We're talking about law here; rules for everyone, not just Christians. Your argument assumes a Christian hegemony, it assume the primacy of a Christian perspective. It lacks respect for the views of non-christians. In that regard it is immoral. — Banno

The US Constitution guarantees freedom from government-involvement in religious affairs--clear separation of Church and State. The Texas law certainly involves the state in what is primarily a religious issue (not just when life begins but when personhood begins, adult autonomy (reproductive decision making), the right to privacy, and more. The Texan government has decided in favor of extremely intrusive involvement in (what many consider) private, individual, reproductive decision-making.

However, it doesn't seem reasonable to ignore the religious makeup of Texas. "According to the Pew Research Center in 2014, Christianity was the largest religion (77%).[62][63] The following largest were the irreligious (18%), nothing in particular (13%), Judaism (1%), Islam (1%), Buddhism (1%) and Hinduism and other religions at less than 1 percent each."

The 77% of Texas Christians tilt strongly toward the conservative end of the spectrum. What percentage of belief, political views, or practice does it take to achieve hegemony? It seems like believers have it there. My congressional district in Minnesota votes about 80% Democratic-Farm-Labor. Do we have hegemony?

Just to clarify, I strongly disapprove of the Texas law on abortion, am absolutely pro-choice. I don't pray, don't believe in heaven or hell, and a divinely managed creation. Pretty much an atheist. Minnesota is somewhat less religious, and more liberal at that, than Texas, but the Lutherans and Catholics (et al) run things.

Mars has to colonised. — I like sushi

Why? Has it failed in some way that an invasion from earth could fix it?

ditto, per @James Riley.

Put it on the back side of the moon so we won't have to look at the mess they will surely make. I do not want to look up at the moon and see a big AMAZON or HILTON advertising blinking off ad on. The back side also has the advantage of being shielded from earth's radio noise, so it would be a good place for radio astronomy.

The back side of the moon has geology which is dissimilar to the front side (or so I have heard). We should study that.

Just the fact that we can get to the moon in at least 3 days, and not at least 6 months, counts for a lot.

No problem on earth can better be solved on the moon.

Im thinking that with all the technology we only have higher consumption. — schopenhauer1

This seems to be true. First, there is the purchase of the technology itself. One bought the desk computer and put the typewriter in the basement. One bought a desk-top printer, then refills of ink or toner. One bought the nice little cell phone, then a case to put it in; then there are the monthly service fees. (Of course there are monthly services for land lines too.). One wants some apps that provide special features, games, music and so on. Lots of stuff works this way.

How is it in 80 years, 40 hour norm isn’t commensurate with the efficiency in technology and reduced accordingly. — schopenhauer1

That's a good question. Maybe...

IF one is paid by the hour, the longer one is on the clock, the more one gets paid. Maybe one could do one's job in 6 hours, but that means 2 fewer hours of pay. If one gets paid a salary, and one can't just get up and leave for the day when one has nothing more to do, there is no incentive to be more efficient. Large numbers of workers get a 40 hour a week block; they get paid the same whether they are efficient or not.

Parkinson's law: Work expands to fill the available time, just as paper expands to fill the available space. Have we not all had to experience of stretching a 1 hour task out to 3 hours, because the other things waiting to do were not very appealing?

If the workday was cut from 8 hours per shift to 6 hours (no change in day) my guess is people would get their jobs done in 6 hours. (Of course, if one's job requires being on duty for 8 hours, like a nurse, waiter, cop, etc., this wouldn't apply.). Employing workers for 4 six hour shift a day, rather than 3 eight hour shifts probably isn't going to happen, but it could.

Sorry, I didn't explain it well. 70% of GDP is private consumption. 30% is public consumption -- everything that the city, county, state, and federal governments spend, everything from submarines to city owned hospitals. The US does have a solid production base, though some of it is located in places like China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh.

It's a perfectly normal looking pyramid, just like the one Cheops built. The bottom 70% is consumer spending, the top 30% is government spending.

Besides that, I don't at all think of Americans as lazy, though we do tend to be over-weight on to obese, but that is increasingly a world-wide problem. In an economy, the people both produce and consume, their share and government's share too.

I think it is a very safe assumption that a significant share of work that we do is organized in an inefficient manner. Many Americans spend too much time at work. I'm retired now, but that was true for my work in social services -- too much time spent inefficiently. For instance, a requirement to account for one's time spent delivering services in 15 minute increments is a drag on delivery. So are pointless meetings.

