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Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
483 points by maerF0x0 on Jan 28, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 791 comments
Is anyone else noticing that for several 5 year blocks (pentad) the world just seems to get markedly worse? It's like no body seems to give a shit about anyone except themselves anymore. Whats the cause of this? What's the solution?

A bunch of things I've noticed:

* Landlords seem extremely greedy and do terrible rent seeking tactics like fees upon fees (250 admin fee to rent here, $75 to apply, $300 non refundable pet deposit, $25 a month pet rent, $12.50 community fee, $15 trash valet, $5 online payment fee, $100 a month community internet (for the $50 a month package), going Month to month after a lease ends is 2x the annual price. And then they use RealPage to collude to make prices higher[1]

* People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there's someone with loud as exhaust on "sportish" car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained.

* General worker apathy is endemic everywhere I go people seem aggravated I would dare to check my order and point out they didn't put in the ketchup i asked for, or the napkins, or whatever. Or when I dine in the tables are dirty. Or the gym is filthy, the cleaner just drags the mop around looking busy but accomplishing nothing. But in many instances they keep asking for more tips.

* Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time today. And this one I think I've observed the root, it seems that people get promoted away from their problems so they're not the ones to solve them. And those who do write good software (albeit slightly slower) are not promotable beacuse they're "under performing" their peers. Why does it seem management (and many thusly incentivized engineers) have abandoned decades of experience showing how to create reliable, robust, reusable code that is both great the customer, fast to iterate on, and only a tiny tiny bit slower to write.

* Seems like everything is subscription model and you have to pay N times to access something thats only worth 1-3x . Eg: I Netflix for a couple hours a month. At the price for 4k access I can almost go out to a theatre. Video games are all trending to subscription models. I just learned the other day that the PS4 games I got with my subcription to PSN all are locked because I stopped subscribing (nearly 50 games) . So I paid them like $125 for access to these games for 24 months, and now I cannot play any of them? At least I still own NES/SNES/N64 Game cartridges that will never lock me out.

* Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I've noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world. Folks stealing shit. People driving absurdly dangerously in cars that are not designed to travel like that. (tailgating, lane switch, accelerating at the fastest I've ever seen a beat up Sentra do...) . I never see cops hit lights and sirens at them. And every year our taxes (their paycheck) and our insurance goes up (a consequence of poor driving habits). And at the same time, we get these cases where a dude like Tyre, at least as I see the body cam, seems to be basically complying and the police freak out on him, he basically complies, and they taze and pepper spay him, no wonder he ran away -- what is someone supposed to think when they say "on the ground" and you get on the ground and then just keep getting more and more aggressive. Like are you gonna just lay on your face while they potentially pull their gun and just shoot you in the back of the head? How do you know what's going on unless you can face and see them? How can you trust they wont, cause even if it's 99.999999% they wont, you only get 1 one chance and if you get it wrong you're dead without any coming back.

* Over and over again we keep hearing stories of fake people becoming the top paid, respected, or otherwise status people in society. Elizabeth Holmes, Frank/JP Morgan scam for $175M[2], fraudulent crypto schemes

* And there's a ton of little things too like the water is poison, the air is poison, the food system is poison or crashing etc.

I'm aware of pinker's general argument that many numbers are getting better. But it seems like people just treat eachother like shit these days.

Anyone else have other examples? I am I way off base here?

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/26/23479034/doj-investigating-rent-setting-software-company-realpage

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/21/business/jpmorgan-chase-charlie-javice-fraud.html




I think you're way off base. It's called rosy retrospection, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection. As you already mentioned in your comments, you're judging the past disproportionately more positive that the present.

If you really want to know if everything is declining, try measure it everyday for the next five years. For example, every day, rate your personal well being, track how (un)happy you are with the current software, how much you pay to your landlords and subscriptions, how many mistakes the police makes, the weather, everything, ... After 5 years you'll have a good idea if things actually got worse than they are now. Sure, some things will get worse, but definitely not everything, and some things will even be better than they are now.


This is just personal but anytime I feel similar to the OP, I watch something by Hans Rosling [1] or Anna Rosling [2]. Although 10 and 5 years old respectively, I feel the general sentiment is still true - that human progress is slow, in the background and might be ebbing and flowing in your specific sub-population.

And when compared to the present, media narrative driven present its hard to see the improvements happening across the global population.

It helps me put stuff in perspective - of course mileage may var (and maybe it's just helping me delude myself into getting out a funk but it works!).

[1] Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

[2] See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income - Anna Rosling Rönnlund https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4L130DkdOw


Rosling's work is fantastic, and I too occasionally watch 'How Not to be Wrong About the World' to keep my spirits up, too.

But. The past 5+ years have not been kind to the general arc of progress, particularly in already-developed countries in the West, and the US most of all. There has been genuine, real backsliding across the board on a variety of measures. And it's important to acknowledge that, too.


> [2] See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income - Anna Rosling Rönnlund

Here's the link to view the photos by income:

https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street


The photos are CC BY.[1] Chronophoto, a game of guess the years of these photos, is currently on the front page.[2] So how about a similar game of guess the incomes?

Compared with historical photos, the narrower scope of dollar-street photos might be less fun? Or not - it's a richly textured image set. Deep linking the dollar-tree site could give richer follow-up context. Perhaps paired guesses of income and location, might quickly teach their relative salience?

[1] https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/about? [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34559867


Reminds me of this tweet by Derek Thompson (writer at The Atlantic):

In 2022, we:

- Reversed organ death in pigs

- Made the first embryo from stem cells

- Made a pan-influenza vaccine

- Saw the beginning of time

- Got best-ever results from cancer & obesity therapy trials

- Maybe cracked the case of multiple sclerosis

From: https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1600864770751860737 (https://archive.is/pi95L)


Without looking deeper at any of these, most of the similar stuff from past years has ultimately been humbug, if technically correct. For example, first headlines I found from ’net-positive fusion energy achieved’ were from 2013 or so.

Researchers want to slightly oversell their discoveries, and the media wants to misunderstand to oversell them even more. Humbug 9 times out of 10.


That one is painful, since I wouldn't even call it technically correct, and even an undergrad should have been able to notice the error :

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/09/breaking-news-fusion-re...

So a order of magnitude larger output power promised... except when you count total input power and reasonable heat engine efficiencies (if installing one had been planned), it's unlikely they would even get more power out than in !

But then, the very same month I was also made aware of SP(ARC), which is revolutionary because it can (in theory) afford to be so much smaller than ITER (which is ridiculously large and therefore expensive in a super linear way) :

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/smaller-more-efficie...


> ’net-positive fusion energy achieved’ were from 2013 or so.

Yep, and they were clear that this was not ignition.


And yet, we only get 15 minutes with our primary care doctors. No one doubts the progress of technology: it is the quality of human interaction that's plummeted.


I’ve often had this thought. It seems that people are forgetting they are interacting with other people, rather than machines. The irony isn’t lost on me, as an engineer.


Yes. It’s a shame that more people than ever can’t afford the medical insurance to appreciate these advances.


Yeah and we developed the most efficient graphene nanotube batteries that never degrade!!

Sorry, I'm not buying it anymore. More than likely, none of that is going to help me or anyone I know from struggling just a little more each year.


I hear what you're saying. Things are improving, but what share do I have in it?

Another angle is if I struggle and work hard, what rewards accrue to others, and what do I get in return? The ROI on effort seems to be dwindling cause fakes are crowding out the real hard workers. And the buyers (ie wealthy investors) cant seem to tell the difference between expertise and bald faced lies. (I blame social media and rise of influencers for this, a bunch of fancy graphics and a iphone and now you know the 1 real secret the life long scientists have been holding back to our fatloss/clear pores/million dollar a month business).. Then again it was the missteps of institutions that even gave influencers their chance (a little lack of integrity ruins it for all)


A mind shift (that might help) is to realize that if you have a 401K or IRA or pension - which if you are on HN you have at likely at least have some modicum amount likely - then you are an indirect beneficiary by these profit seeking moves.

From the distribution chart it seems most of the US stock market is owned via IRAs/401Ks/defined benefits and insurance versus individual accounts. [1]

Those evil corporate landlords that drive up rents? Well, likely they are acting on behalf of former hardworking teachers of Canada. Sure there is skimming involved but a bulk is going toward to teacher's retirement. [2]

Of course mileage may vary whether this helps how one feels.

[1] https://i.insider.com/5746013852bcd044008c527e?width=1200for...

[2] Why Canada’s Teachers Run an Investment Firm in Singapore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HXcT_xlLB0


That's also a good point. Boomers legislated themselves to a bunch of entitlements at my expense, whilst simultaneously cutting any sort of good for my (and subsequent) generations.


This makes 0 sense to me.


They are arguing that "the system" changing would be more helpful to them and their friends than "technological advancement".

As the meme goes, ¿Porque no lo dos?


TL;DR

Sure tech progress is cool, but it's hard to care when I feel more isolated from my community than ever, the world feels "angry", and in many important ways my life feels much worse off than just a few years ago.

The meme about "but living standards doubling every X years!" is little comfort when you can't feel any of those impacts - not to mention that the material is scarcely the only thing that matters for human happiness.


I think the challenge is that the doubling of life standards is happening for people at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (i.e. basic survival to a comfortable life).

Most of the HN audience is likely at self-actualization stage where its going to be hard for society to help double life standards when every one's such standard is decided in such a deeply personal way for each individual. [1] It's also going to be really hard to measure progress on this front at a societal level.

[1] The importance of Maslow's hierarchy of needs

https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/the-importance-of-ma...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0PKWTta7lU


It also very much feels like any advancements in tech for the future will also only be accessible to wealthy people... As living costs are skyrocketing daily at the whim of overpaid and callous executives everywhere worldwide.


To be clear I'm not suggesting that specific advancements aren't being made. It's more like things that matter are going away and the things we're getting do not affect most of us.

eg: something like 99.95% of the planet (all but 1-2 Million) have 0 or near 0 benefit from most of those findings (save for maybe the vaccine). But important things are going away -- treating people well, having happy lives, justice and being treated fairly. It's not a good tradeoff IMO.


> eg: something like 99.95% of the planet have 0 or near 0 benefit from most of those findings

This is not the right way to evaluate the benefits of science. This is the year those advancements start having an affect. The same thing was true about microchips the year they were invented, and about radioactivity, and even about the health benefits of washing hands and drinking clean water. All scientific discoveries are an investment in the future, and those four I just mentioned have at this point touched nearly every single person on the planet, just like the above list may well do in the future.

There isn’t strong evidence that the things you mentioned are actually going away, why do you believe it’s true? Women and minorities are getting more justice and fair treatment than they have in the past. People treating each other well is subjective, and it’s arguable how well they ever did in the past. But murder, violent crime, property crime and hate crime rates have all gone down for the past ~40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States Happiness is also subjective, but take a look at the Human Development Index and note how all 66 countries in the list on this page have a positive year-over-year growth rate. All of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index


> treating people well, having happy lives, justice and being treated fairly.

I think that depends a lot on where you live and what you look like relative to those around you. I wouldn’t think black citizens in the US in the 1950s would agree with what you’re saying. An Asian coworker of mine said he always thought it would be interesting to go back in time and live for a little bit in the 1940s, but every time he thinks that he has to remind himself what they did to Asians in the 1940s here in the US.[0]

I do think that tech (particularly social media) has amplified a lot of the bad social behavior that people have always had. I don’t think there’s more of it, just that it’s gotten louder. Someone who could only be an asshole to the people around them can now go online and be an asshole to millions of people around the world at once.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...


I think the generations that were raised coddled, spoiled, and helicoptered are getting into the workforce and administration, and it shows. Police can do much less nowadays because of red tape. The bad apples can do less damage too, but the rest are less empowered as well and the productivity suffers.


Frankly the boomers were already super coddled. They have never known sacrifice, and raised us milenials in an even more hedonistic fashion. No one has the stomach to make sacrifices anymore, of any scale. Even convenience wins out over necessity.


A bunch of claims that cannot be easily verified and may never pay off even if they are true and viable.

Why can't we do something about the genocide of young black men that is being committed by young black men, for example?


We cant fix that because our economic system is rigged against black people. They are kicked down and are forced to fight each other for scraps. The same rigging benefits you (probably) and thus you cannot think of a solution. This rigging starts very early. It's the looks they get in the supermarket. It's how educators think these kids are less smart and give them less chances. Their parents dont educate them in smartness-indicators like the use of certain words or the non-use of others. The parents dont educate them in these indicators because they feel these indicators are from "white people". They are proud of their own culture because they are rejected by the elites (mostly white/Asian). The elites in turn reject them for their "lower class"(read black) behavior. I bet you even do this. After that the easy way is to blame the black people for their upbringing/culture. That closes the loop and blames them for their own failure. But the cause and effects are the other way around.


Blacks had their families destroyed by slavery and now again by social programs that reward women for being single mothers.


genocide of young black men

Are you talking about a specific country in Africa? If so, what do you propose? Should we send US military to force a regime change? Because that worked so well in Afghanistan, right?


To be honest, the regime change in Afghanistan was kind of working, at least that's what it looked to me when I was there in 2010. Then the western world lost interest and withdrew


How long were we supposed to enforce the regime change there?


The right thing is let every country run in their way. Don't interfere. It is wise for U.S. army to withdraw from Afghanistan.

I resent the Taliban for depriving of the right of women to receive eductaion, but that doesn't mean I support meddling in other countries' internal affairs. Believe in Afghanistan will generate an enlightened regime in the future.


We've probably only spent 1/10 on it of what we sent to Ukraine last year since the beginning.


Right here in the USA.

Our crime statistics show the greatest threat to a young black male is another young black male. Look at the Chicago shooting stats every weekend.

Dig deep into gun deaths and you will see that is young men if color shooting andurdering each other in gang and criminal contexts that accounts for most of the deaths.

And yet the media can only rise to care about gun deaths when it is white children being murdered. That shows their real values.


> the greatest threat to a young black male is another young black male

And the greatest threat to a young white male is another young white male. Does that mean that there's a genocide of white men by white men?


Yes, but the murder rate of young white men does not approach that of black men.

More black men are murdered than white men as an absolute count, which is horrific considering that whites outnumber blacks by at least 4:1.

Is it more racist to not talk about black on black violence, or to address it directly? Refusing to acknowledge the issue so we can tailor policy to save black lives is white privilege exemplified.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in...


Black people are people.

Murder is bad.

If black people are murdered out of proportion to all other races, by a wide margin, that's something that needs to be investigated.

Down vote me racists.


I wouldn’t use the word “genocide” in this context, unless you think what happens to young black men in US is similar to what happened in Rwanda.


What do you call a murder rate of 81.7/100000 for black men aged 15-24?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...


To me, a murder rate of 94000/100000 is a genocide, and 81.7/100000 is not.


More black men are murdered in the US than white men. But whites outnumber blacks by at least 4:1.

Call it whatever you like, but acknowledge that this is horrific.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in...


Some young men face a tough choice - work at McDonalds for $8/hr, or work for a local gang selling drugs on the streets. Yes, this choice in US is forced by society upon overwhelmingly black or latino men. But it is still a choice, and not every black man born in a poor neighborhood chooses a violent life of a gang member.

I have zero sympathy for criminals who're killing each other. Have you tried comparing murder rates of innocent non-violent civilians across different races?


Just wanted to say I watched them both and the Anna one was really helpful. Thanks.


I’m always a little stunned when this (and many sibling comments) is almost always the first response to something like this. It’s probably generally true, and an appropriate response to the most dire decline narratives or things easily disproven by stats . . . But like also: really? None of this resonates with you on a personal level? If yes are you that distrustful of your own anecdata? If no: I hypothesize that you got significantly wealthier over the last decade and spent accordingly to choose/manage your surroundings, and/or live in a blessed location with a healthy friend/family group and a healthy relationship to social media. I think all of these are outliers to majority experience. It sometimes feels like there’s a Panglossian Gaslighting Society operating in threads like this.


>If yes are you that distrustful of your own anecdata?

Hackernews is approaching the topic in a very characteristic way but depression is an important phenomenon that manifests to the individual as, among other things, worsening negative appraisals of everything. So do the consequences of poor fiscal and monetary policy. Funny how we use the same word for both.


    None of this resonates with you on a personal level?
Honestly? Not really, no. I think the world has gotten a lot better over the past few decades. My gripes are that, mostly due to short sighted and avoidable decisions, things could have been even better. But if you asked me, "Okay quanticle, I can take you back in a time machine and strand you twenty-five years in the past, would you prefer that?" my answer would be an instant, "Are you kidding? Get outta here."

Just personally, when my family and I came over from India, roughly twenty-five years ago, we could only afford to call our relatives in the home country once every other month, for five to ten minutes at a time. And, on half of those phone calls, the line would be too noisy to actually hear or make out anything from the other end. Today, my mom (in the US) and my grandmother (in India) speak for anywhere between ten minutes and two hours, every day, in high resolution video. No, things haven't gotten worse. We might not have gotten flying cars, but we did get videophones, and that's pretty cool.


My experience has been that the more time people spend on social media and/or consuming the "news" (such as FOX/CNN), the more they have these feelings of impending doom.

That being said, some things are far better now and other things have gotten worse. Our social isolation and self-imposed echo chambers are the primary cause from what I can tell.


Social media and mainstream media is pretty much cancer for the mind. I've been unplugged from all the garbage since around 2015, which is around when people seemed to totally start losing their minds. I still get current event updates from friends as they are all still plugged into the hive mind and basically talk about the same things like clockwork.

I've noticed the doomsday type of rhetoric as well. I really just don't see how people can keep eating this stuff up and not get tired of it.


> None of this resonates with you on a personal level?

Not really, no.

Don't get me wrong, 5 years ago I was in the UK, I moved to Berlin towards the end of 2018. Visiting the UK again last December… it felt very broken.

But it was the same kind of broken that I saw in Portsmouth when I was a child. And Berlin still feels as good as it did on my first visit.

Landlords being greedy? Sure. That's one of the things Marx and (from what little I've read of him) Adam Smith agreed on.

People are loud? I'm remembering a neighbour in my mid-terrace place in Sheffield in 2009-10, the husband and wife yelled at each other every night loud enough I could hear the words. I'm remembering a biker housemate in Cambridge who openly discussed the motorcycles with illegal loud exhausts. I'm remembering the stories in my childhood about illegal raves being shut down.

Worker apathy, that's hard to gauge. Could therefore believe it if it came with evidence stronger than an anecdote.

Software development looks like it's much the same combination of fads, technical debt, and Peter Principles as it ever was. But that's anecdotes, the proof is in the pudding, and everything is more stable and less crashy than I remember — while I think that Apple's UI peaked a decade ago, that's mainly because I am deeply nostalgic for skeuomorphic UI.

Subscription models: well, if you don't like them, don't get them. We're getting Netflix for one month of the year because that's enough to watch what we want, and there's plenty of others with different stuff we can watch later.

I'm not going to get a Photoshop subscription, but I did buy Pixelmator, and if that hadn't existed I'd have used GIMP.

The police? BLM started in 2013, the word "woke" originated in 1938 in the lyrics to a song about racial injustice in the legal system.

I have become very cynical about the legal system as a whole, but for very different reasons: if you were fully enforce all the traffic laws the only people who would be allowed to drive would be people like me who don't, if you fully enforced the drug laws you'd bankrupt whichever country you were in, and so on. But none of this is new, as evidenced by Sir Patrick Stewart's stories about his father.

For rich grifters, I suggest Robert Maxwell. He's… mostly forgotten. Fraudsters often are, so the question should be: what's the fraud rate in your country?

Everything is poison? I grew up with acid rain (solved), a hole in the ozone layer (getting better), indoor public smoking (banned in the UK, doesn't seem to be here in Berlin), asbestos (banned), and leaded petrol (banned).

