Great post. It's almost impossible for normal people to escape the insane effects of the food supply & other things. Seems like housing has also gotten worse and worse, yet we pay more rent than ever.
Great piece. Few mandatory corrections, then my thoughts:
- bread isn’t exactly $20
- you’ll be hard pressed to find a good cheese meal in southern Europe for 7 euros today
I think this general problem comes from a lack of culture/wisdom - the conscious knowledge of what is “worth”.
You’re absolutely right that it’s insane that we have to think about all the plastics and hormones that exist in our tap water (google estrogen in tap water coming from birth control). It’s insane that we have to think about all these additives in foods, all this cancer inducing roundup in crops, etc.
We have completely upended life quality in pursuit of GDP growth. I’m a real big fan proponent of free market capitalism, but I tend to be forming the opinion that greed left unchecked hurts society for everyone.
For some reason, we’re fine as a society importing third world migrants in order to keep GDP going up and partly solve the demographic collapse, trading off societal safety for the ability to partly keep the same “standard” of life. This is a big problem in Europe. But if you think about it deeper - is it really worth it to keep your current standard if you lose your culture to demographic overgrowth of the imported people, as well as endure increased crime rates in the mean time? I think any sane person would prefer living off a little less, if that means we can keep the same community, spirit and ability to let our kids play free outside.
My main suspected culprit of this societal collapse is international finance, believe it or not.
History is rife with examples of nationalistic practices, even Soviet Russia, who seemed to enjoy a decent quality of life. I’m from Bulgaria which was a soviet satellite state. Everyone remembers the days fondly. They had less of the newest gadgets - no fancy new cars, tvs, etc - but they had locally grown food and yearly vacations to their preserved countryside, alongside working public infrastructure.
People rightfully have good memories of this, because in pursuit of fancy gadgets and GDP growth, we lost the basic things that humans need.
Good food. Good nature. Good community.
Unfortunately, the convenience of it all, alongside brainwashing and propaganda from an early age, results in little people realizing what they lost.
I’m a big fan of nationalism as a concept, because it prioritizes the basics. Who cares if I have import control and can’t import the best iPhone, TV, computer, car; if I have clean water, clean food and a happy community?
It doesn’t have to be that extreme, obviously, but in a gist there is massive value in prioritising the basics for your local community. Today, we tend to see the opposite. Joining a global market means creating things to be exported to others, and importing things from the cheapest buyer. This completely changes the incentive structure because i suddenly don’t care to who I’m selling, which decouples me from accountability (absent of strict illegality, although a lot of third and second world country businessmen can easily get away with it), which allows me to skip on quality and even do some sinister stuff without fear of real repercussions.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I agree with everything you say in regards to the diagnosis, but I don't know if I see the solution as clearly as you do.
There's a predatory side of economy that seeps into culture. It's not that we should be happy with less, it's just that the thing we're having "less of" was never something we desired enough to trade these other aspects of life you mentioned.
My idealistic worldview is that we can maintain technological progress, to keep growing as a species, while getting rid of the predatory state-funded monopolies (just one example).
Regression of boundaries as a palliative measure is such a fire way to describe basically everything that’s sad about how the basic well-meaning person interacts with the world
You're wildly exaggerating the price of bread, which immediately makes me not want to read the whole rant. The fanciest bread in the Bay Area, Tartine, costs $15 for a *kilo* loaf, i.e. *two* small loaves. There are excellent, healthy loaves somewhere as fancy as Whole Foods at $6 for a pound loaf. And of course, you can make your own pound loaf from the finest flours the civilization has ever produced for about $1.
I don't think I'm "wildly" exaggerating. Perhaps exaggerating fullstop, because there are indeed cheaper options, but not that cheap. The point, however, isn't that you can't find affordable bread or even make the bread yourself. It's the fact that we've reached a point in our economy and culture where "normal" bread costs more than wonder bread (and that's just a small example I used as a prelude)
OK, sure. But the whole point of wonder bread etc has been to maximize palatability and cheapness while ignoring nutritional quality since anything like it has existed, no? It seems more like a necessary truth than a horrifying blackpill that bread that tries harder to optimize nutritional quality will suffer on other variables.
You're doing what I'm describing in the article. You're saying that it's reasonable to pay a premium for "normal" bread. You expect it.
The fact that a product like wonder bread dominates the culture (most people hadnt heard of sourdough until 2020) is partly the reason you expect a nutritious option to be more expensive.
I'm not sure that is what I'm saying. I think I'm saying that it is literally more expensive, at scale, to make a loaf of sourdough with no preservatives or additives than to make a loaf of highly processed bread. Is this economic fact what you're railing against, or are you arguing that somehow it doesn't actually need to be cheaper? How would you make the wonderbread more expensive?
Great post. It's almost impossible for normal people to escape the insane effects of the food supply & other things. Seems like housing has also gotten worse and worse, yet we pay more rent than ever.
