Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the tiny-homes dept.

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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:18PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @03:18PM (#969080)

    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.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:42PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @04:42PM (#969157)

    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)

      by ChrisMaple (6964) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:27AM (#969433)

      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.

      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

        by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @12:34PM (#969594) Journal

        > 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

    by driverless (4770) on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:00PM (#969289)

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2020, @09:06PM (#969293)

    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.

    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)

      by ChrisMaple (6964) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:34AM (#969435)

      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

        by toddestan (4982) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:03AM (#969454)

        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

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:55AM (#969476)

        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.

        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.