Consumption drives 70% of American GDP. It's Americans as fat, lazy consumers that produces our colossal economy, not slim, hard-working, industrious workers. Plus, having 325,000,000 people helps; plus, a huge defense establishment spending mega bucks; plus a big country with plenty of good land, oil, coal, iron, copper, water, et al.

It might all come crashing down. Frank Zappa asks:

What will you do if we let you go home
And the plastic's all melted
And so is the chrome?

What will you do when the label comes off
And the plastic's all melted
And the chrome is too soft?

What will you do if the people you knew
Were the plastic that melted
And the chromium too?

Would you think that if workers got more benefits and holidays, the more existential situation surrounding work is resolved? — schopenhauer1

American workers work more hours and receive far shorter holidays than European workers, along with fewer benefits. So, the "existential situation" variable as it is for individuals, would not be "resolved" but it would be a real improvement for most workers.

my answer is simply to not HAVE more workers in the first place, as the problem is intractable. A "worker's paradise" seems like a contradiction in terms. It's like "prison paradise" or something. — schopenhauer1

From an anti-natalist position, the problem is utterly intractable. From the pro-natalist POV, 'The Problem' isn't exactly a piece of cake to solve, either. The (presumed) leisure of the ancient hunter-gatherer hasn't been available for roughly 12,000 years. Extracting from the earth the requirements of a reasonably satisfactory settled civilization involves a lot of laborious tasks.

We certainly can reduce our energy and material requirements, and we jolly well had better do so, if we expect to have a future--which is a key plank in the pro-natal platform. A rational use of resources (e.g., public transit instead of 1 billion automobiles, gas powered or electric; apartments instead of single-person houses, less clothing, furnishings, and so forth) would reduce the collective work load, and is entirely doable, even without eliminating capitalism.

No matter how optimistic one is, paradise on earth is not an option; we might be able to avoid hell.

I can't quite tell whether you are caricaturing the ruling class, or giving them your obeisance on bended knees. If you are on your knees, get the fuck up this instant!

Their great conceit is that they, and they alone, have actually "invented it, paid off the engineers and programmers and scientists and doctors to make our initial ideas grow". They think these myths justify their existence. But you know better! You know that the contributions of the rich (who as a group are not particularly inventive, creative, or innovative -- with a few excepted) are slight compared to the genius and work of all the technical workers (inventors, engineers, programmers, scientists, doctors, professors, administrators, ET AL) who actually bring ideas to fruition (regardless of where they come from).

The economy of a successful country requires the efforts of almost everyone. The queen of a beehive, ant hill, or termite mound is but one role of many essential workers. Does the hive die if the queen dies? No. The workers have the ability to create new queens.

In the same way, the rich "kings and queens" of a country can drop dead without the economy screeching to a halt, because the economy has so many essential operators. 128 million workers -- including everyone keep the train on the track and it's wheels turning.

It has ever been thus.

they would just say that this... — schopenhauer1

The inventor entrepreneur will just say... — schopenhauer1

they will thank the little people... — schopenhauer1

But the Lords will say that... — schopenhauer1

The bourgeoisie have all sorts of justifications to cover their operations. They will keep repeating their self-justifications until the world is an unlivable hothouse and we are all dead. If we expect to leave a world fit to live in (say in 80 years or so) we had best reject their lies, deceits, misrepresentations, and self-serving fictions.

Don't be clouded by the apocalyptic visions of Christianity, That is but one vision, which lacks the unrestrained positivity inherent in other traditions. — Hanover

I wasn't thinking of Christianity; I suppose "our light of the world" might have suggested it to you. I was ironically references us as "our light of the world" not Jesus--THE light of the world.

What will probably happen is that we won't know the world is about to end. A few might see mushroom-shaped clouds in the distance (which would give some a period of time to contemplate their proximate demise. They'll have time to say, "I guess it's going to be fire and not ice." Or, in the event of runaway warming, the day before the last day might allow some to guess that the curtains are being rung down as they mop their brows and crawl deeper into the cave. On the other hand, the big meteor will not give us time to think about it. If it's disease, people will get sick and die, thinking that they are having a private deathbed experience, and not sharing death with billions of others. Of course, if they are gasping for air in the street with 20,000 other air-gasping, running sore, vomiting people are right next to them, that might be seem as a clue.

