I kinda went on a little research spree on economics this afternoon but at one point I figured it’s probably good to know if it’s possible for, say, at least 98% of people on earth to live a happy fulfilled life at all.
I know there’s plenty of people who’d be more than happy to have literally nothing more than a house, food and water, but that still leaves a whole lot of people who want other things in life.
Do we have any metrics or data on wether the earth can sustain roughly 8 billion humans?
At the risk of sounding like a conservative, most people do find meaning in doing work and would not be content to lay around eating and watching TikTok forever. Just because someone does not find meaning in laboring to make their bosses wealthy does not mean they don’t find meaning in the work itself.
For example I think a lot of “low level” jobs would be quite enjoyable and rewarding if we weren’t forced to do them in order to survive. I’m thinking things like carpentry, running a small grocery store or even waiting tables.
So to answer your question, yes, the Earth can provide far more than every person needs to live a fulfilling life because all we need is food, shelter, community and freedom to find how we can best contribute. Those things are not expensive or resource intensive. But they are kept from us and replaced with plastic things we don’t need in order to further enrich a small few.
That didn’t sound conservative. I will just add performing/art, including literature, picking up trash in the neighborhood, visiting and doing small chores for those who can’t is work.
to add to this excellent reply: we are drastically losing resources by that very same plastic & pollution & climate change. so this way ahead we lose earth’s capacity to sustain this amount of people, inevitably.
the oligarchs are the richest- every year breaking record wealth in human history- and the least efficient in using that wealth and the most delusional. that Jeff Bezos is intent of living on Mars - a planet without the earth’s abundance. that’s like a noob on easy mode with power leveled allies always helping out in coop asking you trust they can take on the hardest difficulty of a game solo. no track record of success in this world, delusional to think mars isna solution
I think the saying “money doesn’t bring happiness” is one of those unlearnable lessons - something you’ll never truly believe until you experience it firsthand.
I’m self-employed contractor and find my work quite meaningful, yet I still dream of living off passive income and never having to work again. But honestly, I’m almost certain my life would spiral out of control if that ever became reality. Work is what the rest of my life is built around - it’s why I get up in the morning. I’d like to think I’d find meaning elsewhere, and maybe that’s true, but I’m skeptical. I’m almost certainly just kidding myself when I think that I would. I’d just sit at home smoking weed and watching YouTube videos.
I don’t think work itself is the problem - it’s the soul-crushing drudgery people are forced to endure to survive, where there’s no sense of meaning or gratitude. Especially in jobs where you can’t even see the results of what you’ve done. If you’re sweeping streets, at least you’re outdoors, you talk to people, and at the end of the day you can see what you accomplished. But if you spend eight hours entering numbers into Excel in a toxic office environment, then of course it feels meaningless.
Enough money can remove the barriers to happiness.
If I suddenly had enough money to not need to work on order to survive, I would still “work,” except it would be on my own terms, not someone else’s. There are loads of things I want to do and not enough time to do them. I dream of being able to prioritize my own time for myself rather than needing to sell a third of my life to a megacorp for bread.
“All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.” - Spike Milligan
But if that’s what you enjoyed then that is what you’d do and it would make you happy. If it didn’t make you happy you wouldn’t do it. So maybe that’s how your life after work would start, but if you became restless and stopped enjoying it you have your background in contracting and you’d probably take on some more enjoyable creative aspect of that role.
In the end your life doesn’t only have meaning if it’s defined by a job title, it’s defined by how you live it. It doesn’t even need to have “meaning” outside of your own enjoyment of life.
That’s not really how people work though. There’s a ton of other motivations than happiness.
Shit man, I don’t even know what would make me happy.
I disagree. It might be enjoyable in the moment, but looking back, it wouldn’t be something I’m glad I did. Happiness is a fleeting emotion - what most people actually want is a deeper sense of contentment. And I don’t think chasing hedonistic pleasures gives us that.
I don’t look back fondly on the countless hours I’ve wasted staring at screens, but I do cherish the memories of doing difficult, effortful things - even the ones that weren’t all that enjoyable in the moment - because they left me feeling satisfied and proud afterward.