Now I'm imagining our economy like some cruel volcano god, demanding blood in exchange for temporary safety. "People's lives are getting worse, look how much money that's making us!"
It's as if people exist only to make money, actually making people's lives better be damned. I doubt people will tolerate such a vampiric system for much longer, especially if it doesn't feel the need to conceal it's fangs anymore, and what comes afterward keeps me up at night.
That is a cynical view. Trying to forecast the cost of pension obligations is a real problem that has very real costs to companies, and can send companies bankrupt. The article shows that changing life expectancies mean a change of nearly $10B to estimated costs for just two companies. You can't run people's lives and companies based on hand-waving and assuming it'll be alright.
OTOH maybe that is why our vending machine is full of unhealthy snacks. :)
+ I have to add problems like these is why companies now give 401ks to employees. Whether you live long or not now is the person's problem and the risk is no longer borne by the company.
Another cynical view is that it's a febrile fantasy to put all of your retirement eggs in the basket of an organization continuing to pay you over your entire lifetime.
This is a good point - what strikes me about these arguments, however, is that the biggest problem (IMHO) stems from the fact that the economy often relies on local optimization, not global optimization.
If we optimized human life quality globally everyone would get better healthcare etc., but since everyone makes the decisions that benefit them (+family and immediate surrounding), then we end up with worse healthcare for the vast majority of the population.
As such, it should probably be the job of governments (regulation, incentives) to make 'globally' optimized decisions more attractive (centralized healthcare). In a best case scenario at least.
That's the theory, it's just that a lot of people frankly have their heads too far up their asses to see how a global optimization is better than the local one.
I don't care to be this coarse, but I've been trying for 10 minutes to find a better way of putting it.
in my own experience, one of the primary ways people with an analytical bent (looking at you HN) have their heads up their asses is that they seem to think that the market is a perfect judge of value. hard to convince people of your point when they believe such a circular, lazy thing.
>see how a global optimization is better than the local one.
When the local maxima and global maxima do not align suffering occurs. This is why evoLuton picks a few broad things on a global scale, but at the local scale thing developed very differently
But the top 1% provide the jobs. Unless the bottom 90% collectively strike, or you "nationalize" everything (that works really well /s), what ya gonna do about it?
I agree, at least once the company is well established, but they do own them. If you nationalize them, or somehow make it so the company "serves the greater good", rather than the interests of it's owners, the results are disasterous. It's playing out in Venezuela now.
What I remember is that their criteria to choose who were they throwing to the volcano was very varied and nonsensical. Like "children with more than one hair swirl" (not sure about last word, hope it is clear).
And sometimes they didn't use a volcano but just remove the skin of victimes and store them in a cave. They will use the skins to dress up and dance a month later.
In any case, victims were members of their society. It was maybe an honor. Yeah, colonizers were brutal, but it seems it was the state of the art back then...
The problem is just that we as a society have never had to plan for such a large proportion of our society being older and thus outside the (regular?) labor force. We created social security nets but they look increasingly like a ponzi scheme, making lots of young pay for the care of the old (in addition to contributions made by the old when they were a part of the labor force). Is this sustainable? I don't know.
It is sustainable if you manage it properly and don't rob the collection plate. Insurance is predicated on the same ponzi scheme, just usually private market based. Some insurance exec couldn't be embezzling millions and still have the numbers work out.
I'd say it comes down to good management (as with anything) and priorities. A bad government is going to mismanage it and spend more on the military or other priorities, borrow money to make up the deficits and then of course everyone loses faith.
Your comparison to "the economy" as some dark being that demands sacrifice has been explored more deeply. It's a good read on why obviously terrible outcomes still happen even though we know it's bad.
Just go for a drive through Los Gatos or Los Altos to know where all the blood and sweat is going. Even just look them up on Zillow with some unusual filters.
It's as if people exist only to make money, actually making people's lives better be damned. I doubt people will tolerate such a vampiric system for much longer, especially if it doesn't feel the need to conceal it's fangs anymore, and what comes afterward keeps me up at night.