Richard LittlerAliens: "We don't understand why 8.2 billion humans are just standing by while a tiny (tiny!!) fraction of narcissistic, flagrantly benighted terrestrial fucknuggets ruin the planet and risk the future of the species. It makes no sense."
Jamez Barrett 🜃 ॐ Ⓐ@Richard_Littler I would argue that it's more about a system of value than what individual people do or have accumulated. In turn it is a system that directs all that we do and how society is organised. Perhaps the most obvious measure of value in this system is money. But there are other measures of value. To borrow from Pierre Bourdieu, these measures include social, cultural and symbolic capital. All these forms of value drive the hierarchical division of humanity and unequal distribution of resources and wealth. Aliens are more likely to see us as prisoners of our own childish desires and irrational fears, than as simply slaves to a privilege class. The wealth isn't so much the issue as the ridiculous and cruel system that produces it (along with hunger, homelessness, war, militarism, nationalism, poverty, wage slavery, colonialism, child labor, mass consumption, resource exploration, professionalism, the manosphere, environmental destruction, global warming, hoarding, body dismorphia, influencers, super yachts, gated communities....... and so on).
JackMex
numanumayey@JackMexa4 @didgebaba @Richard_Littler
biggest problem with wealth is that it inherently disincentivizes doing anything that promotes self worth - why cook your own food when you can hire a chef and have it delivered to you by a butler?
problem with getting someone else to do it, and it's getting quite salient with LLM usage, is that it induces cognitive and physical decline. you didn't use it, so you lose it.
the privilege of not having to do it anymore quickly devolves into the prison of being unable to do it anymore.
soon wealth becomes the only thing that you have, and you're stuck unable to do anything for yourself, especially if you haven't done it before.
the solution is to build a society that promotes learning new skills and life fulfillment as primary values, above how much wealth you have.
nobody feels horribly insecure anymore, and you'll naturally make a lot of wealth with such a society regardless.
furthermore, a nation not tied to wealth as a value and that prioritizes education and skill over it can do a hell of a lot more on the world stage.
(*cough* china *cough*)
@breathOfLife @JackMexa4 @Richard_Littler yeah...wealth is relative. The ways it can seal people off from greater society is interesting. The wealthy can control their own time and space. It's almost like the symbolic value of money defines the material conditions of human interaction ( that's a tautology I realise). I do know some very wealthy people but they are consistently unhappy and frustrated. It's the seperation they experience as well as the pressure that comes with wealth. Being "well off" is easier.
Raven667@didgebaba just like there should be a floor for poverty which the state does not allow anyone to fall under, so their basic living needs are met, there should be an upper limit as well that no individual can claim as their personal property. In a similar fashion, organizations should also have limits on how much wealth can be under their private control before they need to have representation from worker unions and democratic oversight as well as shareholders to steer decisionmaking to be accountable for dowmstream effects, not just profit.
@raven667 the way to think is what is your budgeted resiliency for bad decisions destroying value, how much is one person allowed to screw up, and when do we need to have collective supervison of resources.
Divarin
@JackMexa4 @Richard_Littler good question. There is a lot that has to be done. I am perhaps of a more radical persuasion. Nation States need to be curtailed. An Indigenous World Council needs to established with executive power. Wealth needs to be collectivised. Surplus should be converted into base production and not more. Tax should be shifted from the Middle Class to Corporate and the Wealthy ( I would argue for the Swedish model as it was in the 1970s). Education should be free. Intellectual Property can last no longer than a creator's lifetime. Psychedelics replace religion. I could go on...