Downsizing the McMansion: Study gauges a sustainable size for future homes:
What might homes of the future look like if countries were really committed to meeting global calls for sustainability, such as the recommendations advanced by the Paris Agreement and the U.N.'s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development?
Much wider adoption of smart design features and renewable energy for low- to zero-carbon homes is one place to start -- the U.N. estimates households consume 29% of global energy and consequently contribute to 21% of resultant CO2 emissions, which will only rise as global population increases.
However, a new scholarly paper authored at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) assesses another big factor in the needed transformation of our living spaces toward sustainability -- the size of our homes.
The paper published in the journal Housing, Theory & Society makes the case for transitioning away from the large, single-family homes that typify suburban sprawl, offering new conceptions for what constitutes a more sustainable and sufficient average home size in high-income countries going forward.
The article surveys more than 75 years of housing history and provides estimates for the optimal spatial dimensions that would align with an "environmentally tenable and globally equitable amount of per-person living area" today. It also spotlights five emerging cases of housing innovation around the world that could serve as models for effectively adopting more space-efficient homes of the future.
"There is no question that if we are serious about embracing our expressed commitments to sustainability, we will in the future need to live more densely and wisely," said Maurie Cohen, the paper's author and professor at NJIT's Department of Humanities. "This will require a complete reversal in our understanding of what it means to enjoy a 'good life' and we will need to start with the centerpiece of the 'American Dream,' namely the location and scale of our homes.
"The notion of 'bigger is better' will need to be supplanted by the question of 'how much is enough?' Fortunately, we are beginning to see examples of this process unfolding in some countries around the world, including the United States."
Maurie J. Cohen. New Conceptions of Sufficient Home Size in High-Income Countries: Are We Approaching a Sustainable Consumption Transition? Housing, Theory and Society, 2020; 1 DOI: 10.1080/14036096.2020.1722218
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:12AM
Greedy Jews advocating for eating bugs and devolving to third-world standards to prolong the Western property bubble for reasons of profit? Color me surprised. I think we need to round up assholes like Bill Gates and inject them with every vaccine their foundations imposed upon the world.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday March 10 2020, @10:07AM (2 children)
We should use wearable or targeted heating and cooling. Does the technology actually exist to do that effectively? Eh, maybe.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90385897/the-billion-dollar-race-to-invent-a-wearable-air-conditioner [fastcompany.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday March 11 2020, @01:40AM (1 child)
Wearable heating won't keep your fingers warm if you need the dexterity only available when not wearing gloves. And no matter how warm you keep your body, breathing subzero air all the time can't be healthy.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:09AM
We can beam infrared at the occupants!
https://abcnews.go.com/International/meet-russias-arctic-freedivers-plunge-ice-100-feet/story?id=39141129 [go.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @10:09AM (7 children)
I live in a 5m x 10m unit.
It sucks. It really does.
Air flow is non-existent. The building next door blocks the sun. Haring the neighbors sucks. Smelling the neighbors sucks.
I used to live in a house. Then GFC happened.
Now I live here.
It sucks.
I can't afford to move.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 10 2020, @02:34PM (1 child)
I have to wonder how similar your description is to the reality of being incarcerated. Other than the fact that you can leave your "home" to go outside at your pleasure. (or peril?)
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:48AM
Hrr... you are correct.
This is basically a cell I pay for, for which I only really leave to go out to work.
Yes, I do go out to visit a park sometimes.
It's.. a cell.
Thanks for that.
At least I have a TV and internet.
(Score: 4, Informative) by legont on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:30PM (4 children)
Socialism calculated the number many years ago. It is 9 square meters per occupant - about 100 ft.
Below that and Soviet government would consider to put you into the line for improvements, which was about 10 years long.
(it was so called living space though - bedrooms, living rooms and such - kitchen, toilet and hall not included. They would add another 15-20 meters or so for a family of four.) 50 square meters total for 3 was elite.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:41PM
Is that Joe Socialism or his younger brother Tom Socialism ?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:14PM (2 children)
For people modding this troll, it's a fact, they - and I think "they" was the USSR, but may have been East Germany - produced detailed engineering drawings of the least space you could fit people into for sleeping, washing, preparing meals, etc. That's how Plattenbauten - and that was definitely East Germany - were designed.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:07AM
Yes, they did engineered it all indeed. To be fair, they also designed the outdoor space which was much more generous than what we currently have in cities. I am sure modern green would benefit from the ideas.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 11 2020, @11:55AM
Maybe, but that's an answer to a different question:
Soviet question: What's the smallest floor area per person for basic survival.
TFA question: What's the smallest floor area per person for an environmentally sustainable home?
But I suspect you knew that, and only brought it up because you wanted to conflate environmentalism with communism, in order to push some big irrational fear buttons and spread some anti-green FUD.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 10 2020, @10:33AM (18 children)
For criticism, housing is a target rich environment. There's a lot of sheer stupidity and stubborn adherence to outdated customs.
From monitoring my family's energy use, I know that roughly 50% of an American house's energy usage goes to just heating and cooling. This is on an older, 1970s home with one A/C unit, before the McMansion fad peaked.
