[extropy-chat] i don't laugh at peasants anymore

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Al Brooks <kerry_prez at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  Tech is all very fine, but in the meantime many parents do need Jose
> to build them an affordable house large enough for the children to
> sense they are not living in cubicles. 

It is interesting to see the growth in need for personal space. Ever
lived in a bungalow built in the post-WWII housing boom? Vets would
pack their kids in two to a bedroom in those places and they thought
they were living the American dream. 

This isn't unique. I recall a Japanese business colleague of my fathers
proud that his home was "eight tatamis wide", as if that was a feat of
achievement for a nipponese middle manager.

The growth in the need for space goes along with the growth in need for
'stuff'. The average home grew from 1200 sq ft in the postwar period to
2000 by 1970, now reaching near 3000 in many areas of the country,
while at the same time we have fewer kids per family and fewer are
having families. We all have stuff for work, stuff for the various
activities we are involved in, and unclutter it by spreading it out.
Without more kids to pay for, you can afford more space for the kids
you do or don't have (self included) and all the 'stuff'.

Problem is, where do you put all your stuff when you aren't using it?
If your stuff was compiled by nanotech, it can be decompiled by
nanotech, something Neal Stephenson coined as "deke-ing". There is
therefore no need to keep stuff hanging around which you don't need
that often, as long as you can pay the royalty on the use of the
compiler.

What do we do until the nano-santa comes? Go by normal economics,
tweaked with a bit of "irrational" exhuberance and an expectation of
exponential positive growth as a matter of course rather than a rare
transient event.

Why complain that Jose is building your home, unless Jose is taking
Joe's job? You want more house for less cost, you are going to hire
Jose, and Joe can pound sand or go get an education (the one he dropped
out of a decade ago). There's nothing wrong with hiring Jose, you are
paying him two to four times more than he could make at home in Mehico
and giving his family a good life down there. Let Joe move his family
to Mexico and he can afford to work at Jose's hourly rate too. 

Mexico is becoming a big retirement destination for Americans anyways.
That social security check goes a lot further south of the border than
it does up here. Northerners now look to Mexico much as they once
looked to the southern states before they got all pricey.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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