Social Evolution

[Birdjaguar]

The question as I see it is "what are the top 3-7 top deliverables" that those who want more and faster social evolution looking for?

 

[Farm Boy]

Luxury goods, obv.

 

[Sommerswerd]

In NM (and other places) some convenience stores have 20 or more pumps.

Of course. That is the case in every state, its not unique to New Mexico. Rest stops and truck stops everywhere have lots of pumps like this, New Jersey included. When you go to a truck stop in New Jersey, there's two dozen pumps and its all full-serve, no self-service. Its fine, it works. Its an actual currently fully functioning, fully operational way of handling gas stations that has been proven and is currently in use.

Even the small BP convenience store down the street from me has 8 pumps & usually at least half are in use. If they started making me wait for somebody else to pump 4-7 other cars before getting to mine, I'd just go somewhere else that was self-serve.

Two things about that... First, what I am proposing is that there would be NO self-serve at all, anywhere. So "go somewhere else that was self-serve" wouldn't be an option. Second, the way a self-serve state (like New Jersey) works, is that the attendant sticks the pump in your tank and clicks in the little lever on the handle/trigger that lets the gas flow on its own, without them having to hold it, then goes to the next car and does the same, rotating around to pull the pump out of the cars where the fueling has auto-finished. All modern pumps already auto-stop when the tank is full and or has reached the amount of money allocated.

So "making me wait for somebody else to pump 4-7 other cars before getting to mine" isn't a thing. You don't have to wait for the attendant to pump other people's gas, everyone is getting their gas pumped all at the same time. It actually takes less time than pumping it yourself. It can be an extremely efficient system, I've seen it work seamlessly in New Jersey. Also, with the larger rest-stop/truck-stop style stations, they generally have multiple attendants working at a time, so it goes even faster.

Same for checkout lines at the grocery store. If a store doesn't have self-checkout options, I'll go somewhere else that does in the future.

In my proposed system we wouldn't necessarily eliminate self-checkout, we would just make it so stores were required to hire more cashiers, rather than laying cashiers off and just installing a bunch of self checkout machines.

These are not the jobs we want to brute force into the economy. It's inherently wasteful. It's a waste of human potential.

I disagree. These are exactly the types of jobs we want to brute force into the economy because there is no barrier to entry. Not everyone has time/money to seek their full "human potential" or similar, they just want/need a job/income/money so that they can go about their lives with a modicum of independence and dignity, without having to go to college and without constantly being told that they don't have the necessary qualifications. The issue isn't the job itself, its minimum wage levels. Raise minimum wage and the so called "low skill" jobs are viable.

 

[Farm Boy]

Lean profit stream, "useful work," in my experience just means that John Deere, taxes, and landlords capture more of the thinner margin on grain. Less farmsteads, more equipment haulers with part time hired men on the road, less families, less community.

All courtesy of people rearranging lights on plastic, freeing up labor for actualization. They've got cousins that need faster uber response times. Or an authentic food truck experience. ****, I don't even know.

 

[Narz]

I disagree. These are exactly the types of jobs we want to brute force into the economy because there is no barrier to entry. Not everyone has time/money to seek their full "human potential" or similar, they just want/need a job/income/money so that they can go about their lives with a modicum of independence and dignity, without having to go to college and without constantly being told that they don't have the necessary qualifications. The issue isn't the job itself, its minimum wage levels. Raise minimum wage and the so called "low skill" jobs are viable

I don't see any dignity in a useless job. Better to pay someone a wage for doing community service

 

[Akka]

Seriously, has there actually been a real communist government? I've read Das Kapital and other writings by Marx and Engels. They advocated for the abolition of states and governments, rejected capitalism in all forms and pushed for syndicates of laborers replace business. In my view, every government that has claimed to communist are in actuality brutal authoritarian states, i.e. "the People will now rule, and we are the People" kind of thing.

