by arcolithe wrote:I'm pretty sure there must be an article on how individuality positively affects technological progress.
And technological progress beats any maximization efforts of labour.
And the best way to get a country out of depravity and income disparity is through "developing" capital-intensive practices.
I don't understand OP's comment on capitalism and family vs family. But I don't understand most of the Net Neutrality fad that's going around (despite what people try to "explain" me)
There are several, which is why small businesses tend thrive and large corporations tend to stagnate. It doesn't invalidate anything I have said, though. The thing is that we live in a world of 5+ billion people. Is it that hard to sort through the people and find people that match your culture and can provide innovative thinking without rocking the boat?
And if there weren't any progress to be made out of maximization of labor, we wouldn't see giant corporations running agriculture, communications, distribution, entertainment, and other aspects of our life, and buying up more such businesses to get even bigger. It's a giant pond where the old, fat fish eat the young, fast fish. The young fish usually willingly giving themselves to the bigger fish for something in return.
As far as development and economic improvements, it's been proven pretty well that you have to balance capital investments into infrastructure and such with quality of life improvements for the population. And the trickle down portion only works if it is used to create jobs for those that are in need of them. Simply providing breaks to those with wealth to spare usually just nets in the rich getting richer and the money not spreading very far.
In fact, one can argue that the QoL improvements do more to promote individualism and cultural development than anything else can.
Several comments were pulled out of another thread, so there's some references to posts there.
ricky wrote:I think it has a lot to do with specialization in the economy as well. You simply don't need to know anything anymore. As long as you can hold down one job, you can reasonably afford to have someone else take care of problems you know nothing about.
The baker doesn't know how to make shoes, and he doesn't have to.
If you want to look at it this way, mankind has been in this position since the foundation of civilization and the specialization of labor. The men hunted, the older children picked berries and nuts, the women worked in the camp and took care of the little children.
@Nooby: just because you refuse to understand the argument (or maybe you can't?) doesn't make the argument wrong. It's like the artist saying the sky is a beautiful shade of blue, and the physicist saying that the moisture in the atmosphere provides a brilliant spectral pattern that makes the sky vibrant today. It's the same sky, the same everything except the person perceiving it. And just because a person makes a different argument than you that you can't understand doesn't give you a right to be an ass and start lashing out.
NOOBY93 wrote:Someone who doesn't want to change his situation because it's comfortable and he's lazy is pretty much the opposite of a slave.
Seen Django Unchained? I'll refer to Samuel Jackson's character, the house slave. He was comfortable and lazy and didn't want to change his situation. That's what made him a slave, not the bondage of forced servitude or being owned by another person. Other people submit to slavery out of fear of the consequences--beatings and an even worse master and even harder labor, maybe even death. If it meant a lifelong job where I could have comfortable hours, and decent retirement, and enough freedom to do what I wanted, I'd gladly give myself into slavery, but that isn't what happens. Power corrupts, always. The minute you take away a person's freedoms, or the person gives away freely, someone gains power. That power eventually goes to their head and they start abusing it. Maybe they don't do real evil by the person, but the social contract starts breaking down because the owner no longer has any consequences.
Consequences are why individual freedoms are better than slavery, both socially and economically. It's easier to enforce because a free person can walk away. But what if a free person can't just walk away? The modern "wage slave" term has come about because people can no longer walk away from jobs without severe and harsh consequences: the person lacks education to find work elsewhere; nobody will hire that person (black balled) because they walked away from another company (illegal in many jursidictions, but still happens); can't afford to move to another location to find work. Other reasons exist. The consequences are often self inflicted, but are just as real and sting just as much as a slavemaster's whip. It's a real thing, even if you don't want to acknowledge it.
NOOBY93 wrote:We can't have a utopia though.
Can't, or just refuse to accept it? No, we really can't because we aren't perfect beings, we're all individuals with our own wants and desires, and the ego and id won't let us devote ourselves to another person's idea of what utopia is fully. We can come close, but we'll never fully reach it as a society. Individual cultures can come closer, but only an individual can truly create their own Utopia. (Of course, what life has meaning without others in it?) We accept the fact that we can't reach this goal even though most of us stride towards it.
NOOBY93 wrote:Also how is there more meaning to life in hermitting than in the "system"? My grand uncle and his wife live in a village that nobody else lives in and they make their own food, home, and everything. Their lives are trash. They have to work all day tirelessly to survive, they can't rest, have fun, enjoy their relationship. They will die exhausted and wrinkly after living a worthless tiring life.
Might I suggest reading Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" where he makes the case for doing exactly this in one's life?
Got a link to the Gutenberg site publication of it here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205 ... tm#linkW19 Also available via Amazon's Kindle/Kindle app or other e-readers (should be for free as it is public domain if you don't need a translation to a native language from the original 1850s American English).
Jalpha wrote: I'm not sure how you propose to derive meaning from your existence post retirement.
Most people that are devoted to their work can't when they first retire. Most everyone figures it out at some point.
