Good article. I think it can be taken further though.
I wonder about all of the work that is done with the wealth of billionaires and millionaires in the service of... what?
Let’s take their personal obscene levels of luxury, and imagine a world that didn’t have to include that effort. How many more people would be free do more meaningful work instead? How about their decision to put thousands to work on projects that totally fail to serve humanity as a whole..? (Mars? Amazon?)
We are a civilisation of people working so many pointless jobs, at pointless levels of stress, simply to serve and enrich the few that set the bar. I want to see someone show me the math on what the world looks like we remove that from the equation.
Also consider though that this paradigm has levels, and that for almost every member (genuinely struggling, it’s expensive y’aal) of industrialised economies there are a crowd of impoverished, disenfranchised people in the global south giving up their resources and time to fuel what we are told we need, in fact made to have, in order to keep up sufficiently to be able to work enough put food on the table.
Consider the time it would take to wash your own clothes vs cost of a washing machine. Where is it made? With which materials? Mined by who? Expand this to your car. The jet plane we have such easy access to. But it’s so much more cost effective!
The global south sees trillions of dollars a year extracted from its economies in resources or debt harvesting. Whilst the billionaires extract from us all, they are the tip of the heap. We need to find what the middle ground of an equitable sustainable future lifestyle actually looks like. I don’t think it’s European living standards - as the west likes to imagine everyone on the planet utopically living like Sweden or Switzerland ... last I checked Europe average x8billion was a lot more than 1 earth.
Would love to see more articles tracing this down to what average might actually be if we took the resources and ingenuity of the planet and made it serve more people equally. But more importantly- HOW..?
What I planned on writing next was - what if the 10% lived like the middle class? Where would we be on climate and planetary boundaries? I like the idea of quantifying what all the luxury lifestyles of the world cost/waste. That is a bigger project, but one I'll think about.
Yeh it’s a hard one. It gets really sticky with the dollar cost of something, whilst being a relatively good correlate to energy use, doesn’t account for the very real social-economic requirement of that thing to operate within the system (eg personal cars where there is no public transport, full time childcare when you need a second job, white goods and ready made products for everything because no one has time or skills to DIY any more. Etc.)
I think a more equal society would see people doing a lot of the ‘work’ they otherwise outsource with a great deal more happiness, since we are very adaptable, versatile animals who bore easily and like variety! So the apparent (still very large) global energy burden of the western middle class is not actually one they would necessarily impose, if they were given the opportunity to live differently under a more equal model. Take away the insanity of options created by globalised, commodified everything and suddenly we’ll get used to a different pace of life again.
A slower life is the answer ... I think. A four-day work week, with universal basic services, and universal basic income, job guarantee, with human well-being as the reason for our economy - not growth. We would have more time and work not based on fear. An example is growing your own food. Today most people don't NEED to grow their own food, and they won't be able to grow ALL their own food, or even most of it, but having a garden that you tend to every day means you have the time to do so, be out in nature every day, have time to share that activity with your family every day. It is less "efficient" than just picking up that tomato from the store, but the quality of life and health are all positively impacted even if I've given up time that I could have used to make $.
Examples of high Efficiency always seem to delineate the framework in which that efficiency is apparent. Then you have Jevons paradox, and suddenly you’re the person who is GREAT at replying to emails and do it all day...
Keep up the good work, it’s hard to get people to really see this as a future they would not only cope with, but be genuinely happier and more fulfilled, and without going back in time or going Amish all of a sudden.
Have a lovely evening - I’m being super efficient at cuddling my daughter listening to the birds 🥰
I don't think it is reasonable to say that billionaires create jobs. Economic activity creates jobs; billionaires just control most of the economic activity. If more and other people owned that economic activity the jobs would still be created, and the wealth would be more equally spread. The billionaires serve no special function in this.
Of course, the truth is that we need less economic activity and therefore less jobs if we are to stay within planetary boundaries.
Thanks for commenting Chris. That sounds about right.
Just like there’s a minimum wage, there needs to be a maximum wage.
