Courage to Downgrade / Mut zum Downgrade

Well, where to - with this - but the interneational marketplace of ideas? What language should we use? Well, right now, english seems to be pretty convenient.

It's an unpopular opinion - I guess, but how unpopular it really is, seems to come down to what the people who drive the idea believe it should entail. I mean, from mere observation I hear people screaming and yelling about "oh no! They're taking away our beef!" - from just the same corners I hear people screaming and yelling about how the system is broken and fucked.

So, how would we go about fixing this broken system then? By just ... stressing it to its limits until it maybe collapses?


What are you on about?

But sure - in as far as I'm not fully on board with the picture book wokista alphabet mafia super soldier guide to activism, I too am somehow "clogging the system" as you will with "mushy issues" rather than offering a true solution. But, let's not narrowly imply that they have a real solution either.

I mean - as it stands, we're faced with individually preparing for the inevitable, and somehow I'm part of a crowd who believes that we don't really need to be worried, while also preaching all and everything about preparedness. And sure. For how long would one have had to live in fear of this inevitable outcome? Wouldn't it be more than a millennium?
So yea - preparation and the mindset involved with it starts to shift when the timescales start to change.

I would assume. Anyhow. And the answers are ultimately ... .
I mean - if the whole thing just came down on us - well, nobody would be surprised and yet we'd all expect things to go down as if we were.
I mean sure - who knoweth the day?

Wouldn't it be funny, if some evil agenda planned for it - and we just turned around and didn't?


I mean, here's the thing: Instead of waiting for some dude to think it'd be a great idea to own a supermarket, for them to go to the city who'll say "cool, but I want something in return", to then figure out how to turn a profit by selling us things that we need while also somehow finding the people to run the place - to then somehow feel like the institutions aren't failing us because now we can trade in necessary goods for our currency; Let's look at it the other way:

Some amount of people of a given population are required to run a place that distributes neccessary items amongst people within a given area. Beyond that, different places exist for different reasons - reflecting habits and demand of the population.

So - in an ideal world, correct me if I'm wrong, we could manage this without the pretense of a free market economy. And sure, still have it work within a free market economy.

Since technically the idea so far happens to merely be a semantic trick, the outcome is basically the same. Yet, for all intents and purposes we come to the thing where we are asked by ourselves to give permission to ourselves for a thing we need. It is a formality and I suppose there ought to be a term for that. I mean, it would be so if we had the democratic majority so that we had a rightful say in the city council or whatever. As the idea is further conceptualized as an endeavor of cooperation, yet again a majority of some kind is involved in some thing.

But now - while traditional Supermarkets deal in profits and stuff - we can take a closer look at the supply and demand of things. We can shave off a degree of financial concerns - and if anything is leftover we can directly forward it to where it will be useful.
As for the supply and demand - one way to think of this is that we can compartmentalize; And we can also create services like ... we can for instance reduce packaging if we just don't insist on packaging everything if there is another and perhaps even better way.

So, the end result would be like a Supermarket but smart.


Since the main issue here is that of nourishing the population, and my observation seems to carry this assertion, there is a certain wisdom in establishing food-stations of sorts within areas that are innately of high demand.
I personally find it frustrating how difficult it is to find good breakfast - and wherever you turn it's just so darn expensive. And I can't believe that these few places are all there is to cover the demand. I mean - sure. Looking at how crowded these places can become, but that also just during certain hours, there is a certain issue with space. But wouldn't it make sense to just have it anyway? I mean ... Jesus. 3 Euros for a Pretzel with Butter ... are you fucking kidding me? Are we THAT poor now or is it ... something else?

But yea. To be honest - I don't mind the prizes that much. It seems that they were a bit low before. Like - just something in my guts. And I'm willing to accept that the economy is in fact more complicated than I like to give it credit. Whatever. The main frustration in those areas seems to boil down to the fact that things we expect to have simple knobs for don't seem to have any knobs at all.

And spinning the idea further - we're back to a "normal economy" - where we would hand out tokens to those who actually work as a part of this whole thing. I mean, assuming that we never got rid of money, that'd just be the loan. So, if we set aside the amount that we would pay for groceries, food and the associated trips - and just donated it to some organization who would then do the same but more efficiently ... and for you ... I mean, the question were - how much bang can we get?


So, the idea front and center here is "downgrade" - because, well, that's one way to describe what upgrading and optimization may entail. To reduce space for instance. To optimise routes. To simply: Decrease the bloat.
And if we now take certain things as features - that are however just bloat - well, we have to ... let go of it. Or find ways to change it.

The reliance that everything is just available - and responsibly disposed of once thrown into the trash - that's one thing. To be more conscious about certain things.


I mean - two things. "Think of the Children". I don't like to lean into the horror stories of how bad the youth of the day is - as measures of good and bad can often be more irresponsible than helpful - but to be conscious of certain things is to me one of those immutable things that are like, as to say, "officially indisputable". I mean, in the movie Idiocracy there might still be those speaking of how bad the youth has become, versus those that have been saying it for years. And well, here we are. And once the boomers are no more - what's left?
Sure - they screwed us over, but just how fucked are we?

There are days when the mountains ahead of me that as usual just keep getting bigger feel a little bit too much to climb, but on and off I also see just how simple it all actually is.


As we basically have to start from scratch anway.
And the other thing, well. Yes. We should learn to "make space" - giving back to nature perhaps - while in coming together we'll yet again need more of it. And as some shift like that would take place, the value of money would also gradually shift along with it.

I mean - technically, I suppose, the thing is this:
If we had full control over the entirety of "the economy" - say, all the individual points of control got thrown into some transfiguration machine and out came as a control panel - what value is artificial and what value is real?

I mean - one thing that is true about adjusting the minimum wage is, that ultimately it won't change the reality of things. If there are ten people but only 8 eight bananas, it doesn't matter how much either of them earns. Well - but for the fact that it's an arbitrary measure of who finally gets to have them.

So, I guess it's complicated. But one thing that makes it more complicated than it has to be, is whatever obfuscation to the real values there is. Or not? I mean - whatever. We could point to it as an inevitable outcome. And yea - to me it's like this: I look at my books - some of which mean a lot to me, and see: "Yea, without Amazon, none of this would have come together" - and I can see the bright side of things. But then I look at Bezoz and co. and have to see: "And yea, that's what we've got out of it". I mean, instead of a well ordered Bazar of things and a well-informed and well-regulated whatever to regulated our global economy in everyone's best interest while having communication technology that allows us to update in real time ... we have a chaos that couldn't even be described as the most unholy of messes because it's much worse than that.

I mean, OK. Trickle Down economy works in that the overall wealth and thus overall accessibility of things in this world would seem to be somewhat carried by a top level demand in the purchasing power of money. Where wealth takes root and thus profits can be gained, businesses pop up.

We can have all sorts of dumb shit on demand - and most of us could afford the one or the other dumb thing every once in a while. This produces a quality of life that could be considered "Peak" of what is humanly possibly - at the very least when measured in material performance only.

But so, it still like ... trickles down through the quasi butt cracks of those above. And the higher we let it go first, the more butt-cracks it will have run through.


I mean, we can have what we need - much easier. That's ... the idea.
Uhm ...