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> But when everyone spends more, the effect is merely to raise the bar that defines special. The average American wedding now costs $30,000, roughly twice as much as in 1990. No one believes that couples who marry today are happier because weddings cost so much more than they used to.
It seems odd to claim this increase is due to keeping up with others' weddings when inflation between 1990 and 2015 was roughly the difference here. The weddings were/are more expensive because everything was/is more expensive. $15,000 in 1990 had the same purchasing power as ~$27,000 in 2015. So this hardly seems related to bigger, more extravagant weddings. People have had to spend more to maintain the same quality of wedding as the previous generation.
TBH, it seemed such an obvious point you're making that I assumed the author had to be comparing inflation-adjusted dollars, but from the (very little) digging that I did, it looks like that's not the case.
In fact, weddings decreased in inflation-adjusted cost between 1990 and 2023: https://ktvz.com/stacker-lifestyle/2024/03/01/how-us-wedding...
I would assume that downward trend has continued as inflation has spiked in the past few years and people had to spend more of their money in other areas.
> I assumed the author had to be comparing inflation-adjusted dollars
As did I.
90s weddings remind me of the Friends episode where Monica was scoping out her wedding. Chandler revealed how much money he had by writing it on a price of paper (that is, the audience never saw the dollar value), and Monica said something like "oh, we can go with best one, plan A" and Chandler said he didn't want to spend that much money "on one party". I've always wondered what amount of money that was.
Well they used the money to buy a house in New York so it wasn't 15000 , because that's not a down payment for a New York house/ apt, even in the 90s.
Inflation has made prices higher, but people's purchasing power has been decreasing all this time. Salaries, benefits etc have all not been keeping up with inflation for decades. It is why young people are marrying later, not able to afford to buy property etc. All the gains the economy has made over the past handful of decades have been captured by a small percentage of the population.
> Salaries, benefits etc have all not been keeping up with inflation for decades
I don't believe that's consistent with the data
Also when you factor in the age of the wedding participants it almost seems like a regression. A couple in their 30s should be able to afford more than a couple in their 20s a generation ago.
I don’t think my concern is that AI is going to make everything too awesome for people to cope. The fact that I can now DoorDash lunch doesn’t really matter when I can’t afford a place to live or healthcare.
Also, as the article points out, this is all mostly theoretical as we're pretty far from utopia. Just ask the private chauffeur for your burrito next time he comes by.
Woah they get their pizza delivered sometimes, they must be super wealthy and out of touch.
They take a taxi to the airport, oh to live a life of such extravagance.
They get their newspaper delivered to their door every Sunday? The aristocrats.
There's actual wealthy people in the world, no need to be a crab in a bucket.
Freedom is not “doing anything you want”. It’s “not having to do the things you don’t want to do”.
AI may automate a white colar subset of those, but modern day society has for the longest time used wives, young people, immigrants from countries with bad currency devaluation, etc, to fill the gap above. The article talks about status and attention as the ultimate goal, but that may be a male-only perspective. Or even a him-like-perspective. The reality is humans chase many ladders since brains have may proclivities. For more than half of the population (wives and the poor) the goal may be freedom or time to do more.
women are just as status driven as men, and the poor men and women are even more so. when need is taken away the status race will be intense
living in the third world i have seen absurd stuff: early 20s women living in slums that own the latest iphone pro max on a 5 year term loan is a common theme
in london the children of the UHNW (net worth >EUR100m) compete for scholarships and academic achievements, or to create unicorn startups, because the only way they can differentiate themselves from UHNW peers is the academic arena where money doesnt matter. they also tend to make shitty films or own vineyards, or try to become authors, or try to make scientific discoveries, and get sucked in to Mystical Gurus like Mr Epstein and Elizabeth Holmes/Thanos
I grew up in that world. People making 150 per month would have kids carrying 600 phones just to put something on the table. In eastern europe, an adidas track suit seemed like Armani, when advertising just started after the fall of communism and people thought that made them feel sophisticated for wearing western brands. When you can’t brag with an expensive house or car, you brag with expensive accessories on yourself (gold chains, phones, watches).
It’s no different than a national geographic video where the loudest frog signals it can be bold enough to broadcast its location, even though it can be eaten. Wearing gold chains and bragging you have crypto is akin to yelling “come and rob me” in a less safe world.
The reality is that status is just a way to “encourage/compel” voluntary submission of services from other people, who may think they will benefit from your status rubbing on them in some way.
Strangers don’t support you for what you do, but for what you can do for them in the future.
> Freedom is not “doing anything you want”. It’s “not having to do the things you don’t want to do”.
Both of those are anemic views of "freedom".
The most robust understanding of freedom is and must be rooted in morality and thus human nature:
Freedom is the ability to do what is *good*, or what one *ought*.
And human nature has a direction. Good acts further human beings along that general axis (neutral acts at least do not retreat or deviate). Eating lead is unhealthy, but doing so intentionally, knowing fully well that lead is harmful, is evil, because a choice was made in light of knowledge to do what one should not.
