Fun fact that chart is outdated, it's worse now!
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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In a future capitalist dystopia, the Empire (aka USA) will be renamed "United States of Amazon Prime®", and every 4 years the name will be replaced by the name of some other mega oligopoly
So, basically the script of idiocracy
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
That's just the book Snowcrash
Interesting, I don't know the work so I'll look into it
Hey at least it will have a distinguishable name for the first time
(There are multiple "united states" in America, such as The United Mexican States and The Federative Republic of Brazil)
We are Verizon-Chipotle-Exxon, and we're proud to be one of America's eight companies!
What happened to our anti trust laws?
The people that enforce them are, ironically, untrustworthy.
Sounds like antitrust people ought to be untrustworthy. Linguistically, ya know?
Wait, is that where it went wrong?
What's funny about the US experiment is that capitalism is supposedly the better way but at the same time when capitalism runs its course the government feels the need to intervene because it doesn't take long for capitalism to become a monopoly and for the free market to disappear, but that's as far as the reflection goes...
Conglomeration occurs naturally - economies of scale in a large organization give it an advantage over smaller ones. Similar to how cities naturally occur. The problem is the organizations are not democratically controlled and so they act in ways that are unsustainable, anti customer and anti worker. Workers should manage the organization through a one person one vote principle (sometimes multi-stakeholder coops would make sense), and all commercial entities should be regulated by a democratic government.
That would be better true but I argue that even if you compare companies to cities the same problem occurs with cities, mega or very big cities are not sustainable or easier to manage, they just occur naturally.
I don't think even if a company is worker owned or democratically controlled may still choose to go against the customer or competition with monopolistic practices so I'm not sure it's possible to have mega corps be very positive in any way to society.
How are mega cities not sustainable?
How do those people feed themselves? How do they move around? How far away is the average person's house from the workplace, or the market, or the hospital? In the end is the average energy consumption per person smaller? The existence of mega cities requires a lot of land elsewhere to sustain those people with the added transportation costs. There is not much to gain from gathering too many humans in one place for the sake of it.
Dense cities are way more efficient than living spread out on the countryside.
Infrastructure cost is lower per person, because higher density means less km of pipes, wires, roads etc. per person.
Mass transit is also more efficient in both monetary and resource cost than cars, but it is only viable with the density of a city.
How far away is the average person's house from the workplace, or the market, or the hospital?
I live 3 min by foot from the grocery store. Medium/high rise buildings and mixed zoning make that possible. Idk if you are thinking of American style suburbia, which is indeed very inefficient.
mega cities requires a lot of land elsewhere to sustain those people with the added transportation costs
The farmland needed should be the same either way, but centralising stuff usually makes it more efficient. For example a cities grain needs can be met with a single freight train, which should use less energy than the same amount of grain transported in many small trucks to smaller towns
Dense cities are way more efficient than living spread out on the countryside.
Infrastructure cost is lower per person, because higher density means less km of pipes, wires, roads etc. per person.
Mass transit is also more efficient in both monetary and resource cost than cars, but it is only viable with the density of a city.
How far away is the average person's house from the workplace, or the market, or the hospital?
I live 3 min by foot from the grocery store. Medium/high rise buildings and mixed zoning make that possible. Idk if you are thinking of American style suburbia, which is indeed very inefficient.
mega cities requires a lot of land elsewhere to sustain those people with the added transportation costs
The farmland needed should be the same either way, but centralising stuff usually makes it more efficient. For example a cities grain needs can be met with a single freight train, which should use less energy than the same amount of grain transported in many small trucks to smaller towns
Dense cities are way more efficient than living spread out on the countryside.
Infrastructure cost is lower per person, because higher density means less km of pipes, wires, roads etc. per person.
Mass transit is also more efficient in both monetary and resource cost than cars, but it is only viable with the density of a city.
How far away is the average person's house from the workplace, or the market, or the hospital?
I live 3 min by foot from the grocery store. Medium/high rise buildings and mixed zoning make that possible. Idk if you are thinking of American style suburbia, which is indeed very inefficient.
mega cities requires a lot of land elsewhere to sustain those people with the added transportation costs
The farmland needed should be the same either way, but centralising stuff usually makes it more efficient. For example a cities grain needs can be met with a single freight train, which should use less energy than the same amount of grain transported in many small trucks to smaller towns
Dense cities are way more efficient than living spread out on the countryside.
Infrastructure cost is lower per person, because higher density means less km of pipes, wires, roads etc. per person.
Mass transit is also more efficient in both monetary and resource cost than cars, but it is only viable with the density of a city.
How far away is the average person's house from the workplace, or the market, or the hospital?
I live 3 min by foot from the grocery store. Medium/high rise buildings and mixed zoning make that possible. Idk if you are thinking of American style suburbia, which is indeed very inefficient.
mega cities requires a lot of land elsewhere to sustain those people with the added transportation costs
The farmland needed should be the same either way, but centralising stuff usually makes it more efficient. For example a cities grain needs can be met with a single freight train, which should use less energy than the same amount of grain transported in many small trucks to smaller towns
Dense cities are way more efficient than living spread out on the countryside.
Infrastructure cost is lower per person, because higher density means less km of pipes, wires, roads etc. per person.
Mass transit is also more efficient in both monetary and resource cost than cars, but it is only viable with the density of a city.
How far away is the average person's house from the workplace, or the market, or the hospital?
I live 3 min by foot from the grocery store. Medium/high rise buildings and mixed zoning make that possible. Idk if you are thinking of American style suburbia, which is indeed very inefficient.
mega cities requires a lot of land elsewhere to sustain those people with the added transportation costs
The farmland needed should be the same either way, but centralising stuff usually makes it more efficient. For example a cities grain needs can be met with a single freight train, which should use less energy than the same amount of grain transported in many small trucks to smaller towns
"I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say kill 'em all!"
Well they are free to run their monopoly...
Is that website still around? I think it was like theyowneverything.com