
The perils of short-termism - noego
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190109-the-perils-of-short-termism-civilisations-greatest-threat
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dr_dshiv
Part of the issue with longtermism in the present politic is pessimism on
climate change. Specifically, because people treat tech and development as
antithetical to healthy futures, they don't develop a positive vision of the
50 year future.

We need a positive vision. We need to be optimistic that we _are_ addressing
the environmental issues and that humans _will_ be thriving and flourishing in
2100. Therefore, what will that look like? And what is the work we need to do
to design and develop that positive future?

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selfishgene
What this author forgets is that many young people today are not procreating
because having children is increasingly becoming a luxury of the upper middle
class. Why should childless individuals care all that much about how issues
like global warming and growing economic inequality will affect future
generations when they're desperately just trying to hold onto their current
jobs in order to service increasingly unjustifiable levels of debt (home,
medical, educational,...)?

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rogerkirkness
That's a weak argument for antinatalism. The global middle class is much
larger and more capable of supporting the necessities that children require.
People consider upper middle class lifestyles table stakes for child raising,
which is why they choose to opt out of the children having status tournament.
Diapers and food are actually not that expensive, but toddler yoga, dual
earner flexible childcare, private school and similar absolutely are.

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marble-drink
I cannot find a woman who will be a full time mother after giving birth. I
will not put my children into day care for 12 hours a day. I could afford to
support a family in my own, but only with my very frugal and minimalist
lifestyle (no fancy car, no expensive holidays, no eating at restaurants etc)

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badpun
> very frugal and minimalist lifestyle (no fancy car, no expensive holidays,
> no eating at restaurants etc)

That's not "very frugal and minimalistic lifestyle", that's just living for
95%+ of the world population. It's not so bad.

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marble-drink
I didn't say it was bad. But women who work tend to do all of this and want to
maintain that lifestyle which is clearly ridiculous to do on a single income
with children.

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ptah
this is not a new problem. it's been around since at least the industrial
revolution

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devoply
When the next collapse of civilization happens those that caused it will be
holding most of the money. They will then use this money to rebuild
civilization and make yet more profit...

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crispinb
There's a good chance that the next collapse will be more comprehensive than
previous ones though. In particular, it's very easy to imagine nukes getting
thrown around as nations compete for rapidly diminishing topsoil & fresh
water.

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n4r9
It's also easy to imagine the financial elites burrowing down into their
premade bunkers to wait it out.

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crispinb
They're entirely welcome to what's left at that point as far as I'm concerned.

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n4r9
The issue is that

a) they have a lot of influence over how humanity reacts to existential
threats

b) they're nowhere near as concerned about the collapse of civilisation as
everyone else.

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lazyjones
The opposite is true. We're currently so occupied with imagined problems from
the future that we forget to take care of present issues. The interesting time
span for normal folks and most politicians to deal with should be the next 5
years, not the end of the century. Leave that to science fiction authors.
Better and more interested people will deal with problems in 81 years,
whatever they will be.

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SamReidHughes
A lot of great projects -- subways, tunnels, bridges, constitutions, the
metric system, manifest destiny, the marine chronometer, GNU -- wouldn't have
happened if people only cared about the next five years.

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lazyjones
All of these were built in order to immediately improve the current situation,
not the one in 100 years.

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SamReidHughes
It takes longer than 5 to pay back the investment, and many are planned in
anticipation of future growth.