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> There is a running joke in the U.S. version of The Office where Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), who is “Assistant to the Regional Manager” keeps insisting that he is “Assistant Regional Manager”, which sounds a bit better. When he is officially promoted to the title he prefers, he is delighted
As with so many of them, the joke is more subtly, brilliantly, and originally from The Office; not The Office (US).
I'll be the uncultured swine who points out that "The Office (US)" was a better show. Ricky Gervais agrees.*
*In that the US show made him rich.
Ha, I get it, great Angela impression.
Beautiful piece, with a great closer (not reproduced here, you should go with it).
I do wonder if our society would be better if we had more honourifics and formality. China has instituted social media rules based on qualifications. Many indigenous societies have forms of secret and sacred knowledge.
I think too many people are concerned with the abuse of these sorts of social systems when we already live in a system of value that is rife with abuse.
> I do wonder if our society would be better if we had more honourifics and formality. China has instituted social media rules based on qualifications. Many indigenous societies have forms of secret and sacred knowledge.
In the US we administer a test at age 16 that determines lifetime "qualifications" and access to "secret and sacred knowledge". How much further is there to even go on that front? Back to inherited nobility?
What test?
Was referring to the SAT and existing credentialism from the college and university system.
I assumed you meant driving.
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Despite “post scarcity” still being infinitely far away, we have moved towards it. A lot of things still suck, but a lot of things would be miraculous to a time traveller from 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. Unfortunately, the hedonic treadmill is real at the societal level as well as the individual.
This is a good read especially for people early in their career starting the chase. Make sure you understand what you are chasing, and why.
It started off really interesting, but I had to stop once the "AI could lead to post-scarcity" bit came.
Sorry, no offence, but I wish that this was the "problem" with AI.
The "Problem" is actually that it turns known tractable problems into non-reproducible problems.
Giving the illusion of giving the right answer is significantly more dangerous than giving an obvious wrong answer. So we're not going to AI ourselves into post-scarcity, whitecollar work will just sleepwalk into even further absurdity. (because, the fact is, humans also suffer from this issue; the worst among us give the appearance of competence and fuck it up massively).
AI consumes resources like a motherfucker, to maybe replace white-collar work, but the bluecollar stuff isn't going anywhere. It's a harder problem so people (companies) avoid it the same way that they avoid writing native GUIs. Much more convenient to just focus on pretty things and in the digital realm, but farming? agriculture? textiles and everything that society actually relies upon?
AI isn't coming for those jobs, because it's harder and has more definite outcomes. You can't trick people into believing that a pig has been slaughtered, carved and cooked properly.
It's comparatively easy to trick people into thinking that the man behind the curtain is a wizard, however.
He never says "AI could lead to post-scarcity" in the entire piece. In fact, he says:
> Before making this argument, I want to defend the topic. Utopia is not around the corner; these issues don't have any practical urgency. But I agree with Bostrom that thinking about utopia “can serve as kind of philosophical particle accelerator, in which extreme conditions are created that allow us to study the elementary constituents of our values.” Reflecting on utopia might tell us something interesting about human nature more generally.
>bluecollar stuff isn't going anywhere.
The 1700s called, regular mechinization already came for that.
And non-LLM AI has been moving into more blue collar stuff for years already, now with LLM logic they are becoming far more capable too.
You must be thinking of the more blue collar service industry, which may not go anywhere, but the time it takes to train, and the number of people that will go into it will ensure earning a living is difficult.
The entire idea of post-scarcity doesn't withstand the slightest scrutiny. Even if unlimited energy and matter could be summoned by magic, one would be limited by space and the speed of light, and by the threat of black hole formation if too much matter and energy is crammed into too small a region of space. In addition, one's time would be limited by the impending heat death.
Post scarcity means everyone has enough food. Not that we break the laws of physics.
automation already came and went for agriculture.
a lot of agriculture is either about owning a bunch of land and machines, or owning access to a bunch of slave-ish labour. sure the slave-ish labour side isnt all that automated yet, but the up side to automating isnt very high either
> Giving the illusion of giving the right answer is significantly more dangerous than giving an obvious wrong answer.
Oh man sometimes I'm like "actually what I just said is wrong"... I have to remind myself to slow down/think over everything before saying something is done.
I wish I had access to free, unlimited childcare so that I was free to pursue my dream of raising children.
If your dream is raising children, you might want to consider being the party providing the childcare. I hear there's quite a lot of money involved!
What would actually happen if you quit your job and spent all of your time raising your children?
What would happen if you just had children?
Why should I compromise my dreams by living them?
Locker
> Titles mean something because they mark one’s status—where one stands relative to others. [...] The inevitability of hierarchy, that some people will do better than others and be more respected for it, leads to all sorts of social pleasures and social pains.