Thank you. And yes, I agree.
Great piece. Few mandatory corrections, then my thoughts:
- bread isn’t exactly $20
- you’ll be hard pressed to find a good cheese meal in southern Europe for 7 euros today
I think this general problem comes from a lack of culture/wisdom - the conscious knowledge of what is “worth”.
You’re absolutely right that it’s insane that we have to think about all the plastics and hormones that exist in our tap water (google estrogen in tap water coming from birth control). It’s insane that we have to think about all these additives in foods, all this cancer inducing roundup in crops, etc.
We have completely upended life quality in pursuit of GDP growth. I’m a real big fan proponent of free market capitalism, but I tend to be forming the opinion that greed left unchecked hurts society for everyone.
For some reason, we’re fine as a society importing third world migrants in order to keep GDP going up and partly solve the demographic collapse, trading off societal safety for the ability to partly keep the same “standard” of life. This is a big problem in Europe. But if you think about it deeper - is it really worth it to keep your current standard if you lose your culture to demographic overgrowth of the imported people, as well as endure increased crime rates in the mean time? I think any sane person would prefer living off a little less, if that means we can keep the same community, spirit and ability to let our kids play free outside.
My main suspected culprit of this societal collapse is international finance, believe it or not.
History is rife with examples of nationalistic practices, even Soviet Russia, who seemed to enjoy a decent quality of life. I’m from Bulgaria which was a soviet satellite state. Everyone remembers the days fondly. They had less of the newest gadgets - no fancy new cars, tvs, etc - but they had locally grown food and yearly vacations to their preserved countryside, alongside working public infrastructure.
People rightfully have good memories of this, because in pursuit of fancy gadgets and GDP growth, we lost the basic things that humans need.
Good food. Good nature. Good community.
Unfortunately, the convenience of it all, alongside brainwashing and propaganda from an early age, results in little people realizing what they lost.
I’m a big fan of nationalism as a concept, because it prioritizes the basics. Who cares if I have import control and can’t import the best iPhone, TV, computer, car; if I have clean water, clean food and a happy community?
It doesn’t have to be that extreme, obviously, but in a gist there is massive value in prioritising the basics for your local community. Today, we tend to see the opposite. Joining a global market means creating things to be exported to others, and importing things from the cheapest buyer. This completely changes the incentive structure because i suddenly don’t care to who I’m selling, which decouples me from accountability (absent of strict illegality, although a lot of third and second world country businessmen can easily get away with it), which allows me to skip on quality and even do some sinister stuff without fear of real repercussions.
In essence, we need everything to be more local.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I agree with everything you say in regards to the diagnosis, but I don't know if I see the solution as clearly as you do.
There's a predatory side of economy that seeps into culture. It's not that we should be happy with less, it's just that the thing we're having "less of" was never something we desired enough to trade these other aspects of life you mentioned.
My idealistic worldview is that we can maintain technological progress, to keep growing as a species, while getting rid of the predatory state-funded monopolies (just one example).
Regression of boundaries as a palliative measure is such a fire way to describe basically everything that’s sad about how the basic well-meaning person interacts with the world
Yeah, and I think we all have areas in our lives where we act that way, unfortunately.
One of your best
Thank you. It's also the most hated apparently.
Tl:dr
Go off grid
Surf waves
Grow food
Enjoy nature
Buy nothing
You're wildly exaggerating the price of bread, which immediately makes me not want to read the whole rant. The fanciest bread in the Bay Area, Tartine, costs $15 for a *kilo* loaf, i.e. *two* small loaves. There are excellent, healthy loaves somewhere as fancy as Whole Foods at $6 for a pound loaf. And of course, you can make your own pound loaf from the finest flours the civilization has ever produced for about $1.
I don't think I'm "wildly" exaggerating. Perhaps exaggerating fullstop, because there are indeed cheaper options, but not that cheap. The point, however, isn't that you can't find affordable bread or even make the bread yourself. It's the fact that we've reached a point in our economy and culture where "normal" bread costs more than wonder bread (and that's just a small example I used as a prelude)
OK, sure. But the whole point of wonder bread etc has been to maximize palatability and cheapness while ignoring nutritional quality since anything like it has existed, no? It seems more like a necessary truth than a horrifying blackpill that bread that tries harder to optimize nutritional quality will suffer on other variables.
You're doing what I'm describing in the article. You're saying that it's reasonable to pay a premium for "normal" bread. You expect it.
The fact that a product like wonder bread dominates the culture (most people hadnt heard of sourdough until 2020) is partly the reason you expect a nutritious option to be more expensive.
I'm not sure that is what I'm saying. I think I'm saying that it is literally more expensive, at scale, to make a loaf of sourdough with no preservatives or additives than to make a loaf of highly processed bread. Is this economic fact what you're railing against, or are you arguing that somehow it doesn't actually need to be cheaper? How would you make the wonderbread more expensive?
I think you should read the entire article first.