The first use of solar energy should go to heating, especially of water. It's so easy to do. But this usage is near nonexistent in the US. I have read that Israel has solar water heating everywhere. In the US, however, solar water heating is incredibly, amazingly costly. Last time the water tank needed replacing, I was quoted $17,000 to convert to solar. They got it all the way down to $6000 or so by throwing in rebates, price cuts, and government assistance. Still too high. Annual bill for the gas to heat the water was perhaps $200. 30 years is far too long a pay back time. Yeah, they argued that it would increase the value of the home. I also looked into switching to tankless. That would have cost about $1500 in equipment, plus whatever the labor would be. Needed to change to a larger diameter gas pipe (and I sure as hell wasn't going to try doing that job on my own, risking a gas leak or even an explosion, as I totally lack experience working with gas piping), and a larger diameter exhaust flue, install an electrical outlet for the heater's control system, and add some additional support as the tankless was wall mounted rather than freestanding. And it would have reduced the energy use by perhaps, I don't know, 20%? Or we could just get a new tank for $300. The new tank was near twice the efficiency of the old tank, thanks to the old tank having very little insulation.
Another really stupid thing is the clothes dryer. There's this ancient tech known as the, uh, clothesline. But, damn, people love dryers. Impatience, perhaps? Or that the clothes are not stiff? Or, the embarrassment of having your drying underwear flapping in the breeze where everyone can see? I've tried drying my clothes indoors, only to have the S.O. claim that this promotes the growth of mold.
The fireplace is yet another. Do not be confused into thinking the typical fireplace is a serious means of heating a home. Any more, what fireplaces are really for is entertainment.
And still more are the automatic sprinkler system, the slab foundation that will crack sooner unless it is regularly watered by said sprinkler system in which case it will crack a few years later, the privacy fence (much more prevalent in the southern US), the use of tiny bricks and bricklayers, the complicated and steep roof line just for looks, the wastefully rambling floorplan that makes keeping an even temperature indoors twice as costly, the idiotically high interior ceilings with light fixtures 5 meters above the floor to make replacing lights more fun, stairways that are still dangerous, and crazy attic access locations.
To sum up, a great deal of housing seems almost calculated to bleed the homeowner dry, so that lawn care, home improvement and repair, and energy utilities can make more money. The US is very warped that way.
(Score: 3, Touché) by xorsyst on Tuesday March 10 2020, @11:41AM (9 children)
In the UK, a lot of dryer use is because for 10 months of the year, it's likely to rain a little on any given day, which makes hanging outside annoying. For some reason, people aren't aware that this is a solved problem with products like http://www.clothesmac.com [clothesmac.com] which really do work.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @11:53AM (2 children)
I'm no weather girl, but where I live, if it's raining, the humidity goes up to 100%.
Clothes only dry when the humidity in the air is less than the humidity in the clothes.
With those concepts in mind, it looks like your product is another greensploitation scam.
(Score: 2) by xorsyst on Tuesday March 10 2020, @12:50PM
Not my product :) We have one similar to that and it works really well. British rain tends to be occasional light showers that aren't enough to raise humidity but are enough to drench exposed washing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:06PM
Live in the southeastern US. Humidity levels in the summer are sky high. If you leave something outside even if it doesn't rain which it will nothing is ever drying out. It will mold over and rot first. So no clothes line for us.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @12:40PM (4 children)
Hang your clothes up in the laundry room where you probably have an exhaust fan to whisk moist air outside already, or in the garage where there's lots of room and it's dry. We have a collapsible wooden rack we use in our apartment when my wife hand-washes delicate garments.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:24PM
Blow the air we spent a bunch of energy air-conditioning out the window?
At least with a heated tumble-dryer we are getting it over with fairly quickly. With your system it would take all day to dry a load, while blowing all of the air conditioned air out the window.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Mer on Tuesday March 10 2020, @07:18PM
Having a room all for the washing machine? Now that's wasteful. Put it in the kitchen or the bathroom.
You point still stands (for the bathroom, not the kitchen unless you want your clothes to smell like lunch).
You do have to schedule around showers but hey, showering at set hours is a good habit.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:42PM (1 child)
"laundry room" ..."garage where there's lots of room"... "collapsible wooden rack we use in our apartment"
Your apartment has a laundry room and a garage? When I lived in an apartment I had a stackable washer-dryer in a closet just big enough to hold it, one parking spot in a parkade, and a rule prohibiting clotheslines on the balconies.
And if I put up a wooden rack somewhere I'd lose the use of that room until i took it down.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:07PM
Your own parking spot? Luxury. In modern Britain we have to walk 5 minutes to road where t'car's parked, and pay council for privilege of parking there!
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:52PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:02PM
Your observation is correct. Housing is calculated to bleed the homeowner dry. There are many means to mitigate, or even reverse, most of it as long as you're willing to brave the perceived risk of the neighbors thinking you're weird.