I recommend dying pleasantly before fate takes up any of these options.

A well done apocalypse (as opposed to a half-assed piece of rubbish) raises this unpleasant question: If our light of the world could be so easily extinguished, what earthly good were we in the first place? A lot less than we like to think.

A Kant Quote comes to mind: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." Kind of hard to top that for succinct summation.

BTW, there's nothing wrong with liking half-assed rubbish; nothing could be more human, really. We may seek the sublime, but we can be quite satisfied with low-brow dreck.

"The End of the World" will, as a fact not as a fiction, be the end of all our long striving. There will be no one left to add so much as a sigh. The heaped up detritus of culture will mean nothing ever more (or something, never more). There will be both an end to human striving, though that may not coincide with The End of the world. The planet, and it's less sentient beings may spin on for a long time--but we won't be part of that.

Our demise might occur simultaneously with the end of the world. A large meteorite striking the earth would suffice. So might a primate-destroying plague. Runaway global warming could work -- assuming the the running away went on long enough. A week of end-stage runaway global warming might be unpleasant, but a week is too quick to develop a good story. We will have plenty of time for misery once the globe becomes our rotisserie.

I enjoy a piece of well written apocalyptic fiction -- one without too many clichés, please. No zombies, please. If there is to be cannibalism, then it should wait until the bitter end, not as soon as the Internet goes down or gasoline becomes hard to get. I also appreciate the absence of grotesquely sadistic gangs romping across the countryside.

A World Made by Hand (4 volumes) by James Howard Kunstler is very good. Kunstler illustrates how difficult it will be to carry on in a world whose environment is intact, but whose technology is dead. Earth abides by George R. Stewart is a seminal work. Written in 1949, Stewarts imagines a fast plague wiping out 99.99% of the population, so only a tiny remnant remain. The story is tentatively upbeat at the end. On the Beach (1957) by Nevill Shute and A Canticle for Liebowitz (1959) by Walter Miller, Jr. are both fine nuclear apocalypse novels. The End in On The Beach is final; for A Canticle For Leibowitz, the world recovers in 2,000 years and then does the whole nuclear thing over again.

There are more such novels, of course. Somebody is scribbling out the last lines of another one, right now.

Do you see a differentiation with a plutocrat that that invented a new product... — schopenhauer1

The short answer to a very good question is: No.

Take Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak deserve credit for bringing together several already-existing components (the mouse, the graphical interface, the electronic bits and pieces, the all-in-one-box) as a new product. My first computer was a Macintosh, which I loved and adored. Bill Gates is another example of a gigantic fortune from invention. I always preferred Microsoft Word and Excel to all others.

They deserve great credit, but they do not deserve unlimited financial reward. Why not?

First, creativity, invention, and innovation depend on the creative, intellectual, and physical labor of many predecessors without which there would be nothing new. The Macintosh Computer rested on a century's worth of technological development. Science and industry are inherently social activities which gradually accumulate potential for new technology.

Second, if there is to be a fortune made from new technology (like personal computers) the inventor depends on the socially accumulated wealth of bankers and investors who are willing to gamble on making a product a reality, and perhaps a success, in exchange for a payoff. Without financial investors, there would be no iPhones, no music streaming, no Teslas, no airplanes, no televisions, no LED lights, no railroads, no nothing.

Everything that is made today depends on social accumulation of knowledge and wealth. Specific individuals (like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk) capitalize on what others have built previously--and 99% of the accumulation was produced by working people.

...and ones that just found themselves as heads of industry by luck? The ones that invented something, will say they are getting their just reward and providing jobs for the little people to [sell, train, support, install, account for the money of, transport, warehouse, market, website maintain, develop further product development], of the product they started. — schopenhauer1

They would say that. They might also say (but will not) that their fortune depends on all the jobs "the little people" did -- "sell, train, support, install, account for the money of, transport, warehouse, market, website maintain, develop further product development]". Without all the workers' efforts, there would be no fortune, no reward.

Look, this isn't personal. I am not bitter (despite my avatar). I don't dislike Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or any other multi-billionaire. I don't know them, don't have to deal with them. I willingly contributed to the fortunes of Steve Jobs and the stockholders of Apple™. We have all made contributions to the great fortunes of the very few. We live within a capitalist society. Accumulation of wealth is THE NAME OF THE GAME. I neither tried nor succeeded at that game. I don't admire the winners of this game.

