Living space, not great. 60m2 for a 4 person family. That’s tight. I live alone in a 90m2 house and I could use more space, do they want me to live in a 15m2 house or do they want to force to share living space? Sorry but I won’t compromise there. I prefer people having less children that me having to live as ants in a colony.
That is just a personal pick with the DLS minimum requirements chosen.
But still forgetting that. The reasoning is extremely faulty.
Most of their argumentation heavy lifting is just relied to Millward-Hopkins (2022) paper establishing that 14.7 GJ per person anually is enough. That paper is just a work of fantasy. For reference, and taking the same paper numbers. Current energy usage (with all the exiting poverty) is 80 GJ/cap. Paleolitic use of energy was 5 GJ. Author is proposing that we could live ok with just triple paleolitic energy. That paper just oversees a lot of what people need to live in a function society to get completely irrational numbers on what energy cap we could assume to produce a good life.
Then on materials used. The paper assumes all the world shifting to vegetarian diet, everyone living on multiresidential buildings, somehow wood as the main building material (I don’t know how they even reconcile that with multiresidential buildings…). And half of cars usage shifting to public transport How to achieve this in rural areas it’s not mentioned at all).
A big notice needs to be done that both papers what are actually doing is basically taking China economy (greatly praised in the introduction) and assuming that all the world should live like that. And yes, probably the world could have 30 billion inhabitants if we accept to be all like China, who would we export to achieve that economic model if we all have a export based economy? who knows, probably the martians. And even then, while a lot of “ticks” on what a decent level of life quality apparently seems to be ticked, many people in western countries would not consider that quality life, but a very restrictive and deprived life standard.
I’m still on the boat the people having less children is a better approach to great lives without destroying the planet. At some point a cap on world population need to be made, it really add that much that the cap is 30 billion instead of maybe 5 billion? It’s certainly not a cap in the number of social iterations a person can have, but numbers give for plenty of friends. And at the end it’s not even a cap on “how many children” can people have, as once the cap is reach the number of children will be needed to cap the same to achieve stability. It’s just a cap on “when people can still be having lots of kids”. Boomer approach to “let’s have children now” and expect that my kids won’t want to have as many children as I have now.
Also another big pick I have with the article is that it blames the current level of inefficiency to private jets, suvs, and industrial meat. But instead of making the rational approach of taking thise appart from the current economy and calculate what the results will be. Parts from zero building the requirements out of their list. Making the previous complaint about those luxury items out of place completely. On a personal note I would reduce or completely eliminate many of those listed “super luxury” items. But I have the feel (just a feel because neither me not the author have studied this) that the results of global energy and material usage won’t drop that much, certainly not at the levels proposed by the authors with their approach.
It’s a minimum to bring the impoverished up to. The paper makes no suggestion that the rest are to be brought down to that standard except by changing production practices.
You’re not really considering the article in the context of what it’s arguing against, which is the implicit position of the World Bank that someone is not “poor” if they’re living on the equivalent of over $3.00 per day (as of 2025). The standard that Hickel et al. are proposing, while low by Western standards, is still much higher than what billions of people are currently experiencing.
“It is important to understand that the DLS represents a minimum floor for decent living. It does not represent a an aspirational standard and certainly does not represent a ceiling. However, it is also a level of welfare not currently achieved by the vast majority of people. A new paper by Hoffman et al finds that 96.5 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries are deprived of at least one DLS dimension.”
Firstly- Are you so selfish that you refuse to change anything about your lifestyle in order to provide people with an absolute minimum standard of life - a standard that you have identified as abhorently poor by your standards?
Secondly- Change on your part may not even be required. Tax on production (i.e. corporations) would cover the majority of it, and the rerouting of production from useless things like casinos and yachts would cover the rest.
Finally- additional taxes and such would not even be required for many changes, just spending more efficiently. As an example- Very rural places all over the world have train and bus service. It’s a matter of choice that the US doesn’t, not a matter of practicality. We spend all of our money on highways instead, which are far more expensive per person per mile. Investing in rail, like Europe and China have done, provides far more use for far more people.
Yes, to support everyone on what our economy outputs today will involve the quality of life decreasing for a lot of people. And the economy will have to change, to build the things that people need but are currently unable to pay for. This is unsurprising.
Probably the living space is more to show this is feasible over it being the expected/desired solution. It would be very counterproductive to tear down good houses, but small apartments work well for “house single unhoused people”.
