But of course!
Because the average modern day American totally hasn’t been dumbed down for the last half century, and all of us know how to completely and efficiently sustain our way of life without any outside assistance whatsoever.
We’re all inherently capable farmers, butchers, carpenters and plumbers, and every endeavor we undertake as “rugged inidividualists” is certain to succeed…
Incorrect. Economics is the study of how scarcity is addressed. The root of scarcity is human needs.
I would strongly argue we haven’t dumbed down, we’ve specialized. The rugged indiviualist hasn’t been true in any wide-scale manner for a few centuries. The iconic homesteaders of the Great Planes were greatly assisted by a merchant network spreading east that supplied a lot of their supplies, often on credit. It’s hard to imagine the Free Silver fights being a big deal without a strong debt economy.
Although if you are able to make it work, I highly recommend it. There are drawbacks, such as not having water until someone fixes your well (this is me right now), and the lack of ready access to much of modern medicine, but it’s nice in so many ways! I don’t get angry while grocery shopping because the store is packed and two numbskulls decided to leave their carts next to each other and block the aisle. Driving is typically a relaxing experience. I can just go to the beach without having to pay someone.
Also, the U.S. needs more blue voters in red rural areas, IMO.
From what I’ve read, cities are better for people in a lot of ways (more efficient, greener, medicine, etc.). My personal experience is that I won’t go back unless I have to, though.
What is this… this… cash… you speak of?
When I’m in this rural area, living in my hand-built home, how do I get more of this cash? It it grown there in the rural areas? Can I pluck it, say, from trees?
Please, do tell me more about how my life is foolish.
How have a million dollars while getting back to the land:
That’s your choice, but 40 years worth of observation tells me otherwise. It happened while we were busy Keeping Up With the Joneses, and putting football and baseball up on a pedestal far and above, say, teaching or child rearing.
There, I completely agree.
Step 1: Build time machine.
Step 2: Travel back to a time when the above was feasible.
Step 3: Implement the above. Kill Hitler if you have the chance.
If it was ever true. The Leatherstocking Tales were fantasies even at the time they were written. People just don’t go where opportunities aren’t.
Certainly not that fiat money the Fake News Government prints. First you have to mine your own gold, then smelt it into your own bars and then trade that for goods and services along with your fellow John Galtians. Anything less is accepting state charity.
You’re not wrong. The business axiom “measure it and it will get better” cuts both ways. Whatever metric you choose to measure will “improve”, so organizations must pick those metrics that will drive their desired outcome. If our desired outcome is public good then GDP is a metric where improvement is almost diametrically opposed to that goal.
No, no, no; that’s doing it all wrong.
Kidnap Hitler as a baby; raise him in a better and completely different environment, keeping a very close eye out for any signs of sociopathic behavior. If at any point in his formative years, you observe him enjoying someone else’s pain or torturing animals, then you kill him.
Thus giving rise to the old saying, “you can take the Hitler out of Germany, but you can’t take the Germany out of Hitler”?
Huh, I never heard that one before.
I’m generally against the entire idea of time travel to the past, given the potential for completely fucking up the present timeline (see both Back to The Future, Part 2 and the Butterfly Effect) but the whole philosophical/ethics thought experiment of ‘killing Hitler as a baby’ has always seemed a wee bit slanted to me.
There are other options to consider before jumping directly to infanticide.
A bit ironic sourcing this from Vice. They’re the very model of a cynical, late-capitalist, pyramidal startup.
That is simply a part, NOT the whole of what economics deals with.
It is the core of economics. Everything else: markets, allocation of capital, supply, demand, etc., grows from more and more complex ways that we deal with scarcity. The core of econ is human needs.
Unimportant details? See: the unpaid work of women, everywhere. It’s a huge part of the world: child-rearing, shopping, cooking, cleaning. In some places, it involves growing the food, gathering the fuel, and carrying the water for the entire family.
Yes, and should be recognized and counted.
What bothers me more is the “everybody panic” type of reporting that the press does when mentioning the stock market. If there’s a drop of 200-300 points, it’s treated like terrible news. I used to submit suggestions to news outlets that they should stop using points and start using a percentage to put it into perspective, but they want to scare the sheeple. Something like the chart in this article would be more useful: What Happened in the Stock Market Today | The Motley Fool
If the goal is to change this, I wonder which organizations and publications should be targeted to use a different method? The same thing applies to those captains of industry constantly trying to improve their rankings for earnings & revenue for coverage by Forbes and Fortune. It might be helpful to shift their focus to different lists:
https://www.philanthropy.com/specialreport/the-2017-philanthropy-50/127