But if you ask, "Is this a good system?" I am emotionally and rationally compelled to answer, "Absolutely not!" and argue for a system which distributes reward for both fizzy creativity and mud-slogging work fairly. A fair and equitable distribution of rewards for work is possible, and it doesn't look like our capitalist system.

:100:

is the Internet allowing democracy to destroy itself? — Tim3003

It might be helpful to make a distinction between "democracy" (broadly understood) as a system of government, and "democracy" as ordinary, daily interaction of citizens.

In our republic, representatives are elected by the citizenry. Political parties have been part of the American system since the beginning (and that was an issue, early on). Our system of election, representation, and government was never pure, never perfect. On-line social media is a new thing, but corrupting the system is not.

The ordinary daily interaction of citizens has mostly been helped by the internet. Consider the difficulty of organizing events 50 years ago: One had to put up posters, buy advertisements in daily newspapers or neighborhood papers--if there was one. One had to use social networks like bars, clubs, bowling teams, etc. Not bad, but inefficient. Now there is MeetUp, Facebook, NextDoor, and much more. It's all faster, cheaper, better.

BUT: There is a downside. (There's always a downside opposite every upside.). Ideas can spread faster than the speed of reflective thought. An example might be "defund the police" idea. This was picked up by a lot of people on line --"woke whites" it seems like, before the idea was given reflective attention.

In Minneapolis, "defund the police' caught fire after the 2020 summer rioting season. A year later, the voters of Minneapolis defeated a charter measure which would have led to a sharply reduced police force. There was pushback on police defunding on line, as well as in more typical media, but a year's time gave people a chance to think over the idea of what a defunded police force would mean. A solid majority didn't like the smell of it.

The Internet is a many splendored thing. If Facebook and 4Chan or 8Chan are not good for it, other parts are. It isn't the Internet, per se, that is a threat to democracy. Powerful groups who dislike democracy are a muckiest bigger threat.

As for bad information, there is nothing new under the sun, Public discourse and the press have operated at abysmally low levels for long stretches of time. There was no 'golden age' when everyone read only balanced, carefully thought out opinion pieces and altogether factual 'news'.

People who believe--the corona virus is a hoax, or that the moon landing was faked, or that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election, or any number of other stupid lies--are impervious to fact and balanced argument. It doesn't matter whether they flock to web sites that present garbage, or not. In 1969 there was no internet, yet the "the moon landing was faked!" individuals managed to find each other, anyway, and they have persisted in this nonsense for decades.

As an aside, there are many sites on the internet, television stations and programs, publications, and individuals or groups who are just not good for one's cognition or mental health. One does well to avoid them.

Are there trees that old? — Cartuna

There are trees that old (probably not in Europe where trees tended to get cut down for lumber and were replaced by new trees). Actually you don't need the tree in the ground. There is a "Dendrochronological Database" that has been put together over the years which covers about 11,000 years into the past. You can take a core from a beam in a building and look it up in the database, to see what the climate was like from year to year -- wet, dry, warm, cold. During warm wet years the trees grew more, so the rings are wider. Cold dry seasons produce narrow rings.

I don't actually know anything about this, I just come across it in books about... medieval or ancient history.

BTW, there is a specific tree, a great basin bristlecone pine, that is over 5,000 years old. No, you can't go see the tree; it's location is secret. If the assholes of the world knew where the tree was, it wouldn't be there anymore.

There are beautiful winter scenes painted. Very romantic. — Cartuna

Hendrick Avercamp 1585–1634 painted this. It is charming and romantic, but it was pretty cold and the growing season was shortened, which wasn't quite so romantic.

Tree rings tell the tale, as do lake sediment cores (looking at pollen grain). I don't know how many records from back then commented on the weather. Besides, they were in the middle of it and may not have realized they were in an epoch of nice weather. Unless events happen fast enough, we don't necessarily see the pattern. The people who shifted from hunting and gathering to agriculture almost certainly didn't know that's what they were doing. It was too slow a process.

Seems like you know a lot! An American (?) savant! — Cartuna

Yes, I'm a certified idiot-savant. American.

