I want to show an alien a worker from food production and Justin Bieber. Stand them side by side. Explain to the alien that one of these people plays a vital role in providing food for the colony, and one grabs his nuts and says “baby baby baby ooh”. Then ask him which one he thinks is a ball-hair away from starving on the streets and which one has more resources than they could realistically consume in a lifetime.
It’s sad to live in such a contradictory world. A construction worker needs to work a few months to build a home, but would need to work 50 years to pay it. The problem is that most of people just get used to, instead of consider that something completely unacceptable, that’s why there’s no reaction, and the few people who dear to react are considered “weirdos” by the rest who just conforms.
Leaving aside the value of land which is a whole other can of worms - how much time do you think building said house would take if you first had to gather the raw materials?
There’s a lot more labour involved in building a house than that of the construction worker.
Yep, you’re right. But the example I gave above is a symptom that something is broken. Many decades ago, in many countries within the Western hemisphere, a middle class worker with NO university at all was able to buy a home in only 10 years, whilst feeding a family of 4. Nowadays we reached the situation where some cities in the world are renting capsules for individuals: in L.A., for instance, there are renting capsules for living at a monthly price of $750 (check the video about it).
Take in mind that the video above was published in 2019, the capsules price are very likely higher now. Bart Simpson’s tree house was bigger and healthier than that. I’m not an economist, but I think the proof that buying homes can be much easier is that it was already done in the past.
Our toxic culture is an employment based, market fundamentalist culture. Any smart alien would run from that.
I want to show an alien a worker from food production and Justin Bieber. Stand them side by side. Explain to the alien that one of these people plays a vital role in providing food for the colony, and one grabs his nuts and says “baby baby baby ooh”. Then ask him which one he thinks is a ball-hair away from starving on the streets and which one has more resources than they could realistically consume in a lifetime.
It’s sad to live in such a contradictory world. A construction worker needs to work a few months to build a home, but would need to work 50 years to pay it. The problem is that most of people just get used to, instead of consider that something completely unacceptable, that’s why there’s no reaction, and the few people who dear to react are considered “weirdos” by the rest who just conforms.
Leaving aside the value of land which is a whole other can of worms - how much time do you think building said house would take if you first had to gather the raw materials?
There’s a lot more labour involved in building a house than that of the construction worker.
Yep, you’re right. But the example I gave above is a symptom that something is broken. Many decades ago, in many countries within the Western hemisphere, a middle class worker with NO university at all was able to buy a home in only 10 years, whilst feeding a family of 4. Nowadays we reached the situation where some cities in the world are renting capsules for individuals: in L.A., for instance, there are renting capsules for living at a monthly price of $750 (check the video about it).
Take in mind that the video above was published in 2019, the capsules price are very likely higher now. Bart Simpson’s tree house was bigger and healthier than that. I’m not an economist, but I think the proof that buying homes can be much easier is that it was already done in the past.
Future episodes will cover that topic 😉
Looking forward to it