Do we still have problems? I assume so! But they don't appear to be worse, rather they appear to be milder.


> everything is more stable and less crashy than I remember

I can't begin to believe you're not trolling here. Seriously. "Everything" is more stable ?

Pick a random every-day operation ("rent an hotel", "book a flight", "pay your taxes", "order a pizza", etc...). We'll go to the first website that will come out of a google search, and try to follow the process from start to finish using a modern browser on a modern OS of a modern computer.

I bet we'll get at least 3 to 5 bugs (either in page loading, some server crashing, some page layout issue, some text display, some translation, some form field validation, some form submission, some confirmation email not being sent, etc...)

The most charitable view I can have is that software is "as bad as it ever was, but there is now new kind of bad software that lets you badly do things that were not possible in the past". But claiming an "improvement", especially in stability, seems like a stretch.

There was a distant time where those operations were done by calling a human being on the phone. Those were awkward conversations to have, and there were "bugs" in those too - but human interactions had had a few thousand years to iron out those bugs.

As a software engineer bringing my own set of (hopefully not too buggy and moderately useful) software into the world - I seriously miss those days.


> ("rent an hotel", "book a flight", "pay your taxes", "order a pizza", etc...).

I have literally never had any of those crash, which is what I was writing about.

> some page layout issue, some text display, some translation

Almost certainly on some of them, but that's not what I was talking about.

I have, 4.5 years ago, had an airline not understand how a + before the @ works in an email address. But it didn't crash.

And Ryanair's app and website sucks, but it didn't crash on me.

Booking hotels is reliable enough I've done a 1000 km cycle ride where I booked each hotel en route 2-3 hours before arriving because I didn't know which village or city I would reach before that point.

Taxes I can no longer do online because the UK won't let me do their bit online now I live abroad and I don't trust my understanding of German tax terminology for the other bit so I have an agent, but that's a legal issue not a website limit, and I can't remember ever having had a problem with HMRC online.

Likewise, the biggest problem I've ever had with buying a travel pass digitally was 5.5 years ago, because BVG didn't support iPad (not a typo, my phone was a Blackberry and I had an iPad).

I grew up with "System Error Type 11 (Restart)" on a weekly basis; nothing like that happens any more.


> I grew up with "System Error Type 11 (Restart)" on a weekly basis; nothing like that happens any more.

This probably explains why we don't understand each other.

I grew up with fairly crashy stuff too, don't get me wrong. I ordered stuff on a Minitel, for heck sake.

However, I suspect the fact we're old timers makes it even harder to sympathize with "normal people" confronted with unstable systems.

Because, a page not displaying properly on your phone, a form not liking your first name because it has a hyphen, a website suddenly switching to Spanish for half its content, a email that says "you'll soon receive " before not receiving anything, the message received in batch of 10 explaining that your subscription will now be "${sub}€", etc... All those things (that I literally encountered _this weekend_, on systems developped by big corporations and / or public service platforms): we hackers call them "annoyances" ; fancy people call them "bugs".

Real people call them "stuff that does not work".

And when your are forced, by law, to use stuff that does not work because the software got all the funding, and people are too expensive, then, some real people call it "barbary".

It's "death by a thousand cuts", for sure, in a world where so many die by actual bullets. So maybe it does not warrant a violent uprising.

But you'd be surprised how much I hear it contributing to the overall anger - being the rich "computer guy" trying to help the real people navigating this.


“ Everything is poison? I grew up with acid rain (solved), a hole in the ozone layer (getting better), indoor public smoking (banned in the UK, doesn't seem to be here in Berlin), asbestos (banned), and leaded petrol (banned).”

But now you have to worry about plastics in your food, leaching of chemicals from batteries that power new technology, depression and suicide, resulting from social media (especially amongst young children and teens), loss of privacy due to technological devices, dangerous side effects from new drugs that are pushed and marketed onto the public, dangerous chemicals and metals found in modern vaping devices, reduced quality of life due to income stagnation and exorbitant real estate prices, etc


Grew up vegetarian because my mum was worried about mad cow disease. The batteries were also toxic when I was a kid. So were more of the lightbulbs. Suicide rate is significantly lower in the UK today then when I was born.

Loss of privacy concerns me. Most people seem happy to over-share, presumably because the thing also allows more connections with more niche interests than most people can name.

Dangerous side effects of drugs? I remember seeing thalidomide victims in my local mall. We're a lot more cautious these days because of things like that.

Vaping is an odd thing to have a moral panic about, as the alternative for many people is to set fire to a tube of things known to produce carcinogenic smoke, and stick it in their mouth.

Stagnant quality of life is by definition not getting worse.

Exorbitant real estate prices are the only thing where I agree with you they're a genuine concern for the average Millennial and post-Millennial.


In US, suicide rates increased 36% between 2000-2018 and declined 5% between 2018-2020. Overall, a huge increase and we still have covid years to add to the mix.

https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html

“A "vape," or electronic cigarette, is a device that heats up a liquid to create a vapor you inhale.”

https://www.webmd.com/connect-to-care/vaping/what-is-vaping

What liquid? I know what tobacco is, but I don’t know what a “liquid” is. It could be anything and many of them contain dangerous metals, fragrances, and other mysterious chemicals. Hardly an improvement over cigarettes.

Stagnant wages over time, while they may have the same numeric value, result in far less purchasing power due to inflation.

Ridiculous real estate values are a concern for every generation.


Why did you describe what vaping is? This isn't a weird obscure practice, and the point was reduced harm relative to putting a burning cancer stick in your mouth, not a claim that that vaping is completely harmless.

> What liquid? I know what tobacco is, but I don’t know what a “liquid” is. It could be anything and many of them contain dangerous metals, fragrances, and other mysterious chemicals. Hardly an improvement over cigarettes.

Do you really know what tobacco is? Or do you take the mental shortcut that most people necessarily have to take with organic chemistry and mentally categorise "tobacco" as one single monolithic thing?

"""Of the more than 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 250 are known to be harmful, including hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, and ammonia.

Among the 250 known harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 69 can cause cancer.""" - https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/t...

Combining:

> In US, suicide rates increased 36% between 2000-2018 and declined 5% between 2018-2020

With:

> Stagnant wages over time, while they may have the same numeric value, result in far less purchasing power due to inflation.

Yields some combination of:

There was significant nominal growth in incomes in that group (USA) in those period (both 2000-2018 and -2020, only a brief dip in 2020 and more growth since then but that's beyond the scope of what I'm responding to here), it was only stagnant after compensating for inflation — and then mostly in the poorer half (which I'd say is really bad because I'm European and therefore so left-wing I think the Democrats are dangerously right-wing).

And:

The worldwide suicide rate didn't follow the USA's, and is down by about a third in that period: https://ourworldindata.org/suicide — This graph also doesn't support the CDC percentages you quoted, because it's saying USA +10% over the same period they're saying +36%. (I wonder what the difference is?)

And:

Worldwide income per capita, at purchasing power parity, almost doubled from 7.954 PPP dollars in 2000 to 17.038 PPP dollars in 2020.

And:

The CPI inflation index also account for housing costs.


There are some pretty clear indications that the derivative of civilization is strongly negative at the moment, particularly if you live in Europe.

Actually, the fact that people are supposed to pretend things are OK, while everyone over there is possibly a few steps away from being drafted into war, is another sign that things have headed in the wrong direction in exactly the manner OP is suggesting.


“Everyone” in Europe is definitely not a few steps from being drafted into war. This is ridiculous polemics.


Also, what a fun draft that would be. What Western Europe country could realistically support and train a large uptick in reluctant new recruits?

You need a backbone of experienced military professional and infrastructure to do that ( eg : France used to have a lot of military center to host / train people. Those have been abandoned in the late 90s )


> everyone over there is possibly a few steps away from being drafted into war

Why do you think so? Might be different in Eastern Europe, but as a Central European I think it’s quite unlikely that a direct conflict is going to happen.


There already is a direct conflict. Wake up and get your head out of the sand.


There was a huge negative spike around the invasion, but the bigger effect has been the rapid rise in fuel prices. Russia are now clearly losing and Russia is in less of a position to threaten.

Nobody in UK discourse is talking about conscription. Mind you, UK political discourse has gone increasingly off the rails with trying not to deal with corruption and incompetence of Tories.


Is Russia clearly loosing? I hope so. But I'm not so sure. They didn't win immediately like they thought they would. But long term they might have better chance than Ukraine to win a war of attrition. (If murdering 100000s people and conquering ruined cities can be called "winning".)

Read [1] recently and it paints an bleaker picture than some other analyses.

https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/whats-ahead-war-ukrai...


This might be of interest to you :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deK98IeTjfY

It's a video essay on ammunition stockpiles on Ukraine and Russia by the youtuber Perun. It doesn't paint a rosy picture per se, but it does directly refute at least a few of the points made by the author of the RM blog you linked.


Uh, no? This is definitely an outside perspective.


What are these clear indications (beside the potential draft point)?


People are getting less social, probably because of social media.

That's not something you can do away with seeing the past in a more rosy way. Because in the past people had to interact to get through life.


Social media might play a part but I'd argue it's not the biggest one. It's urban sprawl, car dependency and now remote work. People are being isolated in boxes out in the suburbs surrounded by no points of interest or areas to hang around.

The most important thing for socialization is to just have physical proximity to other people in shared spaces, be that a park, office, school, club, etc. If anything, social media is just enabling people to sit in their boxes longer while still getting some form of socialization.


When faced with a sinusoid, humans seem to extrapolate exponentials in both directions. Take the business cycle, where the good times appear to approach a "new paradigm!" just before a large correction, and the bad times seem like they'll never end.


Exactly this, and this is a general pattern.

This is reminiscent of my previous struggles with cyclothymia[1], for example. Furthermore, the perception of impending calamity was contributing to the stress and worsened the symptoms further. (I wonder if there is an analogy to be drawn here as well, but I suspect this part is much less generalizable.)

At the same time, it makes sense for people to have heightened awareness of "the bad times": each cycle represents added stress to the system, and with a heightened probability of calamity (eg. becoming insolvent / suffering a mental health emergency).

[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17788-cycloth...


The business cycle is not a sinusoid. It’s a fractal. It’s chaotic and oddly correlated. Also, sinusoids are exponentials. ;)


Oh! could you elaborate on this? To me even the name "business cycle" hints towards a cyclical/periodical movement. Sinusoids are not exponentials, sinusoids are periodical. They seem exponential for a short while though. The growthfactor also declines at some point. Could you elaborate on why you think its fractal?


It's a joke, sinusoids are sums of exponentials when you're talking about complex functions [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_formula#Relationship...


There is a danger to assigning this term blindly, as it is almost a form of 'rosy ignorance'. We are certainly in an extreme period of societal volatility, and it is absolutely appropriate to examine the causes.


The world has been very dependent on tech for a long time now. We've had many companies that dominated tech and now they have a stranglehold on pretty much every aspect of life and business.

I think a major component to societal decline can be linked to the effects of social media and ill willed corporate and consumerist influence on everything around us, coupled with the on-going social and economic conflicts (war etc) being driven by egotistical personalities that have also been an enduring problem worldwide.

As the Internet grows, greed and ego are consuming resources that were previously share across many prior... There is only the illusion of success played out by people (many of them are trust-fund-driven nepo-babies), as web sites. social and dating apps. and many other prominent online schemes are now simply lottery games that rarely pay out even after years of careful participation. Our ability to climb economically is under great threat by greed of far more wealthy people than us.

The future looks grim as long as we keep letting the wrong greedy personalities win... We really need to stop giving that a pass.


I agree with the OP over the last 5 years. I think he/she's right and it is not an effect of being depressed or what.

Over the last 5 years, wealth distribution, general wellness, world order, SW reliability have all declined. There are data points for some of those items but no all of course.

For SW reliability, I include: buggy websites, product requiring cloud access making them intrinsically less reliable and less trustworthy, the services needlessly requiring authentication making credential theft wide spread and spam/scam campaigns more likely to succeed, companies pulling the rug under paying customers feet, dark patterns...


This reminds of a classic Late Night with Conan O'Brien episode when Louis C.K. was the guest. He is very right. We adopt to the new normal so fast. We need more people feeling gratitude. It is tough since modernity is focused on consumption.


Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFB7q89_3U


The few minutes before the clip starts were great too, but sadly I've never been able to find them since I first watched them.


Just because a thing has a name doesn't mean it's true. In many ways the past was better than the present. For example in 1965 a single average wage earner could afford a 15 year mortgage for a nice house in a nice neighborhood.

And don't even get me started on architecture. There's no rosy colored glasses there. Contemporary five over ones are abominable.


For a very large chunk of the population, life is much better today than it was in 1965. Ask the average person in a 3rd world country which has now lifted out of poverty since then or someone who didn't live the straight white ideal 1965 scenario.

And even for people who did live the best possible situation of 1965, we are no longer poisoning everyone with lead and asbestos in the way we were back then. As well as many things we consider absolute requirements like air conditioning being considered an optional luxury back then.


> Ask the average person in a 3rd world country which has now lifted out of poverty

Who did the lifting?


If by "everyone" you mean white males.


Do you have some data that says this is off base besides some general Wikipedia concept? The OP reported direct observations.


>Seems like everything is subscription model and you have to pay N times to access something thats only worth 1-3x . Eg: I Netflix for a couple hours a month. At the price for 4k access I can almost go out to a theatre. Video games are all trending to subscription models. I just learned the other day that the PS4 games I got with my subcription to PSN all are locked because I stopped subscribing (nearly 50 games) . So I paid them like $125 for access to these games for 24 months, and now I cannot play any of them? At least I still own NES/SNES/N64 Game cartridges that will never lock me out

This one is wrong. If this were the SNES era to play 50 games the best you could do is rent for $3 to play for a couple nights. That's $150 (more like $300 in today's dollars) which is more than they paid for unlimited access to the games. To match that they'd have not much choice other than retail for $50 a pop, $2,500 for all of them, or $5,000 in today's dollars. Used for maybe half that with effort.

HBO was more expensive when it launched in the 80s and that doesn't count the base cable subscription fee. I pay much less for the 2-3 streaming services that I use than my parents paid for cable when I was growing up. That alone is undeniably better. Plus you can do things like buy any Disney DVD used for $2 pop plus a flat $3 shipping on ebay. No way that happens in the VCR days. Not to mention that used DVD players are practically free vs a couple hundred for a vcr player.


Interesting points. I do remember FF3 selling for nearly $100 Canadian.

I guess I feel shafted paying $5 a month to get b list games for only so long as I keep paying $5 a month in perpetuity. The eventual sum of this is approaching infinity or something like 1500-2000 for my remaining life expectancy.

Versus on steam you can sometimes buy great games for $10-20, albeit your betting steam will exist in the future to distribute the game to you.


Direct observations? It seemed like anecdotes to me! Crime can certainly increase in some areas but I think overall we are down from decades ago


There are obvious examples in history where it really is getting worse and then things get better. How do you know that Rosy Retrospection applies in this case?


Pick an actual measure and look at real data vs vague feelings. Or like they pointed out, at least compare feelings recorded at the time vs current feelings vs memories of past feelings.


And how does that help the feeling the poster has now? Of course in hindsight it will be known if things are as bad as the poster thinks. Why state the obvious that in the future it will be known if this present time was as bad as some thought? And the question I asked remains unanswered: How does noud know that rosy retrospection is what the poster is experiencing?


I actually read a religious based book on anxiety once that said (secularized) "look at all the hard situations you've gone through and how you felt about them vs how you actually fared. Perhaps you could temper your current mood about the present in light of the difference between how things felt vs how they turned out."

It's not absolutely most rational point, survivor bias and all, but it does have a point about not being excessively negative/anxious.


Also known as "G.O.D." ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_old_days


Everyone claims stuff like this. Or they say that "kids these days" and quote archimedes or plato or something...

But just seriously watch leave it to beaver and then watch any modern tv show and compare the "disrespect". Even if people have been saying "kids these days" for 1000 years, that does NOT mean things haven't been changing for 1000 years for the worse.


Counter-example: A significant subset of people on HN agree that Google search is deteriorating.


Great idea - I can tell you mine personally is 25% better over the last year because of my migraine medicine. I have one extra day a week to be among the living. Sure I have some days where I’m a little bit off but I still remember just how bad it was. Also I can drink and experience a hangover like a normal person. Hangovers are easy no big deal just kind of off days.


> It's called rosy retrospection

Explain this then: https://www.thelocal.se/20230127/ten-terrifying-stats-about-...

Numbers talk. At least here in sweden rich are richer and everyone else is poorer.


Sure, there are dozens of metrics by which the world is getting objectively worse in ways that have very real human and ecological costs. But OP didn't cite any of those. They did, however, complain that the minimum wage worker who made their burger didn't express remorse for forgetting the ketchup.


Not at all. Many problems pointed out are real in some areas, but the never ending techo-optimism of HN cannot handle that.


Pick up the book "Knockemstiff" for a good perspective on how bad things used to be. Things are better then they have ever been, but we all have a responsibility to continue improvement instead of tearing it down to rebuild it (worse).


* Also people like to argue the validity of other's view for the sake of projecting truth-knowing with cursory wisdome like if there was one truth. Spiced with life path couching on own initiative as an extra.


Stop doom scrolling. Find the things that actually matter to you and take steps you can to improve them. Have the wisdom to accept what you can't change.


probably combined with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic


[flagged]


You need to read up on the definition of gaslighting. That is a nasty accusation and inaccurate.


Telling people that the reality is not what they see and they imagine things, is - so to speak - the definition of gaslighting. Gaslighting might be hyperbole and surely I made it a bit more pointed, however I see how his post can be seen as gaslighting.


Gaslighting by definition requires ill intent or manipulation and you are conveniently ignoring that.

In your version pretty much any internet disagreement is gaslighting.


> Gaslighting by definition requires ill intent or manipulation and you are conveniently ignoring that.

You cannot determine or know ill intent, so it's not really helpful as a property.

> In your version pretty much any internet disagreement is gaslighting.

Disagreement alone does not suffice. You need to tell the other person that what they see is not real and/or that they imagine things. But as I said, it's a bit exaggerated, however it's not so farfetched either.


>You cannot determine or know ill intent, so it's not really helpful as a property.

You're clearly still trying to change the definition and are still ignoring that gaslighting itself requires negative manipulation. From wikipedia, these actions are easy to identify:

>Obfuscation: deliberately muddying or overcomplicating an issue.

>Withholding: pretending not to understand the victim.

>Countering: vehemently calling into question a victim's memory despite the victim having remembered things correctly.

>Blocking and diverting: diverting a conversation from the subject matter to questioning the victim's thoughts and controlling the conversation.

>Trivializing: making the victim believe his or her thoughts or needs are unimportant.

>Forgetting and denial: pretending to forget things that have really occurred. The abuser may deny or delay things like promises that are important to the victim. Although anyone can deny or delay, the gaslighter does it regularly in the absence of real external limitations. The gaslighter may make up or create artificial barriers to allow themselves to deny or delay that which is important to the victim.

Telling someone who asked for feedback, in earnest that you think their perceptions are wrong is not in any way gaslighting.


Damn. I wish there was general unflag. GP wasn't far off the mark and there was a conversation worth having :(


There's no controlling spouse using these tactics to make their partner doubt their own sanity. Okay.

Gaslighting probably isn't an exact answer, but it's dismissive enough to be close. Hand-waving it as "rosy retrospection". Telling OP to measure things they actually do seem to be measuring.

There could be a name for this exact sort of "You're not really paying attention to everything you're obviously really paying attention to" dismissiveness, and if the churn of language lands on "gaslighting, definition c", I don't have much argument against it.