Why can't that hold nowadays? — Cartuna

Given a culture / economic collapse from global warming, it might. But there were some factors: The withdrawal of the Empire meant that its organized military and administration disappeared. There was plenty of action during these 800 years -- trading, migrations, agricultural developments, conflicts, and in general cultural and social development. But there was not enough net surplus of production to fuel year-over-year growth. About the time that a surplus was possible, the Black Plague arrived and set things back a ways. Between 950 and c.  1100 Europe experienced a streak of very nice warm weather--good. That was followed by the Little Ice Age - not so good.

By the end of the 1400s, Europe had moved into higher gear and economic growth resumed, albeit not like a house-a-fire.

Since we did interbreed and produce fertile offspring (which is why Europeans, for instance, are about 1%-3% Neanderthal. Same for Asians and Denisovans. The great apes, chimps, bonobos, or gorillas are closely related to us, but not quite close enough to produce fertile off-spring, MAYBE a great ape / human fertilization could take place (it hasn't, as far as we know) but if it did, who knows whaat the result would be like. Donald Trump, possibly, but with bigger muscles and a huge gut to digest rough feed.

Who are Denisovans? Danish savants? — Cartuna

You must be thinking of Søren Kierkegaard's learned aunts and uncles. But no. A little finger bone found somewhere in eastern Russia supplied the DNA sample. The Denisovans were a non-Homo Sapiens species that mixed with humans in Asia, like Neaderthals mixed with H. sapiens in Europe.

As a generalization, there have been periods of real growth. For instance, the post WWII boom brought real growth (increases in real income) for about 30 years. During the last 45 years, real wages have decreased by a minimum of 25% for most working class people. The cause has been stagnant wages and inflation.

Now, if you want a period of time when economic growth was a real drag, take the period between the collapse of the Roman Empire (say, 600 a.d. to around 1400 a.d. for a round figures) the annual growth rate was 1/100th of a percent. People could look forward to a 1% increase in income per century. As it happens, those 800 years were not terrible for everyone. Life was just very stable.

No, it wasn't fine, but we were farther away from a tipping point. By 1900, a huge hunk of coal had already been dug up and burned. Oil was getting set to join coal as a major driver of rising CO2 levels. Some whale species' numbers had been devastated, and some species of animals and birds were going extinct.

Patterns emerge gradually, and observers generally need a reason to look and see.

Once there lived 100 000 people. That they lived 12 years max is just propaganda. — Cartuna

Oh, yes, very true. Ancient hunter-gatherers were robust and pretty healthy. So were Neanderthals and Denisovans. Besides, low longevity generally means that a lot of children died. Averaging out dead 1 - 5 year olds with mature adults, you get absurdly low life expectancies.

Which countries would that be?

@ChatteringMonkey: I hope you haven't been waiting 3 years for this factoid; I just came across it again. After the dust settled from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and following for several hundred years, the economic growth rate was about 1/100th of a percent per year. Super stable. No growth. Once every century you could expect a 1% raise.

The so called "dark ages" during which the rate of growth was practically zero, wasn't 'dark'. The period saw some development, some innovations, improvements in agriculture, and so forth. But economic growth was very slow; the economy was a 'stable steady state'.

I can't think of a tolerable method of achieving stable zero-growth. Global warming might do it for us, by reducing the population, wiping out the technological knowledge base, and focussing our minds on the matter of bare survival. The survivors would experience one grand RE-SET. Quite possibly, after the dust settled, life would go on in a stable, no-growth fashion for a long time.

Marx gave us some valuable insights into the workings of the capitalist economy. Leftists, on the other hand, not so much -- especially in the last 40 years. During the 1930s, Communists helped organize unions and participated in the black struggle in the south. Then the Stalin-Ribbentrop treaty, and some communists discovered they were "premature anti-fascists". Crazy! (Uncle Karl said, "History repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce".)

I identify as an old-style American socialist--reference Eugene Debs, d. 1926. "The left", as it exists in academia, identity politics, Portland, OR, et al has become a farce. Not much left of that version of the left -- a few old guys.

As to work, the past of work, the future of work... I've been bitching about work for decades. Modifying a quote from Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Workers (whose work is houses of hospitality for the poor and homeless and peace) "I commend work, and I abhor it."

