Re:Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)
by hnbad on Monday September 06, 2021 @05:28AM
(#28431923)
Not a direct answer to your question (also 1921 isn't exactly a local optimum considering it's just after the end of WW1 and on the precipice of the Great Depression) but if you take away a "primitive" tribal community's land, charge them for living in it and pay them a starvation wage to work the land for you, you've increased their economical wellbeing by almost every metric.
Additionally the metrics being called out are things like the World Bank's poverty statistics, which applies fairly arbitrary definitions of income-based poverty that in many cases would identify people otherwise labelled "food insecure" as "not in poverty". The definitions are also applied globally and by their nature adjusted over time, which can skew the results. And even if all of these limitations are ignored most of the "improvements" are localized in China.
I'm not going to defend primitivism because I think the problem today is mostly a matter of distribution and resource inefficiency but for a metric that has gotten worse over time (though again not in the 100 year view for obvious reasons) consider leisure time. Hunter-gatherer societies spent considerably less time on sustaining themselves than the 40+ hours per week the average modern human spends working a job, doing household chores and shopping.
The problem is that a lot of the ills don't neatly fit into metrics and even when you try to do so, you have to rely on self-reporting for a lot of them. For example for most workers industrialization massively increased alienation from their work, remote work (but also on the opposite end the need to relocate for career advancement) has drastically increased social isolation, enclosure and the increasing commodification of leisure activity also have take their toll, and social media has increased the spread of disinformation, replaced social interaction with public performance and has been a massive cause of social anxieties.
And of course the thing is that a lot of the problems we have can't just be fixed by a clever improvement because their causes are intrinsic to the system. You can try to reduce overproduction and improve recycling but the best consumer action to help the environment is not to consume and the best industrial action to help the environment is not to produce. But considering how much of our economy hinges on demands people didn't know they had for things they didn't know they need (not just production but also sales, advertising, financing, sales and advertising for the financing, debt collection, sales and advertising for the debt collection to the companies doing the financing, insurance for the companies doing the financing, sales and advertising for the companies doing the insurance, and so on) that just translates into "killing jobs" and "ruining the economy".
Additionally the metrics being called out are things like the World Bank's poverty statistics, which applies fairly arbitrary definitions of income-based poverty that in many cases would identify people otherwise labelled "food insecure" as "not in poverty". The definitions are also applied globally and by their nature adjusted over time, which can skew the results. And even if all of these limitations are ignored most of the "improvements" are localized in China.
I'm not going to defend primitivism because I think the problem today is mostly a matter of distribution and resource inefficiency but for a metric that has gotten worse over time (though again not in the 100 year view for obvious reasons) consider leisure time. Hunter-gatherer societies spent considerably less time on sustaining themselves than the 40+ hours per week the average modern human spends working a job, doing household chores and shopping.
The problem is that a lot of the ills don't neatly fit into metrics and even when you try to do so, you have to rely on self-reporting for a lot of them. For example for most workers industrialization massively increased alienation from their work, remote work (but also on the opposite end the need to relocate for career advancement) has drastically increased social isolation, enclosure and the increasing commodification of leisure activity also have take their toll, and social media has increased the spread of disinformation, replaced social interaction with public performance and has been a massive cause of social anxieties.
And of course the thing is that a lot of the problems we have can't just be fixed by a clever improvement because their causes are intrinsic to the system. You can try to reduce overproduction and improve recycling but the best consumer action to help the environment is not to consume and the best industrial action to help the environment is not to produce. But considering how much of our economy hinges on demands people didn't know they had for things they didn't know they need (not just production but also sales, advertising, financing, sales and advertising for the financing, debt collection, sales and advertising for the debt collection to the companies doing the financing, insurance for the companies doing the financing, sales and advertising for the companies doing the insurance, and so on) that just translates into "killing jobs" and "ruining the economy".