Communism is like capitalism. They would be the perfect system, if only humans weren't humans and instead were the ideal species that these systems are actually built for (though that is mostly the case for every ideological system ever).
Also, both would produce perfect results, it's just that every single implementation ever attempted wasn't actually "true" capitalism/communism and was hamstringed by outside effects, like humanity or reality.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't see any dignity in a useless job. Better to pay someone a wage for doing community service

Pumping gas is not a useless job lmao, it is serving the community

The real problem with gas stations is that we're gonna be in deep trouble if they're still common in 15 years

 

[Narz]

Pumping gas is not a useless job lmao, it is serving the community

It's useless. You can do it yourself.

 

[Narz]

You know what'd be a good job, have a park attendant in every park in the country. Can chat w frazzled parents bringing their 2yos to play, can listen to a lonely old person sitting on the bench. Don't need to have any childcare or mental health training just be decent company and a good listener.

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't see any dignity in a useless job. Better to pay someone a wage for doing community service

[snipped by Birdjaguar] I'd rank prostitutes higher on the social welfare scale than the majority of cubicle folk even if they do work from home now.

 

[Narz]

[snipped by Birdjaguar] I'd rank prostitutes higher on the social welfare scale than the majority of cubicle folk even if they do work from home now.

Imagine being a toll collector? Now there's a crap job we should be glad is on the wane

 

[Farm Boy]

I can imagine it fine. If I could have gotten one of those jobs at what they paid in the 90s I'd have saved myself almost 20 years of cubicle futility. Total waste of life. First covering numbnuts' backs in corporate HR, then covering numbuts' backs in governmental bureaucracy.

Go toll collectors.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It's useless. You can do it yourself.

This does not follow. Being able to do something for yourself doesn't make the job of someone doing it for you useless. There are so many things that you can do for yourself. You can cut your own grass, but that does not make landscapers useless. You can cook your own food but that doesn't make chefs/cooks useless. You can fix your own toilet/sink but that doesn't make plumbers useless. You can grow your own food but that doesn't make farmers useless... and so on...

 

[Lexicus]

This does not follow. Being able to do something for yourself doesn't make the job of someone doing it for you useless. There are so many things that you can do for yourself. You can cut your own grass, but that does not make landscapers useless. You can cook your own food but that doesn't make restaurants useless. You can fix your own toilet/sink but that doesn't make plumbers useless. You can grow your own food but that doesn't make farmers useless... and so on...

It sure would unlock mad human potential if we were all spending our time doing things we could do ourselves like subsistence farming and uh *checks notes* designing and building smartphones

 

[Sommerswerd]

It sure would unlock mad human potential if we were all spending our time doing things we could do ourselves like subsistence farming and uh *checks notes* designing and building smartphones

Right but then who would process all the insurance claims?

 

[Narz]

This does not follow. Being able to do something for yourself doesn't make the job of someone doing it for you useless. There are so many things that you can do for yourself. You can cut your own grass, but that does not make landscapers useless. You can cook your own food but that doesn't make restaurants useless. You can fix your own toilet/sink but that doesn't make plumbers useless. You can grow your own food but that doesn't make farmers useless... and so on...

Pumping gas takes about 1 minute & requires zero skill.

Have you ever done a job that requires zero skill all day (plus breathing in exhaust & in an ugly environment)? It's not empowering or enriching, it just makes you miserable. Better to just give people free money than give them a token nonsense job.

Again, with a bit of creativity we could pay people to do something useful like hang out w old ladies or at risk kids that actually helps them feel useful & helps society rather than stick a nozzle in a car all day. Only more useless job I can think of off the top of my head is a bathroom attendant that you'd see in some fancy hotel to hand you a towel to dry your hands.

 

[Farm Boy]

It would be communist of you to plant a garden.

 

[Narz]

It would be communist of you to plant a garden.

And you need someone to count each bulb planted & someone to watch that guy to make sure he's counting properly & someone to hand out tissues in case anyone has a runny nose & someone else to blow your nose for you cause just cause you can do it yourself doesn't mean you should. Full employment for all!

 

[Farm Boy]

I always did appreciate the clean bathrooms at the county fair, but the guy with the collection plate by the crapper did always make me feel a little uncomfortable. I'm trying to decide what parts of that are good, and what parts of that are bad.

 

[Lexicus]

It would be communist of you to plant a garden.

Bold of you to assume I own any dirt to do that in