Yes, you can’t completely eliminate the risk. But there is a huge difference between “an occasional disaster” and “a sad everyday reality”.
There are some families where for cultural reasons it is unthinkable to keep your individual finances separate, and it is heartbreaking to see how one member of the family is working their ass off to improve the situation, and some other member of the family just takes the extra money and burns it (not literally), keeping the family in poverty. And there is no way out, unless they learn to establish some boundaries.
Anyway, if principle like the Pareto principle are true, we only need 20% of the working force to produce most of the goods.
I like this argument! Never heard it before (applied to employment).
I wonder where it applies, though. Probably true for most IT companies. But there are jobs that don’t scale well, for example teachers or doctors.
I guess if we fired the right 80% of teachers and replaced them with “kids watching Khan Academy”, little educational value would be lost. (Though there is other value of schools: babysitting. That one probably scales worst of all.) Even better, kids watching Khan Academy most of the time, once in a week having a debate with a teacher.
So… maybe we need about 50% of the current workforce? And with 50% of people staying at home, we would not need so much babysitting for the children.
We would still need the doctors, I think. One day, machines may replace them, but we are not there yet.
I’ve heard stories of missionaries and philanthropists in Third World countries ending up dejected by how impossible it is to get a lot of primitive tribes to join the 21st century and do Capitalism. They suggest the tribespeople start some business to provide needed goods to their village, but the tribespeople complain that if they made money, they’d be socially required to give it to their inlaws/clan/spend it all in a huge feast for the village, so what’s the point?
Yes, you can’t completely eliminate the risk. But there is a huge difference between “an occasional disaster” and “a sad everyday reality”.
There are some families where for cultural reasons it is unthinkable to keep your individual finances separate, and it is heartbreaking to see how one member of the family is working their ass off to improve the situation, and some other member of the family just takes the extra money and burns it (not literally), keeping the family in poverty. And there is no way out, unless they learn to establish some boundaries.
I like this argument! Never heard it before (applied to employment).
I wonder where it applies, though. Probably true for most IT companies. But there are jobs that don’t scale well, for example teachers or doctors.
I guess if we fired the right 80% of teachers and replaced them with “kids watching Khan Academy”, little educational value would be lost. (Though there is other value of schools: babysitting. That one probably scales worst of all.) Even better, kids watching Khan Academy most of the time, once in a week having a debate with a teacher.
So… maybe we need about 50% of the current workforce? And with 50% of people staying at home, we would not need so much babysitting for the children.
We would still need the doctors, I think. One day, machines may replace them, but we are not there yet.
EDIT:
Haha, just saw this at Astral Codex Ten:
That’s funny :)