First, insulate the heck out of your house. Everyone can. It's cheap and has the quickest payback time. I rented a blower from Home Depot and insulated my father-in-law's house for $1,000; I was only going to take it up to R-38, the sweet spot, but they gave me a volume discount on bricks of cellulosic insulation that saved me $300 so I wound up taking it up to R-60. They have an oil heater which used to cost them $5,000 to heat the house every winter; now it costs them under $1,000. So the effort paid for itself in about 1 month of savings.
If you can switch your HVAC to a heat pump (homes sitting on naked rock are out of luck, but those on soil/sand/gravel/clay can) then you win all kinds of ways. You can hook up the water heater to the heat exchanger, heat your home with it in the winter, and cool it in the summer. It can be a big initial outlay, but the savings are dramatic and the payback time is fast.
Residential solar has been falling like a rock and has reached grid parity in more than 30 states. Once you have that installed, you can put in a battery bank like a Tesla Powerwall for darker periods, and a smart tie to the grid to sell excess power back to the utility (if there is net metering where you are). Solar can run your heat pump, too, so at that point you can go off-grid if you want.
Lawns are a waste of space for the most part. I ripped up a bunch and converted it to gardens, fruit-bearing shrubs like raspberries and blueberries, and garden boxes. The fresh produce we grow feeds us from spring to fall. If we were more industrious we could can stuff and live on that through the winter also. Some people go a different route and xeriscape so they don't have to water or tend to the outside at all.
YMMV may vary in the implementation. Some people have to contend with weird Home Owner Association restrictions and that sort of thing. Some people can't swing the cost of doing it all at once, in which case implementation in stages can get you there--insulate, put the savings in a short-term interest-bearing vehicle, leverage it up to tackle the next step. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:29PM (4 children)
I have some nitpicks but I mostly agree with you.
I really think McMansions are sold to the public as a hidden trade off. "In a small property you need to take time to de-clutter and organize. In a huge property, you don't. Since you're so busy working because we spent the last fifty years stripping away the progress of the labor movement, you don't have time any more. As a solution, I give you the McMansion. And the best part is, since it costs more to buy and to heat and cool, you'll be working even longer hours! But it's okay, because you have all that space."
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:44PM (3 children)
I don't even think it's that, it's just the equivalent of a 1970s gas-guzzler. I've visited friends who live in McMansions and, at least in some cases, seen rooms completely empty of anything because they were superfluous. Even when they were furnished, it was very sparsely, and from the condition of the carpet it looked like they had little to no use. They don't need, or have a use for, a house that big, but the property came with a McMansion preinstalled so that's what they live in.
Which also means that an economic analysis of this is pointless, do you want to be the only person on your street who doesn't live in a McMansion? Or, if all the places available to buy are McMansions, are you going to bulldoze it and build a tiny home in its place? It's a social issue, not an economic one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:55AM (2 children)
A big part of it seems to be that's all they build as single family homes go. You either get a McMansion, or something like a townhome with a shared wall. Nothing in between. If you want a small single family home, go buy something built in the 50's. If you want something a bit larger, go find a neighborhood built in the 70's or 80's.
Even if you find a place where you can buy the land and then build your own house, you'll find a bunch of rules and restrictions on what you can build (minimum square feet, so many garage stalls, restrictions on building materials and style, etc.) that all the houses end up pretty much the same anyway.
If you want to build a smaller home, you basically have to go way out of the city and build it in a rural area.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:38AM (1 child)
It's more profitable for the builders to build a McMansion.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:50AM
Yeap, that's a big part of it. Builders found out that in many ways, the cost of things like pouring the foundation, doing the plumbing, installing the flooring, etc. isn't that much cheaper in a small home than a big home. Yet they can sell the big home for a lot more money. Hence one of the reasons homes got bigger.
Same thing with autos. Jacking up the suspension, throwing bigger tires on, and adding some plastic cladding is cheap, but now it's a SUV that you can sell for way more money.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday March 11 2020, @01:50AM
In the northern US and Canada, solar water heating is an unfunny joke. The portion outside needs antifreeze to prevent bursting in cold weather.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Wednesday March 11 2020, @06:45AM
Rambling roof line: We have hurricanes! The will act like a wing and lift off the house if its area is all in a single roof line, or not steep enough to act like a spoiler. If you strap the roof to the walls well enough it can't lift off, and the walls to the foundation a cat 5 can lift the entire structure. If the roof fails or a built in garage door fails wind will hit the far wall from the inside and push it down, then the whole house falls. (see Andrew collapsing houses in Florida)
If you're going to make a push, why not one to make solar electricity mounts and wiring pre-installed in homes at the point when it would be cheap - when the walls aren't skinned. Along with choosing roof profiles that make solar work best and pre-permit approved installs for 'same model' builder homes you'd bring the cost of installation down. (if there are 150 identical houses in a subdivision, they should be able to get permit pre-approval if they duplicate a prior install)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:09PM (29 children)
The single factor which defeats environmentalism in the United States is its poverty-thinking. The pie is finite, so we must each learn to content ourselves with an ever-shrinking piece of that pie. (It's the same mentality that drives socialism, actually, and that is why it is viscerally repellent to most Americans.) That progression always counts down to zero.
