Chuck M 

Even if you have a proof of purchase chiseled on a stone tablet, those are going to be out of warranty.

BBB_Adrift

my brain hertz at the quality of these puns.

Bald Paul

Don't feed it.

BBB_Adrift

but at least the stone tablet doesn't dissolve if you leave it in your pant's pocket in a wash cycle.
mind you, they'd still claim you weren't the original owner or some weaselly excuse.

indyfabz

I’m a rara avis these days.

BBB_Adrift

That level isnt getting any hire. If anything, it's lower now. That was defo a budget post.

terrymorse 

If the problem is framed as "give up getting stuff for the better future", I think you're right. That's a hard sell.

But if people recognize that getting more stuff doesn't produce happiness, and if they can exchange getting a bunch of stuff for more fulfilling things (leisure time, socializing, hobbies), maybe it doesn't seem like a sacrifice at all.

indyfabz

Are you drunk?

BBB_Adrift

Agreed. It's about changing perceptions and aspirations. Of course, it helps if the freedom of choice is removed (as was the case in the former soviet union), but maybe we will be entering a new era of reduced consumerism based on the changing political appetite to interact with China and its tsunami of cheap consumer goods. Not necessarily a bad thing, imo.

ofajen

He sticks to a budget.

Carbonfiberboy 

Position 1:
Position 2:
Two well presented points of view. This is the discussion which human beings are having right now, real time. Looking outside our current situation, we might look at the history of North America. Before Europeans came, the portion of the continent currently occupied by the United States supported an estimated 20 million people in a sustainable manner, again as far as we can tell. The current US population of 332 million and climbing is emitting approximately 28% of the world's carbon emissions. This is obviously not sustainable, at least with our current economic system. A correction will come, will we or won't we. Fortunately, I doubt that any of us here will live to see the result of this correction. We are the luckiest human being who have ever lived, alive at the peak of our "rabbit cycle."

If we all acted in accordance with Position 1, the economy would definitely shrink. It's obvious that if we eliminated turning vegetable matter into either meat or fuel, we could grow plenty of food for our current population, so that's not an issue. More people would certainly have more idle time. Studies show that current aboriginal populations work about 4 hours a day. We would produce a lot more art and a lot less CO2.

Currently, most of our population acts in accordance with Position 2, which has resulted in a constant increase in our GDP, accompanied by a constant increase in CO2 emissions. While that theory of thrift is certainly correct, it seems to me that putting a lot of people out of their current job is desirable, not the contrary.

I've traveled some in the East and found that wealth is not in one's possessions, but in one's leisure time. Another interesting thing is that, looking at museum collections, I've come to believe that the wealth of a culture can be seen in the time a people invests in the tools they use in their daily life, meaning the artistic and artisanal quality of those tools. Our current culture invests the absolute minimum time in tool manufacture. That's called efficiency. True wealth is when efficiency is not a criterium, meaning one has lots of time to spare..

Carbonfiberboy 

No, he's using a "smart" phone.

Koyote

Growth for the sake of growth is the logic of the cancer cell...And yet, around the globe, economic growth has long been a paramount goal of almost every society, every government -- even in societies like ours (and all other OECD countries), which have the means to easily provide adequate housing, food, medical care, and other necessities to every single person.

This paramount urgency of GDP and jobs is so ingrained that most people, like one earlier in this thread, have difficulty grasping that reduced consumption -- and the concomitant reduced needs for income and employment -- would not be calamitous if it were driven by people's desires...In fact, they would be good for the environment, for our families, and would correspond more closely to our stated values. So, why doesn't it happen? Because it would reduce profits. And so the capitalists have to keep us spinning on the hedonic treadmill, always producing new products, advertising the hell out of them, and convincing us that we MUST have them to be happy -- even though copious evidence demonstrates that more stuff doesn't create happiness in an affluent society like ours, and most of us know it. (Oh, and they have to keep convincing us that the social services that would allow us to work less -- maybe retire earlier, have more one-worker households, like comprehensive health care and a real national retirement system -- are "socialist" and hence evil...Even though such amenities are very common and wildly popular in the rest of the industrialized world.)

shelbyfv

Hopefully the sock sleuths will be on this before too long.

genejockey 

Just to be clear, my "position" is a statement of the current case, and positions 1 and 2 are not incompatible. Instead, think of position 1 as "What we want" and position 2 as "What we have". There's a saying that "A problem is the difference between what we have, and what we want".