Rural transport is a rounding error compared to the number of private cars that could be converted with minimal fuss in cities.
Why would an export economy be a bad model? They literally have a surplus; all you need to do to fix it is… Make less?
Definitely use empathy on someone who has none. That’s how they practice.
Even seeing somebody else do it neurologically strengthens those circuits in the brain. This is the actual front line, the human brain, and saying not to USE EMPATHY ON PEOPLE WHO HAVE NONE is a command to retreat in the very moment it is your turn to act.
A bad person? For what? For not wanting to live in a tiny bedsit just so the world can accommodate more theoretical people that don’t exist and need not exist?
I’m not mad. I will just not allow anyone to reduce my living standards because they don’t want to use a rubber.
A export model is not bad. I just said that’s unreasonable to think that all the world could follow that model. Because then “who would we export to?”. It’s like liberals thinking that the tax rate in a tax heaven are proof that every country could have those tax haven rates. Good for them, that the model worked, but for some country to export other country needs to import, that’s all. Chinese economic growth have been very linked to being the world factory. That’s great, but it could not be assumed that all the world could just do the same.
The paper assumes all the world shifting to vegetarian diet, everyone living on multiresidential buildings, somehow wood as the main building material (I don’t know how they even reconcile that with multiresidential buildings…). And half of cars usage shifting to public transport How to achieve this in rural areas it’s not mentioned at all).
Yeah, that’s totally unrealistic. We could get rid of 99% of cars and only keep ambulances and fire trucks, and most people would be happier. Also we should get everyone on a vegan diet. Vegetarian is okay, but still enslaves animals. We can do much better.
Public transport for low density areas is terrible. So or you are forcing people to live in cities (where public transport can be good) or you are forcing people to endure terrible public transport.
Also forcing dietary changes on people, something as big as preventing people to eat or use animal products…
I just don’t think forcing that on people would be clever. I know how I would react if anyone were to impose that way of living to me, and I can only assume that many people would react the same way. Specially if I would have to endure all that only to accommodate a growing population when we could just try to aim for a lower stable number of total human population (a number that will need to be reached regardless at some point. Infinite growth is unfeasible).
I have some information that’s gonna blow your mind: people lived in rural areas for many thousands of years and cars were only invented a hundred years ago.
They lived self sufficient lives and walked to town once a month for essentials. If they were lucky, they had a mule and a wagon.
I’m guessing you live in a rural area and you think you need your car, because you’ve gotten used to driving into town every few days for fresh groceries and haircuts? Yeah, so that’s arrogant decadence. You live a cosmopolitan lifestyle with inner city conveniences, despite being out in a rural area with plenty of space and low land values, and this is made possible by your poison death machine.
The poison death machines are not sustainable. Go back to living how your ancestors did. Take the mule into town once a month for soap and molasses, or move to the city. You don’t get to have it both ways
Tough shit. Your poison death machine is killing people on the other side of the world, and the only way to have a clean conscience is to get rid of it
Yeah, I’m actually subtly manipulating you. See, you were acting like there’s no way to live rurally but to use cars, so I explained that people can live in rural areas without cars in a way you can’t argue with. But the trick is, I lowballed you to set your expectations low. Now I can explain that the United States was basically built by railroads, and that trains are faster than donkeys. Furthermore, rail technology has advanced massively in the last 100 years, to the point that you genuinely could live rurally without a car and still enjoy those urban conveniences you love, like out of season fruit. It won’t be as convenient as the car, but I’m sure now you’ve realised it would still be a far better quality of life than has ever been possible for your ancestors. And now it’ll look really selfish if you say you’re still not satisfied with that and you want to poison the sky and kill people for even more convenience.
I have a kitchen, a living room and two bedrooms. I do remote work so one of the bedrooms have a double purpose as guess room and office.
I would love to have at least, another room dedicated to storage. And second room so I could have a hobby/office room and a guess room separately.
Also I would love to have a garden.
I spent a lot of time at home, between remote work and hobbies, so I would like to have a more spacious living space. The more time you spent on a place the bigger it probably needs to be.
Reading the study I get the following remarks:
Living space, not great. 60m2 for a 4 person family. That’s tight. I live alone in a 90m2 house and I could use more space, do they want me to live in a 15m2 house or do they want to force to share living space? Sorry but I won’t compromise there. I prefer people having less children that me having to live as ants in a colony.