Good article. I think it can be taken further though.
I wonder about all of the work that is done with the wealth of billionaires and millionaires in the service of... what?
Let’s take their personal obscene levels of luxury, and imagine a world that didn’t have to include that effort. How many more people would be free do more meaningful work instead? How about their decision to put thousands to work on projects that totally fail to serve humanity as a whole..? (Mars? Amazon?)
We are a civilisation of people working so many pointless jobs, at pointless levels of stress, simply to serve and enrich the few that set the bar. I want to see someone show me the math on what the world looks like we remove that from the equation.
Also consider though that this paradigm has levels, and that for almost every member (genuinely struggling, it’s expensive y’aal) of industrialised economies there are a crowd of impoverished, disenfranchised people in the global south giving up their resources and time to fuel what we are told we need, in fact made to have, in order to keep up sufficiently to be able to work enough put food on the table.
Consider the time it would take to wash your own clothes vs cost of a washing machine. Where is it made? With which materials? Mined by who? Expand this to your car. The jet plane we have such easy access to. But it’s so much more cost effective!
The global south sees trillions of dollars a year extracted from its economies in resources or debt harvesting. Whilst the billionaires extract from us all, they are the tip of the heap. We need to find what the middle ground of an equitable sustainable future lifestyle actually looks like. I don’t think it’s European living standards - as the west likes to imagine everyone on the planet utopically living like Sweden or Switzerland ... last I checked Europe average x8billion was a lot more than 1 earth.
Would love to see more articles tracing this down to what average might actually be if we took the resources and ingenuity of the planet and made it serve more people equally. But more importantly- HOW..?
Good luck. Keep writing 🙏
What I planned on writing next was - what if the 10% lived like the middle class? Where would we be on climate and planetary boundaries? I like the idea of quantifying what all the luxury lifestyles of the world cost/waste. That is a bigger project, but one I'll think about.
Wonderful.
Yeh it’s a hard one. It gets really sticky with the dollar cost of something, whilst being a relatively good correlate to energy use, doesn’t account for the very real social-economic requirement of that thing to operate within the system (eg personal cars where there is no public transport, full time childcare when you need a second job, white goods and ready made products for everything because no one has time or skills to DIY any more. Etc.)
I think a more equal society would see people doing a lot of the ‘work’ they otherwise outsource with a great deal more happiness, since we are very adaptable, versatile animals who bore easily and like variety! So the apparent (still very large) global energy burden of the western middle class is not actually one they would necessarily impose, if they were given the opportunity to live differently under a more equal model. Take away the insanity of options created by globalised, commodified everything and suddenly we’ll get used to a different pace of life again.
A slower life is the answer ... I think. A four-day work week, with universal basic services, and universal basic income, job guarantee, with human well-being as the reason for our economy - not growth. We would have more time and work not based on fear. An example is growing your own food. Today most people don't NEED to grow their own food, and they won't be able to grow ALL their own food, or even most of it, but having a garden that you tend to every day means you have the time to do so, be out in nature every day, have time to share that activity with your family every day. It is less "efficient" than just picking up that tomato from the store, but the quality of life and health are all positively impacted even if I've given up time that I could have used to make $.
Examples of high Efficiency always seem to delineate the framework in which that efficiency is apparent. Then you have Jevons paradox, and suddenly you’re the person who is GREAT at replying to emails and do it all day...
Keep up the good work, it’s hard to get people to really see this as a future they would not only cope with, but be genuinely happier and more fulfilled, and without going back in time or going Amish all of a sudden.
Have a lovely evening - I’m being super efficient at cuddling my daughter listening to the birds 🥰
I don't think it is reasonable to say that billionaires create jobs. Economic activity creates jobs; billionaires just control most of the economic activity. If more and other people owned that economic activity the jobs would still be created, and the wealth would be more equally spread. The billionaires serve no special function in this.
Of course, the truth is that we need less economic activity and therefore less jobs if we are to stay within planetary boundaries.