Stuff you buy loses that special "new thing" glow pretty quickly, if you know what I mean. Stuff you've made yourself still gives you satisfaction when you use it months or years later, I've found.
I'm a big fan of bush-craft, primitive crafting and recreating ancient archaeological finds. I'm not especially worried about a lack of meaning if the world really does become post-sarcity, but that kind of thing will be almost completly AI-proof because the whole point is being self-reliant and making stuff yourself.
"The great majority of people consume and waste and destroy, and that’s pretty much it.
The average person buys junk and fast and other processed food for nearly all their meals when they’re already fat, they use a ton of energy as their default for basically no reason1, they buy a lot of stuff and throw away a lot of stuff, they never fix anything, and they never make or create anything." Are you alluding to something like bs jobs with this? Obviously most people have some kind of job that's at least ostensibly about producing stuff.
> I'm a big fan of bush-craft, primitive crafting and recreating ancient archaeological finds
Yep, I'm a big fan of this, too. One of the things I like most about these folk is that they've actually contributed meaningfully to paleoanthropology by just trying stuff - I reference a few cases like this in an upcoming post.
> Are you alluding to something like bs jobs with this? Obviously most people have some kind of job that's at least ostensibly about producing stuff.
Well first, maybe half of people don't have jobs (~170M / 330M have jobs), and the rest are kids, retired, or unemployed or on welfare. 46% are kids, and 30% are retired.
And for the ones WITH jobs, I feel like service industry and a lot of white collar jobs *don't* really produce anything of value? Let's check that assumption.
I mean, from my own experiences in finance and with FAANGs, I'd argue a lot of that is probably incrementally net negative to the average consumer, because we're wasting the finest minds of at least 2 generations in the eyeball and synthetic financial derivative mines. Yes, they produce some value, but the value compared to those minds harnesed towards something useful like producing scientific research, inventions, or founding new companies? Basically zero. And the products of those finest minds is going to zero sum games (finance), or driving "average screen time" from ~2 hours a day in 2014 to ~7 hours a day today. Is the average consumer REALLY better spending 7 hours a day on screens versus 2? Or are they all fatter and more depressed? Sure, "revealed preferences" and all, but if we index too much on that, we should celebrate that 75% of all Americans are fat, because they're revealing they like junk and fast food and that's their choice.
Manufacturing is 8% of employment and agriculture 2% - so we have 10% of jobs that are unequivocably producing stuff. Another 10% is mining and logging and oil rigs and stuff, which is producing stuff. Another 15% is transportation and logistics, I guess that counts.
The 15-30% that's service sector - does your barista or cashier ACTUALLY help produce anything? Putatively, overpriced coffee milkshakes and sales, right?
But they can essentially be replaced by machines with no change in the thing being produced. Heck, I *prefer* self checkouts and espresso or capuccino from fancy machines, and I think humanoid robots or Mcdonald's style ordering screens would be a good enough replacement for most people.
For the remaining ~50% that's white collar - 6-7% is FAANGS or finance, which I already covered.
3-4% is teachers, which I consider largely net negative to our future technological and economic growth (child prisons that are designed to crush and oppress actually talented kids, but all economic and technological progress is driven by the top <=20%, etc).
1% is realtors, who actively detract from real estate transactions by spamming you with completely irrelevant links while you do all the search and work, make it more difficult to see places by having to coordinate around THEIR schedule, then charge you $50-$100k for all that.
I guess there's probably another 40% in there that might be able to go either way that I can't really categorize easily? Call it half that are BS jobs, we're at 20%.
Huh. I guess you've convinced me. We're at least 55% jobs that actually produce or help produce something of value, which is the majority. And probably part of those teachers, FAANG and finance employees, and 20% BS white collars actually do drive or enable SOME value, so maybe we're as high as 70%. So discount by the half working, and a full ~35% of the US is net producing, and 10% of the pop is retirees were, and prospectively another 15% of the pop is kids that will be, and we're at ~60% total?
Better than I came in thinking! (One outside view triangulation here is that only about the top 20% of households are "net payers" vs consumers in the tax system, so I came in with that as my prior). I'm convinced.
I do still feel that in "personal lives" and habits there's a large divide between "makers" and "consumers," and that the vast majority of people merely consume and waste in their personal lives, and that's more what I was thinking / pointing to there. But I think you've convinced me we have to give people with jobs, retirees, and kids the benefit of the doubt on net.
I don't, I have a "book list" note where I collect book recommendations to inform the next books I get / read, and that's my main record of what I've read / liked for the past few years. The ones I liked are bolded in that, happy to shoot it over if you're interested.
Stuff you buy loses that special "new thing" glow pretty quickly, if you know what I mean. Stuff you've made yourself still gives you satisfaction when you use it months or years later, I've found.
