He talks about that in the article, but people did less work than they do now when all they did was survival. We are working more than people who were at subsistence levels.
People don’t mind mild inequality. Some people have more, that’s fine. When it’s extreme it’s a problem. 100% we need to make sure everyone is taken care of before we worry about if someone can have even more money than they will ever need.
I'd be curious to see a breakdown by age. I can imagine a lot of people under 35 whose experience with capitalism was the great financial crises, the housing crises, and the continued eroding of "safe" jobs. Not to mention the meaninglessness that comes with wage labor. It's no wonder that people increasingly have a less favorable view of capitalism and a more favorable view of an alternate system.
I think the final paragraph of the article sums up the issue pretty well. The tech world spends a lot of thought and energy on trying to escape our current existence instead of trying to make it better. There's very real crises that are solvable like climate change and food security. But instead of working hard to fix those, tech billionaires are focusing on space travel, AI, etc. Things that are important and could have a large (currently vague) impact, but don't solve our long term relationship with our own planet.
I think this could largely be an issue with public or VC/PE funded companies. There's plenty of private companies of small/mid size that make plenty of money but don't feel a need to grow excessively. You could think of the local plumbing company, or a small boutique consulting firm. They want to grow, but there's a natural barrier that's hard to cross without becoming a very large company and changing the nature of the company that the owner may be enjoying.
I have always wondered how that would apply to software companies though. If you make something that works really well and everyone wants to buy it, you could grow fairly large financially without needing a ton of people if you just focus on that one program that makes you successful. I imagine it's hard to not feel a need to scale up dramatically when you have millions of users/customers asking for new features.
Why do people drag out trade schools? Sure they can make sense financially, but there's a heavy toll of working with your body instead of sitting in an office chair for work. And the numbers don't lie, college graduates make significantly more than non college grads. You might have loans, but your career trajectory can be much higher with a degree.
I'm surprised funding isn't the number 1 issue across the spectrum. It's abundantly clear the schools near me are already underfunded and also have a 100 million a year budget hole. You can complain about admin and what not, but at the end of the day class sizes are big and schools are being closed. That's a massive funding issue.
I'm not sure how another urbanizing country choosing cars is evidence against my belief that denser and more walkable cities are better to live in. Places like the Netherlands are choosing to build dense walkable neighborhoods and in my opinion they seem really pleasant.
Okay fair enough, but you understand my point. Some EU countries have higher standards that avoid the issue of hearing your neighbor. I remember watching a tour of a construction site that an american construction manager was going on and the floors were radiant heat, which meant they were 9-12 inches thick of concrete and the walls were also 9 or so inches.
I think when people think of the ideal urban environment, they're thinking 3-6 story mixed use buildings close to the street with tree lined streets. People have an idea of miles of single use suburbs because that's the prevailing model. I'd say almost all urbanists don't want everything to be like downtown.
One of the main issues in cities like Seattle is 76% of the city land area is zoned for single family only. People in Seattle aren't overly worried about what suburban towns are doing, but the city limits itself still has a ton of land area that could be upzoned to drastically increase density. Zoning laws are very much imposing less density on cities.
We still have to build and maintain roads for cars, which has its own emissions. EVs also weigh more and road damage cubes or ^4 with vehicle weight, so EVs also increase the cost and frequency of road repair. EVs are an improvement, but less cars and not needing to own a car is the better choice.
Everyone driving EVs still has very large infrastructure costs of building and maintaining roads, parking, garages, etc versus if people lived in walkable and bikeable areas. Less wear and tear on roads by orders of magnitude when not using a car reduces maintenance, less roads have to be built, less wasted space for parking. The idea of making things more walkable and dense is to reduce maintenance costs for society and reduce things that just aren't fun like driving between 2 destinations. "Life has to suck" would be living far from everything and having to maintain a house that's way too big.
In the EU they have much higher construction standards including much thicker walls and floors that block sound between units better. I wish the US could duplicate that, though that would increase building costs which are already high here.
It's funny, brownstones originally had similar resistance for being bland and uninteresting yet we find them beautiful now. I think cost effective new housing just isn't going to be that visually interesting, but we need it anyway unless it's going to be expensive.
Isn't part of the issue that state and federal funding for higher education hasn't kept up with costs, so the increase just goes straight to the students paying?
I think some places have tried it before, but if it's optional then people who think they will earn a lot will just get a traditional loan, and people who think they will earn less get the income based one. So it ends up not being economical to offer.
A friend of mine was a PM at amazon and was part of the layoffs earlier in the year. Hasn't had any response to their applications, only 1 interview from a referral but it wasn't a good fit.
It's much easier to convert older buildings than newer ones, just due to them being designed differently. You lay out structures different if you're designing a small building for PI style offices than you do if it's a huge open floor plan. It's just more difficult to break out those big spaces into smaller apartments while making sure people have enough light.
They're also difficult because modern office buildings just don't lend themselves to small apartments very well. One of the conversions in New York cut a giant hole through the middle of the building so they could have interior units that get light. Giant modern office buildings take a ton of effort to convert.
This assumes that small towns that have shrinking and aging populations are more desirable to live in than cities for the sole purpose that housing is cheaper. Cities have large advantages like proximity to other jobs should it be lost, services, better schools, better restaurants, more people your age you can hang out with.
According to the census, 80.7% of americans live in urban areas. We really should be creating spaces where people don't have to have a car to do the basic necessities. When talking about car dependence, it's about creating viable options that are more sustainable and more equitable for getting where you need to go. Kids, elderly, disabled people all have issues driving and if we create a way for them to get around without a car, it makes the city a better place.
The issue isn't cars specifically. The issue is our built environment requires cars. Maybe more things should just be down the block.