This for a lot of things. Problem you encounter here tho is social peer pressure to avoid anachronism.
"Ugh your parents are so old fashioned"
My kids don't believe me when I tell them they have it easy half arsed lazily cleaning their rooms, when at 12, I was cleaning stables, field picking, gardening and taking the five mile walk to school alone. I did my year in cadets and attempted service (medical discharge apparently being near blind in an eye without glasses is a no no, cant wear contacts) Not for pocket money. That was duty. To earn my place in the house.
Pocket money was 50p at the car boot. If I wanted something bigger it was birthday/Christmas money or save up.
Their natural response was to assume I was lying just to guilt them, until they spoke to grandad.
And now I'm left sitting here thinking my dad had it harder. He was a coal mine worker at 12. So I'm grateful all I did was shovel shit and march around.
But as said, my kids don't appreciate their lack of effort, purely because any attempt to apply honing pressure is met with an overwhelming social peer pressure to undo it all. "But Kevin and Stacy and Alex and Mark don't do that, so I shouldn't have to!"
There used to be babysitting and paper routes, but those apparently went by the wayside.
My money as a little kid came from change I was allowed to keep from my gofering duties. Coin change only, back long before the dollar coin, and pennies were, of course, still a thing. (But you could get a comic book for a quarter, and a bottle of Coke for 20 cents.)
This reminded me of a discussion I was having with my brother somewhat recently. We've both done pretty well, I wouldn't say rich but both comfortably in the upper half of the middle class. He was talking about saving for kids colleges and my suggestion was actually to not do that and instead just make clear to his kids that as far as education expense goes figure it out yourself essentially, as that's how we were raised.
The fact of the matter is we both figured it out in our own ways and without loans or free money from parents. I worked and paid my way through, it took about six years and was hard and there was no time for the "go off and find yourself at the indoctrination camp" college life. It was something I did when I wasn't at work to get a piece of paper. Looking back, I wouldn't change a thing. Starting off in my mid 20s with zero debt to my name and continuous legit work history going back to when I was 16 was a springboard into the rest of my life that getting a handout could have never provided.
What you're describing is a roundabout way of saying that for a society to remain healthy it needs to instill certain cultural and social values in each new generation.
Leftists would call these "institutions". Why do you think they went after everything from K-12 to comic books? Videogames, movies, TV, commercials, comics, books... these aren't just timewasters or hobbies and diversions. SJWs understand that these are the ways society tells itself stories about itself.
Just look at the Federation's internal culture Star Trek TNG and DS9. With matter replicators the concept of money and wealth is pointless, you can have any thing at any time. But at the same time private enterprise is still thriving. We see private freighters and transports, inventors, we even a privately owned family restaurant.
It works because the culture written for Star Trek's Federation is an idealized form of protestant work ethic. The entire Federation is based on a culture of striving to build things and explore. People want to work, they embrace challenge and even hardship.
That's the power of institutions. You don't need to dial back technology and the economy to make things suck again, you need to dial back the self-destructive perversion of social and cultural institutions that have run rampant on both the left and the right thanks to Bezos and his buddies.
The problem with that view is "too much success". It will vary wildly person to person. Because the problem isn't "too much success". The problem is related to too much success, sure, but the real problem is resting on your laurels. Becoming complacent. "Good Times Create Weak Men"? You can't throw Atilla The Hun a nice birthday party and turn him into a simp cuck. Atilla probably had a LOT of good times, given the amount of people sharing his genetics. Good times don't directly create weak men, they simply allow for, and even reward, their existence, causing them to outbreed the growth and success ones, bringing collapse.
You speak as if seeking growth is the malignancy, the cancer. But ironically (given cancer's form) in that growth can keep you ever-afloat: Infinite growth is not only possible, but necessary. It is the moment we STOP growing, that it crashes down, and your suggestion here would implement that.
It's socialism: "Do not produce more than your neighbor." "Do not excel in science more than the dumbest person." "Stagnate." "Success is dangerous: Winning only brings failure down the line." "You can't have a nightmare if you never have dreams."
And I fundamentally disagree with that worldview.
So long as we have hardship, we can continue to create good times. That hardship, though, should NOT come from limiting humanity. Humans are fantastically limited creatures. There is no end to their limitations. We have hardships all around, if we're willing to shake off the yoke of complacency, the plateau of "good enough", and identify them. I will die one day. That's a huge limitation. I can't lift up my house. Not an important limitation perhaps, but one nonetheless. I need very specific chemical intakes to stay alive, and even a 2% change in oxygen content in the air causes me damage. It's a hardship of all humanity.
But like the collapse of Rome, the hardships the worthless plebs think of are "food", "circus", and "sex", and our society has even shamed that last one out of Maslow's hierarchy. They eat good food, watch fun shows, and they're content. And so they do not progress, for they are content.
People RIGHT NOW are doing your idea: They're slacking. They're coasting. They're letting society fall apart. They're listlessly drifting in the day-to-day, year-to-year. So if you think your idea won't lead to tragedy, great, society is careening off a cliff called "good enough" RIGHT NOW. So rejoice, young socialist: Your utopia where people are handicapped by themselves, the law, and society all in one, is nearly already here.
What would shutting it all down look like? It seems impossible.
No offense, but that's vague as hell and just saying "it's possible" doesn't make it so.