[flagged]


No it's completely right, it's called "outsider perspective". It's hard for OP to realize they are not making an accurate observation. If you want to really work out if things are in decline, instead of finding some vague feeling of what it used to be like vs now, actually measure something?

Loud motorbikes weren't invented last year, and crime isn't higher today than it was 20 years ago.


I think it's harder for other people to accept that certain things can and will decline, or that history has ebbs and flows for any dimension you care to measure, and is not just linearly getting better.

"You're just imagining it bro" is a rationalisation that lets people cling on to the Eternal Progress narrative.


What in their comment was manipulation?


They responded to "Here's some things I've noticed" with "You're old and you're imagining it".


That's not manipulation and they didn't say either of those things. It does not appear that you are responding in good faith.


[flagged]


It's quite possible not to be able to answer "did x happen" but to still be interested in the question "will x happen".


People don't usually get rate limited for opinions. It's usually for breaking the rules, personal attacks, intentionally trolling and that kind of stuff. If you're not doing any of that or are willing to change you could email him and work it out.


I don't know your age but I'm going to guess 30+. This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people you knew pined for some earlier time (say the 1970s or 1950s). And you probably thought they were being silly. Well, now you've become one of those people.

The fact is the world always seems better when you are younger, not because the world necessarily better, but because it's just more pleasant to be young. The future is full of promise, you haven't made any huge mistakes yet, and your body hasn't started the inexorable march towards decay and death.

Most of your points are subjective, reflecting people's mentality or thoughts. I can't really argue against this because it's your own perception. But I would say you should be a bit skeptical that people's behavior can really change that much over such a short period. It's much more likely that you interpret it differently than you use to. Scams have been prevalent throughout human history. Perhaps you are just paying more attention to the news lately?

Some of the things you bring up are valid objective things. For example it's true that many more things are subscription based now. But on the other hands, those are things that weren't even available before. You can still buy and play all the same non-subscription games that used to exist (I still play HOMM3 for example). If you prefer cable TV that still exists as well. So I find it misleading to argue that because we have more choice that it's somehow worse when the previous options haven't been taken away.


I'm 21 and I think everything's going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?


Those are a bunch of statements that angry people with agree with, but you haven't presented any evidence for your claims, and I think they're mostly backward.

We're in the longest period of peace in thousands of years. Check out this cool graphic that puts in perspective: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/

People are mad about politics, but I don't think it's any worse than the cold-war, kennedy assassination, mcarthyism, being drafted to Nam. Reagan was a movie-star who became president.

Innovation is the fastest its ever been.

It's hard to say how corruption is changing, and whether accountability is greater or lesser now.

People are upset about the environment now, but consider stuff from the last 100 years (leaded gasoline, the banned-pesticides, radioactive toothpaste, etc etc).


Not to sound adversarial, but you’re not presenting any evidence either. Where do you get that innovation is the fastest it’s ever been?


You’re not wrong, but THAT is the item you want evidence on? Especially here. This seems disingenuous.


Innovation in narrow fields is not representive of the greater whole. Sure, generative AI is booming, but mobile phones and computers haven’t evolved practically at all in the last 5 years. The general rate of innovation can be somewhat gauged in the increase of living standards, and to my understanding there has been little the past 10 years (in the West in general).


>but mobile phones and computers haven’t evolved practically at all in the last 5 years.

Lets do a fact check on this, that time span is the iphone X to iphone 14 Pro. Taking one metric, the geekbench score has gone from 2156 to 5383. So in that time phones have become more twice as fast. It released with ios 11, I wont even bother to list all the major improvements between 11 and 16 because it's a huge list.

There is so much more to expand on this but when even the most obvious stats show dramatic improvement, there isn't any point detailing the differences in camera, connectivity, features, etc.


Some people will argue that's simply incrementation and not innovation, even though there's serious innovation needed to jump from 10nm to 5nm architecture.

Even at that, if you want to simply do 'novel innovation' in things that are truly new or change your process...you can get phones with folding screens these days, that's pretty cool and wild to think about.


exactly. what more can do you with it? You can't watch more shows or play twice as many games of chess or something.

Yes the jump from 240p to 4K is enjoyable, but Marvel movies in 4k are still vacuous compared to something with meaning in 720p.


You can take better photos, have a longer lasting battery, send emergency sms via satellite. Scan objects and rooms with LiDAR, generate ai images locally with the massively improved SoC. Just to mention a few things off the top of my head. Just because _you_ aren’t doing anything interesting with the new tech, doesn’t mean innovation hasn’t been happening.


I agree innovation is happening, what I mean is that meaningful life change isn't happening. Yes I'll be thankful to be rescued if the emergency SMS works.


Phone benchmarks getting bigger arbitrary numbers as an example of innovation has to be a joke right? Fundamentals like the existence of mobile internet is HUGE. My phone giving more or less the same access to video, messaging, and webpages as it did in 2013 is stagnation.

What do you see as a genuine new feature?


In the past you could have centuries without any changes that weren’t social/political.

The fact we can even see quantifiable change in our lifetimes is completely new and limited to the last 200 or so years.

And nowadays we can see significant change from decade to decade.

It’s like looking in a mirror. You see it everyday so of course it doesn’t seem like anything’s changing. You need to look at the bigger context and look at the forest instead of trees. Try Hans Roslings 200 years in 2 minutes talk.


> phones and computers

I sometimes end the day with 50% or more left on my phone battery. That didn't happen before my last upgrade.

10GbE is finally starting to filter down to consumer-level things.

Cloud stuff is starting to have Arm systems as a standard offering.

I can run an SSD as my only disk, rather than as an expensive small cache in front of a platter drive.

Risc-5 seems to be really starting to become a thing, even if it's hasn't fully just yet.

Of course everything's a good bit faster, but that's kind of a given.


These are all neat things, but I think i'm looking at it on another layer than these kinds of technological things.

I had always thought it was George Carlin, but maybe this was actually penned by a pastor in the 90s?

"The paradox of our time"

(first paragraph) " We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgement; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry quickly; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom."

[1]: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-paradox-of-our-time/


Love George Carlin, and love that quote.

- Taller buildings, shorter tempers: Yes, unclear (I think the average person today gets in fewer physical fights)

- Wider freeways, narrower viewpoints: Yes, unclear (I think in many ways we were even more narrow-minded 20 years ago. Do you remember the "Nuke Iraq" mentality?)

- We buy more but enjoy it less: Unclear, unclear

- we have bigger houses and smaller families: Yes, Yes

- more conveniences, yet less time: Yes, Unclear

gosh there's a lot of these.


You're also missing the point that "innovation" in software does _not_ translate to "improvement" for a large part of the population.

You can use an app on your pocket-supercomputer to get a less-than-minimum-wage "independant contractor"/slave to bring you junk food at 10:00pm ? Sure, "Innovation". Is it "progress" ? Does it improve your life ?


There's way less trust in our society than they have been in many years. This is something that's been studied with evidence to back it up. You can see this in the week it took to elect a speaker of the house, something that hasn't happened (at that scale) since the 19th century.

Globally, nations that become more economically developed shift towards individualism and selfishness.


This trust thing is true, but it doesn’t mean that institutions are lest trustworthy. It seems more that we have the tools (institutional, cultural, technological) to actually understand many systems better and see how untrustworthy they are. Basically, our vision is better, the situation isn’t worse.

Individualism is something I do half agree with. I’m not sure it’s a time-based thing tho, and I’m agnostic to whether it is good or bad. Collectivism in the past could be incredibly stifling and coercive. Hyper individualism can be alienating.

There is some middle ground and I actually believe we are in the process of moving towards it. Because if you talk to anyone, they KNOW there is a problem with how individualistic consumerism causes us problems, and they KNOW alienation is a problem. We are learning to balance our new-ish freedoms, prosperity, and individual flourishing with our deep need for community and solidarity. It will take time, but we will figure it out.


This is actually what you’d expect from practically any system where wealth and power centralize as a function of time. The pressure will grow until it eventually might pop.


Could you elaborate on the 'longest period of peace'? I've read that before but where is the peace? How many wars are going on right now? I live in Europe, your references sound like you're from the states. There is a war in EU right now. USA has troops in many countries, news of them bombing shit weekly. Other parts of the world are not much better (wars in Africa, South America, different parts of Asia, genocides happening right now).

So what is this peace? Does it just mean we don't have world superpowers going at each other with full force?


Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories), and getting more in person interaction.

You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics or stories of violence hundreds of miles a way. Disconnect and recharge. Reconnect with people around you and enjoy the world as it exists, not for some representation of all the terrible things on news media.


>Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories),

300% this.

I heard on several occasions long ago how newspapers aren't worth reading and news programs aren't worth watching. At the time I didn't understand why and thought it was bad advice, young and naive greenhorn that I was: The news is there to inform us! Being informed is a good thing!

Now that I'm approaching my mid 30s and have some wisdom under my belt (still need to accrue more!), I can properly understand and appreciate the value behind that sagely advice to ignore the news.

The news, and more aptly the media at large including social media, isn't about informing us. It's about angering us, about baiting us into feelings of sensationalism. The vast majority of the bullshit we see on the news is negative because negative stories are very effective at tugging at our heart strings. The vast majority of the content on social media is far fetched from reality because reality is fairly mundane.

It's a patent waste of time to be concerned about things that don't concern you or that you can do nothing about (eg: things happening on the other side of the continent or the fucking planet). Turn off all that bullshit, time is finite and there are much better things that time could be spent on.


Big +1 , I've been off the news for about 5 years now (minus a stint for a few months around March 2020).

I always recommend people read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Niel Postman. Sums up the news cycle perfectly (and frankly the social media cycle too, even though the book is from the 80s).

> and getting more in person interaction.

I think this is key though. From my experience:

If you just switch off the news and put that time into more productive personal pursuits - like I did - you don't actually lose the news/social media mindset. The next time you see someone pull out Instagram during lunch or parrot political babble at dinner they could only have heard on the news, your brain immediately returns to the sensationalist, triggering and combative frame that you've been trying hard to avoid.

You need to create spaces _with other people_ where you're all disengaged from the cycle.

It's getting harder. Particularly if you consider TikTok now part of the cycle.


What is "the news"?

I'm also in my 3rd decade, and wisdom tells me there is much to gain from good news sources: NPR (there are others) teaches me something every day: People outside my socio-economic bubble their triumphs, their struggles.

Do you ever think how the divisions in this country are not because of divisive news, but the lack of learning about and empathizing with people different than us?


>Do you ever think how the divisions in this country are not because of divisive news, but the lack of learning about and empathizing with people different than us?

No, the divisive problems we face today stem in vast majority from the media publishing divisive narratives to keep us sensationalized and distracted from greater things.

The world appears divisive because the media wants us to believe the world is divisive.


>No, the divisive problems we face today stem in vast majority from the media publishing divisive narratives to keep us sensationalized and distracted from greater things.

>The world appears divisive because the media wants us to believe the world is divisive

The Taibbi argument is this coincides when news media switched from being a for-all source of information (where it was biased but still for all audiences) to a bifurcated model where stories that infuriates one side or another of the political aisle were focused on. Starting with Fox News which was wildly successful, the same thing becomes replicated with MSNBC, CNN, and such. The numbers show it: 90+ percent watchers of the former are Republican, similar or higher are Democrats with the latter two. Now with online ad sales and clickbait, the situation continues. Echo chambers form on social media, themselves cycling in to one or another of the news medias they orbit around.

The point is not to talk about politics, but the idea that the division has a rationally profit-driven motive. And yes it's horrific.


I'm in my 30s and couldn't agree more with ya. Sober from social media since 2015 and couldn't be happier. I didn't really understand how effective the hive mind (social media) was until I was completely out of it. Now I'll get the same "have you heard about this?!" from different people within hours of one another. It's disturbing at times how there seems to be an invisible force cast over the majority of the population, with the ability to cause outrage or panic at a moments notice.


You need something to read on the train, or at the bar. It's hard to go through a Kindle book on probability on your phone when you're just hanging out someplace, it's easier to scroll mindlessly through comments. This is what I'm demonstrating right now at a bar at 11. It doesn't obviate social interactions, but sometimes there's downtime.


This is braille to me as I've put some complex puzzle pieces together regarding automated equity trading heavily dependent on statistical data in the middle of some chaotic places, including a bar/restaurant. I'm not special; just determined, very anti social media, and also have the ability to tune stuff out. On the train thing, fortunately I'm blessed enough to not have to ride a train or some other horrible form of transportation to and from my job, or I'd probably want to kill myself.

On the other end of the spectrum, a wonderful family member of mine is one of the most productive people I've ever known and makes a lot of money for it, but they will scroll through social media anytime they aren't walking like it's their full-time job. This person is absolutely addicted though, so take that for what it is.


Aaron Swartz learned this when he was very young: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews


I used to watch the local news in the morning and then get on reddit for more news and you end up feeling like everything is falling apart. Quit watching the news and left reddit entirely. Now I'm focusing on going to in person events and meeting up with friends. Your whole life turns around and all the doom just vanishes. Turns out you don't actually need to know about the latest scandal in the UK. Sure, you should be somewhat in tune with your local politics, but it's hard to get the bits that matter without the useless crap that comes with it.


>You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics

Unless of course part of the majority of the world's population who actually lives in it. I had more than a few friends who were doing their software engineering jobs from a bunker last summer. Missiles in Kaliningrad are about 10 minutes travel time out from my parents home.

Whenever I see these kind of "the news isn't real" takes I'm like 99% sure this is coming from some suburb in Colorado. Believe me the news is real, it's just not at your door yet. But when even Americans are increasingly starting to feel the craziness settle in you know it isn't going to well.


I have a problem with reading too much news, you're right. However, switching it off doesn't lessen the impact on daily life. Fuel doesn't become cheaper because I stopped reading the BBC News reports about the Russo-Ukrainian war. I don't pay less tax because I chose not to read about the government increasing VAT.


How much of that resentment towards fuel prices stems from being told to be resentful about fuel prices?

When we're able to make our own judgments about the goings on in our life instead of being programmed how to feel by the media, life stops feeling like it's all hell.


This is a big one. In a less dramatic way, it's easier to enjoy video games when you don't read the reddit threads whinging about them. It's easy to feel like a game is unplayable garbage when you read a list of every single complaint people have, while playing and experiencing it yourself, you just don't notice this stuff and get to simply enjoy the content.


It does, actually. It’s the difference between struggling and being preoccupied with struggle. Anxiety doesn’t make fuel cheaper, end war, or racism; anxiety is not a virtue.


I want to call out that at least in the US, politicians actually appear way less corrupt than they used to be. Any reading of specific political histories, e.g Robert Caro, you can quickly get a feel for just how insanely corrupt politicians have been throughout history. If you compare them to today, it’s actually some relief. They are still corrupt today but really it’s child’s play compared to most of US history and pretty much all of world history.

I think a big problem is that people don’t read or watch real history, they are only familiar with abstract, high-level, or hyper-biased history. In basically every aspect imaginable, excepting maybe some things resembling spirituality (which do matter but are much trickier to pin down and understand) the world is so so much better than it has ever been, petty much everywhere


If anything, the problem with modern-day politics is that politicians are too committed to their ideological beliefs and are not corrupt enough to be bribed into cooperation.


> Innovation is coming to a standstill

Machine learning is getting significantly more powerful by the month, nuclear fusion technology has been advancing at a much faster pace recently (not even counting the NIF's breakthrough), though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive, the cost and efficiency of green technology just keeps improving, the cost and efficiency of going into space has improved dramatically, pills which can cure obesity, cancer wins, longer lifespans than ever before, I could go on.

I imagine one of the reasons you think innovation is stagnating is because the industry which has innovated at an incredible rate for the past 50 years, where you spend most of your life and time, is finally maturing. This was always going to happen. It was just a matter of time.


> though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive

Can someone explain in layman’s terms what the impressive parts are? The mania surrounding NFTs left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d like to keep an open mind about the technology.


Likewise. Here's the most convincing video I've seen trying to explain that, but even this explanation doesn't feel great: https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY

It's from the Computerphile channel, so I trust it more than random YouTube.


Even the stuff that has had ages to mature still seems to be rocketing forward. The M1 Macbook upended the whole market, one day we suddenly had a thin laptop with no fan that outperformed chunky brick laptops and did it with outstanding battery life. The rest of the market is catching up now but I don't think we should ignore how remarkably fast this all changed.


Others already said this is wrong on basically every point, but I haven't seen this one commented yet:

> Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?

It's the smallest, easiest, most concrete thing. Dictionary, en masse, "as a whole". Sure, hyperbole, so let's say... how about a bit more than half, 51%? But you're talking about suicide (presumably), we all know that isn't 50% of the population, but I don't know the figure. "En masse" really, even as a hyperbole, sounds to me like it ought to be at least a few percent.

Wikipedia -> search 'suicide rate' -> redirects to article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

The worst country in the world has a suicide rate below 0.1%. Kids I couldn't quickly find a global rate for but in the USA (https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html) it's at 0.002%.

"En masse" is not even close to reality.

Every individual instance is horrendous for those involved, that's probably why you hear about it and why it seems so bad, but keep things in perspective when considering what the world as a whole is like.


That phrase doesn't necessarily mean suicide. It generally means "giving up" - for example, burying themselves in things like video games or social media instead of school or friends.


This is worth reading: https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-...


I felt like that when I was 21 as well! I had very strong political beliefs as a reaction to these, with an angry desire for change. That's entirely common at that age.

The nihilism seems more pronounced in the 20somethings of today, but when I was that age music also reflected that same nihilism, so who knows if it's worse now experientially.


You’re wrong on pretty much every measure here.


Please keep the low quality comments to Reddit. Thanks.


I think you should consider backing those assertions up a little bit more.

> Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?

1 is definitely not true given patronage doesn't exist like the early 1900s. 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Innovation doesn't seem to be coming to a standstill, we are seeing rapid advancements in ML just this year, not to mention in energy (fusion research, battery research, wind+solar deployments) and biotech (MRNA). Housing is more expensive, yes, but the easy solution remains just having a longer commute like people in the 2000's dealt with. More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984, so there's no real decline in family formation either.

I don't think kids are checking out of life either. I really can't see any statement here that's particularly justified.


> 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs.

Alright, fair, conflicts like the one in Ukraine aren't anything new, with what's going on in Palestine, Iran, Egypt, Rwanda, probably countless others I can't name. But EVEN IF you were referring to how 'mundane' and indicative of stability such conflicts are, I'd refer you the Doomsday Clock which was recently set to 90 seconds to midnight. I don't really know much about the geopolitical state of the world, but I'd trust a group of scientists who have direct interest in the matter to make those sorts of calls for me.

> I don't think kids are checking out of life either

Kids were checking out of life when I was in high school ~5 years ago. Hell even I was. So if you've got any updates on that situation please feel free to educate us.

> More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984

Can you supply the percentages please? Because otherwise this is pretty meaningless


ah yes, the 10k€/m2 studio is probably my imagination.


I recently learned here on HN that you're probably just looking in the wrong place for a studio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34528025#34528779


For sure you could buy a land for 3 month of salary in the campaign. Where nobody can employ you.


> The fact is the world always seems better when you are younger, not because the world necessarily better, but because it's just more pleasant to be young.

I would also mention that when you're young, you're readily learning and accepting new ideas, and that capability/willingness shrinks with age (at least on average).

As a result, the world seems increasingly a foreign place for you as you age - you understand less - partially on the cognitive level, partially on the value judgment level. It's the world of your youth which seems like your home, where your values align with the trend, where you understand what's happening.


I'm 22 and I'm worried about high interest rates and how the cost of food has doubled. Getting a house is out of the question right now because I want a stable job rather than starting a business. Mind you I have more prospects than most; I'm at a top XX school's CS program.

