HalloweenSnarry
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User ID: 795
HalloweenSnarry
2d ago
Food is to survive, what makes life worth living are other things that is not food.
Yes, but some might argue that numbers on a graph are not what makes life worth living.
I think using the example of a formerly-communist country is misleading, and that there is a minimum level of prosperity in absolute terms, not relative, wherein people can be satisfied. Did Latvians suffer in the post-Soviet scenario you described, or were they still happy despite a lack of industrial capacity?
HalloweenSnarry
2d ago
I would think the disparity in reaction here is because the upper class are expected to behave better than that, to rise above vice, and they often try to avoid disabusing the public about such a notion.
Consider the meme of pedophile Catholic priests: these are the people who are supposed to be your spiritual leaders, and while all humans are fallible under Christian doctine, molesting boys is a level of sin that one could otherwise not believe a holy man would stoop to.
Maybe it's some sort of hardwired primal instinct. If we gravitate towards hierarchy, we also gravitate towards expecting more out of our social betters.
HalloweenSnarry
2d ago
I dunno, I think both left and right have been directionally-correct in that the economy is not the end-all-be-all of civilization. Plenty of societies in the past didn't give as much consideration to economic growth, yes, but they seemingly didn't really need it.
The way you wrote this post, I genuinely cannot tell if you are being sincere, because, at risk of mod intervention, it sounds like an alien value. If anything, I think it's the opposite: there are other values that allow us to have economic power, they are what lead to an economy and not strictly the other way around.
We are at this point, and you are concerned, because some of the very values that enable the economy are themselves weakened and endangered.
HalloweenSnarry
3d ago
But allowing tariffs destroying economy? That is borderline to treason against the USA.
Is the economy that central to the American nation? I understand that market freedom has been an important component of our political strength, but at the same time, this feels like preparing for the last Cold War right as we are in the midst of a new one.
Okay, then, that's something else, and that seems to explain a lot if you actually are from Latvia. As an American, I am way more amenable to arguments that we are suffering from success, and to some extent, our nation likely barely suffered the kind of privation experienced by Eastern Europe.
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