There is a different way to approach the question, though, that can work and is working. It is an abundance mind-set. If the pie isn't big enough, grow the pie. Eliminate waste so everything is used. Make money saving the environment. That progression grows and grows and grows.
Think about how anemic the first approach to saving the environment has been for 50 years. It is based on indoctrination and coercion. Then consider how much money Tesla is making doing it as a business, and how dramatically it is already disrupting the fossil fuel industry that is the main culprit in CO2 emissions.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:22PM (6 children)
You miss the key factor in all of this, that the internet has only exasperated by about a million orders of magnitude.
Complaining and trying to tear stuff down is easy, satisfying, and socially promoted. Trying to build stuff up is *extremely* difficult, challenging (though ultimately far more satisfying), and -contrary to what I think most would imagine- generally discouraged by society. What I mean on that last point is, for instance, what happens if you decide to give it a go at starting a business. I will never forget my mother in law's reaction on learning that I'd made a few thousand in my first 'start up', "You should take that out [of your business account] and buy yourself something nice." Implicitly suggesting I'd lose it all. For some context, I grew up dirt poor - as did my wife, so a few thousand bucks with no direct obligation (such as rent) was a *lot* of money for us.
Anyhow, I think that mentality is extremely common, especially (and counter productively) among the poor and lower educated. Those who can never even imagine success will obviously turn that pessimism into quite the self-fulfilling prophecy. So then they get back to complaining and trying to tear stuff down. At scale, enter an increasingly large chunk of society that thinks socialism is the answer. This time it'll be different, really!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:17PM (5 children)
In rapacious capitalist societies such as the US, the lack of financial discipline is augmented by the constant screaming exhorting and coercing everyone to spend. Buy your way out of a problem (and don't notice that we manufactured the problem for you). How could you not buy what your child needs to get ahead? How could you, you rotten excuse of a parent?!? Your home needs maintenance, lots of it, or it won't meet city ordinances or HoA regulations. You can use your money to care for it in the prescribed and approved manners, or you can lose the money paying the fines we're going to levy. Your choice, ha ha!
Don't even think of going to the dentist, not in Fee For Service Land. No telling how many cavities the dentist will find that aren't real. Same with the doc. They will load you down with a bunch of drug prescriptions, if you in any way encourage them, like by complaining of aches and pains that aren't really all that bad.
The car is a huge money pit. But in the US, the way cities are designed, it's nigh impossible to live without a car. Some places, yes, you can do without. Not in sprawling suburbia though. No public transportation of any sort, and everything is so spread out that walking will take much too long. And biking? Without bike lanes? Worse, with car fanatics who believe that bikes shouldn't be allowed on the roads? Once when he was around 10, my brother was deliberately run off the street by some crazy old woman driver who thought just that. The old girl was probably going senile. She should have been charged with, what's the crime? Reckless endangerment? Attempted vehicular homicide? And should have had her license pulled. Elderly drivers are the worst scourges of everyone trying to get places on foot or bicycle. Very dangerous, the way they can accidentally swerve out of their lanes without realizing it, especially on corners. And they were children and teens in the era when car mania was at its peak, and we had drive-in everything. Likely they want a return to those days.
Never mind Keeping Up With The Joneses. Just keeping your head above water is a challenge.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:55PM (2 children)
If you want to live in an overcrowded city with "excellent" public transportation, you are welcome to move to NYC. You could of course probably not afford the "good" parts, so you'd have to live in the not-so-good part. But hey, with no space for personal cars and being surrounded by people too poor to afford one, transportation options will be tailor made to fit your expressed preference.
The truth is, for pervasive public transportation, you need to design entire cities around it and tax people heavily to pay for it: public transportation is very expensive. (It only seems like a deal when you think somebody else is paying for it.) Given that, does public transportation serve a society or does a society serve public transportation? Given a choice (and we are all given a choice in that we move to a region we choose), people in America have overwhelmingly shown that they prioritize other things over public transportation. ALMOST EVERY TIME. For those who want it, you are free to move to the city. The public transportation people are always saying how much better the city is already, right? Oh that's right, they aren't content with letting people live where/as they wish; their suburb must be turned into a city. Any other possibility is just WRONG.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:55PM
That's the US model for public transportation. It works well in other countries. And then you get flow-on effects where, if a place has fast, efficient, cheap public transport, everyone uses it and there are fewer cars clogging up the streets.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:22AM
Even so, you can live quite well without a car. There are foldable bikes that pop into a bag. Ride to the subway/bus/whatever, sit down, on the other side ride to work and throw the thing under your desk. Mostly, though, in NYC you can get where you need to go faster and cheaper on a bike, without public transportation at all.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:52PM
Was just talking about this with friends yesterday, all of the drunken bums I knew when I was a student now own their own homes after working hard and saving every penny. They're financially secure. However, we all knew people who spent money as soon as it came in, and will never own their own home. I have no idea what they're going to do when they retire and the massive Ponzi scheme that is the pension has run out of steam. Wage increase? Great, let's spend it! Christmas bonus? Great, we'll book a cruise! Small inheritance? Fiji, here we come! It's almost inconceivable how these people persist in barely-gets-by homeostatis, no matter how much more money comes in they'll just increase their spending until they're back to zero again.
