If there’s only one working person for every four old people, and those four old people each need one or two caretakers a piece then there’s not enough workers to go around.
And that doesn’t count every other job in society that needs done to support the caretakers, like growing food and fixing toilets.
I don’t think most jobs need doing. I don’t want any jobs at all period.
But if you have four old people who need four workers to care for them and there’s only one worker to go around no amount of firing social media managers and insurance adjusters is gonna fix it.
This isn’t an economic problem, it’s a demographic one. Which is why it’s a problem across the world and not just in capitalist nations. (And is in fact worst in China due to the effects of the one child policy.)
Okay, let’s assume it’s 10-1. How many other people, in a perfectly efficient system, would it take to provide a decent quality of life for that caretaker and the 10 elderly people? Growing and transporting food, building and maintaining infrastructure, researching and providing medical care, producing electricity and clean water. Nothing extra.
What term would you use instead of “funding”? Even if we ditch capitalism, as we should, doctors et al still need to get paid, and hospitals still need money to operate (assuming we got rid of any for-profit healthcare). We wouldn’t be doing this with a barter system, right?
The problem is that the base still relies on humans. Even in a perfect system you can’t eliminate greed. Eventually someone will want more than what they need and use violence to take it and the cycle repeats
What’s it like to consider reality a distant and off-putting concept but an imaginary conception of society totally familiar and so doable it’s not even worth mentioning the process to get to it?
Capitalism has been around for a couple of hundred years. During most of that time fertility rates were high in pretty much every capitalist society. This changed within a generation of contraceptives becoming widely available, even in those capitalist societies most strongly influenced by socialism, with low poverty rates and where generally everyone can easily afford to have children. I think we can make a fair guess which factor was more important, between capitalism and contraception.
Humans, and mammals in general, never developed an innate desire to reproduce. It was never necessary in an evolutionary sense, since fucking led to reproduction. There hasn’t been enough time for humans as a species to adapt to the new reality, and we can probably develop new contraceptive technology faster than any resistance to them can evolve (one would expect, for example, allergies to the contraceptive pill or condoms to start appearing and/or increasing in frequency among the population).
The more impactful evolution might be of a sociological nature. Cultures and subcultures that encourage large families should be expected to begin proliferating globally. We have seen some beginnings of this happening, such as the Haredim in Israel and ultraconservative communities elsewhere.
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Even without capitalism the math doesn’t math.
If there’s only one working person for every four old people, and those four old people each need one or two caretakers a piece then there’s not enough workers to go around.
And that doesn’t count every other job in society that needs done to support the caretakers, like growing food and fixing toilets.
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I don’t think most jobs need doing. I don’t want any jobs at all period.
But if you have four old people who need four workers to care for them and there’s only one worker to go around no amount of firing social media managers and insurance adjusters is gonna fix it.
This isn’t an economic problem, it’s a demographic one. Which is why it’s a problem across the world and not just in capitalist nations. (And is in fact worst in China due to the effects of the one child policy.)
deleted by creator
Okay, let’s assume it’s 10-1. How many other people, in a perfectly efficient system, would it take to provide a decent quality of life for that caretaker and the 10 elderly people? Growing and transporting food, building and maintaining infrastructure, researching and providing medical care, producing electricity and clean water. Nothing extra.
And how many people to support these people.
Probably more than we’d have available to work.
There’s a reason China started taxing condoms.
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Having worked in technology for a quarter century I do not have the rosy view of it that you do.
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Are you advocating for not treating the sick whatsoever, or are you assuming total governmental funding for treating the sick?
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What term would you use instead of “funding”? Even if we ditch capitalism, as we should, doctors et al still need to get paid, and hospitals still need money to operate (assuming we got rid of any for-profit healthcare). We wouldn’t be doing this with a barter system, right?
deleted by creator
The problem is that the base still relies on humans. Even in a perfect system you can’t eliminate greed. Eventually someone will want more than what they need and use violence to take it and the cycle repeats
deleted by creator
What’s it like to consider reality a distant and off-putting concept but an imaginary conception of society totally familiar and so doable it’s not even worth mentioning the process to get to it?
deleted by creator
Great, you get to just make up an argument I never made and run with it. My favorite.
Capitalism has been around for a couple of hundred years. During most of that time fertility rates were high in pretty much every capitalist society. This changed within a generation of contraceptives becoming widely available, even in those capitalist societies most strongly influenced by socialism, with low poverty rates and where generally everyone can easily afford to have children. I think we can make a fair guess which factor was more important, between capitalism and contraception.
Humans, and mammals in general, never developed an innate desire to reproduce. It was never necessary in an evolutionary sense, since fucking led to reproduction. There hasn’t been enough time for humans as a species to adapt to the new reality, and we can probably develop new contraceptive technology faster than any resistance to them can evolve (one would expect, for example, allergies to the contraceptive pill or condoms to start appearing and/or increasing in frequency among the population).
The more impactful evolution might be of a sociological nature. Cultures and subcultures that encourage large families should be expected to begin proliferating globally. We have seen some beginnings of this happening, such as the Haredim in Israel and ultraconservative communities elsewhere.