In high school I worked at a car wash and I met people who'd worked there for twenty odd years. Well not 'there' as they usually bounced from place to place, but at other car washes, fast food, what have you. These people have no clue about starting businesses, arbitrage trading, SaaS whatever.

So if I'm thinking to myself that the future is kind of shaky, I might have to wait for a new house, then hundreds of people are thinking the future is kind of shaky, I might have to skip dinner for a couple days.


I think you are stunting your growth and forgetting to live life. The world works on a Benjamin Button sort of deal where the best you will ever be physically is when you are the most financially destitute and vice versa. Thus your risk adverseness is also reversed where the time to be risky with wealth and job and life in general is your youth and the least when your in retirement age.

The best thing you should worry about right now is figuring out a budget that allows for constant savings into bellwether stocks or savings bonds THAT YOU DON'T DESTROY ON A WHIM to tap the power of COMPOUND INTEREST. Heed Warren Buffett's advice and get into the habit of saving money early along with the discipline of not touching it for any reason until you have sufficient resources to readjust the performance of whatever it was invested into.

If you don't have money working for you by collecting interest or grown by investment whether by wall street or a main street business, it will not keep up with inflation - that was learned by many in the 1980's when deregulation began eroding the financial industry.

But the real point is that you should be young and take risks now as when you are older, you won't have the time or possibly the freedom to do it without other factors being in play (job,family,responsibilities for young and old, etc..)


> But the real point is that you should be young and take risks now as when you are older, you won't have the time or possibly the freedom to do it without other factors being in play (job,family,responsibilities for young and old, etc..)

I hear this all the time but I question how universal this strategy is. There's this statistic about the average age of the entrepreneur (42) and how successful businesses are started by the older side of that curve. Personally, I know I can't start a business anytime in my 'youth' because I'm still learning to manage my ADHD and lifestyle, let alone actual real world shit.

My plan is to start stacking as many practical skills as early as I can so when the time comes, I can compete with industry and put my weight behind something that's not just lucky. Until I have the self confidence required to do that sort of thing, the idea of business responsibilities just makes me nervous.


> This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people you knew pined for some earlier time (say the 1970s or 1950s).

Not really. What I picked up from them is the 90s were some sort of high period.


I would say that was due to mostly shock and the brainwashing our parents gotten which delayed the wokeness as the hippies were quietly finding out about Cocaine and becoming Capitalists. Disco never died, it was just the precursor to EDM. Attitudes about people didn't change, they were just relabeled from Geek to Nerd and back to Geek once they became millionaires and "cool". Politics are still the same however - if not worse due to the herd mechanisms and failed idealism.

I'm one year shy of my big 50 now and have been online most all of my life in one form or another so I feel I'm pretty hip to both sides of the culture/counterculture that connectedness brought forward. I've learned and confirmed that usually when it comes to personal/family wealth that it's better to have a republican in office (as long as you have financial understanding on what you can control in your life) but that comes at the expense of perhaps personal safety or religious separation as usually what happens is that democrats will not only add more social programs but will also put more people in prisons due to the concept of being "tough" on crime.

It's too soon to say whether or not social/mental health programs will change the trend but one could say that the biggest changes come from social adoption towards better change. I hold up the 1950's where laws were passed to both codify and tear down major social issues and whet peoples attitudes for changing the world, after many of them went farther than any generation previous to them ever traveled - remember that most people rarely traveled more than 100 miles from the place they were born for any great length of time over the 175 years prior to this period.

You hopefully just saw some with BLM, Safe Places, Gender/Sexual Equality and also some retractions like Abortion Legalization (remember, the SCOTUS is just an equalizer - not a law maker which there was never formal legalization - just the prevention of non-legalization being enacted).

Billy Joel has a song called "We Didn't Start The Fire" for which is his least favorite song that lists off the highs and lows of the period. The only problem is that it stops at roughly 1990. It would take a whole other song to quantify what has happened since for which one could say that we still may have highs and lows but overall it's still getting better than before our great grandparents had to exist within.


> People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there's someone with loud as exhaust on "sportish" car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained.

> Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I've noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world. Folks stealing shit. People driving absurdly dangerously in cars that are not designed to travel like that. (tailgating, lane switch, accelerating at the fastest I've ever seen a beat up Sentra do...) . I never see cops hit lights and sirens at them.

Both of these resonate with me. I perceive it as a general decline in the willingness to enforce any sort of standards of behavior by any means (social shaming or formal enforcement by law). Antisocial behavior like drag racing, speeding through neighborhoods, arguing and even fighting on airplanes, being a grown-ass adult in pajamas out in public, etc. You're likelier to get resistance for trying to enforce any sort of basic decency than to flout old (but not that old...) standards.


>being a grown-ass adult in pajamas out in public

I'm with you about all the other things but people wearing whatever clothes they want to affects you in literally no way shape or form.


A society is made up of people. The way people act, dress, talk, or do anything else has a pretty direct impact on other people in that society. Unless your definition of society is an extremely disconnected one, comprised of alienated individuals that have no interaction with each other, yes, it does affect other people.


It only affects people who care about what other people wear, and those people shouldn’t have any sort of societal influence because that’s stupid. Name literally one reason that wearing pajamas in public will cause another person actual harm and I’ll take back this statement.


There are a lot of things that don’t cause “actual harm” (which is itself a very narrow and short-sighted metric to exclusively focus on) but are probably important to worry about. Clearly people care about “cultural things” even if you personally don’t care.


That’s the thing, I do care. I care that people should have freedom of self expression. My daughters are 18 and 19. Some day soon I’ll be the parent their boyfriends will come home to meet. I hope they feel they have the freedom to wear what they’re comfortable in and that represents their genuine identity.

So yes of course context matters, we are social beings, but expectations of what is acceptable changes. I’ve seen it change in my lifetime, and that happens by people pushing the boundaries. Good luck to them.


Some day soon I’ll be the parent their boyfriends will come home to meet. I hope they feel they have the freedom to wear what they’re comfortable in and that represents their genuine identity.

Really? My hope is that I don't raise my daughter so poorly she ends up with a slob who wears pyjama in public.


Sure. Nothing I said implies I want them to have slobs for boyfriends, or would be happy if they did. I raised my girls to confidently exercise critical thinking and have decent values, but at this point they’re out in the world making their own decisions. It’s up to them now.


I raised my girls to confidently exercise critical thinking and have decent values, but at this point they’re out in the world making their own decisions.

Congratulations. I mean that.


I hope my son finds love and kindness with literally anyone he loves and enjoys, but that’s just me. Maybe other people don’t want their kids to be happy?


Maybe other people don’t want their kids to be happy?

Yeah you're just a better parent than everyone else. Congratulations, you can order yourself a "worlds best dad" mug and with you it won't even be a joke!


You can hope, but it’s nowhere within your circle of control.

Every non-parent says “my kid will never…”, which is comical.

The most surprising part of parenting to me was how wildly different each child’s personality and temperament are, and how little control I have to affect any of it.


My take on it is that there's no point using coercion to force kids to comply with your values and preferences. That will work while you have direct control over their lives as a parent, but the moment they're free adults living away from home, you have no further control and therefore no further say or influence in their lives.

I'm not saying you shouldn't exorcise control at all, as a parent you're responsible for their safety and behaviour. I just mean that coercion should be an emergency backstop that you use as little as possible.

The best approach is to explain why you are asking them to behave a certain way, and why you think certain choices in their lives are preferable, because you think they will lead to them having better lives. Drugs is a classic example, I tried weed when I was in my 20s but never anything stronger. I tried cigarettes. Ive been honest with my kids about it, and explained why I thought stronger drugs weren't for me, and how I saw them affect people I knew. I think that built a lot of trust. The objective is to give them the framing so that when I'm not there and they have an opportunity to try drugs, they will be able to make reasoned informed decisions that they take responsibility for. The same goes for sex, or dangerous sports, or any risk.


Sure, there's nature and nurture in play. But foregoing your responsibility to nurture because of the strength of nature is not a path I want to go down.


Like what? Name one thing that causes no physical or emotional harm to anyone but we should still care to ban it. If you can make three, I’ll (figuratively) eat my shoe.


Would you dress that way to meet your partner's parents for the first time? Or to see a friend you haven't seen in years? Or to represent your company at an event? What about going somewhere where you are expected to be a role model? Of course not. That's because you give a shit about the impression you give in those situations and understand the kind of atmosphere and impression it gives if you dress like a bum.

Now try having that same level of respect for your community, for your public spaces, for the people who share those public spaces with you. It's called living in a community.


What you call respect, I call conformity. If I'm representing my company at an event, I have to conform in my dress because I'm putting my personal identity aside to represent the company. If I'm meeting my partner's parents, I conform to show submission to the conservative dress code standards they grew up with.

Meeting an old friend? I'd wear something fun - maybe a nice dress, maybe fishnets and a choker. Depends on the friend.

I'd rather not go back to the 1920s where everyone had to wear suits. It's nice being able to express myself.


Love reading sentiments like this on Hacker News. Hackers are so well-known for their adherence to social norms on dressing up.


These days if you dress nicely you're not adhering to social norms. People feel uncomfortable.


Seriously like, programmers coming to work in their pajamas is the kind of thing you'd hear about in the late 90s.


I’m personally way more offended by people covered head to toe in gaudy all-over logo print “high end” sweatshop-made fashion that will end up on the racks in resale shops for decades because it’s so tacky, and probably made out of non-sustainable animal leather from mistreated animals too. This is without even getting into the climate impact of disposable fashion in general and leather in particular.


So if I get milk I sweatpants I'm degrading to social fabric of my community?


If the communities view is that you are then I guess you are


I sleep naked, so I doubt I would go out naked. I do wear Hawaiian aloha shirts to business meetings, even on the mainland, because I don’t care about conforming to the mainland ideal of business attire. I’ve definitely been treated differently just for aloha shirts, so I basically think you guys will complain about anything not “normal”.


Would you hang out in your pajamas with your best buds? Of course you would. Try having the same level of comfort with your community, with your public spaces, with the people who share those public spaces with you. It's called living a normal, happy life.


I wouldn't but that is purely because of the social expectation which is grounded in nothing. Moving away from expectations that are based on arbitrary status signaling is a good thing.


Are oversized billboards harmful? Do advertisements on every surface of public space cause physical harm? Is a yard full of non-toxic junk poisonous to its neighbors? Do parking lots lining every Main Street cause anyone direct physical harm? Is the person cutting the queue an assault? Does litter harm your being? Do gas powered leaf blowers? We’ll, probably, but that’s not why we hate them!

All these acts belie any notion that maintaining our shared spaces is a personal responsibility and that those spaces could hame some function beyond selling or maximizing immediate personal utility - whether that be inspiring wonder, awe, tranquility, community or contemplation. Consider the public spaces we actually choose to visit, or why we built them in the first place.

I don’t wish to enforce a dress code on anyone. All the same, wearing pajamas in public doesn’t read as a defiant act of personal expression to me.


There was a post a while ago about counter-signaling: When a CEO rides their bike to work, it's a "good" signal - they're being green, getting exercise, etc. When a teenager rides their bike to work, not so much - it probably means they can't afford a car. Basically that the same action can mean different things depending on context.

Pajamas in public is another of these, but has meaning for the community rather than the individual: It can mean either not caring, or it can mean that it's a safe, friendly community (like we had in the suburbs I grew up in). It depends on the larger context, and people are concerned it more likely than not has the first meaning. And plenty more bad stuff comes alongside not caring.


Maybe I have something to learn, but what load-bearing social foundation would public pajama-wearing endanger?


Respect for other people, general social norms, polite behavior, personal dignity, and in general just a respect for one's appearance and a desire to make "civilization" aesthetically appealing. People seem to enjoy living in beautiful buildings with green parks nearby, without pollution or noise, and yet somehow think dressing like a slob or putting zero effort into one's appearance is unimportant.

To be honest, if you don't find this obviously true, I'm not sure any argument is going to convince you. I'll also add that in many countries outside of America, it is just the default to care about your appearance when in public.


I try not to argue with strangers much on the internet, but I really disagree with you on this one.

What someone wears is a part of their self-expression. In this post, you use the phrases "respect for one's appearance" and "care about [one's] appearance" to suggest that people have a responsibility to follow certain norms in how they dress in order to make "'civilization' aesthetically appealing," in your words. Aesthetic is a subjective, and I think it's funny that you are so eager to project your aesthetic onto others. I for one actively choose to wear pajamas, go barefoot, keep my hair disheveled in public because that is my aesthetic and I think it looks good.

I will also clean up my local park, reduce my ecological footprint as much as possible, insert socially responsible behavior here...but you should consider widening your view of what is and isn't ok to wear in public.


To me, the distinction is whether we put in effort in our dress. It doesn’t matter what we look like; it matter that we spent resources to look like that.

People in many industries wear ties to work. I used to wonder what the point is of a tie, or a good suit. I don’t think it’s just fashion, but what? My take now is that it implies you care about how you’re seen by others - that you’re actively going to burn some of your time and money to demonstrate your vulnerability to your reputation. If someone who hasn’t washed and wears pyjamas gets in a fight in the street with someone in a suit, the person in the suit has more to lose. And that means if I want to make a business deal with one of them, I’m going to feel much safer dealing with the person in the suit because if they do wrong by me, they have reputational face to lose. (Or at least that’s the implication).

So yeah, I also agree with the GP. I think putting effort into the appearance of our cities and ourselves is effort spent signaling to each other that our society is worth investing in. It can go too far, and it was fun wearing pyjamas out on the street during covid. But I’m glad to live in a place that removes graffiti and where people sometimes dress up to go out.


Some people think that aesthetics is entirely subjective. This is the default view of Western liberal democracies, especially among people that haven’t really thought much about the topic.

Some people, including a lot of philosophers and art theorists that can be considered “experts”, disagree. I would consider myself in this camp, although not a credentialed expert by any means. And no, I’m not “projecting my aesthetic” on to others, simply defending the idea of norms and expectations. This is a very different thing.

As I said in another comment, if you can’t get beyond the idea that Value is not entirely subjective and that everything isn’t just “your opinion, Dude,” then no argument is probably going to convince you of anything. Hence you will just end up in a situation like the OP posted about.


>Some people think that aesthetics is entirely subjective. This is the default view of Western liberal democracies, especially among people that haven’t really thought much about the topic.

Don’t do this. It’s a weaseling way to claim the person you are discussing things with isn’t thinking.

Do you think the following is fair?

Some people think that freedom of expression in appearance is unimportant. This is the default view of authoritarian societies, especially among people who have not really thought much about the topic.


How do you know what the objectively correct attire is and how did you measure it? And if you don’t know what it is then why would you say pyjamas aren’t it? Norms and expectations have varied wildly not just geographically in the present day but over time as well. To the point it was and actually is common to physically harm people.


Just because multiple scales of value exist does not imply that all scales are equal or meaningless entirely.


Right but that’s a non-answer because norms change over time and place and that can only happen if people are allowed to change them over time and place. All you’re saying is that it’s subjective in a clouded way. At best you’re basically being left behind the cultural norm and probably should catch up.


No, it just means that norms should align with values. I have certain values and think that caring about aesthetics (personal appearance, nice architecture, clean spaces, beautiful art) results in a society that is better for me and other people.


Yes, it’s your subjective opinion you want to force on everyone else but previously didn’t want to admit is the case because it shows there is no actual argument as to why anyone else should agree. Like the clashes over wearing headscarves in Iran where people are literally being killed an imprisoned over that subjective value disagreement.

“Everyone should share my values” is essentially an extreme position.


Thinking that it’s beneficial for people to live in beautiful buildings without pollution is my subjective opinion?


But you’ve changed the subject. We were discussing what people were wearing.

And as obvious yes if you personally think that it’s very acutely your subjective opinion. You are literally telling us your opinion. You couldn’t get a clearer example of something that’s subjective.

There’s a worrying level of philosophical paucity here.


What is “beautiful” is, like, the textbook example of a subjective opinion.


No, not really. The concept of beauty has a long philosophical history and many knowledgeable and intelligent people have written books on the topic. As I said above, the people who think this stuff is entirely subjective tend to be ones that haven’t engaged much (or at all) with previous thought on the topic.


> The concept of beauty has a long philosophical history and many knowledgeable and intelligent people have written books on the topic

Which is not incompatible with it being subjective. In fact, many of those “knoweldgeable and intelligent” people have written specifically on its subjectivity, and others explicitly on specific, e.g., of a specific culture and time, subjective standards.


People who wax philosophical almost entirely about what the inherent subjectivity of aesthetics means for our experience as subjects, individually and collectively.


This line of reasoning is unsound because it attempts to universalize particulars wrt aesthetics. Universalizing particulars is what Lacan would call psychotic. The antidote here is a good dose hysterics.


What should one do if they find that the aesthetic norms practiced by the people around them don't align with anyone's values?

Is there room in your clean, well architected, art-endowed society for protest? If not, what keeps the norms in-line with the (presumably drifting) values?


>beautiful art

Wow, you just keep digging deeper. Pray tell, what makes some art beautiful and other art not?


I think we ought to distinguish between the case where the person has thought through their decision to wear pajamas in public and is doing it as an attempt to challenge existing norms, versus the case where they didn't even give it a thought.

Because if that's what they're doing, then I'm 100% with you. Hanging onto existing norms is just opting out of the conversation about what the norms should be.

I suspect, though, that gp is objecting to a different sort of opting-out--one where you're either blind or apathetic to the consequences of your actions.

I guess what I'm saying is, it depends on the pajamas.


But norms change because it becomes normal to do it which requires people do it without thinking about it. By definition.

If people only do subversive things intentionally nothing changes. That’s in fact what the conservative view wants, safe “change” that doesn’t actually matter. Which is why for example Iran is cracking down so hard on the recent protests because they desperately need for the norm not to change.


I feel like there's more middle ground than you're acknowledging.

Yes, people eventually start doing a thing because it's the new normal--but it doesn't happen spontaneously. Some emergent leader decides to wear pajamas to the office (or whatever) and then the barrier is lowered and others follow suit because the leader had a point and then eventually being comfortable in public is the new normal. But that emergent leader is required, no?

Somebody has to do it first.

I've been witnessing this in my neighborhood. Some apartment complex put up a fence and now the route to the grocery is long and circuitous because we can no longer cut through the apartment complex's parking lot. Some hero dismantled the fence to make a hole and now the whole neighborhood is reopening the hole when the complex repairs it. I'm happy to participate in the maintaining the new normal, but I wasn't the hero that set it up in the first place. I'm in that guy's debt.


Some people not only think that that aestethics is entirely objective (which may or may not be true), but also think that their perception is somehow authoritative on the matter!

Their opinion is that everything they like is objectively beautiful, and everything they don't like is objectively ugly.

How narcissistic do those people have to be to hold themselves in such an unrealistically high regard?


You've made a massive leap here. Of course there is an argument that aesthetics aren't entirely subjective.

Are there any noteworthy philosopher who says (in effect, obviously not this exactly) people shouldn't go around in pyjamas?


Aesthetics isn't really that subjective - at least not as subjective as modern philosophy likes to claim. This is why it is possible to produce a radio station or build an art museum. You actually can guess what art a large number of people people will like.

Still, people can have disagreements about the exact ranking of whether Monet's water lilies is prettier than the Mona Lisa or vice versa (or take any Jackson Pollack if you want to extend the analogy). We all agree that they are more beautiful than Timmy's finger painting. Even Timmy's parents. The fact that there isn't one strict ranking doesn't mean that there is nothing objective.

The same objective standards, and subjective disagreements, apply to clothing and personal appearance.

