MealSquares are a nutritionally complete food. That means if you eat 5 MealSquares (2000 calories) you will get 100% of your daily recommended value of all essential vitamins and minerals.This product sounds really useful but something about the page flags ALL THE RED FLAGS EVER and I’m not sure why.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/5/soylent-end-foodinsecurity.html
“This is the reason many commentators fear the rise of Soylent and products like it. Under capitalism, we spend most of our waking hours under the direction of our bosses. We’re under pressure to produce ever more efficiently — not for more pay, but simply to keep our jobs. With stable 9-to-5 employment increasingly scarce, companies are not only making the workday longer, they’re making sure workers achieve peak productivity throughout it.
Pervasive surveillance of employees, the division of work into mundane and tedious component tasks, and the relentless pace of production have always been associated with labor under capitalism. But in the unionless cubicle of the future, workers have even less of a chance to push back against these trends.
For those of us still lucky enough to have it, a lunch break is one of the last reprieves from the tyranny of the workplace. It doesn’t matter that we’re spending half of it standing in line for Chipotle — socializing with others and having time away from the grind has tremendous value.
Our biological need for food to perform effectively as workers is one of the few things employers have to respect. A labor force sipping Soylent all day at their desks would satisfy that need without disruptive pauses for food preparation, consumption and cleanup. Lunch breaks could come to be seen as an antiquated luxury, relics from a bygone era of 40-hour workweeks, paid vacation and sick days, and “Cadillac” health and dental plans.”
Uncritically Mealsquares-positive libertarians, PLEASE reflect on this!
P.S. slatestarscratchpad what do you think?
It kind of seems like that’s what they see as the point, actually.
It’s not that people don’t like eating and want it easier. It’s that eating is stupid and irrational because people should be maximally productive at all times.
They’re not solving the same problem.
^^ Actually, I fear that they (tech culture/proprietarian geeks/the LW Right) just straight up divide humanity into two classes: proles like me who should be productive, obedient, disciplined and quiet - and the elect like them, who deserve the spoils.
The people I’ve met behind Mealsquares finding selecting what to eat, preparing it, and then eating it unpleasant, boring, and distracting from their lives, much the same way people with ED that I’ve known don’t like eating. They want to get the problem out of the way once and for all.
I think Soylent is meant to be the “superfood” for the productivity cult (which I am opposed to for a few reasons) who want to be productive 18 hours a day.
And naturally, the people for whom the distraction of lunch is vital rather than unpleasant do not figure into your ideas at all, right? After all, how could the exercise of free choice on one end of society possibly result in the increase in coercion and decrease in personal freedom on another end? :mystery:
How exactly do you propose for us proles to get out the way of the paperclipper that you are so enthusiastically fuelling? And why don’t you view damage control as a necessary part of your mission?
P.S. look at what happened with telecommuting and the “flexibility” that it has allowed! It lets employers manage and commodify more of their employees’ lives - and so they do!
I don’t think projects developing alternatives to eating are the problem, though?
Of course not. Even Sunkara in his article about Soylent linked above agrees that it could be a wonderful thing for precisely the reason of streamlining our lives for our own aims and desires. The problem is that under capitalism, it would give others power to streamline our lives away.
The inventors are not the problem, they have perfectly good ideals, but we should get them to think critically about the system.
But like, they’re people making a thing? And if people could only make things with no potential for employers to use to make employees’ lives worse, how could anyone ever make anything?
It’s nice of them to make the thing! It’s just equally important of them to think critically about the system in which the thing is going to fit, and engage with the people who want to make the system less Unfriendly!
Can you unpack that? What specific actions do you want them to take?
For starters, how about a panel (sigh) with union activists as well as specialists who study working conditions and the history of labour? Making a memo with (specific) policy recommendations for improving (broadly enough defined) work conditions? Interrogating companies about their (expected) policy stances and publishing results?
You want the soylent people to do all that? That seems like 1) a lot of effort and money, and 2) pretty far outside of their wheelhouse
Edit: also, okay, say they do that. What sort of results do you expect to come of it? What will they learn and how will they use that knowledge?
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dataandphilosophy reblogged this from ozymandias271 and added:I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that a division along these lines (in group, out group, somewhere out there where I...
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hylleddin reblogged this from ozymandias271 and added:The sort of condescending viewpoint of users does actually show up a lot in tech circles, in basically the same way you...
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ozymandias271 reblogged this from dataandphilosophy and added:I don’t know enough about tech to assess how accurate it is (yet. growth mindset!). I do wonder if this is a general...
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bartlebyshop reblogged this from multiheaded1793 and added:Enjoy.
multiheaded1793 reblogged this from bartlebyshop and added:Shit, I had no idea something like that existed. Like, in Soviet times there was a mandatory morning workout in a few...
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Wow I guess marxism makes a lot more sense if you think every fucking product people invent to sell because someone may...
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insertwittyremarkhere reblogged this from madeofpatterns and added:Yeah I can see that. Their tone is kind of condescending, and like ‘we’ve done the SCIENCE do YOU science?’. So like if...
thetigerisariver reblogged this from multiheaded1793 and added:That quote is really interesting because tbh, I feel like the "lunch break” is already dead and buried. Ofc, I have ed...
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nuclearspaceheater reblogged this from multiheaded1793 and added:While some hypothetical superfood may be like that, I’ve tried MealSquares and I can’t realistically see it being...
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fnord888 reblogged this from multiheaded1793 and added:You’re going to have to unpack that simile. Some people will want Glass, despite the existence of smartphones. And some...
madeofpatterns reblogged this from bgaesop and added:I think that would be reasonable if they were marketing it to companies. I don’t think that’s reasonable for a product...
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queenshulamit reblogged this from queenshulamit and added:*remembers Ozy eats mealsquares* Once again I am an idiot who can’t take a joke. :(
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bgaesop reblogged this from multiheaded1793 and added:You want the soylent people to do all that? That seems like 1) a lot of effort and money, and 2) pretty far outside of...
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I’m sorry if I’ve sort of derailed that conversation! I’m glad people are reblogging with the things they perceive as...
uncrediblehallq reblogged this from ozymandias271 and added:Yup. Evil Bay Area techie here. I am sympathetic to "eating is STUPID.” I don’t eat MealSquares because (1) I tried them...
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nixiesorceress reblogged this from molly-ren and added:Two comments: 1. “You need carbohydrates, not bread.” Some variation on this might be true, but food science is super...
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