For the anti-capitalists, I have a genuine question (sorry, I couldn’t find an “ask a commie” community):
In the capitalist system there is a movement called Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) where people commit to living frugally in an effort to maximize savings and investments. The goal is to achieve a balance that allows you live off a safe withdrawal rate (around 3.5-4%) and then leave the workforce at an earlier than normal age. Some people commit to a life of minimalism and lean-FIRE with under $20k in investment income per year. I believe there is significant overlap with the van-life crowd and other nomadic lifestyles.
Is this lifestyle compatible with, or is there a similar lifestyle within a communist system? To expand, can those with a different set of priorities trade away their later working days in exchange for less material things?
Let me put it this way. For capitalism to continue there’s an ever-marching goal of exponential profit. To get more profit you must work harder and the company must pay you less and work you longer. At some point you will be crushed. Nothing can expect exponential returns, yet capitalism constantly expects that.
Communism wouldn’t need retirement because such a society wouldn’t have an exponential motive for existence. Work would be done as needed instead of constantly more and more and more. I wouldn’t mind being in my 80’s and still “working” because all the work I’d do would have a direct positive result on my community instead of more money for someone pocketing the excess value of my labor over what they paid me.
Besides, who would need to push papers around for companies in an economic system that is moneyless and stateless? (communism is literally moneyless and stateless so USSR, China, Valenzuela, etc. are not communist since they have a state)
I can only answer as capitalist. FIRE relies on accumulated interest. For workers it should be the same if 10 billionaires or 100,000 FIRE investors own their companies.
UBI should be fairer.
Both scenarios are the same. Work 20 years hard and then stop working.
The FIRE owner have an interest in low wages for the workers whereas in UBI, more income for workers could mean more to be shared.
If I find your farts funny then I’m scaling the current level of joy per fart. We can have an import / export scheme. My gross domestic product is outrageous.
Are you suggesting something like the tin cans with a string in the middle, but replacing the string with a hose. We’re gonna need some government subsidies on our farts because eventually one of us is going to overproduce and kill the other in a horrific explosion.
The great thing that 95 hamsters and farting so much that you need 95 hamsters have in common is that visitors already know exactly what they’re in for based on the smell.
I actually only needed the volumetric farts of about 15 hamsters.
However, I thought it’s not realistic to have them all fart at the same time, so I kept buying more.
Eventually it was a big enough group that it seemed more statistically plausible that 15 of them farted in unison.
I feed them beer and cheese and beans to increase the hypothetical flatulence interval of each hamster.
Also I have found, adding “I don’t know, maybe something startled them and some of them… Went off” helps. I could buy a few more hamsters instead, but times are hard.
The sad part is that there’s a not insignificant number of people out there who would honestly rather embrace the human instrumentality project and never look back.
I mean, yes, in general every person is speaking for themselves. In this case I’m just reporting what people with suicidal ideation and survivors of suicide attempts report in therapy.
I joke, in bad taste. You are right, though The facts are clear. Most people who are suicidal are just looking for a way to stop some type of suffering.
Having said that, I do think it’s important to recognize that this does not apply to all “suicides.” An old person who wants to end their life, because they feel that they’ve lived a full life is technically suicidal. They deserve the right to end their life.
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