That is just a personal pick with the DLS minimum requirements chosen.
But still forgetting that. The reasoning is extremely faulty. Most of their argumentation heavy lifting is just relied to Millward-Hopkins (2022) paper establishing that 14.7 GJ per person anually is enough. That paper is just a work of fantasy. For reference, and taking the same paper numbers. Current energy usage (with all the exiting poverty) is 80 GJ/cap. Paleolitic use of energy was 5 GJ. Author is proposing that we could live ok with just triple paleolitic energy. That paper just oversees a lot of what people need to live in a function society to get completely irrational numbers on what energy cap we could assume to produce a good life.
Then on materials used. The paper assumes all the world shifting to vegetarian diet, everyone living on multiresidential buildings, somehow wood as the main building material (I don’t know how they even reconcile that with multiresidential buildings…). And half of cars usage shifting to public transport How to achieve this in rural areas it’s not mentioned at all).
A big notice needs to be done that both papers what are actually doing is basically taking China economy (greatly praised in the introduction) and assuming that all the world should live like that. And yes, probably the world could have 30 billion inhabitants if we accept to be all like China, who would we export to achieve that economic model if we all have a export based economy? who knows, probably the martians. And even then, while a lot of “ticks” on what a decent level of life quality apparently seems to be ticked, many people in western countries would not consider that quality life, but a very restrictive and deprived life standard.
I’m still on the boat the people having less children is a better approach to great lives without destroying the planet. At some point a cap on world population need to be made, it really add that much that the cap is 30 billion instead of maybe 5 billion? It’s certainly not a cap in the number of social iterations a person can have, but numbers give for plenty of friends. And at the end it’s not even a cap on “how many children” can people have, as once the cap is reach the number of children will be needed to cap the same to achieve stability. It’s just a cap on “when people can still be having lots of kids”. Boomer approach to “let’s have children now” and expect that my kids won’t want to have as many children as I have now.
Also another big pick I have with the article is that it blames the current level of inefficiency to private jets, suvs, and industrial meat. But instead of making the rational approach of taking thise appart from the current economy and calculate what the results will be. Parts from zero building the requirements out of their list. Making the previous complaint about those luxury items out of place completely. On a personal note I would reduce or completely eliminate many of those listed “super luxury” items. But I have the feel (just a feel because neither me not the author have studied this) that the results of global energy and material usage won’t drop that much, certainly not at the levels proposed by the authors with their approach.
It’s a minimum to bring the impoverished up to. The paper makes no suggestion that the rest are to be brought down to that standard except by changing production practices.
You’re not really considering the article in the context of what it’s arguing against, which is the implicit position of the World Bank that someone is not “poor” if they’re living on the equivalent of over $3.00 per day (as of 2025). The standard that Hickel et al. are proposing, while low by Western standards, is still much higher than what billions of people are currently experiencing.
Gonna quote the study again:
Firstly- Are you so selfish that you refuse to change anything about your lifestyle in order to provide people with an absolute minimum standard of life - a standard that you have identified as abhorently poor by your standards?
Secondly- Change on your part may not even be required. Tax on production (i.e. corporations) would cover the majority of it, and the rerouting of production from useless things like casinos and yachts would cover the rest.
Finally- additional taxes and such would not even be required for many changes, just spending more efficiently. As an example- Very rural places all over the world have train and bus service. It’s a matter of choice that the US doesn’t, not a matter of practicality. We spend all of our money on highways instead, which are far more expensive per person per mile. Investing in rail, like Europe and China have done, provides far more use for far more people.
You mad?
Yes, to support everyone on what our economy outputs today will involve the quality of life decreasing for a lot of people. And the economy will have to change, to build the things that people need but are currently unable to pay for. This is unsurprising.
Probably the living space is more to show this is feasible over it being the expected/desired solution. It would be very counterproductive to tear down good houses, but small apartments work well for “house single unhoused people”.
Rural transport is a rounding error compared to the number of private cars that could be converted with minimal fuss in cities.
Why would an export economy be a bad model? They literally have a surplus; all you need to do to fix it is… Make less?
They’re not mad, they’re just a bad person. Don’t use empathy in argument with someone who has none.
Also, those numbers are like averages. Some places would have high rises to accommodate the sheer numbers of people, working or non-working.
But yeah, I’d tear down my own fucking home right meow if it was for equality on a massive scale.
