I always wonder what is the point of progress if we can't use it to solve basic problems like people not having food, shelter or access to basic medical help.
I guess there must be well understood tribe/ethnic reasons to explain that.
I have been on couple trips to northern Norway/Sweden. People there did not even have locks in their houses, it wasn't even necessary. I wonder if it changed now with advent of migrations from eastern Europe and Middle East.
The re-key kit is only a few bucks, and it's a pretty simple process, and you get to enjoy the ingenuity contained in the lock while you work on it.
Until not long ago all locks were bad
My house growing up couldn’t really even be properly locked up. You could lock the door but the first floor windows and sliding door on the deck didn’t lock at all.
Before we moved here after our daughter was born, we lived in a rougher part of town and would instinctively lock the doors any time we went in our out. Our neighbor got robbed while she was at work, and my wife was at home when it happened, so we were very cautious. As a last resort we had a gun, which luckily we never had occasion to use.
It’s amazing how moving 10 miles away was such a huge stress reducer for me and my family.
As a note, the people who like to "do crime" for some reason are not willing to move up north and prefer to stay in Oslo.
Regarding countries; when adjusting for gender and age, three countries have > 100 offenders per 1000 immigrant (table 3.3), namely Kosovo, Somalia and Iraq. The lowest rate is 26.8 for the Netherlands (or 10.1 for Oceania, but data not available per country).
Note that immigrants, in general, were underrepresented for some crimes (damage to property, drug-related) and overrepresented for others (ratios): 1.73 for theft, 1.5 for violence and abuse, 1.2 for trafic. When adjusted for age, gender, place of living, and occupational status, immigrants from Africa were overrepresented by 174% and 101% for violence/abuse and offending public order/integrity, respectively (p. 34).
From the abstract:
> [W]e use data on all immigrants, Norwegian-born persons with two immigrant parents and people in the remaining population who were 15 years or older and permanent residents as of January 1, 2010, and explore the proportion in each group that was charged with at least one offense committed between 2010 and 2013. The results show that both immigrants and Norwegian-born persons with two immigrant parents are overrepresented as registered offenders, with the rate of overrepresentation being highest in the latter group. Among immigrants, the overrepresentation is most substantial among family immigrants and refugees, as well as for individuals from African countries. For Asian immigrants the picture is more complex. Overall, Asian immigrants are overrepresented. However, while immigrants from certain Asian countries are similarly overrepresented, other Asian countries are underrepresented. Individuals from Western Europe and North America, as well as education immigrants, are underrepresented as well. The pattern is, with some minor exceptions, relatively similar for Norwegian-born persons with two immigrant parents. The patterns of over- and underrepresentation also apply to most types of offenses, except for drug offenses where most immigrant groups are underrepresented. Overall the overrepresentation is substantially reduced when we account for differences in age and gender, especially in the groups with the highest rates of overrepresentation – including Norwegian-born persons with immigrant parents. Place of residence and employment have limited explanatory power once the demographic differences are accounted for. For most immigrant groups a certain level overrepresentation persists also after sociodemographic characteristics are taken into account. It is, however, important to stress that the vast majority of individuals in all population groups were not registered as offenders during the period we consider.
To answer the original question, it depends on the likelihood that social divisiveness foments either spontaneously or cultivated purposefully. Someone with more knowledge on topics like the Sweden Democrats, Norway's Progress Party and their progress toward social division would be better at addressing it than me.
Small groups of people with intimacy and a culture of low rates of crime. Violence or crime would make you an immediate outcast.
It seems nations, like people, can get too big for their own health.
You can help, agitate, organize, join union for shorter workday same wage.
Most people are also unaware that May 1st as the international day for labour demonstrations is in part in commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket Massacre, and as the starting point for a renewed fight for the 8-hour working day in its aftermath, on the request of the AFL president at the time.
Cheap international flights, instant high fidelity telecommunication, standardized container shipping, and streamlined trade with low trade barriers are just a few of the things that have made it less necessary to find workers locally.
But we are still making great progress on it, just think that the best vaccines for Covid came as fruit of cancer research.
We’ve had societies that really wanted to stop people from using mind altering substances, agree with that goal or not it was something that multiple societies choose to try to solve and mostly they failed. The ones that partly succeeded were the ones that used heinously brutal methods.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moond...