I'm a big fan of bush-craft, primitive crafting and recreating ancient archaeological finds. I'm not especially worried about a lack of meaning if the world really does become post-sarcity, but that kind of thing will be almost completly AI-proof because the whole point is being self-reliant and making stuff yourself.
"The great majority of people consume and waste and destroy, and that’s pretty much it.
The average person buys junk and fast and other processed food for nearly all their meals when they’re already fat, they use a ton of energy as their default for basically no reason1, they buy a lot of stuff and throw away a lot of stuff, they never fix anything, and they never make or create anything." Are you alluding to something like bs jobs with this? Obviously most people have some kind of job that's at least ostensibly about producing stuff.
> I'm a big fan of bush-craft, primitive crafting and recreating ancient archaeological finds
Yep, I'm a big fan of this, too. One of the things I like most about these folk is that they've actually contributed meaningfully to paleoanthropology by just trying stuff - I reference a few cases like this in an upcoming post.
> Are you alluding to something like bs jobs with this? Obviously most people have some kind of job that's at least ostensibly about producing stuff.
Well first, maybe half of people don't have jobs (~170M / 330M have jobs), and the rest are kids, retired, or unemployed or on welfare. 46% are kids, and 30% are retired.
And for the ones WITH jobs, I feel like service industry and a lot of white collar jobs *don't* really produce anything of value? Let's check that assumption.
I mean, from my own experiences in finance and with FAANGs, I'd argue a lot of that is probably incrementally net negative to the average consumer, because we're wasting the finest minds of at least 2 generations in the eyeball and synthetic financial derivative mines. Yes, they produce some value, but the value compared to those minds harnesed towards something useful like producing scientific research, inventions, or founding new companies? Basically zero. And the products of those finest minds is going to zero sum games (finance), or driving "average screen time" from ~2 hours a day in 2014 to ~7 hours a day today. Is the average consumer REALLY better spending 7 hours a day on screens versus 2? Or are they all fatter and more depressed? Sure, "revealed preferences" and all, but if we index too much on that, we should celebrate that 75% of all Americans are fat, because they're revealing they like junk and fast food and that's their choice.
Manufacturing is 8% of employment and agriculture 2% - so we have 10% of jobs that are unequivocably producing stuff. Another 10% is mining and logging and oil rigs and stuff, which is producing stuff. Another 15% is transportation and logistics, I guess that counts.
The 15-30% that's service sector - does your barista or cashier ACTUALLY help produce anything? Putatively, overpriced coffee milkshakes and sales, right?
But they can essentially be replaced by machines with no change in the thing being produced. Heck, I *prefer* self checkouts and espresso or capuccino from fancy machines, and I think humanoid robots or Mcdonald's style ordering screens would be a good enough replacement for most people.
For the remaining ~50% that's white collar - 6-7% is FAANGS or finance, which I already covered.
3-4% is teachers, which I consider largely net negative to our future technological and economic growth (child prisons that are designed to crush and oppress actually talented kids, but all economic and technological progress is driven by the top <=20%, etc).
1% is realtors, who actively detract from real estate transactions by spamming you with completely irrelevant links while you do all the search and work, make it more difficult to see places by having to coordinate around THEIR schedule, then charge you $50-$100k for all that.
I guess there's probably another 40% in there that might be able to go either way that I can't really categorize easily? Call it half that are BS jobs, we're at 20%.
Huh. I guess you've convinced me. We're at least 55% jobs that actually produce or help produce something of value, which is the majority. And probably part of those teachers, FAANG and finance employees, and 20% BS white collars actually do drive or enable SOME value, so maybe we're as high as 70%. So discount by the half working, and a full ~35% of the US is net producing, and 10% of the pop is retirees were, and prospectively another 15% of the pop is kids that will be, and we're at ~60% total?
Better than I came in thinking! (One outside view triangulation here is that only about the top 20% of households are "net payers" vs consumers in the tax system, so I came in with that as my prior). I'm convinced.
I do still feel that in "personal lives" and habits there's a large divide between "makers" and "consumers," and that the vast majority of people merely consume and waste in their personal lives, and that's more what I was thinking / pointing to there. But I think you've convinced me we have to give people with jobs, retirees, and kids the benefit of the doubt on net.
Do you keep a list of books you've read a la goodreads?
I don't, I have a "book list" note where I collect book recommendations to inform the next books I get / read, and that's my main record of what I've read / liked for the past few years. The ones I liked are bolded in that, happy to shoot it over if you're interested.
Sure! Would appreciate it.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hf980o9p8kumyq68pgw9m/Book-list-as-of-Feb-2025-rtf.rtf?rlkey=b9q6p5rao6i7y62ak3u1v5por&dl=0