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[+] -9 points 2 months ago (24 children)

Not really anything to do with capitalism. If the ratio of workers to non-workers decreases without a proportionate increase in productivity, a higher proportion of workers' time has to be spent catering to the needs of non-workers. That means less time spent not working and/or less time spent producing unnecessary stuff that improves our lives like chocolate or TV shows.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    We grow several times more food than humanity can possibly eat. We don't have a productivity or resource shortage. We have an allocation error.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    I don't think this is true. I checked the stats for caloric supply and the highest value worldwide is (unsurprisingly) in North America where about 3,500 calories of food are produced per day. That is less than double what a person needs per day, so "several times" seems unlikely.

    But I don't dispute the idea that we produce enough food to feed the world. But I also didn't say we didn't.

    Could you comment on what I actually said, which is that an ageing population (or any situation in which there are more non-workers per worker) will result in less production being available for people on average?

    This is not just about food; it is also about other necessities (such as healthcare) but also non-essentials like entertainment. The problem of an ageing population is not that we'll starve to death; it's that our quality of life will decrease.

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  • [+] 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I think it is a problem if we need to have less free time, or work more for the same things that we do in our free time, because a higher proportion of worker time needs to be spent supporting people who are not working. You don't want to go back 200 years even if humanity could survive in such conditions. (And the present population probably could not survive)

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