What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world would be better off with less global trade and more local productions. Local productions means a stronger community and more visibility for business practices, because it's more sustainable.
If a global business decides to just toss all the plastic it uses it in its backyard you'll never notice because it's 2000 miles away. If Amazon decides to treat their workers unfairly, you'll never notice. But you'll notice if a local business does it because you'll be walking in there every day. There's a level of accountability.
In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online. It's incredibly unclear to me why a super poor and undeveloped local economy is better than a specialized globalized one. In my country there was a dictatorship with protectionism and when we opened things got way better, not worse.
Regarding me not noticing crimes, I think we have police and regulations for that.
> In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online.
(1) That is because technology also takes away components of life that one can enjoy without being rich such as accesss to nature and local food production.
(2) The global economy is only so "good" because it takes advantage of the commons in poorer places. We simply should not have the capability to do that. You only benefit off the suffering of others.
On (1), I grew up behind the iron curtain in a pre-internet age next to a village (no TV, no organized entertainment). The typical non-working activity there was not to enjoy the beauty of nature (as farmers they were fed up with it) but to be bored, get drunk and start fights with anyone non local. When the economy opened up in late 1980s anyone who could ran out to cities.
I will take technology and some globalism any day. My 2c.
That's the thing that I see a lot of. I grew up in Africa, and was exposed to extreme poverty, since as far back as I can remember.
People living poor don't like it. They may have accepted it, and may have learned to deal with it, but they don't tend to like it. They want out, and generally jump at the chance to do so.
People in richer communities may have fantasies about "living closer to nature," but that doesn't usually involve things like shooing rats off your kids at night, or having your house collapse, when there's a 3.0 earthquake.
People in poorer communities may have unreasonable expectations of what having money will bring, and we often see poor people that get rich quick (think Lotto "winners"), having pretty miserable lives.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
I picked a place to live that's close to nature, right across my back fence from millions of acres of public forest. I love it here. Poverty is not required. I commute to work via Starlink and most nonperishables are delivered to my front porch by UPS, mostly from Amazon. It's green on both sides of my fence, and it's a choice that normal people, who can work remotely, can make if they value it. My house is far cheaper than one in a city and local costs are lower. Amazon deserves credit for making such a lifestyle easier, and if we can export more of it, that sounds like an advance.
I understand the joy of your choices. I live in an old mill town that has had multiple Renaissances. I consider myself lucky because I live at the edge of the town and have a 10,000-square-foot lot that is in the process of intentionally rewilding. My house wasn't necessarily cheaper than other houses. It's much more living space, fewer neighbors, and roughly the same cost per month as a three-bedroom apartment closer to where my partner works.
The downside is that she has a 1 1/2 hour commute. Not because of distance but because of congestion. She is willing to take public transit, except it takes roughly twice as long to take the train, then a bus, then another bus, then a third bus, and not be able to do errands during the day or on the way home.
That is all well and good and a setup I totally understand. Now that I am in the US I like that my home is 15 steps away from a good-sized network of forest trails. Nature is good. But it is good because of technology: unlimited potable water, plenty of energy to keep my home warm, electricity and internet and cars to get me to the downtown or an airport when I feel like it.
But my opponent, to whom I responded, wants to "severely restrict technology". And this is what I have beef with. Those folks tend to be from rich countries and want to freeze things at their current, comfortable for them, level. They do not want to give up the running water, swear off vaccines and antibiotics or go through dental work without painkillers. Which is where a large part of the world would be stuck under this "technology restriction".
False dichotomy. Both situations are bad because both are predicated on lack of wisdom. A lack of wisdom in a poor place implies brawls and wanton violence. A lack of wisdom in a rich, technological age implies resource destruction and climate change.
Wisdom combined with restricted technology would be ideal, such as with the Amish. They have their problems but they show that a technologically restricted society is best. Note: I am not arguing for NO technology, but severely restricted technology.
Who is going to do this "severe restriction of technology"? The people themselves, as you write, do not want to do it.
And anytime a self-appointed elite start doing "what is best for the people" against their will, police repression and labor camps are also on the menu. Nah, I will take my freedom, including the freedom to make mistakes.
You assume the people always won't. There's a growing amount of skepticism towards technology and it's quite possible people will begin to hate it. I myself intend to spread the word about the dangers of technology to the best of my ability.
