the artificially slim pickings while the robber barons get richer
Kent PitmanYou might enjoy my 2012 essay Corny Economics, which speaks to this issue.
http://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2012/05/corny-economics.html
econads@kentpitman
I did enjoy it, and saved it. It's a little bit precovid with the emphasis on working from the office, but still.
What about community/socialising? Are they harmonicas? I would argue they're corn.
Another point I thought of is that "essential" tends to be defined by your current situation. I couldn't imagine living hand to mouth, but most people (worldwide) do..
Was that what you @minego meant by security?
Essential in the piece isn't meant to be a precise decision procedure but a thought exercise. Still, there is in the world the notion of a living wage that is similarly vague but most agree is in some form a thing.
The reason this matters is not that you should be happy necessarily with a Spartan existence, though there is the issue of environmental sustainability to be taken into account. Even ignoring that here for conversational simplicity, there can be no market competition for a proper wage when the alternative is starvation. By assuring a basic existence for all, that none will be homeless or starve, the person bargaining knows they will not fall to ruin if they walk away from a bad deal. In the modern marketplace, people take the worst wages, and often dangerous or sociopathic jobs, because they cannot afford not to, lest they starve.
I think we would find that some jobs commanded a better wage without such a fear. That might even change the price of some products. Some things we think are inexpensive might not be if we couldn't force people, by fear of starvation, to take an unfairly low wage. A fair market finds a fair price when two people who can freely walk away from a bad deal opt not to. If either of them cannot freely walk away, the ability of the market to find a fair price is compromised. Right now, many can't walk away for fear they'll fall to ruin with no baseline safety net.
Some skeptics may fear that we can't afford the price shift caysed by paying everyone a baseline minimum, and a fair wage beyond that, might bring. But that's just saying we'd rather cheap fruit than moral fairness. We should aspire to better. We're plenty enough rich as a society to comfortably afford that, what we can't afford or a handful of multi-billionaires hoarding most of the money and consequent power.
And some might say they're just too many people. That's a hard problem. But if we have it, there's no substitute for addressing it separately.
Funny you should mention covid. There's a sequel I wrote during the pandemic, when society wrestled with what was essential.
The Two Economies
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-two-economies.html
invispace@minego Absolutely. It's a choice.
A. Chiwo@minego for some reason people think everyone must get stuff on their own just because. Is it ego? is it envy? is it pride?
a fading echo@minego Worse. Because quite a lot want people unfed and uncared for.
Brokar@minego The barrier and refusal to do it are called "shareholder value" and "patent ownership".
During COVID, a PANDEMIC, everyone talked about vaccination. But only if you could afford it. When we (the rich countries) already talked about booster shots in Africa only 7% in total were vaccinated because they had not developed an own vaccination and were dependent on us (the rich countries with the patents and such) to provide that to them.
That meas you can live if you can afford it, no sharing.
During COVID, a PANDEMIC, everyone talked about vaccination. But only if you could afford it. When we (the rich countries) already talked about booster shots in Africa only 7% in total were vaccinated because they had not developed an own vaccination and were dependent on us (the rich countries with the patents and such) to provide that to them.
That meas you can live if you can afford it, no sharing.
AndrewThis short piece written two years ago speaks to the sentiment you are expressing.
https://vocal.media/earth/carpe-diem-yr1qr40u5y
#yolo #death #life #hunger #wealth #equality #distribution #resources #planet #earth #humanity #hunger
Joker@minego Funny but that's what I read in the Bible too.
@kleb These Christian nationalists have clearly never read it.
Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama