this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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I've seen this before. Last time I looked, it required that everyone live in cities with good public transportation. It also didn't factor in modern necessities like air conditioning (which will be actually necessary in many more parts of the world due to global warming).
Basically, for this to work, everyone needs to live in 2-bedroom apartments... Without air conditioning or anything like a desktop PC. You'd have a small refrigerator and heat your food with a microwave (and nothing else because stovetop and ovens use up too much energy).
It also makes huge assumptions about the availability of food, where it can be grown, and that all the necessary nutrients/fertilizer are already present in the soil and that transporting/processing things like grain is super short distance/cheap.
Also, communism. It requires functioning communism. That everyone will be ok with it and there will be no wars over resources/land.
It requires strict rationing. Everyone gets their fair share, and no one gets multiples of what other people get.
Not only that, but all 8.5 billion would also need to be willing to stop any "lifestyle inflation". It's not just about accepting it for a day, it's about adjusting to that being the norm for themselves and for their kids into the foreseeable future.
A question that I frequently ask when presented this is "what would you personally be willing to give up?" Of course it is important to realize that some of it is systemic and not within the average person's control (e.g. car-centric infrastructure)
Right. I think there are a lot of people who would be happy to give up something, but would need big societal changes first. Like, giving up driving a car, but would need cities to be designed more like Europe where it's possible to get by without a car. Or, living in a more efficient high-rise apartment building vs. a less efficient detached house, but would need building codes and standards to be better so they weren't constantly being annoyed by a noisy neighbour, or having to put up with smells from other apartments.
This is the answer. I have a nonstandard sleep cycle (I worked nights for a decade) and that alone keeps me out of apartments. I refuse to subject a downstairs neighbor to me being most awake at 1am, and I likewise can't sleep when my neighbors are awake.
Yeah, I have a different sleep schedule too. But, it doesn't mean that I can't live in apartment. It just means I can't live in a poorly built apartment with bad sound isolation between floors.
I've been in high quality apartments where you could never hear the neighbours at all. The problem is, there's no requirement to build them like that, and it's much cheaper not to, so they don't tend to do it. If I could be guaranteed not to be disturbed, I'd probably prefer a high-rise. But, I've had too many bad experiences with loud neighbours, or with air leakage so I could smell it when my neighbours were smoking.
Technically, I could live in an apartment. But I can't afford a nice one, so I can't live in an apartment, haha.
That's definitely part of it. But, also because it's not part of the building code, they can just lie. So, even if you go look at a luxury apartment building, they might tell you that it's high quality and you can't hear the neighbours at all. Maybe if you get a chance to talk to someone who lives there they can tell you the truth. But, in my experience a lot of real estate agents / rental agents / landlords and the like lie.
How is strict rationing to provide for everyone not communism?
Just boiling down and highlighting the key point in a "how will this personally affect me" sort of way.
Yes this lowest-common-denominator life we’d all be living would save billions suffering through abject poverty but none of those people are here, reading this right now. Everyone reading this would probably see a lifestyle decline. I always have to laugh when anyone in Europe or the US blab as if they are part of the 90%. We are 10%ers every one of us.
Kind of what I was getting at with my comments. The median standard of living doesn't have to be bad or even particularly uncomfortable, but it would require everyone who lives above that median to be knocked down to it and be okay with that. Which they won't. Meaning it will require force.
The only problem is really consent and the propaganda against these goals. E.g. Air conditioning or cooking is rather nitpicking, those are not real issues, technological advances and passive house design would easily solve that. With Kite Power you already have unlimited energy.
And you could build a huge apartment block surrounded by nature, growing food directly around you and sharing infrastructure. Everyone could get a luxurious apartment with high ceilings and a killer view for everyone. If drastically less people need to commute to work, we wouldn't need to live in a city. You could also have communal kitchens or diners or cafeteria.
The greatest luxury of all would be to have free time. To enjoy life, to study and learn for free, to raise your children in peace. Not consumerism. Let the masses produce VR games if they have too much free time.
I also disagree that it requires full on communism, a UBI or expanded bill of rights for the human necessities to reach a decent living standard (DLS) could work too. You'd just heavily regulate, ban industrial meat production, bad advertising to avoid consumerism etc.
The entire world doesn't have the climate of Japan where it's possible to live in an apartment without AC and heat. No amount of design can ameliorate 38C high humidity.
Only a subset of food can be grown locally and that local food is only available seasonally. It's the system we already have.
That's not a technological solution to cooking. That's social which is far harder if not impossible to overcome.
That doesn't follow. The same work needs to be done, if not more because reducing energy means reducing automation so people have to work to make up the difference.
We're probably talking about different things, like "you can't grow almonds or citrus fruit locally". But humans can clearly survive on a local diet pretty much everywhere, it's just a question of population density. Your food staple would simply be what kind of calorie crop grows locally, plus vegetables and greenhouses for exotic fruit.
And yeah, all of this is a social solution through and though. Like you'd want to encourage people to help plant and harvest. But this might differ from of community to community. Some might want to use more automation with robotics. You really don't want a uniform regime. One man's utopia is another man's gulag.
People already love to eat or order out. You could have a cafeteria for each apartment block and robots delivering inside the building like a hotel. This would still be drastic reduction, even compared to shopping by car. Going shopping by foot or bike in your local city neighborhood is probably still more, because you don't have to transport the harvested food using trucks but process it locally.
No it doesn't! We can drastically reduce the amount of work that needs to be done! That is the whole point! You can look at it as capitalism being incredibly inefficient. Or incredibly efficient at creating unequal conditions benefiting those with capital (and vastly inefficient conditions for those without).
A major driver of this is advertising or "brainwashing" people to buy garbage they don't need. Or the advertising industry itself - think of the stock value of all the social and TV media, it is completely financed by advertising, and all the downstream industry that is fed by it. All that is waste!
Or planned obsolescence, purposefully producing goods and appliances that break within one or two year.
Or things like a byzantine tax code, or complicated laws. Or regulations or land ownership preventing efficient reorganization of cities or infrastructure.
PS: And yeah the obvious impossibility is that those who own and profit from all these inefficiency would never allow this. But we shouldn't forget or deny it's possible.
That's subsistence living. No one wants to go back to that. Nor is anyone stopping you from living that way. Land is cheap in the middle of nowhere. Communes exist everywhere.
A communal cafeteria isn't what people do when "going out". If it was what people wanted, there would be more cafeterias and fewer restaurants.
It's easy to think that everyone is sheep except for yourself. I've now come to believe that consumerism is fundamental to human nature, not advertising changing humans. The proof is thousands of years of pre capitalism artifacts from archeology sites. People have always liked unnecessary "stuff". People have always liked fashion and trends. People are going to be rampant consumers even if advertising and marketing were stopped tomorrow. It's their nature.
Thats the part that sucks. For super poor people this is great. For those of us already in a decent house, it would be a lot worse. I For one cant live in apartments, unless I was absolutely close to homeless.
Although, if we took the billionaires down a notch I bet a lot more people could also have houses.
would you not accept going from a house to something less decent if it came with the likelihood that everyone in the world would have housing, food, and security?
It'd definitely be a tough choice, but I hope I'd be able to make it
Thats a good question, but let me also ask this: is every single human equal? I hate to break it to you, but there are people providing a lot more value to the world than a taco bell worker. So yes, I think the taco bell worker deserves a surviveable wage while they study to be greater and have social safety nets in place to assist. However if they only aspire to stay at taco bell, smoke weed and play cod all night after work, that is fine, but to be fair to others who aspired to be greater, the taco bell worker doesn't deserve as much as them.
Before you call me an old boomer-i actually know people who live the above life and im sorry, they don't deserve to have more than a small apartment. Which maybe is fine with them ! But no, im not going to give up my place to benefit those who aren't attributing as much. Notice, I didn't say they aren't deserving of fair and affordable housing and safety nets.
yeah
Good argument. Your statement solves all our issues. How can people not see this isn't a black and white issue? It can however be put simply:
Billionaires shouldn't exist.
Everyone deserves a living wage (NOT access to all life's luxuries)
If you feel like busting your ass working or saving money, you should be ABLE to afford the luxuries you want.
I used to work in contract law at an insurance company (not a lawyer), and I was paid well to do highly specialized work. I now work behind the counter at a bakery and I get to help people feed their families. I unquestionably provide more actual value to the world through my current job than my previous one.
Id agree with you there! But youre actively bettering the community and improving quality of life, you deserve to have a comfortable living situation for that. You can't just give houses and money to lazy or addicted people, that doesnt solve the issue is what im saying.