Ok, let's restrict the technology. What's the end goal?
Because 1 billion years from now, even if humanity is back to before the wheel technology plants will have disappeared and the oceans evaporated due to the sun.
If we want Earth originated life to have a chance to go over this bump something will have to go forward.
I find myself falling into this line of thought a lot: why should we make tradeoffs that favor the earth instead of hyper-accelerating progress to get off of it in preparation for its inevitable demise?
But isn’t the entire universe also going to meet its end as well, in an anticlimactic heat death? To overcome that, a civilization would have to reach universe-level Kardashev-like energy utilization capability, which would necessarily consume every particle in the universe, including themselves. It seems infeasible and unwise.
Maybe it would lead to the next big bang… but that still is a death and rebirth.
I think ultimately folks that support post-earth transhumanism operate on a notion that they themselves or their direct descendants that they will know and love in their own lifetimes will benefit from this space-colonial survivalist utopia. But IMO the reality is that if it is even possible, it would only happen long, long after they and everyone they could know or imagine are dead. It would likelier be accomplished by a society and civilization that they would hate and believe should be exterminated, due to the tradeoffs that would have to be made to accomplish it.
It’s essentially an individual’s desire to live forever and avoid death, projected onto the human race. I’m not convinced it would actually be nice to live forever. Better to focus on how to make the short time we have be as good as possible. IMO the idea of eternal life leads to all sorts of perversions of the now in exchange for an assumed eternal afterward.
> I find myself falling into this line of thought a lot: why should we make tradeoffs that favor the earth instead of hyper-accelerating progress to get off of it in preparation for its inevitable demise?
Get off and go where? Anywhere we could go is a million times worse for human habitation than post-demise Earth.
I think the idea is: assume sufficient technological advancement to be able to reach or even create countless other essentially exact replicas of earth? Barring that, plenty of ideas have been floated along the lines of extraterrestrial colonization and/or intergenerational spaceships.
I’m not arguing strongly in favor of “getting off it” so I’m not going to make much effort defending the position.
But I can imagine scenarios where we have to leave earth with intergenerational ships and only then acquire the ability to terraform, harness a star’s energy or travel at light speed.
(2) They where literally describing a poor area being better off with global trade.
Economies of scale and local advantages make the world better off. There’s no advantage to growing bananas in greenhouses in Iowa when you can grow wheat and trade with Panama.
Off the top of my head, the advantage in having bananas grown near you verses imported from Panama is that they are possibly fresher. This is assuming they can grow in your area and are in season of course. Produce is a special case in this regard locally sourced can potentially be healthier.
That is to say everything isn't objectively always 100% better with globalization and specialization at least not until come up with faster methods of shipping.
You can grow bananas in Alaska, but you can’t simply plant them outside. Thus my example assumes greenhouses built to a large enough scale to handle trees which is a major economic and environmental cost.
Comparative advantage applies to a huge range of things not just bananas. You could mine cobalt basically anywhere at extreme expense, but everyone is better off when that happens in locations that naturally have extremely high concentrations of cobalt.
That local trade involves taking advantage of the commons (putting CO2 in the atmosphere) to make it work. In my opinion, we do not have the right to take that advantage.
More CO2 is produced manufacturing and maintaining those greenhouses than shipping fruit from tropical locations.
So no, in this case local production is simply worse for the commons. More broadly things that cost dramatically more are generally worse for the environment in subtle ways.
Locally sustainable goods becomes really limited very quickly. You don’t just lose foods but technology as most of the periodic table becomes unavailable, even low tech items like salt needs to be imported into most areas.
On the other hand even occasional imports supports global trade and a dramatically higher standard living. The option to decarbonize global trade is exists, ‘local’ is more feel good nonsense than an actual path forward.
Well for one, lots of my local economy would just involve trade and helping community members for free, creating local community gardens, etc. Quite a lot can be possible with very little.
>my local economy would just involve trade and helping community members for free, creating local community gardens, etc. Quite a lot can be possible with very little.
Isn't this basically collectivization, which empirically has been shown to a massive failure? Without a monetary incentive, it's hard to get people to actually do stuff rather than lying on their couch and watching tiktok.
The first point is true, but most people do not choose it.
I do not think your second point stands. Almost the entire world is financially better off than it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are they benefitting from?