You can look really good with disheveled hair and pajama pants, but that mostly comes down to things like having clean, intact clothes, not smelling bad, not displaying offensive imagery, etc. Similarly, you can be repulsively ugly in a designer suit - just rip it in a few places and let the color fade. Your preference for one look or the other doesn't mean that there are no objective standards whatsoever.


>What someone wears is a part of their self-expression.

It's not just part of their "self-expression". It's a reflection on the broader community as a whole.

To give a concrete example, I personally think highly of black Africans in Australia because they're always well-dressed, well-groomed, physically fit and clean.

Back when I lived in Sunshine (area formerly inhabited by white trash, being rapidly gentrified by migrants), the gaunt, green-faced, drug-addicted beggars and whores with welts all over their skin would reflect badly on me. It was a big enough deal that I just needed to go one suburb over and suddenly would be treated well.

Call people like this a bigot or shallow or whatever you want, but this is the global norm and almost everybody seems to understand it except young Westerners.


Is pijamas in public OK or is it OK to wear what is not considered OK?

Maybe someone’s aesthetics say it’s ok to live in a neglected building close to falling apart or drive a beaten up car.

I’d say it’s much more pleasant to be in a community where aesthetics do matter. Styles do differ, but neglect is not a style by itself.


> What someone wears is a part of their self-expression

Disagree. I generally wear jeans, t-shirt and jumper. It literally has nothing to do with self expression.


> if you don't find this obviously true

Not the one you're replying to... Not only I don't find this obviously true, but also I find it obviously wrong. I prefer people stop being offended by how others look and stop judging people by their looks. I consider such attitude very shallow.


I'm not going to defend the other commenters point but I find your position strange.

Imagine a person covered in poo, ripped clothes leaving visible track marks from using intraveinous drugs.

I'm sure if you were forced to interact with that person, you'd not be happy, right? Does that make you shallow?

I'm not sure someone wearing pyjamas is the slippery slope the previous commenter thinks it is, but their point about preferring people who make themselves more presentable is valid.


I’m rather confused. The topic was how one looked. Where did poo and drugs come from? And where did happiness come from? Do you consider happiness a judgement?


I am someone who, for much of the last 15 years has been happiest in a t shirt and shorts.

But your points are ones I’ve thought about a LOT the last few years.

In spite of being someone who rejects the idea of dressing fancier going deeper than just superficial beauty, I remember how I carry myself differently when I wear a suit. I feel more confident when I dress well. My wife loves when she sees that I made the effort and I love it when she has (as she often does).

I also remember a friend telling me that the way people dress often also reflects their self esteem. And I know I dress worse when I’m feeling worse.

These things matter. And I do think the general drop in quality of how people dress is a more visual sign of how we care less about each other.


I feel worse in a suit and it makes me feel like a fake. Wear a suit if it makes you feel good, I won’t because it makes me feel bad.


That's totally fine, I'm not advocating for suits per se – my point was more about the fact that what you wear DOES affect how you think (and in your case it seems like that particular piece of clothing makes you feel worse).

I am genuinely curious why you make the association between wearing a suit and being fake – have most of the people you encountered that wore suits, been dishonest?


> I'll also add that in many countries outside of America, it is just the default to care about your appearance when in public.

Like forcing women to wear headscarves in Iran.

The reason your argument is not self evidently true is the reason it’s not important FWIW.


[flagged]


My response is neither low quality nor trolling. There is absolutely a connection between the OPs attitude towards pyjamas and women being allowed to show their hair in Iran. It’s the same social mores except one opinion on how others dress is palatable to some and the other not. Which is particularly important given the on going struggle in Iran.

Likewise the OP should consider how their opinion is reflected in that light.

And your style of empty comment is the one that’s explicitly discouraged in the site guidelines.

Edit: oh lol, you are the OP, I assume that touched a nerve.


Dude, I have to agree with the OP here. Chill out.

> There is absolutely a connection between the OPs attitude towards pyjamas and women being allowed to show their hair in Iran

Except there isn't, because women's dress codes in areas under sharia law is enforced with violence and generally considered oppression; whereas pyjamas are an unenforced expectation.

Also:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.


Oh yeah the community can sneer at whoever the fuck they want but god forbids someone does it to them.


But I find enforcement of arbitrary dress codes to be aesthetically unappealing. I feel disgust towards those traits of a low-freedom society, whether that low-freedom comes from social pressure or actual laws. Have strict pollution and noise laws because those things actually hurt people beyond your personal subjective imagination.


Wanna play 5 Whys with it?


A trip to “Citizens of Walmart” (or whatever it’s called) provides a much more solid argument for dress standards. Pyjamas are pretty crass, but they don’t hold a candle to the vulgar, bizarre, and even pornographic stuff that you’ll see on that website.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_Walmart


I kinda hop on this bandwagon to recommend the book "The righteous mind" by Jonathan Haidt, specifically the notion that there tends to be 3 main 'modes' of morality: a logic of individualism (Especially in the western word, and doubly so in affluent classes), the logic of community, and the logic of sacrality.

I feel that this back-and-forth about public pajama-wearing is really at heart a back and forth between a logic of pure individualistic moral (if nobody is hurt, then what's the deal), and more community-focused moral (yeah, nobody is hurt, but it's not bad either to uphold some standards in society).

I've never been to America, and I'm also living in Paris, where clothing is kinda important, but honestly I'm a bit shocked at the idea of going out in public in a pajama. I feel that, unless you're in a really bad place in your life, you should put some effort in presenting a 'good' version of yourself in public, and public pajama-wearing would be a huge signal that you're letting yourself down/are having a huge breakdown, or have mental health issues.


I live in Berlin, where the dress code is far more relaxed.

I noted how well-dressed people are in Paris and my friend answered “because they pretty much have to”. It’s a social pressure and you’re expected to conform to that standard regardless of your means or interest in fashion.

I love not thinking much about clothing. I wear what works, spend less on something that doesn’t matter to me, and save my energy for what does.

I’m not sure how I would benefit from raising the pressure until I am forced to dress better at my own expense.


Taking care of the most basic forms of aesthetics is a form of respect and care towards others.

There's a healthy balance between following some strict victorian dress code and wearing a pajama. It's not about the colors or shape, it's about the message it sends: "I don't bother to dress up"


The underlying assertion of this post and similar ones in this thread seems to be that non-conformance in dress is associated with weakening of social bonds. However, that doesn't seem to match the way that people actually behave.

In America, people who advocate for greater freedom of expression in things like dress and social roles are generally progressives who support strengthening social institutions. On the other hand, people who tend to promote traditional dress and roles are generally conservatives who support hyper individuality.


The liberals want to strengthen explicit institutions (welfare, education, etc). The conservatives want to strengthen implicit institutions (trust, community).


So, "we live in a society"?


This; I’ll take other people in pajamas that doesn’t offend me one bit vs stupid loud exhaust (especially on non-performance vehicles and doubly so when they floor it in neighborhoods) every time. The latter serves no purpose other than annoying many many people around you, and plenty of trucks in particular do it explicitly for the intimidation / “manliness” factor. In addition to polluting a ton more and literally degrading the air we have to breathe when you remove the catalytic converter (which isn’t even legal in many places) it’s just a giant asshole move.

The good thing is that sound cameras with automated ticketing are already here, and I cannot wait until we get them in the Bay Area. https://www.autoweek.com/news/technology/a39906304/californi...


> whatever X they want to affects you in literally no way shape or form.

Replaced "clothes" with "X" to point out a pattern.

This has been said a lot, and I'm not sure it's true. It's true on a case by case basis that individual freedom does not affect us perceptibly. But I'm pretty sure it's not true in aggregate. Maybe the PJs don't matter, maybe yelling in the stairwell at an apartment once a year does'nt matter. But it seems in aggregate they might exponentially matter (kinda like CO2).

Its not just the PJs, but also the butting in line, rude/crass ways of speaking, going behind people's back in a variety of ways (sex, taking credit for work, not reciprocating efforts), driving in a way that causes a series of traffic micro events on the road which exponentiate behind them (if you leave a big enough gap for safety, folks speed to fill it in, so you have to slow down to let the gap increase, so even more people pass you), a little white lie here and there to get ahead unjustly etc.


Dress how you want in your own house. The public space isn't yours and you don't have a right to dress indecently in the public space. Turns out, some of us want to live in a society that takes itself seriously and gives a shit. Walking around in your Cookie Monster PJs just doesn't cut it.

THIS mindset is what I think is the root of all the other listed problems. Somehow freedom has come to mean "I can do whatever I want as long as it doesn't cause you physical injury" - completely throwing the ideals of common decency, mutual respect, obligation to your community, etc out the window.

We're not atomized individuals with nothing to do with each other except transact for individual gain. If we want to be a community with a unified social fabric, we have to act like it, and that means putting aside some "freedoms" that make the commons worse for everyone.


Holy crackers.

When I see a person wearing PJs in public, I think -- actually, I guess I don't really think about it beyond "huh.. PJs in public." You're out there stewing on it, writing about it on the internet, and literally thinking that people wearing things you don't like is stemming from a mindset that's at the root of society's problems.

This casual insight into madness is what keeps the internet exciting.


This line of reasoning is very popular with the "west in decline due to anything I personally dislike crowd".


This is why I come to Hacker News.


This whole thread of folks arguing about PJs in public is reinforcing OP’s point IMO :)


Pretty sure it's just a matter of having drawn the line of "proper behaviour" in a different place instead of not actually caring about enforcing proper behaviour


> Dress how you want in your own house. The public space isn’t yours and you don’t have a right to dress indecently in the public space.

“Indecently”, perhaps [0], but…

> Walking around in your Cookie Monster PJs just doesn’t cut it.

I mean, you do have a right to do this; its not indecent by any definition that is excluded from the scope of personal rights, it just doesn’t mean some people’s fashion preference.

> Somehow freedom has come to mean “I can do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t cause you physical injury” -

If you delete “physical” with “legally cognizable” [1], that’s…exactly what freedom actually means.

> completely throwing the ideals of common decency, mutual respect, obligation to your community, etc. out the window.

“common decency”, “mutual respect”, and “obligation to your community” (beyond legally defined obligations) are subjective, mutually defined limits, and freedom means that you are not bound by other people’s idea of them that you do not share, and, similarly, they aren’t bound to yours, except to the extent that each of you decides to be, perhaps because you want something from the other beyond what is legally obligatory.

[0] EDIT: Though, honestly, while I don’t see the usual definitions of this in the West as urgently problematic, I’m skeptical of the usefulness and compatibility with liberty of the general concept of “indecent” dress. There are very good health and safety regulations about dress in certain contexts, but the idea that the visibility of body parts is a source of the kind of harm to anyone that would warrant limitations on free choice aside from those particular contexts is dubious.

[1] EDIT: and additionally, define what is “legally cognizable” injury by a robust concept of personal rights both defining such injury from the PoV of the rights of the injured and defining exceptions to when injury is legally cognizable based on the rights of the actor who might cause injury. You can have a bad definition of what injuries are legally cognizable which conflicts with freedom.


I went to Home Depot last weekend wearing lounge pants with cartoon foxes on them, because that's what I was wearing at home and I didn't want to change. The benefits to me (saved time, comfortable) greatly outweighed the negative impacts to anyone else. (None.) I'm not going to worry about what I wear to a freaking department store because it might offend some busybodies.


This is a disgusting point of view. You view those who are different from you as subhuman. I bet you see people who wear their tradional non-Western clothing as icky, or poor people as dirty. Anyone not wearing a suit and tie is not worthy of your respect? And dare someone wear something comfortable, because they don't conform to YOUR norms they're somehow being disrespectful, when YOU are the one lacking the base decency to see other humans as worthy of respect.


Do you really have an issue with people wearing what they want?

Where do you draw the line? And who decides when things are turning socially acceptable? Are young people ment to wear the same attire as their parents because that is what I'd already socially acceptable?

I wear stupid things in public because I barely care for anything than comfort. I never thought that could bother someone


I really like places where people wear whatever they find comfortable (PJs, bare feet, togs, dirty work clothes). Happens near me a particular supermarket, and a shopping mall.

Seeing someone in their relaxed clothes has an intimicy, like walking into their home. They tend to be friendlier, more open, smilier.

Uptight suburbs where everyone is wearing "nice" clothes and more strictly following social conventions can feel unfriendly, sad and closed. I can play along with the mores, but I prefer places with more relaxed codes.


Hold on, you're saying Cookie Monster is indecent?


Contributing directly to the downfall of society! Put on some pants, Cookie Monster! There are rules!


For Christ sake, if you seriously can't tell the difference between an exhaust system that physically assault one's ears bordering on tinnitus versus a goofy eccentric pair of Cookie Monster pajamas, I just don't know what to say.

What does "a society which takes itself seriously" even mean? To me this just sounds like mindless conformity.


Broken window theory of dress. Poorly dressed uncaring people attract more of that behavior and the poor attitude bleeds into other interactions.


But how far do you go? Using that approach, people 100 years ago wearing a suit and tie and a hat would probably want to ban what we wear today, on the grounds of broken glass theory. Yet we are (I presume) law abiding citizens here, etc.


It's really not that intellectual or complicated. Just don't dress like a bum in public? Not everything needs a theorem or rigorous, tested, scientifically researched set of rules.

Nobody is asking you to walk around in a 3 piece suit, there is no slippery slope or conspiracy theory here, it's just "dress like you give a shit about the public space and others in it".


But that’s a subjective criteria and one that’s obviously ripe for subversion. What about people’s right to freedom of expression?


Express yourself however you want. People respond to you putting effort in, even if it’s in a direction they wouldn’t go themself.

The minimum effort is being clean enough that you don’t smell and don’t have visible skid marks on your clothes. Stinking up a cafe is antisocial.


There's an absolutely massive space for freedom of expression within the bounds of "not looking like shit".

Nobody needs to look (or smell) like garbage to 'express' themselves.


Don’t they? Seems like an unfounded statement. Just because it’s distasteful to you it’s not valid?


There you go, you got it.


Is it a form of expression to walk around in semen encrusted sweatpants?


Obviously. In the same way you are largely able to say what you want even if it’s distasteful.


Big neckbeard energy with these comments.


It's still essentially the same rule. Something like "Dress according to society's expectations" where it's the expectations that are changing rather than the rule. It's a meaningful difference because ultimately the signal is something like "I can meet the basic expectations of social interaction and human behavior".


How is me not caring what you think of my attire a bad attitude? Fulfilling your aesthetic desires is not one of my goals and, frankly, expecting otherwise seems like something of a bad attitude.


Stop and Frisk, but for an imagined global dress code.


I disagree with this. People - at not just Walmart - with brown stains on the rear, or pajamas that don't cover their butt. :x


Okay except I didn't say anything about people with literal shit stains or exposing themselves, stop putting words in my mouth. Both of the things you mentioned can apply to ANY kind of clothing.


Arson, Murder and Jaywalking (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJa... warning, TVTropes link).


I enjoy the fact the American „clothing culture“, e.g. going to the shop in rags, hasn’t caught on in Europe yet.


Rags? As in, pre-torn jeans? No, we had those in Europe in the 90s. Or was it the 80s?


It comes after the obesity epidemic. Once >40% are obese (adult obesity is 60% in the US), the people stop caring and don’t have the energy or self confidence to care.


Seeing ugliness everywhere you look absolutely effects you. If you can reason about noise pollution, then surely visual pollution is not too great a jump.


[flagged]


Sorry you got a boner once in public, but that doesn’t mean you can dictate women not to wear short shorts. Maybe you need to learn to deal with boners better.


> billions of years of sexual selection

> fertile attractive woman wearing the shortest shorts possible

...so she's wearing more clothing than she did for 99% of the time period in question - that's the observation you're making, right?


I wonder how much popular culture has to do with it. For example, when you sincerely listen to rap lyrics, a lot of it (and from the biggest names too) sound like a deranged, narcissistic, and sometimes violent, rants. When people hear that around them from the youngest age, they get the understandsting that such outlook on life is within the accepted norms (or, more likely, the music tells them to don't care about any norms at all, because it's all about the benjamins or whatever), especially when they don't have parents or other authority figures to correct them. Smart people from decent backgrounds can see through this filth or even use it as harmless entertainment - but, for other people, it can instill antisocial behaviour.


In my social circles, I rarely hear anyone say anything critical about rap music, but it is quite common for people to make disparaging remarks about country music. "I like all kinds of music, except country" is a commonly expressed preference, for example. I have found the lyrics in country music to almost always be positive and optimistic, often imbued with values recognizing the importance of family and hard work. Perhaps there is something deeply wrong with our culture if we continue to have this negative association with an art form that is meant to encourage people to be better to each other.


Yeah no, Typically when people say that they’re.

1) Ignorant. I promise I can find many songs that aren’t country real quick that they’ll hate.

2) Referring specifically to overproduced modern country-pop crap.


> Smart people from decent backgrounds can see through this filth or even use it as harmless entertainment - but, for other people, it can instill antisocial behaviour.

Ignoring the other part of the comment, this sentence sounds quite a bit like the stories I've heard about people who very loudly knew that unlike everyone else, they had enough self-control to play with the nastier drugs safely.


None of this is new. I can tell you stories of similar experiences going back into my childhood in the early 80s. I know people who can tell you airline stories from the 60s that are similar.


Much of this is new. Governments have taken much heed to anything that could be construed as having "disparate impact", and are running a reverse broken-windows experiment on the ground. When in the past did we decide we were going to prosecute theft only if the total value was greater than 1k?


I assume always, when corrected for inflation.


https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/local/2022/06/30...

Salem, OR straight up won’t respond to any noise complaints anymore, citing low officer count. Seems like the negative effects from the 2020 BLM riots are starting to show.


I think we should hire a lot more cops than we currently have but this

> The goal, Womack said, is to not send a patrol officer immediately out to every noise complaint and civil dispute. Those issues can be handled by the civil court system or by non-sworn employees, freeing patrol officers to promptly respond to emergencies or focus on building trust in the community.

Doesn't seem like a huge deal. I'd rather cops be patrolling for property crime than victimless ones.


It’s not victimless. Frequent exposure to environmental noise can cause stress, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, heart disease, and mental health issues.


> Antisocial behavior like drag racing, speeding through neighborhoods

Fast and Furious came out in 2001. A pop movie about a topic means it had been going on for a long time. Driving fast and drag racing has been thing forever.

And loud cars...look up whistler tips on YouTube from the early 00s.


Not to mention the movie Grease lol. 1978. Humans have als ways been a mix of social and antisocial. Or think of A Clockwork Orange, 1962, presenting an anxiety of youth gang violence.


I mean I think the existence of new tech makes it harder to enforce. In the 80's there was an issue with noise on the subway when boomboxes became popular, but they were heavy and expensive to operate. With smartphones and bluetooth speakers, literally anyone on the subway can annoy the rest of the train car with minimal effort. In fact, it takes a bit more effort now (remember headphones, or mute phone), to actually be accommodating to your fellow travelers.

I honestly subscribe to the maxim that humanity doesn't really change, it's our ability to view and be affected by humanity that that increases over time. This works in both directions. It's much easier for someone to annoy me on the train, but it's also much easier for me to learn full-stack development on youtube.


The number of times I've heard phones/iPads blaring music, kids cartoons, etc while at a restaruant is absurd. I don't even notice it anymore.

People feel entitled to have their kids streaming Cocomelon 24 hours a day and ignore you or challenge you to a fist fight if you as them to turn the music down. "This is TGI Fridays it's not supposed to be quiet"


> blaring music, kids cartoons, etc while at a restaruant

The heck, where in the world is this? I've literally never seen anyone do that. Recently (1-2 weeks ago?) someone did this on the bus, after loud phone calls they opened some video app and started watching the most random crap with loud noises on speaker. The bus is not a quiet place but even so, after a few minutes someone told him off.


“ I honestly subscribe to the maxim that humanity doesn't really change.”