Work that is an expression of the individual person's (not 'worker's) creativity and energy is a good thing. Digging up the soil and planting a garden is good work. Stoop labor from dawn till dusk cultivating crops for ConAgra is grim and dehumanizing. Sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day screwing around with meaningless data is soul killing, even if it isn't as bad as stoop labor. Doing charitable work that is funded for the sake of appearances alienates the better angels of our nature. On and on.

What it will take to reduce the work week is a seizure of power from the plutocratic kleptocracy by The People, and following through on abandoning all of the falsity of consumer culture (which has been cultivated by the capitalists for well over a century) and engaging in what might be an agonizing appraisal of what is good and worth keeping, and what is not.

Seizing the wealth and power of the Plutonic-kleptocrats will be extraordinarily difficult, so in the meantime, I recommend people who can do so, reduce their needs and wants so that they can keep themselves afloat on less the 40 hours per week, maybe 30, maybe 25. This is no easy thing, especially after 40 years of inflation and stagnant wages. It's like unto impossible in high-cost areas, like San Francisco, NYC, LA, Washington D.C., Boston, etc.

Antinatalism comes in handy for young people trying to do this. Raising a family pretty much forces one to work however much one can, and that still might not be enough,

I believe the benefit is to create a feeling of extreme tension, — I like sushi

I would have to go back and re-read a lot of old discussions, but it seems like you have presented the "tension" argument before. You seem to suppose that a relaxed resting state is abnormal and that we generate tension to enliven ourselves and our social scene. Conflict, intense emotion, tension, etc. make us feel better.

There is some validity to your view. In times of danger and threat we are on high alert, physically primed for action. Your 'tension' in other words. IF someone presents an opinion that cuts across one's most basic and cherished thinking (somebody says, for instance, that we should institute a forced abortion program to cut own the excess population) we might well experience tension, arousal, and would start marshaling arguments against this view.

Most of the time, though, other people's opinions do not rile us up that way. We can deal with others' opinions without tension developing.

At any rate, I think our "go to state" is one of quiet, restful, homeostasis--most of the time. Still, I recognize that sometimes we like to pick a fight, just for its excitement value--or tension.

Can you give examples? — schopenhauer1

Books, music, drama, discussions sociability -- those are the things that we want to have more time for, not to simplify out of existence. How about eliminating advertising? Credit cards? mortgages? private cars? Credit cards, home loans, auto loans, education loans--are all ways of of expanding the economy on the one hand, and chaining the consumer to his job -- for life. Quite a long time ago the Ruling Class realized that one way to tame restless workers was to chain them to a mortgage (and later, other forms of debt). The worker could be tamed and turn a profit at the same time.

Does it work? Sure. People like having a home, and before long they have some equity in it. Not a lot, but some. They keep paying because they don't want to lose their equity or their home and their stuff. Apartment rental deposits do the same thing. They are now successfully tied down, and they have to keep working--regardless of how unpleasant that might be.

If one has a home, get rid of the time-consuming lawn. If you don't have cows to graze on the grass, then you don't need it. Gardens yes, lawns no. No need to mow the lawn every week. No need to fix the lawn mower. No need to buy and apply herbicides and fertilizers to produce nothing but useless grass. Nature will provide ground cover, don't worry about that.

No doubt -- simplifying life is a radical step away from business as usual.

what is the difference of a worker working for a state entity and worker working for a private entity in terms of exploitation? — schopenhauer1

None whatsoever.

Please note: my socialist alternative does not exchange working for a capitalist pig with working for a state pig. The third possibility is the worker-owned, worker-managed economy. We don't have a lot of experience with this approach, but we have some--cooperatives, for instance.

Are you talking about the idea of simplicity? — schopenhauer1

Yes. It's unwelcome because "we like our plumbing, heat, cars, roads, electrical grid.. etc. etc. endless blather. just think STEM fields. We like our movies, our popular music, etc. etc. We like our electronics.. we like our easy to obtain items from online or department stores".

I very much prefer plumbing, heat, hot water, electricity, and endless blather. Especially endless blather. We wouldn't be discussing this at a great distance without a big hunk of circuitry sitting in front of us. But...

It is still true that simplifying life, whenever, wherever, however possible would give us more time to live.

A truism which certain other philosophies bypass. But I won't say it. — schopenhauer1

A minimum of effort was required of hunter-gatherers before they could spend their remaining time. Some anthropologists think they had about 18 hours a day to cook, eat, sleep, and engage in social activities. 5 or 6 hours might have been required to get food, do maintenance on clothing, tools, or weapons (for hunting). Their now ancient remains say that they were tall and healthy. Compare that to our rat race.