That said, I also don't thing that a constant increase in GDP necessarily implies a constant increase in CO2 emissions. That, too, is a difference between what we have, and what we want.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yes, that's the issue exactly. However, and it's a big however, competition for place in the tribe is in our DNA. We exterminated all our competitors, even as we bred with them. We out-competed them. Greed and desire for power is embedded in our DNA, right along with hate for those not like us. Tribalism. I don't see a way around the DNA thing. Doesn't look good to me, hence my belief that we are the golden ones.

It's not going to get better. We're not going to be able to defend our southern border if we had a howitzer every 100'. "The change in the weather is known to be extreme, but what's the sense in changing horses in midstream." There it is.

indyfabz

I went over my thrifty budget by a dollar traveling to the Alamo to look for my stolen bike. Did you know that the Alamo doesn’t have a basement?

genejockey 

Again, chum, no difficulty grasping it. Difficulty believing it can be accomplished with the ease you seem to think.

phughes

Hello, I introduce you to: https://www.bikeforums.net/politics-religion/ Please make a note of it.

livedarklions

You clipped my quote to cut off the actual hstory of the Great Depression instead of your rather over-simplified relationship between shorter hours and demand. You've picked as your example one particular era of US history when one could both increase their demand for goods AND work fewer hours, and that era has a giant hole in it where collapsing demand actually did cause a depression and mass unemployment. Also, that was the era of the "stay at home" mom That era ends with massive numbers of women working much more hours for higher pay than previously

You're not wrong, it's just that you've simplified almost all of the actual history between demand and work hours out of your B- economics analysis.

genejockey 

Where's the "Economics" subforum?

Koyote

I'm not wrong about any of it. And if you'd like a treatise, I can oblige -- but I think no one wants that. Otherwise, neglecting to mention the Great Depression has no bearing on the point I was making -- a point which is valid and widely documented: up until about four or five decades ago, the gains from rising productivity were roughly split between labor and capital. Workers took a portion of their share (as negotiated by their unions and, later, through gov't mandate) in the form of reduced annual working hours. In other words, rather than always taking more income, they choose some additional income and some additional leisure time (= less working time). That was my point: that people have indeed made that choice. It's not so far-fetched as (ahem!) a particular poster wants to pretend. (And that's not to mention all of the workers in other industrialized countries that have made the same choice, and continue to do so - to a greater degree than those of us here in the US.)

By the way, picking as an example "one particular era of US history when one could both increase their demand for goods AND work fewer hours" is kind of the point. Rising productivity makes that possible. So, unless you think that productivity is done rising (forever) in the US, this complaint of yours completely misses the point.

Honestly, going on about the Great Depression is almost pointlessly tangential. It feels like you just want to argue, which is your thing. So I'll leave it at this.

phughes

I was referring to the rants about capitalism, etc., which belong in P&R. Oh, and you're right, this is a bike forum and not an economics forum.

bikelif3

I identify as..."Savvy"...

livedarklions

Like you don't want to argue? You are completely missing the point. By your own admission, this trend of fewer hours at higher pay ended decades ago. You note that the benefits of productivity gains were split between labor and capital, but that relationship ended decades ago. Productivity rises at this point are being tied to increased automation which really doesn't bode well for the value of labor over time. You're using one period in history to bolster your argument that a decrease in demand for goods won't increase unemployment, and that period was never one of decreased demands for goods except for one period when unemployment skyrocketed.

If we really want to get into it, the post-war boom in the US was such a combination of once in history occurrences that pointing to it as precedent seems rather silly.

​​​​​​I suspect the real economizing we're seeing among consumers is their decisions to have fewer kids. Choosing a cheaper bike rather pales in significance when compared to that.