This maxim is probably wrong, since humanity and said human behavior is a function of the environment which is objectively changing.


That’s only if you believe humans are some kind of tabula rasa. I don’t.


Ask HN OP:

The harsh and indignant backlash to "things would be nicer if people gave half a fuck how they look in public" is probably the best answer to your question that you're gonna get.


I agree whole-heatedly. Every dumb kid thinks he has to be noisier than the next, whether it's a shitty dropped Honda civic covered in primer, a dumbshit F-350 with dumb tires sticking out past the body, or a motorcycle with some ignoramus on it wearing a bandana with a skull over his face, like that makes him tough. It's like everyone has to flex because they think it makes them cool, but really the rest of us are saying "oh look, another dumbass". Yet, you're right, the cops don't seem to care. I don't get it. It's like even they think they have something better to do, and noise complaints are too beneath them to care. I've talked to a number of cops about this, and they have told me they won't enforce these laws unless they are looking for an excuse to pull someone over for something more significant (to them).


I don't agree that these behaviours are down to a lack of social enforcement. The root issue is that the societal incentives that encourage adherence to social norms have been fundamentally weakened by neo-liberalism and the economic consequences.

I don't think it's controversial to suggest that comfortable, healthy, well fed, and financially secure people are less likely to engage in antisocial behaviour. Those doing so are typically people who do not view themselves as belonging to (or benefiting from) society.

Frankly, what goal is achieved in meting out punishment on someone already disillusioned with society? The likely result is exactly what plays out in many prison systems today. A cycle of increasing disillusionment, societal expense, and escalatory retaliation.

Is it any surprise that anti-social behaviour is increasing? Advertising exists largely to convince people of the inadequacy of their current situation, be it financial, physical, or mental. What other effect could be expected in the context of growing social inequality?

In an era of general prosperity households have gone from working a combined 40 hours per week to 80, leaving much less time for personal affairs and increased stress.

Many "low skilled" jobs are simply gone, the replacements generally offering much lower pay and poorer working conditions. Consider the wider ramifications in towns where these jobs made up a significant proportion of the work.

Housing grows increasingly out of the reach of the younger generation despite paying an ever greater percentage of their monthly wage to landlords.


Pajama pants are just decorative scrubs. Medical people go out in those all the time. You’re welcome to wear your denim scrubs as well.


While this is neither here nor there wearing scrubs out is a relatively new phenomenon. In fact, even wearing them around the hospital is pretty new too. They started as something you changed into when needed and then changed out of when the procedure was over.


I've seen scrubs in use as routine shift wear for about 20 years. Easy enough to get fresh ones if they get soiled mid shift.


Yeah I'd say it started probably in the 90s and by maybe the early 2010s it was acceptable to wear scrubs in any sort of medical situation. Like even the receptionists at a opthalmologist would wear them.


That's kinda funny. But if it saves the receptionist buying other work clothes <shrug>


Like with pajamas outside, that sounds unhygienic. But there is no way to judge anyone for this as you do not know if they are going to wear it again.


"normalize $X !!"

$X being antisocial or otherwise reprehensible behaviour.


As others have pointed out: this is the society becoming more liberal. The great triumph of liberalism has been removing the government's influence on social norms, and how we engage non-violently with one another in general.

Where the modern Left has gone off the rails is insisting that we also cannot reinforce good behavior and shame bad behavior, mostly the latter, through non-violent social interactions.

It's great that the government can't prevent adults from wearing pajamas in public, but you'd also be right to make value judgements about the kind of adult who does that.


I have stronger value judgements on people enforcing religious believes on others, don't care so much for pyjamas.


I tend to make more negative judgments on people who look like they've spent the last three hours coiffing every individual hair follicle. All I see is the human equivalent of a whitewashed tomb.


Both of them are the result of the policies that you voted for. Maybe not you personally, but the people in your state.


There's zero need to be judgemental about people's choice of clothing. Also, I don't think you understand what antisocial typically means, And there's no need to be judgemental about that either.

This is actually part of the problem - making shallow jabs on the internet to feel superior is avoidant compared to an actual confrontation; where you have no choice but to reflect on how your views may not apply to all situations.


Kind of ironic that you’re trying to shame him for being judgemental. Username checks out.


I am confronting someone rather than avoiding a confrontation. If I had made the initial comment, you would be correct. Causation and all that.

It was not my intent to shame them either. I was talking to them. Not you.


And this is where in the world? It sounds likely regional but you're not mentioning a region.


This is the problem generally known as liberalism. Hobbes said the foundation of the state was the arbitrary Will of the individuals in the state. Modern states are thus founded on caprice. The solution is as JFK said: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”


This begs the question, what is it that my country wants to do, and who decides that?


In my view it should be decided by a class of philosophers. People who from an early age were possessed of a duty to the whole.


I'm curious if you have any recommended reading on the criticism of liberalism?


I prefer Hegel’s critique. In his Philosophy of Right. It’s a difficult read but very much worth it. This is from the Editor’s Introduction:

“Hegel's liberal critics are in the habit of saying that he does not believe in founding a social order on the conception of individual rights. The element of truth in this assertion is that Hegel thinks personal right, apart from a developed system of ethical life, is an empty abstraction; he believes that a social order founded (as in liberal political theory) on such abstractions will be unable even to protect individual rights, much less to actualize the whole of concrete freedom. In fact, Hegel thinks that the greatest enemy of personal and subjective freedom is a 'mechanistic' conception of the state, which views the state solely as an instrument for the enforcement of abstract rights; for this sets the state up as an abstraction in opposition to individuals. In Fichte's theory, for example, Hegel sees the state as a police power whose only function is to supervise and regulate the actions of individuals through coercive force. The only real guarantee of freedom is a well-constituted ethical life, which integrates the rights of persons and subjects into an organic system of customs and institutions providing individuals with concretely fulfil­ling lives.” (p. xvi)


The economy is just increasingly fake or rewarding foolish scummy behaviour instead of honest cooperative work. People coasted for 10+ years now on "passive income" from printed money along with almost no enforcement action against scams. That gave rise to a chain reaction of people trying to scam each other in a general revenge.

Take for example a big slice of the economy - real estate. Honest real estate agents who try to match real needs to real properties were totally displaced (or outcompeted) by agents who spam fake ads in order to secure an exclusive contract with unfair terms and sell you the biggest property you can afford with no regard of your actual needs. The Fed in turn backstops any losses and buys toxic mortgages perpetuating the scheme.

Further, imagine an economy entirely comprised of real estate agents (or even NFT traders). In such economy, there is only so much real need for agents, at some point there will be more agents than the market really needs. At that point the only way to survive in the market is to become adversarial, it is in your best interest to outspend everybody on deceptive marketing, then mismatch buyers and sellers so that they will have to come back to you looking for new deals once they realise they were mismatched. And again the only reason people can keep this mismatched economy going is because the Fed/congress flood the system with money and their mistakes are rewarded (in asset price inflation at least).

This is the economy we have now more or less in the different sectors. And policy makers can't touch anything because they prioritise stability and growth.


I commented elsewhere but I studied Econ in college because it was a particular interest of mine. I hated it. I also wanted to understand it, so that I could know why it rubbed me the wrong way and live intentionally to push against it.

There was this moment when I was in a grad course and the professor was talking about self-optimizing markets. That's when it hit me. I literally stood up in the class, interrupted everything and went like "wait, the math isn't optimizing for income inequality". It was kind of funny watching more than 100 little economists in training suddenly start tearing apart the equation at once. You could literally hear the sound of frantic spreadsheeting and charting.

In the end, the professor himself said that it was true, you could achieve a fully "optimized" economy with literally everything being owned by a handful of people. Made me think.

How is a system supposed to be beneficial for us all when the mathematics at its core don't actually consider societal benefit?

If an economy is fully "optimized" but everyone is sick, sad, and angry - is it actually optimal?

A mathematical model can make sense without being sensible. This is why I have an implicit distrust of algorithms and other systems of optimization.


You can be pareto optimal / efficient without a everyone having a 1/n share.

The idea of optimization is that everyone gets the best possible set.

E.g. Alice prefers tomatoes, Bob prefers mangos. Thus, Alice ends up with 100% of the tomatoes, Bob with 0%.

Unfortunately it's mostly the externalities and irrationality / wrong assumptions that fail us.

An economy is not optimal (or pareto efficient) iff people are disproportionally sick, sad and angry because of economical reasons (and don't trade this sickness, sadness and angriness for something that gives them more utility).


> How is a system supposed to be beneficial for us all when the mathematics at its core don't actually consider societal benefit?

It isn't, but you could vote someone into power that makes it so. Theoretically, of course. In practice, it seems to me that people like a show of muscle and witty rhetoric more than a show of good math.

Most commonly, it's the poor that vote for the worst possible options which are projected to be the worst for the country (both rich and poor, and often disproportionately the poor). (Where "poor", to keep things in perspective, means someone living off of benefits or minimum wage, i.e. comfortable compared to the richest ten percent in an average African country.)

Not that the rich always vote cleverly, I don't have to look further than my own parents and grandparents to see that much, but e.g. christian parties are still better than voting for xenophobia and racism (e.g. Wilders), both if you follow the math on what immigration nets us and if you simply consider the amount of worldsuck.


That's the cold, hard truth of capitalism: It converges on the rich-get-richer, economies-of-scale winner-takes-all endgames.

Used to be you needed lots of skilled workers to get anything done. You had to pay them. Now with automation and tech and specialization due to global free trade, you only need skilled workers in a handful of professions, the value of doing anything else steadily decreases.


the concept of no-skill workers is a myth


> you could achieve a fully "optimized" economy with literally everything being owned by a handful of people.

Wait, no. That would only be true if all the other people were unable to perform any valuable work. Otherwise it would be more efficient to hire them and profit by selling their goods/services to one of the other handful of rich people.


>Honest real estate agents who try to match real needs to real properties were totally displaced (or outcompeted) by agents who spam fake ads in order to secure an exclusive contract with unfair terms and sell you the biggest property you can afford with no regard of your actual needs. The Fed in turn backstops any losses and buys toxic mortgages perpetuating the scheme.

There's lot's to criticize about real eastate agents but this ain't it. Try taking huge commissions for a disproportionate amount of work from the value of the house for one.


It's only disproportionate for buyer's agents in a buyer's market or seller's agents in a seller's market when the cost of a crap shack is $800k+ - which unfortunately is a growing part of the country.

If you're unaware - the brokerages can take up to 40% of the agent's commission. That's where the real rip off is.

There's lots of places where the median home is still <$250k. It's a lot of work to sell that house (in a buyer's market). In a seller's market - it's a lot of showings and offers before something gets accepted.

70% of 3% of $250k = $5250

Typically, R/E agents are 1099 - which means they're paying ~10% more income tax in the employer's side of Medicare and Social Security.

That's $4446 after payroll tax but BEFORE income tax.

You're lucky if you're selling >1 house a month.

Just because real estate agents aren't writing code and aren't making doo-dads, doesn't mean they're doing nothing, or that their time is worthless.


> real estate

The financial incentives to an agent are to sell as many houses as they can as quickly as possible. Every sale is an end to ongoing time being "wasted" dealing with potential buyers. Every deal is money in the bank now. Agents don't really care about the price beyond talking the seller and the buyer to agree to some number (overpriced or underpriced is mostly irrelevant).

The US system appears batshit crazy to me - very adversarial? In New Zealand there is usually only a sellers agent: it is rare to have a buyers agent. Buying a house in New Zealand has less percentage cost in total fees, from what I can tell. Total agent fees are commonly around 4% for the first $400k of the sale price (median house price $800k in NZ) and around 2% for the remainder. We have real estate companies advertising lower rates. Plus maybe 1% for marketing? https://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/what-does-it-cost/YO4VZM...


real estate agents aren't responsible for people overspending. come on


A lot of this is related to inequality, value of labour detaching from wealth, and the increasing unaffordability of life.

The material conditions of regular people are continuously getting worse as more and more of their income is stripped away by rent seeking oligopolies, mainly increasing housing costs but depending on your jurisdiction all sorts of other costs (eg. cable and mobile phone costs an issue in some places, healthcare in other places).

In the worst extremes people are simply running out of money and the amount of people at risk of homelessness and in homelessness is spiking, and people in such dire conditions are dying at a remarkable rate given the toxic drug crisis.

For the political class, not a problem here, as they are part of the rent seeking class, and they can expect a nice directorship gig at some oligopoly corporation after their term.

The big fix for much of this is fundamentally to put more money in the wallets of regular people. This means increasing rental vacancy, limiting rent increases, and bringing rents down to 30% of people's income (or less!). It means livable incomes and government stepping in to create a social safety net to ensure that those incomes aren't flowing away immediately to pay for the basics of staying healthy.

It means breaking up corporations and reigning them in and stopping rent seeking.

All of this harms the very wealthy and even the upper middle class, who themselves are often small time landlords that benefit from low rents and renter misery, so these politically active groups block all change.


> A lot of this is related to inequality, value of labour detaching from wealth, and the increasing unaffordability of life.

Inequality is declining by every measurable metric in the United States.

Edit: To answer the folk naysaying with their ten second Google searches, the income inequality rate has declined between 2007 and 2019(1), helped by a strong wage recovery in the late 2010s. The share of wealth held by the top 10% peaked around 2015 and has declined steadily since. 2022 was a very bad year for equity markets and has hit wealthy households particularly hard.

These are all pretty findable and uncontroversial statistics, but unfortunately one political tribe has invested a lot of capital in the notion inequality is inexorably increasing, so there’s a lot of pundit mileage in contorting these stats.(2) Which is sad, because these stats are good news for anyone who truly cares about inequality.

(1) I’m book-ending at 2019 because pandemic era macro is weird, and will take us some years to understand.

(2) I’m not making a partisan point here - stats are stats, and both political tribes lie endlessly about them when convenient.


> Inequality is declining by every measurable metric in the United States.

Economist Thomas Piketty would like to have a word. The top 1% takes more of the US national income than the entire bottom half and their share is increasing. Income growth in the bottom 20% is negative.[0] Although perhaps we have different definitions of inequality. If the rings of the ladder are pulling apart in this fashion I’m going to take that as evidence of increasing inequality.

[0] Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman (2018): _Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States_, Quarterly Journal of Economics 2, 2018, Vol. 133, S. 553-609.


This doesn't seem to be the case at all from the top two hits of googling inequality america but maybe there's a contrived way to come to any conclusion here.

But aside from that a more important metric than inequality is the real material conditions of regular people.

In Canada at least rents have been spiking for years on end which is directly reducing people's money on hand, and an inflation crisis is further compounding this issue this year. There's different situations in different US states, but I do not believe the situation is terribly different in many places.

Things are getting worse and worse because people have less and less money.


The census bureau disagrees - income inequality is increasing, not decreasing

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...


that chart includes a huge market bubble and excludes the subsequent bubble pop


> > A lot of this is related to inequality, value of labour detaching from wealth, and the increasing unaffordability of life.

> Inequality is declining by every measurable metric in the United States.

How would you explain any of these metrics? https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...


No not those metrics. The ones Tucker Carlson talks about.


Nah.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA


While I agree with the general point about inequality increasing, I would never trust any chart from the St. Louis Fed after they did this:

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/01/23/china-military-sp...


Over what period of time? Since 1980 there is a clear and dramatic increase in the the concentration of wealth. The pandemic and related problems may have stalled that trend for a time.


(the pandemic has, in fact, made every metric of income/wealth inequality markedly worse)


The $600 checks and free vaccine delivery were the major progressive policies I was thinking of. But those were definitely temporary.


I'm sure you're correct for a lot of metrics, but to say every metric is declining might be wrong. Homelessness is going up slowly but surely: https://www.statista.com/statistics/555795/estimated-number-...

Is this a direct measure of inequality? I suppose it depends but I would say yes?


citations, please.


Am I wrong to think these are just a typical Marxist class-struggle talking points?

At any rate, blaming the problems on inequality seems a lot like seeing everything as nail when all you have is a hammer. I'm not sure why OP's complaint that people don't care as much, or that they are loud and inconsiderate, necessarily has anything to do with inequality. The might feel like there's no chance to get ahead so I'm just going to not care and act inconsiderate. Or they might just be selfish, perhaps because we have ads constantly telling people "get the X you deserve". Or they might be selfish because that's human nature and since society rarely goes to church any more (only 31% attend weekly, 42% at least once a month [1]) they don't hear anything telling them that selfishness is "wrong". I'm sure you can think of other reasons that have nothing to do with economics or oppression.

Furthermore, I'm not sure that inequality produces not caring or inconsideration. Take the 1920s, which had higher levels of inequality than now [2]. People born in that decade are part of the "Greatest Generation", known for their self-sacrifice, not selfishness. My impression is that civic mindedness was actually a thing back then. And it's hard to tell what is representative looking back 100 years, but the buildings from that era seem to be well-built, and you see pictures of working class people in suits (I've seen one with men lounging around a seawall in suits, which you'd never see today). So I dispute that inequality necessarily produces what the OP complains about. (I also think the OP is also not seeing the unpleasant parts of the recent past.)

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/245491/church-attendance...

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Historical-economic-ineq...


Inequality and poverty are what fueled the very active socialists and communists and swelled the ranks of unions. The great depression only showed that the monied few needed to be constrained. Collectivism was the response to the greed of the time. And collectivists pushed FDR into his new deal reforms to build a social safety net in the US.

That was the greatest generation. It grew out of Marxist talking points.


This sounds like hammers looking for nails, too. I don't see how swelling the ranks of communists (which then unswelled a couple decades later) or unions has anything to do with inequality being the correct cause for OP's complaints about things getting worse. I'll agree with you that inequality and poverty fueling two things designed to deal with inequality and poverty (socialist/communist political thought and unions), but I think that's sort of a tautology. Now if you think swelling ranks of communists would be making the world worse than before, I'd agree with you, having lived in China and seeing how the communist governments have turned out...

Regarding the Great Depression, though, the generally accepted cause are generally seen as monetary policy failures and/or the effects of deflation [1]. Of course Marxists see the cause being inequality, but this is looking for nails for your hammer: Marxists only have one note in their song. You'd think that if inequality played a large part in causing the Great Depression, that there would be a fair number of economists--whose job it is to figure out why the economy does what it does--who would agree with that view. But they don't.

Calling the Greatest Generation as growing out of Marxists talking points is just ... well, I guess if you think that socialists, communists, unionists, collectivists, New Deal people are heroes, you might think it was a great generation, but I've never heard the term "Greatest Generation" as referring to anything of the sort.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#Causes


Maybe worry less about the classifications about whether something is Marxist or [whatever]-ist and think about whether the statements have any truth and makes sense or not.

Religion went away decades upon decades ago. It went away in my parents' generation. That is not new.

In my lifetime, the main variable that has been changing the most for the negative, rapidly getting severely and dramatically worse is the cost of living and in particular the cost of housing.

Maybe the causes of everything getting worse are just that simple.

https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...


> the increasing unaffordability of life

Define: life

What life exactly can people not afford anymore? The kind people had in 1900? 1950? 2000? What kind of trend are you indicating here, the last two years only or something broader? Because I don't know of a country not actively at war whose chance on a good life didn't improve over the last generation.

Things are ever getting better. Very few people would be willing to go back even to the level of life in 2000 where the internet was not commonplace (Wikipedia hadn't even started, let alone have some volume to it) and smartphones wouldn't exist for years to come either. Health and education also got better since then, though it was already very good in the rich countries that you and I are both likely from. Gas prices were lower, but you can choose to live in a place where you don't need to drive anywhere ever (i.e., most cities in most rich countries). I have a colleague in his 30s who doesn't have a driver's license because he's got no interest in it. It also saves a ton of money not to own a vehicle and just pay for the subsidized public transport. It's all choices you can make to live a very good life, affordably.