God, I'm an old fart and I'm not even old yet. You young'uns have no appreciation of the value of money...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:44AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday March 10 2020, @02:36PM (15 children)
What if the top 3 men didn't have a larger piece of the pie than the bottom 50 %?
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:18PM (8 children)
I suspect you might not have hit on what he was saying, so let me try it a different way. We now live in a world where a large number of billionaires started off as decidedly middle class or even poor. And I do mean world. Jack Ma [wikipedia.org] is my favorite example. When Ma was young he spent about a decade manually carting around tourists to make ends meet and to learn a bit of English. The man is just unimaginably determined and self motivated. In China there's a national test for college admittance, that hasn't been dumbed down - it took him 4 years to earn an acceptable score and get into college. He applied to Harvard Business School for 10 years in a row, rejected every single time. But he tried and persevered and with a bit of good timing and good ideas, he finally made his way into some ideas that stuck after starting his first company at age 31. He's now worth more than $40 billion.
When there is this sort of opportunity in the world you're going to see *radical* increases in wealth inequality. Those with a bit of intelligence, drive, and determination can now achieve unimaginably great results. Those who lack such are going to fall behind. And the greater the potential, the greater this disparity is going to become. Because of this China's wealth inequality (like much of the developed world) is now skyrocketing. Now if you go back to the 60s in China you'd never see anything like this. They were still trying out full-on communism. And indeed most of everybody was equal, and they starved together by the tens of millions, like equals.
The point I make with this is that this is why you don't want to try to say 'hey 3% - give us your shit', but rather try to help encourage, educate, and motivate the bottom 50% while also ensuring that we have an economic system where success is still very much a realistic goal to strive for. And in fact some of the behavior driving wealth inequality directly drives that bottom 50% up. For instance India is arguably being currently "exploited" by the rest of the world at immense profit. But are they being exploited? Indians working in software make peanuts compared to the developed world, but they make an immense about by Indian standards. And indeed India is set to become the world's second largest economy within the next 10 years surpassing the US and standing second only to China. And a big part of it is thanks to this "exploitation" which is creating a very healthy middle class and helping to drive the overall economic engine of India such that they seem to be possible on their way to 'pulling a China' - and by that I mean the wealth inequality thing, not the let's starve as equals thing.
Don't focus on trying to take stuff from other people - focus on incentivizing other people to create stuff, achieve more, and do more.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:42PM (2 children)
Every Jack Ma needs millions of customers. It's mathematically and physically impossible for every single person in the bottom 50% to do the same thing. It's impossible for 1% of the population to do the same thing. Run the numbers: I start a business that makes 40 billion. If you can get 300,000 people to do that, that's 1.2 quadrillion dollars.
But you don't need an extreme, Jack Ma example for the math to fail. In the US alone, 45 million workers make $15 an hour or less. Say you have some brilliant training program and turn 5 million of those people into doctors or robotics engineers. That's 5 million people with $200k salaries, right? Of course not, the job market doesn't need 5 million new doctors or 5 million robotics engineers.
How about restaurants? Or cleaning services? Or training? Again, the market only has a certain amount of demand and a few thousand or maybe hundred thousand people can find niches and make a small fortune. A few people might find niches and make a huge fortune. But supply and demand means you'll never uplift half the population, or a third, or even ten percent that way.
Last but not least, your rags-to-riches billionaire works hard and applies incredible intelligence, but he or she still does not deserve compensation at that level. I'm an average veteran software engineer making six figures. Say Jack Ma's incredible perseverance means he worked 10 times as hard as me, and say he's 5 times as smart. Neither of those is true, but even just accept them for the sake of argument. Then he should be getting 10x the work multiplied by 5 times the intelligence = 50 times my compensation. Instead, I would have to save my income from a thousand lifetimes to get the same wealth. I'm not lazy or stupid, either. That's beyond ridiculous. It's outright criminal. There are smart, hardworking people with less money than me and there are brilliant, desperately motivated entrepreneurs working for years that 'only' ever got millions of dollars. They would still have to work for centuries to reach his wealth.
The existence of billionaires is a crime against humanity. They earned an insignificant fraction of their wealth, the rest is theft. Jeff Bezos could fire his 650k employees and replace them all tomorrow, but they only way he deserves his wealth is if he could ran Amazon as a one-person operation. He can't.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:27AM (1 child)
Sez you. Your conclusion cannot be logically reached from your presumptions.
You claim you're not lazy or stupid, but you're obviously envious, and envy corrodes minds.
You completely fail to understand that the free market is inherently virtuous; in fact you completely fail to understand the free market.
