• 0 Posts
  • 11 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 6th, 2025

help-circle


  • Efficiency of living is not static, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were possible to sustainably support 10B people with a relatively high standard of living.

    I heard the following metric recently:

    But in China, in 2013, China had terrible particulate air pollution. It was known around the world as the airpocalypse (ph) on a - a 700 on a scale of air pollution from zero to 500, the U.S. embassy reported. And, you know, over the decade after 2013, the size of the Chinese population grew by 50 million people. And so if more people were always worse for the environment, you might think that particle air pollution in China would have gotten worse. But, in fact, particle air pollution in China fell by half, even while the population grew.

    Efficiency of living is only starting to come into the public consciousness, and we’re barely rewarding the exploration of that space. I think we’ll find there are a ton of improvements to be had.

    That said, it’s a “after we survive the crisis” outlook. It seems hardship from climate change is already inevitable, especially in this upcoming century.






  • Realistically, even if enacted, would be tricky to implement, and would definitely have to be done slowly not to shock the economy.

    I think this also means creating a system where companies beyond a certain size cannot be privately owned and must be governed by large “committees”, since beyond a certain evaluation, concentrated controlling entities would be forced to sell off.

    Long shot research and development (e.g. think employing thousands for a decade, like drug development) could probably be harder to get started, but at the same time less corruptible due to spreading out power.

    I do think spreading out power can be a good thing, but I have to acknowledge that would probably make the government much more powerful (i.e. corruptible) by comparison.

    Also, a lot of wealth is tied up in non-liquid assets, so these billionaires would be forced/incentivized to hold more liquid value – who’d want to hold something that can be capped one year only to have it fall the next?

    So on one hand, a ton of market value disappears from the economy due to increased supply, yet on the other a ton of hoarded value is unlocked to circulate in the economy.

    Anyway, don’t know where I’m going with this, I’m not an expert by any means.