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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27162 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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On the contrary, I think you're building a big assumption in here, that countries could simply provide "quality of life worth a damn" to everyone living under their umbrella and are electing not to out of spite. Instead, as that thread covered, even providing a low-quality of life for someone that can't fully care for themselves is incredibly expensive and a massive burden on nations that are dealing with inverted population pyramids.

I haven't really had a chance to rigorously think through this, but I've occasionally had an economics thought experiment involving total economic output being measured in working hours, rather than hard currency: given that the law demands specific caregiver-to-resident ratios for these communities (the reasons for which are not unreasonable, in my opinion), we can quantify what fraction of our cumulative efforts goes into providing for our elderly and infirm. It seems reasonable that a society that spends more of its time this way isn't spending it on, say, fundamental research and technology. Ultimately it seems like technology is, other than demographics, our only way to improve this number in the long run.

On the other hand, that presupposes that research and invention is a better use of our time, which quite possibly isn't always the case: would you trade grandma for yet another cryptocurrency startup? So maybe this is just a derivative "increasing GDP doesn't reflect improving my societal preferences" complaint.

It seems reasonable that a society that spends more of its time this way isn't spending it on, say, fundamental research and technology.

It isn't really. Fundamental research and technology is hard, and almost nobody can actually meaningfully contribute to it. It's only getting harder as progressively higher-hanging fruit is picked. Meanwhile, almost everyone can help the infirm. It's just manual labour. As long as you're not a psychopath and not disabled, you can do it.

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