Listen, these guys were very good, dedicated engineers.
But to say they did this without public support is stupid, because they were paid for from public money in the first place.
The public support comes in many ways. Just because some people didn't like the idea doesn't mean there was no public support.
The ultimate public support is the government, which is officials elected by... wait for it... THE PUBLIC.
Well if that's your definition of "public support", Apollo just barely had enough to succeed. The Lyndon B. Johnson Administration that came after JFK was actively defunding Apollo and trying to dismantle the space program.
Back to my original point, society didn't "collectively decide" to make moon landings happen. JFK made a few bold claims to boost his public image against Russia and his successors tried to dismantle said space program. If it weren't for the tenacious engineers and leaders at NASA, moon landings would not have happened. In other words, if the engineers/leaders at NASA were not passionate enough, LBJ would have succeeded at dismantling Apollo.
It’s basically only now that we have a new space race run by absurdly rich space-nerds that we don’t need active public support, merely that the criticism is limited to grumbling.
Think of it like a software team that has excellent developers but terrible devops. The developers have long long since fixed many of the bugs and implemented most of the features, but the devops is slow, corrupt, and incompetent so very few of the features actually make it to production.
There is no technological problem. We are already wasting more food that would be necessary to feed people who are starving.
Even USSR, at the height of its inefficiency, was able to build housing for most of its inhabitants. It wasn't palaces but it did its job.
And when we need we can somehow find a way to crank out vaccine to vaccinate entire countries. And these are given out for free (of course, we pay for them in taxes, but still it can be done...)
> Then there is the problem of the political class not unwilling
I think you meant "willing".
Here, this is the problem.
When you say it is "political class", what you really say it is not your problem. And this is the cause of why this is not getting solved.
Because the problem is really you and other people like you who think it is not their problem.
If the people decided it is a problem worth solving and supported it with their votes, the "political class" would follow and solve the problem.
The "political class" responds to what is on peoples minds and to what people want. If people decide to spend their focus quabbling over building big walls or election results or vaccine efficacy, guess what is not getting solved? Anything else isn't getting solved.
Also public opinion rarely results in policy. Most Americans for example favor spending on green infrastructure to tackle the climate crisis, most Americans favor a more universal health care system, etc. yet the political class is hesitant.
There are some exceptions like China or various regimes.
But even Chinese Communist Party is very scared to allow their population to exchange knowledge freely, for fear they can just coordinate and decide together.
The technological problem of feeding and housing every human on earth has been solved many times over. The logistics of distributing the available food and shelter to those that need is poorly designed and needs an overhaul. This is a political problem and can only be fixed with the political class that is seemingly unwilling.
Exceptions applied (mothers with young kids, registered artists), but otherwise this was enforced and if you stayed out of work for a certain period and didn't have a valid employer stamp in your papers, you would be chucked into prison for Parasitism (that was the name of the crime).
As a result, the Bloc had almost no visible homelessness, but this kind of solution would probably not fly in the West.
Just showing that there is no need for technological progress to build a lot of housing from public budget, only willingness to do it.
Roof over the head sure does the job. But in exchange a big portion of USSR population lived in essentially shared housing. You get a room and shared amenities (shared kitchen, shared shower, shared WC). In most career paths it would take a decade or more to be eligible for an apartment. And that apartment would be tiny. Got a kid? Great, you go up the queue and you get 1 room (kitchen + room, no living room) apartment! Got 2 kids? Nice, you get 2 rooms (not 2 bedrooms).
Of course, in some career paths it was much more comfy. A nuclear power plant built in bumfucknowhere? Well, anybody willing to go there even for an unqualified job gets a super spacious (compared to above) apartment on arrival. In exchange someone in a big city with no kids may be stuck in shared housing whole life with no chance to have his own apartment.
Perhaps the only difference is that low payed workers in Europe and North America have the option to live far away from their work and suffer long commute hours instead of the small living quarters. Although that option is starting to feel like it is forced upon us now as even the tiniest of apartments are also out of reach for normal working families in big cities.
Now, the political problem reflects us as people. If people wanted the problem solved, politicians would find a way to solve it for the sake of their own interest.
The way I understand it is that most people are really selfish in that they only care about themselves and maybe family and friends.