Definitely use empathy on someone who has none. That’s how they practice.
Even seeing somebody else do it neurologically strengthens those circuits in the brain. This is the actual front line, the human brain, and saying not to USE EMPATHY ON PEOPLE WHO HAVE NONE is a command to retreat in the very moment it is your turn to act.
A bad person? For what? For not wanting to live in a tiny bedsit just so the world can accommodate more theoretical people that don’t exist and need not exist?
I’m not mad. I will just not allow anyone to reduce my living standards because they don’t want to use a rubber.
A export model is not bad. I just said that’s unreasonable to think that all the world could follow that model. Because then “who would we export to?”. It’s like liberals thinking that the tax rate in a tax heaven are proof that every country could have those tax haven rates. Good for them, that the model worked, but for some country to export other country needs to import, that’s all. Chinese economic growth have been very linked to being the world factory. That’s great, but it could not be assumed that all the world could just do the same.
Who said anything about using a rubber? Or not? Let’s properly support the people that exist now.
And do you think that’s likely to happen any time soon in the real world?
It’s all well and good coming up with theories on paper but if your theories only work on paper, then don’t count them as solved.
The theory understander has logged on I see.
Yeah, that’s totally unrealistic. We could get rid of 99% of cars and only keep ambulances and fire trucks, and most people would be happier. Also we should get everyone on a vegan diet. Vegetarian is okay, but still enslaves animals. We can do much better.
What about people not living in cities?
Public transport for low density areas is terrible. So or you are forcing people to live in cities (where public transport can be good) or you are forcing people to endure terrible public transport.
Also forcing dietary changes on people, something as big as preventing people to eat or use animal products…
I just don’t think forcing that on people would be clever. I know how I would react if anyone were to impose that way of living to me, and I can only assume that many people would react the same way. Specially if I would have to endure all that only to accommodate a growing population when we could just try to aim for a lower stable number of total human population (a number that will need to be reached regardless at some point. Infinite growth is unfeasible).
I have some information that’s gonna blow your mind: people lived in rural areas for many thousands of years and cars were only invented a hundred years ago.
They lived self sufficient lives and walked to town once a month for essentials. If they were lucky, they had a mule and a wagon.
I’m guessing you live in a rural area and you think you need your car, because you’ve gotten used to driving into town every few days for fresh groceries and haircuts? Yeah, so that’s arrogant decadence. You live a cosmopolitan lifestyle with inner city conveniences, despite being out in a rural area with plenty of space and low land values, and this is made possible by your poison death machine.
The poison death machines are not sustainable. Go back to living how your ancestors did. Take the mule into town once a month for soap and molasses, or move to the city. You don’t get to have it both ways
I don’t want to live like people lived two thousands years ago, thanks.
Tough shit. Your poison death machine is killing people on the other side of the world, and the only way to have a clean conscience is to get rid of it
You lack imagination. Plenty of ways to not kill people without having to recede to Palaeolithic levels of life quality.
Yeah, I’m actually subtly manipulating you. See, you were acting like there’s no way to live rurally but to use cars, so I explained that people can live in rural areas without cars in a way you can’t argue with. But the trick is, I lowballed you to set your expectations low. Now I can explain that the United States was basically built by railroads, and that trains are faster than donkeys. Furthermore, rail technology has advanced massively in the last 100 years, to the point that you genuinely could live rurally without a car and still enjoy those urban conveniences you love, like out of season fruit. It won’t be as convenient as the car, but I’m sure now you’ve realised it would still be a far better quality of life than has ever been possible for your ancestors. And now it’ll look really selfish if you say you’re still not satisfied with that and you want to poison the sky and kill people for even more convenience.
How do you need more than 90m² when living alone?? I live in a 60m² apartment and literally only use like 30-40m² and idk what I’d use the rest for.
Well they need a garage for their car, and since they’re driving to work and don’t get enough exercise they need a home gym
I have a kitchen, a living room and two bedrooms. I do remote work so one of the bedrooms have a double purpose as guess room and office.
I would love to have at least, another room dedicated to storage. And second room so I could have a hobby/office room and a guess room separately.
Also I would love to have a garden.
I spent a lot of time at home, between remote work and hobbies, so I would like to have a more spacious living space. The more time you spent on a place the bigger it probably needs to be.
I’m basically living as a hermit but I guess we just have different needs.