Yes, if everyone worked as well and as wisely as Jack Ma, the rewards would not be as high as Ma's for everyone (that's comparative advantage), but the total wealth and the wealth of every segment of society would be much higher. Compare wealth at all levels in a country like the US where people are free to use all their abilities, to central African countries like the Republic of the Congo or Zimbabwe where repression is general. Freedom encourages people to produce, and that benefits everybody, including (alas) thieves and supporters of thieving ideologies.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:34PM
> Freedom encourages people to produce, and that benefits everybody
Except we are now in a situation where the freedom to persuade everyone to buy shit they don't need is encouraging everyone to OVER produce and OVER consume leading to environmental meltdown, bringing us full circle back to the point of TFA.
So no, it doesn't always benefit everyone.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:00PM
Yeah, that's the Chinese work ethic. Friend of mine did that, although not on a Jack Ma level. Had almost enough saved when he left China to put down a deposit on a house, now owns two houses, works hard and saves every penny (see my previous post). He's not worth $40B, but hard work and sound financial practice pays off.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:06PM (3 children)
No. You completely missed the point. It's not the richest 3% that own more than the bottom 50%, it's the 3 richest *people*:
Jeff Bezos, Amazon – $114 billion.
Bill Gates, Microsoft – $106 billion.
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway – $80.8 billion.
Those three guys own more than the the bottom 50%.
I suppose you could try to claim that all it takes is hard work and determination, and those things are necessary. However, they are not the *only* things.
In fact, many of those bottom 50% have loads of determination and work very, very hard. If they didn't, and didn't work two or three minimum-wage jobs, they and their children would be living on the street. Which, by the way, 500,000 people do every night.
You are sorely lacking in both factual knowledge and empathy. More's the pity.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:34AM (2 children)
Your math is defective. $300 billion (wealth of top 3) divided by 150 million (half the US population) is $2000. The average wealth of the bottom 50% in the US is well over $2000, the price of a poor quality used car.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:03AM
I agree the numbers don't add up, but also keep in mind there's a lot of people who have a net worth that is negative. In other words, they could sell off everything they own and wouldn't be able to pay off their debts (mostly student loans and credit cards, but also mortgages, car loans, etc.). Some of these people at least seem to be well off.
Actually owning a $2000 used car free and clear would be an improvement for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:55AM
AC you replied to here.
Fair enough.
A little research shows that the 20 (admittedly more than three) richest people have ~1.044 trillion (source: https://wealthygorilla.com/richest-people-america/ [wealthygorilla.com] ), while the poorest 50% of Americans have ~1.67 Trillion in wealth (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org] ).
And by the way, the *median* wealth of that bottom 50% is ~$11,000 (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org] ).
So okay it's not the richest 3 people, but the richest 30 people that control more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans.
While it's certainly true (well, except for the bunch in that group of 30 that *inherited* their wealth) that hard work and determination helped those folks become so wealthy, a whole raft of other factors had *more* impact on their success.
If not, many of those bottom 50% would be billionaires too, given how hard they have to work and how determined they have to be *just to keep their heads above water*.
I can't speak for anyone else, but it seems to me that the current situation actually *hurts* growth and slows the economy. If there were a more even distribution of wealth (I'm not talking about putting the rich up against the wall, rather stuff like living wages and incentivizing growth, reinvestment and expenditure over accumulation).
More money in the hands a broader set of people would spur growth. What's more, a strong safety net would incentivize people to take entrepreneurial risks. It's a lot easier to start a business when you know that if you fail, your children won't be eating out of garbage bins.
Increased entrepreneurial competition and placing disincentives on rent-seeking would help a lot too.
Additionally, incentives for saving and investment should go to *everyone*, not disproportionately to the very wealthy.
From a medium (a decade or two) to long (40-100 years) term perspective, such changes are *necessary* to keep our *consumer* economy viable. A few more decades of the upward flow of wealth will so greatly depress consumer spending (how many pairs of shoes, sofas, TVs, boats, houses, jets, etc. can one person really own and maintain?) that the economy will likely collapse, or more likely, just decline until we're a third-world shithole with a few incredibly wealthy people at the top and a whole lot of impoverished people.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday March 10 2020, @07:54PM (4 children)
His point is that the pie isn't a fixed size. Which of these scenarios would you prefer?
1. Everyone got the exact same 1.5oz slice of pie
2. Top 3 get a 500lb slice, but the bottom 50% get a 3oz slice?
The former is more "fair", but everyone is better off in the latter.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:03PM (3 children)
If there's enough pie for everyone to get exactly 1.5oz each, how can everyone get 500lb or 3oz from it?
Oh wait, Mr.Trump, is that you? "We’re going to get so much pie, you’re going to be so sick and tired of pie".
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:11PM
The idea on the table here is that the price of a larger pie is inequality.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:51PM
Because the pie in scenario 2 is bigger. The point was to highlight that it isn't a zero sum game and we can influence the size of the pie itself as well as how we divide it up.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:56AM
That's the magic of economics. When we work to better ourselves, rather than work to take from others, we get more out of the economy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:52AM
They don't. Keep in mind that these cheesy measures of wealth ignore future income which is an obvious measure of wealth that is roundly ignored. For example [vox.com]:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:25PM (5 children)
You were doing fine until you said "socialism." And "poverty" thinking isn't accurate; you're looking for the phrase "zero-sum thinking."