> The first point is true, but most people do not choose it.
Because they lack wisdom and human beings en masse operate on instinct, not wisdom.
> Almost the entire world is financially better off than it was in the past. Lots of third world economies are visibly richer than they were a few decades ago. Whose suffering are they benefitting from?
The classic reply of the economist. It's because the industrial world measures better off with variables like "life expectancy" and "money".
But a longer life does not a better life make, nor does money always equate to better off.
For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national park and walk there every day, that would be more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a huge city. How does the prevailing evaluative mechanism account for that?
>The classic reply of the economist. It's because the industrial world measures better off with variables like "life expectancy" and "money".
I'd take arguments with objective metrics over handwavy arguments involving vibes, because with the latter you can make whatever argument you want with them and it's impossible to refute.
>For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national park and walk there every day, that would be more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a huge city. How does the prevailing evaluative mechanism account for that?
You can ask for how much people are willing to pay for access to such a scenery and put a dollar value on it, or try to infer it based on housing price patterns (eg. house next to national park vs equally rural house next to corn fields).
> I'd take arguments with objective metrics over handwavy arguments involving vibes, because with the latter you can make whatever argument you want with them and it's impossible to refute.
You can define other concrete metrics. Distance to wild nature for example. That's concrete.
Also, there has been a visible improvement in living standards in third world countries. More money does not mean people have a better life in a rich country because there are diminishing returns on having more money. In a country where most people are a lot poorer and desperately need more money, more money does mean better off.
I am pretty sure people who can afford a proper house instead of a slum stack, or have a proper toilet, etc. are better off. As I said, there are visible improvements in the lives of the very poor.
"For example: if I could live next to a beautiful national park and walk there every day, that would be more valuable to me than a million dollars but living in a huge city."
That is your preference. Many people prefer living in a big city.
Also, what about how good your conditions of life are next to the beautiful national park? A nice house in a big city with good food and leisure time vs a shack in the beautiful place, hard work to grow a barely adequate amount of food?
The prevailing evaluative mechanism would note that you could take that million dollars, invest it in a 4% annuity, and move next to the national park of your choice with $40,000 in your pocket every year for the rest of your life. Indeed, there's a whole movement called FIRE of people who do things like this.
But there's also people like me, who say that sounds great but don't really mean it, because it's cringe to admit that you care about money.
The last 40 years have seen enormous economic growth outside the G7 to the point that North America and Western Europe no longer dominate the global economy.
Vice president Vance marrying a woman from India was a look into the future. The rich elite know what's happening.
That is the other extreme that is also bad. In economies like that protectionism supports inefficient local production - favouring some people at the cost of others. It is designed to funnel money away from some people to others.
The dominance of the economy by a few big companies also has the same effect - elimination of competition.
Where were the police and regulations when Boeing's products killed hundreds of people? Last time I checked, nobody among top management went to prison for that.
That's what "too big to fail" corporations can get you: failed products, anti-competitive environment, regulatory capture, no responsibility.
Getting fined for a few (hundred) million dollars is not responsibility, it's chump change for multi-trillion dollar corporations.
You can have "global business" that aren't "too big to fail". If anything, if you're pro-competition, blindly buying local has the same anti-competitive effects, because you're protecting the local firm from competition from elsewhere.
We have police and regulations but they only apply to the country you are in.
Most of the cheap stuff we buy is from other countries, they don't have the same regulations and protections that we have, hence part(not all) of the reason they are cheap.
Take a look at the cheap chargers on Amazon for example, marked as UL listed but you open them up and you see a circuit that is liable to start a fire. Someone reports it, the vendor vanishes and then there are 5 more listings under different names. See also the lead paint on toys scandal and poison pet food/treat scandals.
> What you are supporting is local sustainability. The world would be better off with less global trade and more local productions. Local productions means a stronger community and more visibility for business practices, because it's more sustainable.
This is true for the extreme minority of products that ARE produced locally.
If you buy a screwdriver from the privately-owned DYI shop around the corner it will have been produced in the same Chinese factory and shipped by the same boats and trucks as the one you'll buy from Amazon.
You're not at all supporting local sustainability, you're just paying more to add one more middleman.
Well, also, if you don't support Amazon, then you don't support the growth of a large company like Amazon which is one more component of the collection of big corporations that are exactly those responsible for globalization in the first place.
