https://www.udet.org/post/the-hidden-cost-of-generosity-how-...
Isn't that another version of the Broken Window Fallacy? Destroying things to create jobs re-creating them is a net loss.
1. The elites grab the crates and hoard them, leveraging their existing power to make sure they enrich themselves and extend their power. They sell the items, but at a lower price than the Earthly-produced items, which is easy since they have 100% margin.
2. Whether or not #1 happens, it becomes impractical to make any of these goods for a living, so people stop. Eventually, the factories are dismantled or simply crumble.
Now Earth is dependent on the aliens to keep sending the crates. If the aliens ever get wiped out, or just elect a populist who doesn't like to give aid to inferior planets, then we won't have any cars, or clothes, or computers.
(And yeah, I get it - no one "really" wants to work on a "soul-crushing" assembly/production-line... People want to make art (or games) or write novels... (both areas of creative work which are ALSO being targeted by AI)... but people definitely want to "eat" and have shelter and our whole system is built on having to pay for those priviledges...)
Around 1800, 95% of people worked on the farm. Today it is 2%. People do different things now.
Maybe it's better to let them decide what they want to buy.
They'll find another way to destroy them.
2018 article reports that Burberry destroyed £28 millions worth of clothes to keep their brand "exclusive": https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44885983
The most desperate povert I've ever seen was in India. You know what people were using to make tents to live in? Clothes.
Poor people have been making clothes for thousands of years without any help from heavy industry, and it's incredibly cheap to produce long-lasting cotton clothing.
Clothing isn't really a perpetual need the way you frame it. A single garment can last decades if it's synthetic or allowed to fully dry between uses.
However, countries don’t wear clothes. People do. People sometimes have shortages of clothing in many places.
For example, here in the United States people sometimes experience poverty and may sometimes experience a lack of suitable clothing. This happens at the same time that there are also people in the US throwing away clothing that they do not use. This is because those people are different people in different immediate locations.
The reasons that people lack clothing is not because there is not enough clothing in existence. It is because the clothing is not distributed universally to every person who needs it.
If I have seen this with my own two eyes in the US, then I am sure it happens in other places.
> A single garment can last decades if it's synthetic or allowed to fully dry between uses.
So? A person with the ass ripped out of their jeans or a hole in their shoe doesn’t give a fuck whether other clothes last 10 years.