Do you like taco bell? Do you see value in fast food existing as a convenience?
If you think that fast food jobs shouldn't exist at all (and everyone should have the means and the free time to make food at home, with accommodations for those who physically can't cook for themselves), I have more sympathy with your position (even though I still disagree with some of your opinions). But if you want fast food, retail, or any similar services to keep existing, someone will always have to work in those poorly-valued jobs. And I don't think they deserve less than the rest of us.
Tbh I think the average fast food employee works a hell of a lot harder during their shift than I do at mine. I'm sitting at my desk typing on social media right now; the guy at the taco bell next door is standing in a hot kitchen, pumping out quesadillas for hours. Sure, my job requires more specific skills, but now that I already have those skills, I'm not laboring more strenuously to use them. If my education had been free, and I didn't need a higher wage to pay off my student debt/catch up for the years I hadn't spent working? I don't think I'd "deserve" more than the taco bell guy.
So the Doctor that studied for 16 hours a day while I played video games and then worked 16 hour shifts at the hospital during residency for 5 years while I worked 7 hours shifts at Taco Bell should be paid the same as me?
Capitalism has perverse unjust rewards but that doesn't make the opposite just either.
I do like it on occasion yes, and those workers deserve a living wage. They don't deserve the luxuries of life that a doctor has, however.
Id agree the "hardness" of a job is difficult to quantify. A job where you sit at a computer all day but talk to people and run large projects to build houses or factories or anything like that, will pay more than a fast food person. They both are working, but it's different. Could the fast food employee design an electrical system for a food facility ? No. Could the electrical engineer work fast food? Almost definitely yes.
I see your position, but respectfully disagree. I appreciate that we may want to incentivize people to be doctors, but the gifts of civilization have been hard won by the labour of all workers over the years, and IMHO on paper should be available to all. It's not about deserving.
Now, in practice is a good doctor more likely to enjoy the charity of the community, and occupy a special status because of their critical role? Undoubtedly. IMHO in a world where creature comforts are guaranteed, these specials perks would be a huge boon.
And besides, I think most people only want lots of money because it helps insulate them from the ravages of our current system when they're old and unable to work. If we didn't have to worry about how to survive after our working years I think collecting excess wealth would have a lot less appeal.
PS. Personally I think there are enough people drawn to medicine that it wouldn't be hard to fill those spots with free education. But we may have to really incentivize people to work dirty jobs like sewage.
PPS. for incentives, maybe it's something like fewer weekly hours, or your time counts 1.5 to double towards your pension, so you can retire earlier.
I agree with you. You have my vote!
And yes, a lot of people tend to ignore that the crap jobs that need to be done wont get done without monetary incentive. So im glad you mentioned that point
Yes. Why is this even a question?
Interesting take. I don't believe it's an all or nothing question. But I think we can all agree that a lazy-by-choice person doesnt deserve as much as someone who went to school for 6 years to be a doctor. Now.the lazy person doesn't deserve prison or to be homeless. But if you think both people need to live in a 1 bedroom apartment for things to be equal, thats actually oppression, not equality.
My main disagreement with your point is the word "deserve". I don't actually have a problem with an economic system that rewards some activities more than others, as long as there's a humane baseline for everyone. But I think that's absolutely an economic choice, and not the only reasonable one.
"Deserve" implies to me that there's a moral system judging one activity as more worthy, or better, than another; rather than simply being more valuable to a particular economic model. It seems like a short step from that to deciding some people are more worthy than others.
Agree, poor word choice. I just meant that yes some jobs are more economically beneficial. You can't pay an artist the same as a sewage worker.
That's only semantics. You agree with the OP, you only don't like the wording.
I think the wording is crucial on this point, yes. I'm open to terms like "earned", or "justifies".
"Deserves" has moral connotations to it. As we see now in the US, it's extremely dangerous to associate moral qualities with economic outcomes.
Also, my original objection was to the question, "Is every human equal?" There, I have no semantic qualifiers - all humans are created equal, and deserve equal rights. Full stop.
gulp
This doesn't mean we wouldn't have access to computers. We just wouldn't individually have personal computers all to ourselves unless you were someone who actually worked in the tech industry and needed constant access to perform your job duties.
A planned economy that functions at optimum efficiency is a communists wet dream of course.