| ▲ | vachina 6 hours ago |
| The top 1% is freaking out at the thought of population shrinking because the cogs of the machine won’t turn itself. |
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| ▲ | foobiekr 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| Being able to punish and control others, especially sexual exploitation, is a huge part of the draw. You need lots of slaves for that. |
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| ▲ | btilly 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The other 99% is even more dependent on the machine than the top 1%. They can build themselves reinforced bunkers, just in case. What is your plan if, say, the food distribution infrastructure breaks down? Does that sound like an extremely unlikely outcome? Back in 2008, we came within hours of credit cards stopping working. Projections say that if credit cards stop working, food distribution breaks down. Mass hunger is not far behind that. And there is nothing like mass hunger to destroy a society. Esoteric problems in financial markets have real world consequences. We've gone nearly a century since the last real demonstration of that. Don't discount the possibility that the next demonstration will be within your lifetime. And in our more interconnected world, it's likely to be a lot worse. |
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| ▲ | BigTTYGothGF 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > if credit cards stop working, food distribution breaks down Except for the very last step in the chain I find it hard to believe that credit cards play much of a role. | | |
| ▲ | Henchman21 an hour ago | parent [-] | | You don’t think goods are acquired on credit? Or are you focused pedantically on credit cards? |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is a call for community and durable systems that serve the human instead of traditional systems built to aggregate and funnel capital to a few. The fertility crisis is a capital crisis (taxpayers needed to pay back debt issued today decades into the future, workers for corporate profits), not a crisis for the individual. I see it as an exciting opportunity to maintain and improve quality of life for humans while solving for decoupling from these suboptimal systems primarily built to extract and exploit. Solarpunk vibes. https://ilsr.org/ is one resource, there are more. (to your food example, the US harvests land the aggregate size of the state of Oregon just for biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel; this is, arguable, unnecessary, and there are many other examples of unnecessary economic activity that can be deprecated) | | |
| ▲ | btilly 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I could rant about the stupidity of spending fossil fuels, to grow biofuels, for no net gain in energy. But with a definite cost in engine wear. That said, like Democracy, capitalism is the worst economic system, except all of the others that have been tried. And there have been enough alternate experiments that I wouldn't want to literally bet my life on the next one working better. | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Europe has done fairly well imho balancing socialism with capitalism and free market mechanisms, good patterns exist today I argue, even if they need tweaks and improvement. Importantly, these demographic curves are locked in for decades into the future, so might as well get comfortable with forward curve of change, we aren't going back to the historical demographic growth curve in anyone's lifetime, if ever. Plan, forecast, and model accordingly. The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44866621 - August 2025 (400 comments) (~71% of the world’s population now lives in countries with birth rates below the replacement level needed to maintain population size, the remainder will follow in time) |
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| ▲ | rekabis an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What is your plan if, say, the food distribution infrastructure breaks down? 300 acres on the westward-facing slope of the interior cascade temperate rainforest. Even if the entire region sees extended drying over the next 50, there will still be sufficient rainfall for crops. All it will need are a few holding pools to reliably produce a year-round supply. It’s also reasonably remote, difficult to reach unless you know of the specific path, and reasonably defensible. | | |
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| ▲ | theflyinghorse 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Top 1% are too divorced from the real world to have ever seen a cog. |
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| ▲ | M95D 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | But they have some ideea how many people need to work to make them that much money. |
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| ▲ | Ajedi32 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If the "cogs of the machine" freeze up and economy tanks the top 1% will be fine. You might not be. |
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| ▲ | danny_codes 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Depends what we mean by freeze up. Revolutions usually mean some part of the elite class gets killed or exiled. Happens all the time. |
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| ▲ | OutOfHere 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Isn't that what AI and robots are intended to be for? As for the customers, B2B could still work. |
