genejockey 

I don't think we get where we want to go solely by frugality. If people are convinced they're being called upon to sacrifice stuff in the present for a future they can't picture, they won't do it. We see this already.

genejockey 

So, LESS market capitalism, more social democracy, because market capitalism doesn't really provide everything people want on its own.

Also note that you just proposed a different economic system. You can argue semantically that it's not THAT different, but it's different from what we currently have.

​​​​​​
I'm pretty happy with the empirical confirmation of my point, thanks.


I take surveys with a grain of salt, and prefer to observe people's actual behavior. We say we want to work less, but companies have to put in maximum vacation accrual because people don't even take the much-lower number of vacation days we Americans get, and it adds up. We say we're willing to do with less, but we keep borrowing money to buy more stuff. So, which do you believe? What people SAY THEY WANT or what people ACTUALLY DO? I tend to believe the latter.

Also, I'd note that, yet again, you are implicitly agreeing that the economic system would have to change.

Koyote

I suspect you know that we don't live in a pure market capitalist system...Far from it. In fact, such a system (arguably) has only existed for a few brief periods in a few places, like Western Europe in the early modern age. And that was so awful that societies almost immediately started restraining it. (See Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation as a starting point.)

​​​​​​Not qualitatively, since we live in a system with substantial government redistribution and social control over the operation of capital. But your attitude seems rather extreme: We can't do anything to allow greater happiness if it means changing the system. Yikes.

I'm just glad that you finally seem to understand the point I was making in posts 37 and 44. You seem to understand that it's theoretically possible, even if not probable. That's progress.

Ironfish653

Just FYI; I am enabling all of y'alls carbon footprint.

You're welcome

50PlusCycling

I moved to Japan years ago, and married into a Japanese family. In Japan, people are frugal as a rule, they spend carefully, and save as much as they can, much like Americans did a few generations ago. My wife, in Japanese fashion, manages the finances, deciding how much we can spend, and putting away the rest for our kids’ college tuition and our own retirement. We both work, and both do well, and this has allowed us to own a home, a car, and other things while having no debt. We tend to spend on the things we “need,” and not on things we merely “want.”

The relationship between income and happiness is largely imaginary. I’ve lived on both ends of the economic ladder, and found that I could be happy on either end. But one thing which will always cause stress and trouble is spending more than you earn. Money is a medium we can use to exchange the value of labor, but, in good hands (even your own, with practice) it is something which can be sowed and reaped to make more money. You can spend money, or you can use it to make more money, the latter is the wiser choice, and can often give you more satisfaction than the mere act of buying more things.

The desire to buy things is foolish, because things are just things, and the pleasure we feel when we get a new toy quickly fades. The goal of marketing and advertising is to sell us things we don’t need and can’t afford. There is a lot of science behind marketing and advertising which is designed to part us with our money as quickly as possible, and most of us who have gotten into economic trouble have done so not because of too-low wages, but too-high spending.

jon c. 

When I was young many futurists predicted that we would all work less in the next century as technology would greatly increase productivity. In theory, we would all be able to consume at the same level while working less to achieve that. Alas that theory relied on the workers seeing the benefit of the gains in productivity. The added value of technology has certainly increased wealth but the distribution thereof has remained somewhat unequal.

genejockey 

Capitalism is not a way of life, it's a tool, and like many tools needs to be carefully controlled or it will cut your hand off.
​
No, my attitude is "This is how the system as it is works. If we want it to work differently, we need to change it.

It's theoretically possible if we change how the system works, which you seem to be acknowledging. I'm describing how the system as it is works. Again, you want a different result, you need to change the system. I don't think the system we currently have is optimal.

indyfabz

At least there are Spandex jackets for everyone. Just too bad they come with short warranties and fade easily, requiring you to turn them inside out if you want to be frugal.

genejockey 

In Star Trek, cheap energy and molecular transmutation largely rendered "work" in the current sense unnecessary, and the benefits were share by all, ending poverty and allowing mankind to seek the stars. There are, no doubt, a number of more dystopian stories with much the same premise but a vastly different result, where those benefits are NOT shared equally.

seypat

If a cyclist really wants to reduce their carbon footprint, they need to purchase the less expensive shoes with the nylon plates/soles instead of the high end ones with the carbon plates/soles.

genejockey 

Or buy the same carbon-soled shoes, but in a smaller size.

datlas 

If thrift is mean, I am super mean.

Know what I mean?

MagnaRota

Be thrifty on your own terms.

It leaves you with more money to spend, also on your own terms. It doesn't seem too complicated.

seypat

There's nothing special about being mean. That's just an average condition. Now if you like to ride your bike on the divider between the lanes, that's a different situation.

seypat

This image is making me crazy about breakfast cereal for some reason.

Polaris OBark

"Mean" means "cheapskate" in Britspeak.

Then there is "mean" vs. "median."

seypat

I tend to be thrifty when reserving a rental car.

Polaris OBark

Sometimes (with regular frequency) I laugh at these posts so hard that it Hertz.

genejockey 

What do I mean by the word 'mean'? What do I mean by the word 'word'? What do I mean by 'what do I mean'? What do I mean by 'do' and what do I do by 'mean'? And what do I do by do by do and what do I mean by wasting your time like this? Good night.

genejockey 

It's probably a sine of something untoward.

BBB_Adrift

In fairness to "the futurists", the next century is still young. We are less than a 1/4 of the way through it. The reports coming out now about the threats posed by AI seem (to my eyes) to be evidence that we lie on the cusp of just this eventuality. Caveat: AI-based manufacturing/industry/services will predominate principally in countries where labour costs are highest. In the Middle East (where I currently reside), one sees cheap labour used in preference to expensive tools as the economics work that way.

The psychological hurdle for govt/legislators seems to be how to justify paying people to not work. The first trials are being held in UK now, where people are being paid a (relatively) high wage to stay out of the labour market. One could argue that this is an extension of the welfare state and, to a degree it is, but it's based on a gradual realisation that there are some traditional jobs that can now be better (and more cheaply and consistently reliably) done by machine than by man.

indyfabz

Speak for yourself.

indyfabz

I always pay a dollar.

Paul Barnard

Well, golly. Thanks for clearing that up?

Paul Barnard

You sound like an enterprising man.