Service jobs and maintaining the machines themselves... probably not. — schopenhauer1

I disagree. A lot of our time is spent maintaining complex institutions which do not exist for our benefit. Examples: insurance companies; banks; the military; personnel departments; Wall Street; companies advertising and marketing crap.

The CEO believes that a rising tide raises all ships.. Simplifying then makes no sense. — schopenhauer1

A rising tide raises the boats of the richest 10%; 90% of us do not have a boat to float, raise or sink. To the 10% who own and manage the economy, simplicity is anathema. To your CEO simplicity means THE END! FINIS! ALLES IST KAPUT! CURTAIN DOWN!

For the rest of us, the essential tasks of raising food, making clothing, and making (or maintaining) shelter still requires a relatively small amount of time. We donate vast amounts of time to the CEO and his ilk -- parasites all.

Most people find this idea no more appealing than antinatalism. We are about equally out of step with the rest of the world.

Work is required to maintain existence. Food has to be grown, clothing has to be made, shelter has to be built. A lot of work has to be done before we can move on to arts and crafts.

QUESTION: For most of our history, hunter-gatherers managed this task and didn't spend anywhere close to 40 hours a week doing it. Can mechanization and automation deliver the basic requirements and allow us the leisure of hunter gatherers?

Around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago there was a critical shift: We started domesticating plants and animals, doing agriculture, and living in large groups in one place. Some anthropologists think that humans were one of the animals that got domesticated by a brand new power elite. From there it has been down hill ever since--for the average non-elite human. Exploiting other humans has proved to be a reliable way of getting ahead in the world--not since the industrial revolution, but since the agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago.

ANSWER: No. Meeting the basic needs of 8 billion people (or 2 or 3 billion) requires a level of social complexity which a hunter-gatherer level of existence can simply not provide. Aside from food, clothing, and shelter (the basics) society itself has to be reproduced, and that isn't something we can automate or mechanize. It's human work.

I don't think we all have to spend 40 hours a week 'reproducing and maintaining society', but life in the global society has to be simplified, especially for 1st world people. We need to stop doing a lot of the stuff we are doing that is aimed at keeping the economy revved up--advertising, marketing, promotion, selling, financing, upward mobility, ceaseless acquisition of new gadgets (be it a fancier watch or a bigger Tesla) and so on.

Simplify, simplify, simplify--both an end and a means.

As an illustration, take a 5 year old child, confine him to a cell for 50 years and let him out into the world on his 55th birthday. How experienced is this 55 year old? — TheMadFool

He'd be a crazy vegetable if he survived at all, long before 50 years.

Intelligence is derived from the physical brain, time (age); and experience. The structure of the physical brain changes materially, as does the content which is derived from the variable richness of experience. Development is an immensely complicated process which we try to capture through various means to provide a convenient metric--an IQ score or some other number.

I'm in favor of measurement, developing stats on intelligence, finding correlations between success in life (defined in various ways) and intelligence scores -- and more. We know, for instance, that children aged 0 to 5 years who hear a lot of 'good talk' (positive, affirming, complex) by their parents develop much better intellectual skills than children who hear much less of it.

But measurement and stats have upsides and downsides: It has to be done well across a good sized population to have meaningful results. Scores can become ceilings rather than floors. Child "A" has a lower score. The existence of the lower score (lower IQ, lower grades, lower test results...) will close many doors to future activities. Average scores ("meh") can be an impediment too, because high scores are so desired (by parents, college admissions, employers, etc.). The 'average' is underrated. Over the millennia, most people have been average and have managed just fine, even in difficult circumstances.

Years lived do not necessarily translate into experience. — TheMadFool

Of course not. But it takes years lived to get experience.

I find Gretta annoying and Donald Trump revoltingly loathsome. However, he became President and neither of us did. (I don't know--maybe you tried and failed; I didn't even try.) Apparently he had enough experience to fill the bill for the idiot bastards in the Republican Party.

No, a state is a monopoly on the use of violence. That's the textbook political science definition. — Pfhorrest

is not the use of (or threat of) coercion the primary means by which States prove their legitimacy?

