#solving the world's problems

[en-plein-amour]

Thank you Graham lmao

[snababo]

A polite request to all busineses, please stop naming your business after the number in your street address.

Thank you for your time.

[o-wright]

Solving World Hunger as a Power Move

So Elon Musk told the UN he would put up the money for world hunger to become a solved problem if they came up with a solid plan. And the UN came up with a solid plan, but got ghosted by Musk.

But imagine if you are Jeff Bozos how much of a fck you to Elon Musk it would be if he now gave the UN the $6.6 billion they need for the plan. Whoo you got Twitter and took a load of shit for it, but for an eighth of the price I’m getting a million praiseworthy headlines and showing the world that I am the best billionaire.

[lilbumps]

“In this humility-poor environment, the idea of disruption appeals as a kind of subversive provocation,” she writes. “Too many designers think they are innovating when they are merely breaking and entering.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/solving-all-the-wrong-problems.html

[ricekrispyjoints]

me: omfjdsklfas i'm super paranoid that i broke my foot

dan: i'm not a doctor, but i recommend duct tape

[theinquisitivepianist]

I am convinced that if chocolate cake was mandatory at all political events/meetings, the world would be a happier and more peaceful place and no one could bear to fight for more than 5 minutes.

[besharmi]

A ten year old talked to me about his love life today and how he likes this girl but he's also talking to another girl and he doesn't know who to pick because they both like him. 

I told him to follow his hear and choose the one that makes better clay models because she'll give really good hand jobs when she gets older. 

[s33]

leisuresanity

If Multisense Realism is a way of making sense of the cosmos, then I was thinking that the motive counterpart would be something like LeisureSanity. As any motivation arises from a received awareness, and the awareness of MR is associated with this moment in history as the world begins to transition into a post-Occidental culture, the appropriate philosophy of this transition needs to be one which counters the pathological excesses of the previous one.

Maybe borrowing unintentionally from the SubGenius idea of slack, LeisureSanity is about shifting the focus from doing things to become someone to doing only what needs to be done and what you enjoy in order to not have to become someone other than yourself. If we are going to prevent civilization from sliding into dystopia, we are going to have to start looking at the engine of civilization as leisure creation rather than job creation. With world population continuing it's catastrophically explosive growth, globalization making universal competition with that population inevitable, and technology replacing more and more meaningful careers without replenishing them in significant numbers, it seems to be only a matter of time before the value of human life falls beneath the level of indispensability. It's already happening. Corporate policies are gradually adapting their workforce to disposable status. It's not their fault, it's just the inevitable consequence of overdeveloped industry and oversupply of labor. The problem is, what do we do with ourselves now that there's no need for most people to produce and reproduce?

The only sane alternative is to increase leisure, and spread it around. Slow this thing way down. Everyone take a year off every five years. Three and a half day weekends. The benefit should be obvious as it would pertain to alleviating traffic, pollution, waste, unemployment, stress related illness (which probably accounts for a huge portion of non-age related problems), domestic abuse, etc. The extra time would stimulate the economy, not only by giving people more time to shop and fix their cars, homes, and bodies, but to spend money with family and friends, and create and innovate in their ample spare time. It seems like an easy way to do this is to make it the law that corporations have to put 90% of their profits into vacation time for their employees. The more profitable the company, the more leisure time for their employees and the more efficient, healthy and sane they will tend to be. The company would then have to hire more people to pick up the slack and that would keep the economy growing.

It wouldn't be socialism, it would be sane capitalism. The government wouldn't be telling people what to do, just insisting on a higher price for human labor - one that factors in the support of the commons - roads, communications, sanitation, utilities, education, etc that produce a marketable human laborer. As it stands now, there is nothing for corporate giants to do with their enormous profits except shoveling it into financial abstractions that end up sucking the life out of the economy rather than enriching it. Digital instruments which create a feedback loop of wealth extraction, not just from the 99.9% to the 0.1%, but from concrete wealth and thriving civilization to WalMart and parking lots; from pensions and raises to permanent underemployment and underwater mortgages. What it seems like is happening now in the 99% is that a smaller and smaller group of people are doing more more and more and enjoying it less, while the rest of society is stagnating and diminishing.

Why do corporate profits have to be in the form of financial leverage? Why can't they be in the form of leisure capital. Instead of a company boasting multibillion dollar profits, it could take pride in it's multibillion hours of leisure. What's the difference to them? Rich people would still be rich. Still have mansions and jets and islands and all that. They still would be doing everything that they did before, and would be just as productive, just more people would be employed and have more time off to be healthy and happy. What is the rush anyways? What are we killing ourselves to produce more of? Shoes? Digital phones? Why should the penalty for not contributing to these glorious pursuits with every ounce of your being be a living death of hopeless abandonment?

The leisuresanity alternative would free us all from the corner we have painted ourselves into, and let us begin to enjoy the fruits of the labors of all of those who came before us. Thousands of years of developing time saving technologies only to flush it all down a toilet of made up stress, all in the name of currency accumulation abstractions on spreadsheets. Literally, it is strangling the world. Think of the generations of hard working people, laborers, scientists, manufacturers - all building and saving and investing decade after decade so that things would be better, more comfortable, and easier for us. We insult them by mindlessly imitating their struggle but letting ourselves get screwed out of the leisure they bought for us with their sweat and blood. Why is it that that these obvious truths are considered idealistic, when they should be our birthright? How have we ended up as the lowly and eager servants of ownership fetish cartels?