People conflate affordability of a certain lifestyle and affordability of a certain level of social status but they are separate things and people really care about both of them.


> Anyone else have other examples?

Elected president who is so crass and generally offensive he wouldn't have gotten close to being elected 50 years ago.

Elected president who is showing clear signs of age related cognitive decline (so they say) but continues to occupy the office.

Elected presidents with criminal behaviour that is far worse than what previous presidents were impeached or resigned for.

Mental illness, drug abuse, homelessness appears to be worsening in many cities while we're seeing record setting net worth individuals and corporations.

Environmental catastrophe lurking just around the corner, scientists pleading for action to the point of civil disobedience, same international apathy from governments.

Increased government surveillance and control, military equipment flowing into police forces, laws passed to allow government kidnapping of citizens without formal charges.


Yeah the stock trading in congress is another one for your list. I sometimes feel like America is the most corrupt country I've ever encountered. it's not overt like "Pay me $50 and you can avoid a ticket" but it's pernicious and wide spread.

- Law makers trade on what they're going to vote prior to voting it

- charging people a different price for the exact same procedure, at the same location, under the same market conditions simply for the reason of their income/insurance/whims

- nepotism and politicking in executive class (boards, Csuite etc), their lobbyists, and the ruling class ("elected" officials) etc. as an example Stock Buy backs are being decided by these groups and benefiting those groups' stock based income despite the duty to maximize shareholder value.


Yeah America has largely avoided the little corruptions like the cops shaking you down for money, but we've got massive amounts of large corruption instead. Although the way that corporations are looking for any kind of new parasitic revenue stream they can find (flip around displays with tip amounts growing everywhere) are sort of a kinder, gentler style of little corruptions.


That one popular Greek economist pointed this out in the way Northern Europe critiques Southern Europe as 'corrupt', the economist points out that while Southern Europe is rife with highly localized corruption, it is Northern Europe that is the breeding ground for systemic corruption by elites (pointing out various banking scandals, etc)


We've just got the cops that will murder you in cold blood for looking at them wrong. I think I'd take the $50 get out of jail free card, if I could.


If you think corruption is actually worse now than it has ever been, as opposed to better but more visible to the general public… I have a nice bridge to sell you.


Only problem is that most politicians will tell you that their money is in a blind "trust". The real issue is deregulation of banking and the incentivization of how debt was repackaged into new "investment" vehicles along with the reality that credit/financial risk assessment never became institutionalized.

Remember, all the sub-prime mortgages were given high marks in being safe risks once they were packaged vehicles of debt because banks could bully their way into giving them assessments that were less than factual due to business pressures put upon them from the competition.

The real current crime is that all the debt from 2008 never was written off in any way. This in turn has had a cascading effect on the economy globally.


everything on this thread relies on ignorance about what was occurring in some prior time

so transparency is improving huh


Thank. You. I’m shocked by how little historical context people here have.

It almost makes me wonder if the average age on here is extremely young? I remember at a young age I felt like the world was falling apart because I had 0 historical context, but a little bit of learning goes a long way to seeing how much the world has improved. Even in recent years.


A European nation casually invading another European nation, something we thought was now unthinkable not too long ago.


Um, Serbia invading Kosovo ring a bell ?

Before that you had decades of Cold War fear mongering, preceded by WW2.


Scary thought but yes this was 24 years ago!

Naivity perhaps, but after that crisis was resolved many political observers thought that Europe was on a path to a forever peace.


Technically Kosovo was part of Serbia back then. And it was a wee worse than „invading“.


Only if you haven't been paying attention or have the "war to end all wars" delusion that people sometimes seem to get. There have been all kinds of wars going on in Europe all the time basically forever[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe


Are you joking? Europe's history is full of this


Europe's history is full of this, but yes no joke there were many, many political observers who, not too long after the conflicts in the Balkan countries in the late 90s, and as countries formerly under Soviet influence became liberal democracies felt that this era of European history was in the past, that liberal democracies wouldn't invade one another yada yada and that there would never be any more wars in Europe.

Obviously they were wrong, or perhaps there just needed to be an asterisk next to Russia as they quickly regressed away from becoming a liberal democracy and all the conflicts recently have involved Russian aggression against its neighbours.


Are you talking about the 2022 invasion? The 2014 invasion? The Yugoslav wars in 1990? The cold war? The world war? The other world war? And that's just living memory.

How unthinkable is something that last happened between the same two countries eight years prior ._.


Maybe what is declining is a knowledge of history? Like, compare Andrew Jackson to Trump, or Reagan or FDR to Biden; it’s no contest. Public mental illness, drug abuse, homelessness were all worse during the 1980s and that’s just in my lifetime. Go farther back in U.S. history and there were entire cities of homeless, destitute, starving, and sick people. The idea that “homelessness” is even a problem that society should collectively address is barely 100 years old. Prior to that people died in the streets all the time and the only public funding was to pick up the bodies and bury them.


I think a lot of problems I see is caused by a general lack of curiosity of any sort of historical norms. I think this leads people to extrapolate what is normal (The Trump presidency was not normal in most respects, and many people treated it as if it was) and what isn't (current living standards actually are extremely high compared to even 40 years ago, but people think standards are declining).


Yeah the mid-'80s sucked in the US, but do you have any modern examples of decline? :-)


> Elected president who is showing clear signs of age related cognitive decline (so they say) but continues to occupy the office.

Donald Trump is many things, but I really don't think he's seeing more cognitive decline than an average 76 year old.


This is in surely reference to Biden. See things like https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=455169079910588


I'm reasonably sure that one doesn't refer to Trump


Reagan, Nixon?


True - one could say that removal of the dollar no longer being pinned to the value of gold could be a factor. But in reality all it's done is shift it to another asset like real estate.


I'll preface this by saying this is all anecdotal evidence based on my personal observations, so it may not apply to everyone.

I often feel the same way, especially with tech. For those of us that remember before the internet was ubiquitous, the optimism and promise of the "information super highway" seems in stark contrast with what we see today. I try to keep in mind a few things:

First, we are living in a time that will be regarded as one of the most consequential in history. We're only ~20 years of nearly every person in the planet having access to all human information, instantly. Think of what people will say about this time period in 200 years. We are currently feeling the effects of growing pains.

Second, everything that embodies that early optimism is still there, its just harder to find. Which is related to my next point:

We are seeing diminishing returns in the benefits of constant consumption of media, energy, food, etc. There is so much choice out there, and the margins are so thin, that you need to consume more to be "satisfied". I often reflect on how many more full TV series we have all seen compared to a few generations ago. Or how much text we all read daily in the form of news, tweets, and forums, compared to the daily paper. Are we better for it? I think a lot of people don't feel better.

So that leads to the optimistic conclusions of this post. Generally speaking, we have more choice than ever before in history, across the board. But we have the burden of the responsibility of moderation and curation.

I find that when I feel this way, I try to shift my "consumption" mental state to "construction". We live in an amazing time to make things and distribute them. And because there's so much noise to compete with, you have to do it friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor. Its a glimpse of how the best parts of the "new world" can provide the best parts of the "old world".


I say this without a political agenda but regarding the diminishing returns of consumption I think there is larger issue that is boiling: there is a huge existential crisis boiling due to the failing of consumerism and growth as the promised way to happiness and so as a goal in life. It’s paradoxical but all that progress has made it obvious that earning more to consume more is pointless because there is already so much available. The whole social contract that was implicit in the last decades/century suddenly has disappeared, climate change and pollution being additional nails in the coffin.

It sounds dramatic but I think the issues OP cites are because people are lost because they are suddenly waking up in a life that was on rails, experiencing a big existential crisis. It used to be a trope, but I think it’s happening for real now, the meaninglessness is becoming impossible to ignore.

But I’m with you on the optimistic side, because we now have so much opportunities to make interesting things and be happy if we can overcome that. For me the passing of relatives and stoic philosophy had already set me on the path of looking outside consumption (and status) for meaning.


> For me the passing of relatives and stoic philosophy had already set me on the path of looking outside consumption (and status) for meaning.

Would you mind talking more concretely about this?


Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is a good entry point. These are reflections of someone who had "everything" for its time (emperor during the golden age of the Roman Empire). It is an eye opener regarding how having things and being rich and powerful doesn't solve anything with what is the meaning of a life.

It is about about differencing what is in your control (what you think and do) and what is not (outcomes and what others think of you), doing what is right with courage and not worrying about outcomes. Ultimately because caring about the opinion of strangers who like you will soon die and be forgotten is pointless. Nobody cares if you're successful in your life, close friends and parents, while they are still there, only care about your happiness (and if not you can then confidently ignore them).

Also the book Sapiens was another eye opener for me on what is physically real and what lives in our mind collectively (nations, institutions, companies, money, relations, the name of things, ... or simply all the things other animals don't see are in our mind). Seems obvious but really working on intuitively knowing to differentiate the two really helps with identifying what problems are real and what problems are juste consequences of mental constructs, and so are self-imposed.

Don't want to spook you with spiritual bullshit but also mindfulness meditation (stoping thoughts, focusing on breathing and experiencing all senses) really works for me for experiencing all of that and happiness without any material thing or doing anything. I could be billionaire nothing I could buy could significantly really improve my life in a meaningful way. Nature will not be prettier, I will not have better friends to laugh, my coffee will not taste significantly better, ... Material thing and experiences are nice of course, I would absolutely enjoy them, but like all things they will pass and leave only insatisfaction if I crave or cling on them too much.


Thanks for the reply! Don't worry, I wasn't spooked.


Attention is the Cash Value of Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRwNnHjAo3k


This is a great idea! With everything on the internet trending towards instant gratification, it's counter intuitive for some of the most rewarding things to be slow. Building new relationships with people in your community takes time but it can be one of the nicest things when it goes well. Strengthening friendships usually feels worth it too.


Indeed we live in a world where someone taking a dump in a remote region of the amazon can tweet about it and I can instantly read about it from my couch..

It's astounding as a mere 4 decades ago such news as the amazon poop would of taken weeks to get out.

In the 90s this was not even a pipe dream for most people. I was tech savvy as a kid and at 12 I built my first computer but even I didn't foresee how connected we would end up.


It's not so much about the connection - it was there back then. It's the critical mass of people from all backgrounds communicating on platforms that allow consolidation of people's attention and the lowering of the bar that allows that to happen.

Where it has gotten difficult is filtering of dissenting opinion, finding specific information or other factors that may give reason to enable/disable something that someone may not have done normally due to herd mentality.


For those of us that remember before the internet was ubiquitous, the optimism and promise of the "information super highway" seems in stark contrast with what we see today.

I don't know. I think there's a little bit of a "you see what you're looking for" effect here. I look at the modern Internet, contrasted with the ideas we were talking about in the 90's and early 2000's and I see a lot of the good stuff has come to fruition in wonderful ways. I mean, right now I can use the Internet to sit in my home, jump on Youtube or Khan Academy, or videolectures.net, or Coursera, or Udemy, or Pluralsight, or Brilliant, etc. and for free or cheap learn just about anything I might want to learn. Math? Physics? Chemistry? Linguistics? AI? Geography? History? All there, in spades. And I can jump on Amazon or Alibris or Bookfinder and find cheap used copies of old / out-of-print books, not to mention tons and tons of (legal) free educational content such as the stuff listed at [1]. And if I'm willing to break the law, I can use ZLib, LibGen, etc. to get almost any book I could want. I can go to Stackoverflow, various niche sub-reddits, Mathoverflow, PhysicsForums, etc. etc. and ask questions of knowledgeable people who will help me with things I'm stuck on. And for free.

I don't mean to paint an overly rosy picture here. Obviously there are negatives that have evolved as well. Constant surveillance, the ubiquity of misinformation and conspiracy theories, election manipulation, etc. My point is just that focusing only on the negatives is also a misleading way of looking at things.

Think of what people will say about this time period in 200 years. We are currently feeling the effects of growing pains.

Agreed, 100%. It's a common refrain (one I believe to be true) in evolutionary psychology circles, that "technology advances much faster than human evolution and we are poorly adapted for the world we find ourselves in right now." Unfortunately I'm not sure what exactly we can to to mitigate that. :-(

[1]: https://cain.math.gatech.edu/textbooks/onlinebooks.html


Such a great comment, absolutely agree and going into "construction" is indeed the remedy for the bleak worldview. We truly do live in amazing times but it's also overwhelming.


> We're only ~20 years of nearly every person in the planet having access to all human information, instantly. Think of what people will say about this time period in 200 years. We are currently feeling the effects of growing pains.

>how much text we all read daily in the form of news, tweets, and forums, compared to the daily paper. Are we better for it? I think a lot of people don't feel better.

To add another anecdotal experience, much of what the complaint sounds like is the cycles of another generational sect (that I would group at about every 5-10 years) reaching an age where they start to see the world as "everything going to hell in a hand-basket", as my grandfather would say, or during my younger years, a college aged version of that. I image its the different information processing stages in which we go through growing pains and the destabilization of that causes this doom world view. My g'father listened to the radio and read the paper instead of watching one of the 3 news/tv stations because "all of the nonsense these days" (we bonded over baseball which we had watched without sound because the commentators "can't shut up and let us watch the game" [umpiring signals really said all that was needed and baseball seems to want to get rid of umps altogether, I see that as a tragedy but the next generation will probably see it as great progress].

I remember and was myself interested in lowrider culture, ie loud exhaust but also large woofers and amps. A friends dad had converted the entire truck bed with custom speakers, amps as well as including a hydraulics system. I dont see nearly as much of that these days, in the same city, that I did in the late 80's.

As for the OP and the "no body seems to give a shit about anyone except themselves anymore" this is also nothing new. people care about their clan and then care about outsiders when it is neutral or beneficial to do so, but now that the world is 'smaller' and it seems these 'outsiders' are everywhere it seems to make people overwhelmed and dig into their clan for respite (that's what I see anyway). Even my disdain for selfie culture can't be looked at as a new phenomena, I remember disposable cameras and Polaroids and how annoying it was to wait on friends/family taking pictures of themselves instead of enjoying The Experience™.

I just think with the increase volume and speed of stories and random people thoughts — that never would have made it into my sphere in the 80's/90's — and the change that brings, it again appears that the world is "going to hell in a hand-basket"


What interests me most about the current zeitgeist is that there is an generalized, or at least spreading, feeling of emptiness.

What replaces religion to fill this gap for a new generation who is not religious? (including myself)

Something very clear, a philosophy of life of some kind that people can adopt to feel like they are part of something bigger, without that something being a fictional being. And without devolving into a cult either.

And obviously I'm generalizing for my north american well-off white man point of view but I feel like living a balanced life, working out, having a good job, having good friends and family etc is all great but it feels like all of that is focused around ourselves.

There is no common thread and it just feels like we see obvious greed every day, perpetuated by massive corporations and protected by corrupt politicians, and there is seemingly no change.

Some other comments about the world becoming more adversial ring true to me.

It feels like we are approaching an unknown cultural revolution of some kind, with a general unease growing and no one being able to put the finger on it exactly and communicate it effectively.

Obviously my own perception comes into play here and on days where I'm happier I don't think much about it.

But generally there is a feeling that we are hurtling towards catastrophe and everyone is trying to profit before it's too late.

There is a mental barrier of irreversible climate change where I cannot imagine the year 2100 being anything other than dystopian.


> What replaces religion to fill this gap for a new generation who is not religious? (including myself)

> Something very clear, a philosophy of life of some kind that people can adopt to feel like they are part of something bigger, without that something being a fictional being.

The answer has revealed itself over the last few years: Progressive ideological activism (generally in pursuit of a long-off utopia).

The "something bigger" is the "progress" towards that utopia where all the evil -ists and -isms and -phobias will have been eradicated (along with those terrible people who believe them) and all the good humans will live in equality and diversity. It's a powerful idea, and while it has strong spiritual elements it doesn't posit an Abrahamic-like God. Yet it fills the psychosocial role that religion used to, while carrying forward the fundamental moral substrate of Christianity (the idea that the sufferer is more noble than the victor).

A minor side-religion is the climate change activist one, but that's been firmly muscled aside by idpol utopianism in the last 10 years.


You're right, I think that it's currently the most widespread form of what I'm trying to express.

However it lacks in character and clarity to be something that unites people. It's not enough of a way of life or way of thinking that can be adopted by a large part of the population.

Another reply mentioned "the diamond approach" and without even going into what that is, I also don't like the idea of anything being named.

It feels more like a boiling point where a group of people somewhere will rebel in a cultural and philosophic quiet revolution that spreads across society within a generation. It's too utopian obviously but it's a feeling of formatting the collective hard drive and starting fresh because it's just gotten too messy and cluttered and we've strayed too far down the wrong path.


When you say "to feel like they are part of something bigger", does the bigger thing have to be true? Does it have to be big enough to hold everyone (in some way)?

I suspect what you are sensing is society's vulnerability to the Neichian überman.


> Zarathustra first announces the Übermensch as a goal humanity can set for itself. All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings.

Quote from Wikipedia above

I had heard the term uber mensch before but I had presumed it referred to something else entirely.

In this context your question of whether the bigger thing needs to be "true" seems subjective. Is wanting human beings to work towards a better present and future for others a "truth"?

But in the sense that it is something true and not fictional like god, then yes to me true here means real and logical.

I don't understand what you mean by the "hold everyone" part though. If you mean that everyone on earth could adopt this philosophy or identify with part of it, obviously that would be great but quite impossible.

However you say "vulnerability" to the uberman, so having only given the Wikipedia article a quick once through, am I to understand that the idea presented is flawed or taps into a flawed part of humanity that wants to believe it to be possible?

I think your comment is probably the most curious I've been about getting an answer ever on HN.


Since "God is dead" the one who knows this is capable of taking control of the direction of humanity. Of taking control of the direction of morality and ethics and truth. If there is no real and logical proposition that is fit for all people and for all times then multiple such people can arise and strive for control, crushing all who oppose them, for none may judge the übermensch to come.

Think of this "unjudgability of the übermensch" like a fork in a cryptocurrency - when viewed from inside the system of the cryptocurrency there is no way to judge which fork is "correct". They cannot be reconciled without some external truth or even standard of truth - a lawgiver.

I say "vulnerable" because I don't believe that the Nazis were simply "a different fork" and that it could someday be "right" to massacre those who oppose the progress of history towards perfection - or even that it is possible to oppose that progress in the manner that the Hegelians (e. g. socialists, national and otherwise) mean.

I believe that there is an external reality to which all persons can give assent. I believe that we are flawed because we no longer want to give assent to that external reality (though we once did). I have hope because I believe that we have been given the chance to revive that desire, though the way is hard. That's why I say "vulnerable" - because the idea of the übermensch is a corruption of the truth.


I’ve found diamond approach to be very cohesive to a western critical as such an approach:

https://www.diamondapproach.org/blog/introduction-diamond-ap...

No fictional beings, no cult-like features in my experience. Just deep exploration of what is.


It's an interesting read but to me this is too intense perhaps.

I think it's the whole spirituality aspect that is pushed strongly and there's teachings and books and one on one sessions etc.

It doesn't seem like a cult or anything and I guess if ideas need to be spread, they need to be named but even their logo gives a culty religious vibe.

I understand that it's not, it's just an initial reaction I'm having to seeing it.

Maybe I fear going into too much abstract thinking so my first reflex is to want to avoid it. I feel like I spend too much of life already thinking rather than living.

I guess the time spent thinking could he spent thinking differently and that's what this would be about.

I also think that questions without answers are not compatible with my brain, I always need to know how things work. Anyways I'm ranting without much of a central theme here, thank you for sharing that link.


> But generally there is a feeling that we are hurtling towards catastrophe and everyone is trying to profit before it's too late.