Globalization is one of the best things that has ever happened to humanity.
It allows whoever is willing to understand the peoples of the world share way more than what makes them different. Globalization, specially through the internet, but trade as whole, is my personal bet on what could "end all wars". In fact it is the first necessary step for the philosophical parts of the communist manifesto that are salvageable, the parts about the global coalition of common peoples working on shared goals and with similar baseline prosperity.
It is only good if you take a short-term, human-supremacist view of the world. If you consider all life to have worth independent of its value to humanity, then globalization is a horror. And then globalization and the industrial society is the cause of climate change, so it's only good in the short-term.
If by "short-term" you mean "until we stop killing each other in massive wars" (I doubt we can eliminate individual murder), I guess I agree, but by my estimation that will take several centuries at least. If by short term you mean before that, I doubt that we can agree. I'm talking about something that to me is already so far in the future that it was strange to hear "short-term" as a response to that argument!
Regarding human-supremacist view, I hadn't seen that expression before but if I interpret it correctly, I would say that describes a great big majority of the world population and I believe anyone would have a really hard time making this case to anyone on the street. I respect the moral purity in a way, but I think it's wildly impractical to call people around you human-supremacists, when like I said we are still not totally in agreement that things like wars should not happen. We say we do but there's never not been wars in our history. I don't know man, I feel like you're too deep in this rabbithole of morality to be able to have a normal discussion about getting a lightbulb at the local store when you start calling other people human-supremacists. But I do enjoy the banter!
Well, when I see people dump their shit into the homes of animals, then I think that comes from an attitude of human supremacy. When I see pristine forests cut down for profit but laws protecting the homes of people, that's human supremacy.
My goal is not to get most people to like me, or agree with my views. I fully acknowledge that I am a fundamentalist in the sense that I have a few axioms (all life is equal and technology must be regressed) and I have a zero compromise policy on that. Of course, unfortunately, to make a living I must participate in some of our atrocities.
I don't think it's necessary either, that I conform and discuss as others. There is no shortage of conformists. Either our destructive ways will stop, in which case I am working to bring them down through my writing, or I will fail. It's something I believe in and nothing will change that.
You have probably never in your whole life been to a forest that's more than a few hundred years old. Even the Amazon was largely managed by humans with fire prior to about the 15th-16th century.
> technology must be regressed
This is a morally deranged axiom. The life-giving benefits of so many technologies can't be overstated.
It is a bad thing. And you say it like it's a dichotomy.
And I could certainly get most of the comforts of modern life with 5% of the force of globalization. House, food, bed, some reading material, etc. I don't really care for technology, and I use it because it's part of my work and livelihood. BUT, I could easily be just as happy living a simpler life.
Believe me, I've already thought about it. I could be pretty much as comfortable with WAY less global trade. Most people buy way too much clothes, use way too much technology, none of which makes life more comfortable.
> Hell, without globalization you wouldn't even be able to do your job, where do you think your Nikon's, Canon's and Sony's come from?
(A) My point is that if there were other forms of labor, I wouldn't be less comfortable.
(B) Again, I'm arguing for a reduction in global trade, not an outright ban. My point is that it needs to be reduced.
Is it hypocritical to complain about your government even though they make the country that you live in? Of course, I'm using the resources I have, but I could be equally comfortable in a different world. My argument is that our current world is not necessary and not optimal.
Please get off the internet then, destroy your computer and go live on a farm. I don't say this to be an antagonist but it is what you yourself is suggesting others do.
I am not advocating for a simpler life off grid. If I were, I would disconnect now. I am advocating for the destruction of technology because it destroys nature. And sometimes, you need to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house.
> BUT, I could easily be just as happy living a simpler life
Put your money or your comfort where your mouth is.
> if there were other forms of labor, I wouldn't be less comfortable.
Yes you would be. My grand parents all farmed and my grandfather was born in a cabin with a dirt floor and no electricity. His mother died in child birth, which was common at the time. He lost siblings to disease. His life was brutally difficult.
Let's face it, you're a math PHD and a photographer, you aren't made of the same stuff as people who clawed potatoes from the ground to avoid starvation. You have no clue what that actually means and you come here to lecture us about the comforts you yourself cling to. It's disgusting.