If business A is getting too successful and the owner decides to scale back, business B will simply pick up the slack.
The only way it would work is if the government had control of everything, but that would be a disaster.
This for a lot of things. Problem you encounter here tho is social peer pressure to avoid anachronism.
"Ugh your parents are so old fashioned"
My kids don't believe me when I tell them they have it easy half arsed lazily cleaning their rooms, when at 12, I was cleaning stables, field picking, gardening and taking the five mile walk to school alone. I did my year in cadets and attempted service (medical discharge apparently being near blind in an eye without glasses is a no no, cant wear contacts) Not for pocket money. That was duty. To earn my place in the house.
Pocket money was 50p at the car boot. If I wanted something bigger it was birthday/Christmas money or save up.
Their natural response was to assume I was lying just to guilt them, until they spoke to grandad.
And now I'm left sitting here thinking my dad had it harder. He was a coal mine worker at 12. So I'm grateful all I did was shovel shit and march around.
But as said, my kids don't appreciate their lack of effort, purely because any attempt to apply honing pressure is met with an overwhelming social peer pressure to undo it all. "But Kevin and Stacy and Alex and Mark don't do that, so I shouldn't have to!"
There used to be babysitting and paper routes, but those apparently went by the wayside.
My money as a little kid came from change I was allowed to keep from my gofering duties. Coin change only, back long before the dollar coin, and pennies were, of course, still a thing. (But you could get a comic book for a quarter, and a bottle of Coke for 20 cents.)
This reminded me of a discussion I was having with my brother somewhat recently. We've both done pretty well, I wouldn't say rich but both comfortably in the upper half of the middle class. He was talking about saving for kids colleges and my suggestion was actually to not do that and instead just make clear to his kids that as far as education expense goes figure it out yourself essentially, as that's how we were raised.
The fact of the matter is we both figured it out in our own ways and without loans or free money from parents. I worked and paid my way through, it took about six years and was hard and there was no time for the "go off and find yourself at the indoctrination camp" college life. It was something I did when I wasn't at work to get a piece of paper. Looking back, I wouldn't change a thing. Starting off in my mid 20s with zero debt to my name and continuous legit work history going back to when I was 16 was a springboard into the rest of my life that getting a handout could have never provided.
What you're describing is a roundabout way of saying that for a society to remain healthy it needs to instill certain cultural and social values in each new generation.
Leftists would call these "institutions". Why do you think they went after everything from K-12 to comic books? Videogames, movies, TV, commercials, comics, books... these aren't just timewasters or hobbies and diversions. SJWs understand that these are the ways society tells itself stories about itself.
Just look at the Federation's internal culture Star Trek TNG and DS9. With matter replicators the concept of money and wealth is pointless, you can have any thing at any time. But at the same time private enterprise is still thriving. We see private freighters and transports, inventors, we even a privately owned family restaurant.
It works because the culture written for Star Trek's Federation is an idealized form of protestant work ethic. The entire Federation is based on a culture of striving to build things and explore. People want to work, they embrace challenge and even hardship.
That's the power of institutions. You don't need to dial back technology and the economy to make things suck again, you need to dial back the self-destructive perversion of social and cultural institutions that have run rampant on both the left and the right thanks to Bezos and his buddies.
The problem with that view is "too much success". It will vary wildly person to person. Because the problem isn't "too much success". The problem is related to too much success, sure, but the real problem is resting on your laurels. Becoming complacent. "Good Times Create Weak Men"? You can't throw Atilla The Hun a nice birthday party and turn him into a simp cuck. Atilla probably had a LOT of good times, given the amount of people sharing his genetics. Good times don't directly create weak men, they simply allow for, and even reward, their existence, causing them to outbreed the growth and success ones, bringing collapse.
You speak as if seeking growth is the malignancy, the cancer. But ironically (given cancer's form) in that growth can keep you ever-afloat: Infinite growth is not only possible, but necessary. It is the moment we STOP growing, that it crashes down, and your suggestion here would implement that.
It's socialism: "Do not produce more than your neighbor." "Do not excel in science more than the dumbest person." "Stagnate." "Success is dangerous: Winning only brings failure down the line." "You can't have a nightmare if you never have dreams."
And I fundamentally disagree with that worldview.
So long as we have hardship, we can continue to create good times. That hardship, though, should NOT come from limiting humanity. Humans are fantastically limited creatures. There is no end to their limitations. We have hardships all around, if we're willing to shake off the yoke of complacency, the plateau of "good enough", and identify them. I will die one day. That's a huge limitation. I can't lift up my house. Not an important limitation perhaps, but one nonetheless. I need very specific chemical intakes to stay alive, and even a 2% change in oxygen content in the air causes me damage. It's a hardship of all humanity.
But like the collapse of Rome, the hardships the worthless plebs think of are "food", "circus", and "sex", and our society has even shamed that last one out of Maslow's hierarchy. They eat good food, watch fun shows, and they're content. And so they do not progress, for they are content.
People RIGHT NOW are doing your idea: They're slacking. They're coasting. They're letting society fall apart. They're listlessly drifting in the day-to-day, year-to-year. So if you think your idea won't lead to tragedy, great, society is careening off a cliff called "good enough" RIGHT NOW. So rejoice, young socialist: Your utopia where people are handicapped by themselves, the law, and society all in one, is nearly already here.