<story><title>Full Employment</title><url>https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andyjohnson0</author><text>Reading the economic and tech-fix discussion here, it strikes me again that we&amp;#x27;re trapped in a system that doesn&amp;#x27;t provide workable means to solve our pressing problems. Yet we continue to treat it (economics, the global financial system) as some kind of inevitable force of nature, rather than as something that we invented and (to some degree) chose. I wish I knew why that is.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how we get from here to a place where these problems become solvable (or even what that place looks like) and from there to a world that is actually going to sustain us again. So its hard to have much confidence that we have much of a future beyond the later part of this century. My children will by my age then and I don&amp;#x27;t envy them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>setgree</author><text>&amp;gt; we&amp;#x27;re trapped in a system that doesn&amp;#x27;t provide workable means to solve our pressing problems&lt;p&gt;Generalization: most of those problems are political rather than technical, and unlike with technical problems, if you make a wrong guess about how to solve a political problem, the costs might be unboundedly catastrophic (e.g. world war).&lt;p&gt;I personally believe that the best response to global warming is open borders, because it would mean that all the people who:&lt;p&gt;* are living in the global south could relocate somewhere colder and further inland, if they wanted;&lt;p&gt;* are subsistence farming, but who would be great engineers, scientists, etc. given the right opportunities, would be more likely to get those opportunities.&lt;p&gt;Most people think that open borders would be bad, and I don&amp;#x27;t think I will be able to persuade them otherwise in my lifetime.&lt;p&gt;In general, alternatives to persuasion in politics amount to seizing power and&amp;#x2F;or changing the rules of the game. Even if I thought I &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; do that, which I don&amp;#x27;t, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t, because all too often in history, the cure is worse than the disease.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why I think these problems are hard -- and why I&amp;#x27;m scared of people who propose grand solutions to them.</text></comment>
<story><title>Full Employment</title><url>https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andyjohnson0</author><text>Reading the economic and tech-fix discussion here, it strikes me again that we&amp;#x27;re trapped in a system that doesn&amp;#x27;t provide workable means to solve our pressing problems. Yet we continue to treat it (economics, the global financial system) as some kind of inevitable force of nature, rather than as something that we invented and (to some degree) chose. I wish I knew why that is.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how we get from here to a place where these problems become solvable (or even what that place looks like) and from there to a world that is actually going to sustain us again. So its hard to have much confidence that we have much of a future beyond the later part of this century. My children will by my age then and I don&amp;#x27;t envy them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hhjinks</author><text>What makes you so sure that economics is entirely constructed? Things like supply and demand are clearly natural consequences of resource scarcity, and doesn&amp;#x27;t only apply to economics. While we do have certain frameworks that are man-made that prop up and support the economy, AN economy of some description just seems like a natural consequence of things being perceived as having value. We even see this in animals.</text></comment>