More false dichotomies. Technophiles love them. The choice isn't just between modern global capitalism and a dirt floor. It's just that you have a strong emotional attachment to technology and can't see a way out.
It isn't an emotional attachment, I just clearly see that lots of technologies lean on one another and you can't easily pick an choose which ones to abandon and the clock simply does not roll backwards. Every material good that isn't made of material near at hand relies on trade and specialized skills. The humble pencil is shockingly complicated to produce, as you can see in the 1958 essay "I, Pencil". If you want something truly useful to a life above meager dirt-bound poverty like say antibiotics you need big supply chains, complicated machinery, and packaging that in and of itself requires its own inputs and machinery. It's all related.
Your anti-humanist rants are frankly disgusting and morally revolting. Also, who goes around calling themselves doctor? Skimming you substack, I'm really impressed by the inability of a mathematician to string together logical arguments, "Five myths about technology" might be the most sophomoric and poorly argued blog post I've ever read arguing against technology.
For example, your claims that "Technology, in other words, grows and feeds on the medium of global humanity" is totally unsupported by your argument and fails in its basic understanding of peoples' revealed preferences. You argue by simple example, but fail to come up with anything more convincing than whatsapp usage in Brazil or cars in general. It's lazy writing and lazy thinking. Waving away cures and treatments for rare diseases by saying "such people are in difficult situations due to modern technology" is beyond foolish. You could name dozens of genetic hereditary diseases that have laways existed that were a death sentence two generations ago. Type 1 diabetes comes to mind.
Thank you for your input. You're right, and one day I hope to be elevated to your level of rationality and logical thinking. It's an honour to receive input from someone like you.
This is a common sentiment especially in Germany, but Hannah Richie in Not the End of the World shows multiple studies where the impact of CO₂ from transport is negligible for most foods. Other factors like what we decide to eat play a much greater role.
Your plastic example is a reasonable example, but I could also counter that if plastic is the problem then locally isn't necessarily more sustainable. Local farmers can also wrap their products in plastic. In the end, the plastic is there to increase the shelf life. Even most local products will need to have a shelf life of a few weeks. It's unreasonable to demand farmers stop batching their produce and instead demand they carry a few apples to the market each day.
Plastic SIGNIFICANTLY reduces waste. Freakanomics also pointed out that locally grown can have worse carbon footprint than food shipped around the world.
It's clearly not as black and white as you paint it. Local production uses the same materials that global production uses due to pricing. As long as transportation is cheaper than local production this will stay the same due to simple economics.
Also accountability is the same there, shops just buy their material regardless of working conditions and whatsoever. At least companies can be regulated based off of that.
The error is too systematic to say "just produce local".
To add to this, local production means that money can be moving through local financial institutions, with larger balances, which provides more liquidity to the community.
Those financial institutions hire local people. Other local businesses use the same financial institutions.
It's not about "simple economics". This isn't a supply and demand curve. It's about what a higher cash flow/economic output can mean for the subjective quality of life in a community:
- More jobs
- Higher wages
- Improved public services (schools, roads, healthcare)
- Increased property values
Tons of people in these comments talking about the shitty rural experience while seeming to miss the irony in "big cities are so much better" -- big cities started as small cities.
It's a start. As I always say, practices such as encouraging at least _local involvement_ is a start. Of course, another necessary step is revolution to bring down large companies.
The products sold in local stores are never produced locally. It's national or international products, just like on Amazon.
Buying from local stores pays the salaries of local salesmen, that is a benefit for the community. But wouldn't the community benefit better if they did a job that was needed instead?
local production happens in China though. if you live anywhere else, most of the stuff you can buy off Amazon was made in China. the local shops will ultimately buy it from China too.
Your ideas of how the world work are just patently false. A lot of local farms use large amounts of plastic everyday, its quite common to use plastic sheets to cover the ground when planting. You think you would know they are just dumping it into the pit on their land?
Global trade is one of the best things to happen to the world, it has improved the lives of many. All your advocating for is going back to a time which you did not live it but you romanticize. I suspect it was not as romantic as you make it out to be.
If a global business decides to just toss all the plastic it uses it in its backyard you'll never notice because it's 2000 miles away. If Amazon decides to treat their workers unfairly, you'll never notice. But you'll notice if a local business does it because you'll be walking in there every day. There's a level of accountability.