And it doesn't get any better because people are more and more focusing on themselves and getting cut off from community.
you don't need to think of the 2nd/3rd/4th order effects on society if you prove some theorem in number theory.
Capitalists often fall prey to the notion that hard and productive work isn't being performed unless someone is sacrificing their health or safety or happiness; that's wrong. We can do these things and provide a good life for the people doing them, too. In some cases this will mean that the doing will be its value itself, or even a loss leader for other efforts. That's fine; not everything needs to be profitable to be valuable.
His name was Henry George, and he famously recommended reducing all taxes to one: the land tax. His book was hailed by everyone from Milton Friedman to Leo Tolstoy and US Presidents wrote glowing reviews. And somehow, it is all forgotten today, except among trained economists who had to maybe read it in college. Most libertarians in the US today are capitalist, and have no concept of Georgism or left-libertarianism.
In today's world of intangible goods you can produce without owning any land.
Why would multi-billion pharma company pay less taxes than a local farmer, because the land needed for offices to run bio-research is less than a small field to grow crops for couple families?
Two hundred years ago you had to own land to be "big", because most ways to produce anything required land to grow crops or land to extract natural resources or services with connection with those two types of activity.
If you look at top 10 largest companies in the world, only one is tied to a lot of land or services for other companies with lots of land (Saudi Aramco).
Before one hundred years ago the largest companies or wealth creators would inevitably be largest land owners or ones that provide services for largest land owners.
It's a problem of values. Despite abundance, people still believe that people who don't work a 9to5 job are not worthy or good treatment.
Most people still believe in a hierarchy of people and values, and that "there is no free meal", except yes, there is: most food is subsidized and cheap.
Like it or not, "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") was displayed at the entrance of concentration camps, and I really think that if you ask people around, they would still hold the same opinion that 100% of people should work and that nobody should escape that.
Now, work is divided between "noble" work, which is essentially office work, and "essential" jobs, which are necessary. Like in the middle ages, nobility is better valued because they're privileged.
Society is really upside down, and despite the years of communism and socialism, which are mostly dead now, it seems we haven't really evolved.
The reason why politicians should strive for full employment is that abundance of labor leads to desperation, which leads to a worse treatment of workers and thus employers are more willing to waste their time. When there is full employment then labor is scarce and precious, meaning the time of the workers is scarce and precious which means employers will either make sure that the workers are treated well and enjoy their time or at least let their time be used for more "productive" endeavors.
>Society is really upside down, and despite the years of communism and socialism, which are mostly dead now, it seems we haven't really evolved.
They are solving the wrong problem. Really, just make sure basic macroeconomic accounting rules work and everything will be fine. For example: Everything produced must be consumed. When you apply this principle on labor, full employment becomes inevitable. How does our economic system violate that rule? It is possible to earn more than you spend, meaning you produce more than you consume. The excess is the deposit in your bank account. If you don't consume labor through work then it will be consumed by being idle. Thus the real value of your savings is eroding day by day until one day your savings have no value because all the freed time was spent idle.
Thus the logical conclusion is that there must be a deadline for your savings. At some point you must spend them before they lost all their value, not because there is an evil government stealing your money or whatever, because nature is eroding the real value of your money. Labor is spoiling the same way fruit spoil. If you want to save then you should save in real terms. i.e. you use your money to buy goods that last longer than labor (a house or industrial machinery) or a promise of a future payment (bonds or stocks). Saving in real terms leads to the employment of other people rather than their unemployment because it still counts as spending for accounting purposes.
The reason why a gold standard is a stupid idea is that linking money to something like gold will make people hold onto the currency because of the exposure of gold. When gold goes up in value people will stop spending because their nominal wealth is going up even though their real wealth isn't going up. In fact, by not spending your money there will be people that didn't work and your real wealth is actually going down.
There is another reason why spending should be forced or encouraged: Debts create money and repaying them destroys money. Holding onto money prevents debts from being repaid or in other words: The debt will exist as long as the deposit exists. There are obvious implications: Government debt can never go down because deposits never go down because people are not forced to spend them.
This is a broad generalization and it varies widely by culture.
Some people believe that all work is important.
> Some people believe that all work is important.
Sure, but I think it's a minuscule part.
Very few people living in poverty really wants or chooses to be there. It's usually generational.