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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   25228 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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In the spherical cow hypothetical of half the supply of labor vanishing with literally no other negative effects, yes, quality of life for the remaining would improve profoundly. This isn't a matter of "belief," it's history and biology. Wherever civilized and sufficiently stable nations have recovered from sudden and large declines in population, golden ages have followed. It's ecological succession as applied to humans.

Not to be taken as personally misanthropic--I'm quite pro humans, quite pro there being many, many more. The US is simply not presently equipped for its number of inhabitants, and this is not a problem that can be solved without first deporting 50 million people.

(A: it won't, of course, because, broadly, more labor => more production => more Stuff That People Want)

It doesn't matter if you make $10 an hour and strawberries cost $5 or you make $100 an hour and strawberries cost $50. The way you bring down the price of strawberries is by producing more strawberries. Repeat x1b across literally everything.

You describe the mechanism. Yes, flooding supply is how you decrease prices. I'm not denying the mechanism, I'm saying its benefit is illusory. Abundant cheap offshore labor is how you produce abundant cheap plastic garbage. We wouldn't need abundant cheap plastic garbage if bankers hadn't destroyed the value of the dollar, if the owners hadn't outsourced so much labor, and if those same owners hadn't stalled out worker compensation.

That's all the economy is, now. The ongoing attempt to outrun the consequences of those decisions.

This isn't a matter of "belief," it's history and biology. Wherever civilized and sufficiently stable nations have recovered from sudden and large declines in population, golden ages have followed.

I'm going to have to ask for a citation, because this seems like an extraordinary claim and contrary to basically every historical example I'm aware of. What's the mechanism here? It is true that the recovery that follows an apocalyptic event will seem like a golden age compared to the apocalypse. However, the fact that hitting rock bottom leaves nowhere to go but up does not mean hitting rock bottom is welfare enhancing.

(I have a weird feeling you're going to pick the Black Death, but maybe you'll surprise me).

I'm not denying the mechanism, I'm saying its benefit is illusory.

What are you actually trying to say? Like, what is the counterfactual scenario you are proposing? You say the benefit of material abundance is illusory, but also seem to expect that things would be better if instead of having more stuff workers were paid better. Is your position "actually, things would be better if we had less stuff"? If so, you should say that. If not, there's a basic problem where higher worker compensation and lower prices are isomorphic. If worker compensation rises but the amount of goods remain the same (per your stipulation) the result is the inflation that seems to incense you.

I guess “golden ages” are just the dead-cat bounces of civilizational history.

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