Thing is, though? Zero-sum thinking did NOT start with poor people. Zero-sum thinking is deliberately imposed on us from the top down by the rich and powerful precisely *because* it stalls out any attempt to change the system for the better (and therefore erode their power and money base). THAT is your zero-sum thinking.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:32AM (4 children)
"Socialism" is as poisonous a term as "nazism," and we cannot forget that. It's a modernist, totalitarian ideology that is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.
That aside, we seem to agree on the mindset, no matter what you call it. It doesn't work. Fully tried, it requires force and death. It is the opposite of pluralistic, free, democratic society.
Let's save the environment with an approach that doesn't employ the socialist mindset. The environment must be saved, but we cannot kill ourselves to do it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:03AM (3 children)
Yeah, fuck socialism. God forbid we end up like those horrible shitholes Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland. Awful. And mostly atheist, too, those places! God is righteously venting his divine fury on them by...uhh...making them...some of the best places on earth to live...? Huuuuh.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:40AM (2 children)
The countries you cite are not socialist, they are mixed market economies injured by a partially socialist welfare system. Current socialist states are places like Venezuela and North Korea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @05:53AM
Those are not true socialist states though.
Just you wait... There will be a glorious socialist utopia any day now.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:53PM
I know :) But when the kind of idiot like the one I replied to says "socialist" they're trying to conflate Venezuela with Denmark.
There is more meaning behind what these people say than the literal face value of their words. They have an agenda, and they are leaning into it. If you don't pay attention you could get suckered in too. Don't turn your brain off: read what they mean, not just what they say.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:37PM (4 children)
So, rather than set square footage targets, how about carbon emissions targets per person. Oh, wait, there's that variable again: number of people. While we're not on a global exponential growth curve anymore, the linear growth of global population continues around 75 million people per year, set for another doubling of population in 100 years (as opposed to the previous doubling that took only 50 years), if we continue this "rate of slowing" we might then only double again in 200 years, and again in 400 years, but, wait - that means that by 2700 we'll be trying to cram 60 billion people probably just on to the Earth, because... space is just too expensive. Hell, if we can't afford more than 900 square feet for a family of four, how can we afford a Mars colony? /rant
New rant: let's look at the "total carbon cost" of housing, and by that I mean energy expenditure cost - if we start to get our energy from lower carbon sources that can pay a "housing luxury dividend" in the future. But, for now: what does it cost to build and maintain a house? If construction costs 20% more (money, energy expenditure, same thing really) up front but lasts 2x as long, that would seem to be something worth pursuing. Just swag that "baseline" construction of a 2000 square foot home costs US$200K, and this home costs US$250 per month for energy with an expected 30 year lifespan, so: $90K in energy across those 30 years. Seems like switching construction methods to something that costs $240K to build but lasts 60+ years (around here, that would be switching from wood frame to concrete construction) would have a greater positive impact over the following 60 years than cutting the energy consumption in half. Napkin math says: $400K construction vs $240K construction over 60 years, $160K savings, whereas 50% energy reduction would be $180K vs $90K, so $90K savings - durable construction wins by a factor of 178%.
Of course, better still would be to do all of the above: double lifetime for 20% increase in cost per square foot, decrease square footage by 20%, increase energy efficiency per square footage, eat veggie burgers and like them.
Meanwhile, I like my walls of windows in Florida, it's my life and I can afford the extra $50 per month they cost me. Arguably, if my wall of windows were a depressing opaque slab of energy insulation, I'd spend that $50 per month in petrol blasting around in my V8 automobiles instead to ward off the depression of a dark home. True facts: when I rented a 350 square foot apartment, I drove 20,000 miles per year. When I moved from there into a 1200 square foot home, my driving dropped by 75%. When I lived alone in that 1200 square foot home, my energy bills were negligible - $25 per month average usage. When a "cohabitant" moved in with me, an electric clothes dryer got installed, the A/C ran much more often, and the bills jumped to an average of $125 per month. Let's not talk about what happened after two offspring joined the pod.
Big houses, and even energy in-efficient construction, are not the culprits - it's how they're used. Though, I will say, new construction of any kind uses more energy and emits more net carbon than light rehab of existing structures.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:45AM (3 children)
Or transition to negative population growth. After all, the present stretch of linear growth indicates a dropping population growth rate.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:18AM (2 children)
Faith is a wonderful thing, and better still for the faithful on this issue they'll be dead before they're proved right or wrong.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:01AM (1 child)
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:18AM
When you project the bad side, that's called cautious pessimism. The cautious pessimist isn't surprised as often by things going poorly. The cheerful optimist on the other hand can make Mad Max a reality.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @01:47PM (9 children)
My take? Let the urban areas figure out small area housing, the rural areas the larger scale housing, and use marketing pricing to incentivize all that to be more sustainable. In other words, what we're doing now.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:54PM (2 children)
Miniaturization. My grandmother had an appliance the size of a small cube refrigerator, and all it was, was an AM radio. Didn't even have FM. Today, of course, a radio easily fits in a far smaller space. Now, we don't need books all along a wall of a study any more. Digitized versions can all fit on one flash drive. Same with the music collection. Lose the vinyl and the optical media. For some time now, the desktop computer hasn't needed to be the size of a kitchen sink. Flat screens have replaced the far bulkier tube monitors and TVs. Over the centuries clocks have shrunk from 6 foot tall grandfather clock size monstrosities to wristwatches to just another part of a smartphone. LED lighting fits in smaller spaces than incandescent, and doesn't burn or melt everything that gets too close.