Let's say Alaska declares all of itself to be an independent nation. The new state controls the southern coast from Kodiak and Anchorage down to Ketchikan. Most of the territory of Alaska is under the control of the local governments which predate the new nation.

After several years, Sovereign Alaska has yet to extend its control beyond the coastal areas. The people who run the nation are respectable, urbane, sophisticated people who compare favorably to governments elsewhere. Where they are in control, life is peaceable and the people there are happy. But still, they control very little of their territory.

Do you consider them legitimate at this point? Or would you expect them to use force to gain control of the remaining territory?

There are a number of national states, like Somalia, that are considered "failed states". Pretty much no one is in charge. Syria is bad, but Bashar Hafez al-Assad has largely retained control of the government and territory, albeit with savage violence. Syria is still Syria, more or less. Hasn't Assad proved his legitimacy? (He's a loathsome person, but that's another matter.). I don't like the Taliban, either. But, like it or not, they have gained control of Afghanistan. Since they don't seem to want to all drop dead, they have gained legitimacy.

The Republic of Congo has been described as a failed state. Seems like it to me. Various non-governmental actors have stepped in to do some of the things a state is supposed to do (above and beyond controlling territory). That proves the point: The 'State' is out of order. Kaput. Illegitimate.

Basically, if you have a low IQ, you're a child trapped in an adult body and vice versa for high IQ folks. — TheMadFool

Not so, because adults have more experience in life than children, even if they have a relatively low IQ. Low IQ isn't a severe mental impairment. Granted, it's not an advantage, but someone with an IQ of 85 or 90 is not mentally retarded. Children with IQs of 120 to 130 do not thereby have extensive experience. Life experience is an important aspect of intelligence. Brains without experience don't have much to say.

If you wanted to do the research, I am confident that you would find that the mean high school and college GPAs as well as standardized test scores and scores on intelligence tests are all much higher among, say, electrical engineers than among police officers or firefighters. — Michael Zwingli

It might be true, especially when you are comparing a group who may not need college level training, and another group who needs at least a BA, and maybe an MA.

If you collect the relevant statistics and display them in rank order, low scores to high scores across the board, there probably will be more high scores among engineers and doctors than among police officers and firemen. But... so what?

Training for even professional jobs is at least partly on-the-job. Just because your engineer has higher scores, doesn't mean that he or she would have the ability to function as a police officer, and just because the police officer doesn't have a BA, doesn't mean that he wouldn't have the wherewithal to earn one, even in engineering.

the Protestant work ethic — schopenhauer1

I do not know how much the Protestant Work Ethic figures into people's lives, these days. For Luther, work which contributed to the common good was as holy as the priesthood. For Calvin, salvation or damnation was predetermined by God. Prosperity could only be a sign, not a guarantee of salvation. Prosperity and poverty were not proof-positive of Grace, one way or the other.

Among the earlier generations of Lutherans, Calvinists, et al, these were vital issues. What percent of the population, do you think, actually know who John Calvin or Martin Luther were and what they taught?

Despite all that, most people do want to work -- they want the rewards of regular income; they want the belonging which having a steady job entails. They do not want to be an outsider without work.

Whether or not it has anything to do with protestantism, [don't Catholics work as hard as Lutherans?] most people seem to believe that working is a good thing. They do well to think positively about work, because not having an income means having a pretty bad life. There's nothing particularly Protestant about that.

I have worked at some pretty shitty jobs which I tolerated until better paying, more satisfying work was in hand. Work for work's sake is a dead end.

IF workers owned the means of production, and IF production were for need and not profit, then a 40 hour work week would be an anachronism. Unfortunately, workers do not own the means of production.

The number of hours worked in a week is one issue in people's quality of life (QOL). Equally important is how much people are paid per hour. Over the last 40 years, real wages have steadily declined for most people in the workforce. [The 'real wage' is pay minus inflation.] Falling wages mean a declining standard of living and a lower QOL. Many workers resort to second and third jobs to maintain what they consider a minimum QOL for their families.

A reduction in hours worked has to be accompanied at the same time by a significant increase in wages and benefits, else the worker is just further impoverished.

This can be achieved, but not without some major shifts in spending and taxation. The richer 9% and the wealthiest 1% will have to pay more in taxes, corporations will have to live with lower profits, and less will have to be spent on the military and other unnecessary expenditures. A greener economy (one where most workers are not obligated to own a car) is required.