But why? What is their purpose? What is social hierarchy for?
Let's be frank. Most title chasing is pure vanity. There is no substance in the chase. It's a game that takes schoolyard stupidity and flavors it with "adult" respectability. But underneath, it's generally vacuous and theatrical.
The only purpose of social hierarchy is to serve others. Why does a manager exist in a firm? To serve the workers he manages so that they can do their jobs which are also in the service of someone else. Why is there a king or a president? To serve the common good according to his station. We elevate for service. If someone has more to give and the necessary character to do it well, ideally, we elevate him according to his good so that he can better serve according to the good he has instead of allow that good to rot on the vine. It is service that makes sense of social hierarchy. Social hierarchy is about gift. It's what makes a society a society.
In a tyrannical, upside down world, hierarchy is about domination and exploitation, about taking. Here, the scramble goes by the motto "eat or be eaten". We claw over each other like crabs in a bucket, because we don't want to be "eaten", and because we wish to "eat" others. It is a perversion of our human nature. When Christians speak of "the world" in the pejorative, they mean this systemic pathological condition of human societies. I laugh when people wax poetic about utopia here on earth, as if "resources" could fix the issue, because left to our own devices, it is dystopia that we tend to produce. This is why Christians speak of the need of a divine savior and why our "flesh" needs to be crucified so that we may live, not because the body is bad, but because we are stupid, corrupt, and weak.
> So long as we remain human, we can never be fully satisfied. [...] Reflecting on utopia might tell us something interesting about human nature more generally.
If the satisfaction of all finite desires leaves us with unsatisfied desires, then either there are unsatisfiable desires, or our desires can only be satisfied by something infinite. This is where God as the ultimate good and highest desire and ultimate source of joy comes in. If God is the ultimate cause, source, and sustainer of everything, then our "to be", our being—which is what desire is about—is to be found in this First Cause. All other created beings are in some sense intermediaries and mediators of the desired good. But if you can have the ocean, what, then, is a cup of water drawn from that ocean? Good, to be sure, but not the source.
On this view, many pathologies, obsessions, compulsions, and addictions, then, are misdirected desire.
> But I’ve never met anyone who was entirely indifferent to the opinions of others.
Likewise, if you have the fundamental approval of an omniscient God who knows you better than you know yourself, who willed you into existence with intention, who is the justification of your existence, who loves you more than anyone could and to whom you matter more than you could understand, who can give you joy nothing else can, then the approval of others becomes quite shabby in comparison. Perhaps not entirely meaningless, but not your foundation. Their approval is not your fickle pagan god.
This is what gives martyrs their strength and freedom to endure the injustices and envies and hatred of the world, even unto death. Their soul remains unsold for the measly opinions of others, untarnished by the indignity of desperately seeking the approval of others like a beggar licking crumbs off the floor. It allows one's focus to shift from an obsession over self toward a disinterested concern about the objective good of others. Just hierarchy doesn't bother you, because it exists for your benefit just the same. Even if others despise you, even if they don't appreciate your care, you will be free from the prison of seeking their approval. You will no longer live and act and work for their approval as if burning hecatombs to appease an idol, but serve the objective good.
> But, of course, there’s more to desire—we are often attracted to a particular person. We want them; we covet them. It’s wonderful if they covet us back; it’s agonizing if they don’t. To make things worse, even if we’re lucky enough to arrive at reciprocal desire, we often want the other’s desire to be exclusively pointed our way.
In this life, we guard good jealously (not enviously; envy is the vice of experiencing sorrow over someone else's good fortune that one lacks, while jealousy is a protectiveness over the goodness one does have for fear of losing it). Our happiness may depend on others. But one's joy does not, as the implied good of all things desired is their ultimate source, which is God. Thus, in this view, heaven—for it to be heaven—one would need unmediated union with God (what some call the beatific vision). In this state, love for others is a flawlessly selfless and totally free act of self-giving for the sake of their well-being, not the often tense bargaining and haggling and strife that characterizes much of this life. Indeed, the primary cause of divorce is selfishness. Marriage teaches us and matures us in selflessness. It creates the conditions that make it a lesson that is necessary to learn if the marriage is to succeed. That is life's journey, and marriage is the most typical path by which it is taken.
In summary, according to this view, there is a way out of the predicament the article describes, but many do not know or do not understand, and some despise it having learned of it.
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Peoples' takes on life can be so weird. The problems arent AI or any other tech, its human. This book seems like a waste of paper.
I think the author shares your view exactly:
> But I think this won’t be a problem with a post-scarcity world. So many of the difficulties we face in life stem from our interactions with other people, and these won’t go away even with infinite material resources. So long as we remain human, we can never be fully satisfied. On the bright side, our lives will continue to have meaning in a post-scarcity world. We might be miserable, but we won’t be bored.
Thanks for pointing that out Pavel, I unreservedly apologize for being cranky and wrong online, yet again.
Happens to everyone time to time!
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