Lot has already happened to make smaller housing possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @05:04PM
Yes, all this is a vital part of the solution for people in Hong King living in rented cages stacked one above the other.
For the fortunate rest of us, I think a basic amount of space so you're not bumping into other people is the greater driving factor.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @07:01PM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:15PM (2 children)
Notice how that's actually the very first argument in the summary?
Notice how the anti-environmentalists will just ignore reality and insert their own words into other people's mouths?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:54PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:12AM
So they mention it once and never again. That's not an argument in any sense. It's lip service. It's even worse in the article which claims
They merely mention that some sort of research on "relative decoupling, efficiency improvements, renewables substitution, and behaviour change" has been done, not even bothering at that point to mention in passing whether it furthers the goals they claim to care about or not.
What I think is profoundly ridiculous about the whole thing is that energy and materials investment in a large house just isn't that important in the scheme of things. There is this continued insistence to sacrifice peoples' preferences and living standards for modest conservation of energy and materials.
(Score: 2, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:53PM (2 children)
That logic has lead to nearly every farm and privately owned forest within 30 miles of city centers around here becoming converted into housing developments filled with mcmansions.
I have many friends that moved to the countryside to get away from the city 20 years ago, only to have suburban sprawl encroach on them.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2020, @06:58PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:55PM
Ooooh, excellent argument! If heroin and cocaine and fentanyl are such an issue why is there demand for them? If $HARMFUL_THING is so bad, why is there demand for it?
You stupid motherfucker.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @05:07PM
It never ends: some organization of people that wants to decide for everybody else how they must live their lives.
The only thing that changes is the justification used for their control policies.
It must be a dominance urge in people that is just inbuilt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @08:45PM (1 child)
What we need are brutalist commie blocks. Every apartment the same size with communal bathrooms, showers, and kitchens. This has many benefits because we can ensure that people aren't taking more than their fair share of time on the toilet, taking a shower, or caloric intake. So that people don't get to boast or compete over who gets rooms on higher floors with a view windows should be eliminated, this will make everyone equitable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:31AM
You have described a college dormitory, was fun at the time, hardly’brutal’, but not ideal either.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:43AM (1 child)
I don't need much square footage, but I hate the proportions of most modern buildings. I have broad shoulders, and have to angle my body through standard doorways. I am tall, and have to duck my head through most openings. It is like living in a civilization built by hobbits.
I do, though, have a dream of someday getting out of the cities built by hobbits and building a house scaled for humans. This article seems to want to make that impossible.
Why can't people who want to save the environment stop being totalitarian assholes about it? It's always wrapped up in proto-Marxist bullshit. It does not have to be. We can build green buildings that are scaled to the size a person wants, no matter what he wants. We can live in large homes that have a small carbon footprint, if we want, and if we can afford it. We don't have to have some pinched bureaucrat in some distant nest of assholes telling us what we can, and can't, have.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:18AM
That seems odd to me. Around here, it's the new buildings that I'm most comfortable in as a tall guy. Tall ceilings are all the rage now. 9' ceilings in houses, and I've been in office buildings where the ceiling is practically high enough that you could add a second story under it. The tall ceilings are admittedly nice as they make the rooms feel more spacious and open. Of course, doors are also scaled to match the ceilings so they are larger too. But ultimately they just add more volume that needs to be heated and cooled purely for aesthetics. It's worse in cold weather, since hot air rises into that empty space above your head, so you have to spend more to heat the air you're actually living in.
It's the old buildings with sub 8' ceilings, doorways that are too short, and various obstructions I always have to watch out for (light fixtures, ceiling fans, etc.) that I wouldn't want to live in.
Admittedly, it's probably the buildings built in the late 1960's through the mid 1990's or so that seem to be the most practically designed, even if they seem stodgy and not trendy today (build quality can also be all over the place).
(Score: 3, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:11AM (2 children)
A large house is one of the finest rewards for a productive life. It takes years of living to compare the two, but the advantages of big are manifold. Lower stress. Room to display artwork, room for a workshop. Spare room for guests. A garage to protect your vehicles from the weather. A home theater.
Those who want to force you into a small house (or worse yet an apartment) are people who don't value productive work and don't believe it should be rewarded. What they value is power, the power to degrade you and control your life. That is the shabby secret they hide behind the banner of "environmentalism".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @05:59AM
Yikes, that's not very inclusive of you.
Live in the pod and eat the bugs, you bigot!
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Wednesday March 11 2020, @06:48AM
And don't want your vehicles life to be extended via garage storage. Here is the scorching hot south you can keep vehicles looking nice 5-10 years longer if it's in the shade at work and home. Tthat reduces waste.