Personally, I feel that if we can get through this moment of transition without self-destruction of humanity as we know it (such as the Ukraine/China conflicts not going nuclear), we will have entered an age of our next Renaissance where we would be much closer to some sort of "Star Trek" like utopia for mankind.

I do see this however being the bell tolling of White Anglo-Saxon heredity being removed from the throne and replaced with people with more melanin in their skin. This may not sit well with those who subscribe to racially ethnic purity ideals as what Hitler envisioned as a superior race is biologically reversed to be inferior until genetic mutations bring them back to a norm again.

But people, in general, focus too much on the actionable/measurable in time spans way to narrow to really appreciate how special it is to be: anything at all.

Generations have lived and died without being famous, being associated or related to anyone of any historical record let alone making any difference to the human condition.

However, this time - this collection of people and generations spanning over 75-100 years have seen man at both it's worse and it's best. Even better, the trend of it getting better is rising.

And the trend, is growing faster. As we've never been more connected to one another. Real information has never been more accessible.

And our connections have both deepened with one another as well as been eroded in other ways as what we value and how we approached it has changed. For some it can be scary. For others, it can't happen soon enough.

The only problem that we always have is that we'll never get to see the moment past when we die. But if the body is just a container for the soul, that shouldn't matter.

For those who don't subscribe to that, it appears in recent news that could be changing as well. Or we evolve into singularity. Or we destroy ourselves another way. The fact is that what we know is that we're not whole without others.

For us to be whole requires us to allow for it else to be everything and everywhere. And that to me sounds like reverting to being nothing at all or a return to the before life existed... and that was a long f'n time ago.


> I do see this however being the bell tolling of White Anglo-Saxon heredity being removed from the throne and replaced with people with more melanin in their skin. This may not sit well with those who subscribe to racially ethnic purity ideals as what Hitler envisioned as a superior race is biologically reversed to be inferior until genetic mutations bring them back to a norm again.

I was with you until you said this. Choosing who you want to lead based on how much melanin they have in their skin is an extremely dangerous precedent. Statements like this are exactly why it's impossible to debate social issues today.


I really believe that this is what happens when you go so long without a substantial recession coupled with an easy money regime.

There's apathy because no one has been scared in a long time. Landlords haven't been scared of not finding renters and not being able to pay their mortgages. Workers haven't been really scared of not finding jobs. Businesses have not really been scared of not being able to raise money.

Awful behavior in general comes from an absence of fear. Recessions were the natural force that brought fear and its ensuing product, sanity, to markets. Remove that and you get our current state of things.


> Awful behavior in general comes from an absence of fear

I assume you meant _specific_ fears about the consequences of one's _specific_ actions (e.g. fear of harming someone else, or fear of receiving backlash for it; or fear of squandering scarce funds for a business).

Fear does not unconditionally bring sanity. I've found widespread, chronic, low-grade background fear to be an equally significant driver of awful behavior (and irrationality), often (but not always) co-occurring with an absence of specific consequences.

(The implication being that trying to "solve" this problem with more general terror, as opposed to specific consequences, would likely backfire.)


Fear doesn’t bring sanity, but scale might. Facing hardships and overcoming them generally seems to give people a sense of scale. It gives people a sense of contentment, which subdues greed.

Then again, hardships do also break people, so I don’t know.


Psychologists might call it controlled exposure to fear, under conditions where you know (or will soon know) that things will more or less be all right / have a safe space to retreat to. (Which is a bit subjective, but most people seem to have a few things in common that they value for their security.)

When it feels like everything is slipping away from you, it’s easier to become desperate. This could be the result of losing your sense of scale, or it could be the result of a genuine, significant threat (or anything in between).

EDIT: also think of people in general as lying along orthogonal spectrums of (1) psychological vulnerability, and (2) material and social precarity. People high on either scale suffer disproportionately; and tougher times means a wider spectrum of people that are likely to break (whether just to survive or letting the stress get to them, or more commonly both).


Sure, but it also sounds like OP stopped being grateful. You know, for the little things, like having plentiful food to eat, a roof above your head, being warm in winter, etc. If you read this tirade to 99% of the world population they will laugh in your face. Complaining about not getting enough ketchup with your takeaway, a rental application fee or being tailgated is being privileged.


That's an absurd comparison. If your reality is becoming worse, telling yourself that you should be grateful just because your reality is still better than some random person thousands of miles away doesn't help. Especially if you have no real power to change that other person's reality, BUT have power and a voice to change your reality.

By this logic, no one should ever complain or try to change anything. Because surely, someone, somewhere, has it worse. Got cancer? Well, someone somewhere has cancer AND a two broken legs.


> when you go so long without a substantial recession

2008 was 15 years ago. It caused a lot of pain and human misery, just not among the social classes that typically comment on hacker news.


and also innovation and respect for honest hardworking people


> I’m aware of pinker’s general argument that many numbers are getting better.

I reject the entire premise on the grounds that a list of supposedly bad things without any attempt to compare it to something proves absolutely nothing, no matter how large the list is. If you’re aware of Pinker’s argument, why are you ignoring it? Why not explore it, follow up on the stats and see if he’s right?

It does seem like a lot of people are wallowing in bad news and convincing themselves to be hopeless, several threads have gone by HN recently along those lines, and I can think of friends and family members that are stuck on this too. I have no idea if it’s gotten worse, but seems plausible the pandemic and lower rates of in-person social activity combined with some bumpy politics recently combined with social media and news cycles that successfully engage people in outrage 24-7, seems like all those things may very well increase the perception that things are worse, regardless of the reality.

> Anyone else have other example?

This is explicitly seeking confirmation bias. Why not instead solicit counter-examples? Good news is occurring all the time, and for whatever reason it gets lets attention online and in the media. I highly recommend consciously seeking out good news in your life, it may answer your question.


30-50 years ago, with a single salary you could support a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, multiple kids, and a car. Our society knew how to make that happen once, and we've forgotten.

We've had incredible advances in technology and productivity since then, so why can't we have that kind of economic environment now? What's gumming up the works?


The US population in 1972 was 209b, now 333b. I remember learning about the black plague in middle school. There were many fewer people after the plague. The survivors could command much higher wages, and had more freedoms than before. Crowded environments make for pressures that are unpleasant for everyone.

I think moving to a less crowded location where your individual contribution in society is more valued could be a good start.

A lot of people have been moving to California, making it not as nice as it was even 10 years ago. People sit in traffic forever. Rents are unaffordable for everyone moving in.

Social media makes everyone miserable. Probably best to avoid that.

I’m on vacation in Thailand, noticed some nice things about life here:

1. Everyone has a shop under their house, or food truck somewhere. People hang out at their shop, and it’s also like their living space. People come to buy, but also friends just hang out together in these spaces. The constant connection with others is really nice. It’s possible there is less pressure to fine work with the additional income.

2. Best traffic of any country I’ve visited. Crowded, busy, but no one honks at each other. Everyone gets let in, people respect others space on the road. The large number of scooters makes it easy to find parking, get to your destination without too much stop and go hassle.


Birth rate in the US has been in a decline for a while now - both in the US and globally. In the US, the last uptick was in 2021 but it's been dropping since 1983. It's already has caused China to reverse their one child per couple law and Japan population numbers are going to force that country to reconsider what it means to be Japanese that will have long lasting repercussions to it's society.

People are also leaving California in droves too - to Texas where they were lured by people chasing after HGTV "Property Hunters" home prices - just to end up in another ticky-tacky neighborhood being pressured to keep up with the jones.

If the trend of telecommute is allowed to be the norm, then there is a much higher likelihood of population distribution which will bring it back to a more stoic level. But this will impact global trade which we've seen needs to be rebalanced anyhow due to the supply chain issues presented during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Scale that globally, then maybe there will be better ground to discuss "nationality" in a different light compared to our current political borders. Especially when it comes to law and powers given to a person that is allowed by a society.

Because even the UN can use some improvement.


Life always seems better on vacation. It's not really a fair comparison. I'm sure people from Thailand vacationing in CA also feel like it's better.


This is true 100%. Also, as a foreigner it is easy to see what people here have, or take for granted that we are missing in the United States.


One reason is changing geopolitics. USA is not the sole superpower that it was in the 60s. Other countries are also doing a lot better now. A lot of the jobs in manufacturing have been outsourced to China, in service industry to India. This has led to shift of wealth from US to these countries. The days of American exceptionalism are probably ending. It's only going to get tougher from here.


easy to blame this, but all productivity gains in the US for 40 years have gone to the top; the reason is that our labor market has been undercut by immigration (legitimate and illegitimate) and globalized supply chains. workers do not have the ability to extract higher wages because of a concerted international project to make the labor market as liquid as possible and arbitrage populations with lower standards of living against them. this has been a huge boon to the owners and financiers of industry (and parts of the developing world) at the expense of normal americans. this is the trade our masters have made on our behalf, beginning as a solution to the economic crisis of the 1970s, and as a dead woman once said, "there is no alternative".


What you are seeing is perpetuation of both the rich staying rich and those who were able to capitalize from the technologies invented between 1940 to now. The same could be said in the US at the turn of the last century (1900). The advances that will happen now will be largely thanks to Machine Learning and Quantum computing as our understanding of Quantum Level Physics grows.


This is also a fair point as the USA after WW2 was the only first world nation with an untouched industrial base (that was recently upgraded thanks to the tax payers). That gave the USA an insurmountable advantage as the rest of the world rebuilt.


The USA weren't the sole superpower in 1960s.


I'd go so far as to say that the US is more the sole superpower in the 2020s than it was in the 1960s.


People in the 60s were afraid of nuclear war with the other superpower, USSR. In the 80s job were outsourced to the Japan superpower. USA has never been alone up there. Maybe in the 90s.


The reality is that we need to think about how a population of people will survive when it's more efficient and easier to mechanize a job.

We saw it during the pandemic as we see more of it now. They're finding ways of mechanizing agriculture to make more food with less labor input. They are finding ways of improving health by improving the cognition of machines to find black and white problems within the data deluge. They're even finding ways of making burger flippers and package delivery people obsolete by building machines to do the tasks.

Because when you push a business to try to solve labor problems, they will look for ways of growth that may not include people in general.

That has nothing to do with nationalistic ideals but with simple Capitalism. If you legislate the requirement of it, then what changes how we evolve?

It seems immoral to force people to do something they may not want to do at the same time people will complain that the value of one person shouldn't be held to be lower than another.

Basic income so far has been showing the best way to address this issue - and we've all seen a form of it during the pandemic. What needs to happen is to get society as a whole to make it permanent.


To echo the sentiments of the other commenter: is it really fair to compare everything to the period immediately after the USA won a global mega war and all the other regions internally tore themselves apart?

I assume you live in the US because you probably wouldn't be glorifying 30-50 years ago if you lived in USSR sphere or any country affected by the proxy wars.

Why don't you pick a more representative time period of human existence for comparison, like 1800s or something.


Probably because income inequality is at an all time high in the USA. When 1% of the population has +60% of all wealth....

What's gumming up the works are the billionaires who have more money than whole countries using that power to get favorable laws and treatment. Once you reach a certain level of money you can just print more basically by manipulating the systems in place.


There's not a fixed amount of goods in the world. Middle class people today are far wealthier than they were 100 years ago.


There’s a fixed amount of real estate however. Rent and housing prices have doubled over the past few years in my market of interest. the wealthy have been buying up second and third homes, landlords have been outsourcing collusion to black box ML models, mega-investors have been gobbling up land, housing starts have been trending down while the population has been growing.

I can't sleep on in a macbook.


I always hated the arguments you're replying to. As if owning electronics, gadgets, or other plastic trinkets is akin to living a life where you don't have to constantly worry about housing, healthcare, retirement, or education and every little thing that can cause your path to come crashing down (getting in a car crash could potentially mean losing your job, losing your job equating to losing health insurance, etc).

I just have to assume people espousing things are divorced from reality, because how else can you equate a poor person owning a microwave to societal success?


We refuse to build houses at the rate the population is growing and doubled the labor force by adding women. Simple laws of supply and demand explain it.


> and doubled the labor force by adding women

This has really been the biggest scam in recent history without regulations going along with it to reduce the work week accordingly. It's insane to me that we still expect the average worker to spend ~1/2 of their waking life working for other people.


Largely, overly aggressive (shareholder) profit maximalization. Productivity shot up but wages didn't follow. The only two countries I know that have a working work-life balance are France and Spain. The French are raising their voices and protesting for every little thing and it works. 6 weeks of holiday per year and 62 years of retirement age. Still, a middle class person can afford to drive a new car and many families have 2-3 properties just from their work income.


If you wanted to keep living with the same standard of living as back then you could do it as well. The average family had a 1,000 sq ft house, a single car, almost never went out to eat, never traveled on airplanes, etc.


We expect much much much nicer things.


Yeah, that house had one bathroom. One phone. Zero air conditioners. Zero computers. The four kids had two bedrooms with bunkbeds. The TV was black and white with 2.5 scratchy channels. If the car made it to 50,000 miles you were doing well. Entertainment was maybe a trip to the movies once a month. Eating out was for celebrations only.

Certain things have gotten worse, though. The neighborhood was pleasant, with friendly families and social clubs and a walk to the park right there. The television and newspaper and local college and personnel dept. at work weren't constantly telling you how racist you are.


We have become wealthier in terms of material goods but poorer in terms of social capital. I wonder if there's some inevitable relationship there, like if you don't have much you are more likely to seek the support of others.


I'm not a historian but I'm pretty sure a lot of people talked about racism in the '60s! People thought the same thing about colleges, television, and movies pushing a radical racial message.


> I'm not a historian but I'm pretty sure a lot of people talked about racism in the '60s!

But less so around the mid-1990s, which was the nadir of the perceived incidence and racism in the US (and this is fairly consistent—though the degree of perceived racism and concern about it is not—across racial groups.)

So, while the issue is not new, and not by any means the worst it has ever been, there is a generally greater perception of a problem today tha a few decades ago, whether the problem is worse, sensitivity/standards are higher, or some mix or other factor.


This. Lifestyle creep at the social level. Smart Phones, dishwashers, Netflix and so on. You CAN still find multi-bedroom homes w/in an hour of large metros that a single income can support. Go to New Jersey and get a <200K one with a 45 min drive to Manhattan.


In those decades most consumer goods have become cheaper (adjusted for inflation), but we've seen drastic increases in the cost of housing, medicine, education, and infrastructure. Those are big money pits.

As for why this happened, and continues to happen, and what could be done to fix it... those are hard questions. You can see some good grappling with the subject in this article, and the follow-up listing other people's responses to it:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/17/highlights-from-the-co...


> 30-50 years ago

One of the reasons that is not mentioned is that in the 1960s, the US's share of global GDP was 40%, today it's around 24%.


Everything isn’t declining. Things were never great, by any modern definition. We just have an expectation that things are supposed to be easy breezy nowadays, and it turns out people are still people.

Like, are you telling me that NYC landlords in the 90s weren’t trying to scam their tenants? That Philly police in the 80s were clean, efficient, trustworthy public servants? That there was less fraud in the .com boom, or before the Great Recession, then now with AI-SaaSchain nonsense?

I used to go to a burger place where the cashier would just tell me to fuck off if I ordered too slow. I can’t imagine trying to tell that dude he forgot _napkins_ in my bag.

I totally get the urge to rant too. People suck. But don’t lose hope! Because people always sucked, and it’s nothing new.


That was my reaction too. I've been around a while and none of this sounds like anything new. In fact, as a whole things have gotten better than they used to be.


I agree as well. I think it's common to start to see negatives as you grow older and more jaded. Some intuitive/anecdotal evidence is the generally blissful demeanor of children compared to adults.

The world is not actually getting worse on net. There are certainly some things that are difficult or frustrating more so now than in the past. However, overall society is generally more accepting than ever before, and human and technological development are also perpetually rising.


As I age, I am coming to the same conclusion.

Religions have a lot of warnings about the nature of people which I always brushed off but now I feel like I’m starting to understand.


When I see people start discussions like OPs, my first reaction is always, "Ah, you've just started paying attention to the news. Yeah, it's always been like this. Welcome to the world."


The energy gradient which powers civilization is decaying.

Civilization must conifgure itself around a new, steeper gradient. Only catch: it must use the old gradient to power this transformation.

https://gist.github.com/clumma/214831723c7d567cc343cc0767273...


Accurate and sobering. TY


The energy content of an average rock – one you can go outside and pick up right now – is enough to melt it 1,000 times.

(Except coal – it's one of the least energetic rocks you can find.)

There's no catch. It's just that good. Why isn't it being done?

One might have asked the same thing about coal at the start of the industrial revolution.

"For untold years men froze on the site of what now are coal mines, and starved within sound of the Niagara that is now at work providing food."[1]

Steam engines were around for half a century before Boulton and Watt, and coal had been used for heating and metallurgy since Roman times at least.[2] It would have been natural to dismiss them as big, incredibly expensive machines of limited use.[3]

The answer seems to be that configuring and reconfiguring civilization is tricky... But there's plenty of reason for optimism.

[1] https://gist.github.com/clumma/2ffed4289963dec56d39

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Roman_Britain#Coal

[3] https://twitter.com/clumma/status/1603079619527299073


As for the declining quality of products and services, we are leaving a decade where start-ups were burning VC money to provide a service that was both superior and cheaper, in order to starve their competitors. Now that the competitors are dead, prices/monetization will increase and quality will drop in many areas.

This will hit twice as hard if you were an early adopter, because you also stop being the target audience for most of these products.

And on a smaller scale (restaurants, corner shops, small businesses), the default state of being for most companies has always been to slowly decay over long periods of time. The brand new business that earned your loyalty a decade ago may be worse today, but there's certainly another new business today that you can be impressed with. You just need to find it.


Little things I've noticed decay in my 40 plus years.

I noticed credit card machines fail a lot more. Like 5 or 10 years ago credit card machines very rarely failed. Like you didn't even think about it. Now it's like a 25% chance the credit card machine I'm using will not work properly. This is not a new technology.

No one lets you in in traffic anymore. you used to be able to put your blinker on and people would wave you in. Now people are actively hostile and try to stop you from getting over.

There's a lot more scammy activity. Things like if you forget your tracking number or if you don't get documentation then that transaction will be gone.

Customer service has gotten terrible. You used to be able to call up and relatively quickly speak with someone knowledgeable and competent in many support phone lines but now it's a mostly hopeless endeavor that you wait online for an extremely long time to speak with the super friendly but clueless incompetent person.


I have used credit cards for 15+ years and I cannot remember a single time the terminal did not work. Worldwide, in at least 10 countries. I might have gotten denied due to the bank suspecting fraudulent use, but never a technical error with the terminal or network.

I think it is pretty amazing. I vaguely remember my parents and grandparents discussing or using traveler's cheques (which I never got around to understanding the concept of), but I can go almost anywhere in the world, use my credit card, or use my debit card, and get cash out via a machine at near the spot rate of pretty much any currency and pay no fees.


I’m probably about the same age as you and my anecdotal evidence is probably the opposite as yours. I use my credit card all the time (I hate cash) and never have had a failure in probably 10 years. I have people wave me or others into their lane all of the time often in an unsafe manner or one that is leading to traffic jams. Customer service is usually pretty terrible but it has been pretty bad for as long as I can remember.


We added tap to pay, which has made things much quicker. My tap to pay was failing, but my card was old, I got it replaced and it works really well for me. I wonder how much internet connectivity is a factor here.

Certain vehicle models people do not want to let in front of them. Other people only let you merge when you send the correct messages in a very specific and intricate language communicated using your vehicle. I believe I have mastered this vehicle language and driver psychology, and I personally rarely have an issue merging. I also don't drive a big, new or expensive car, which probably helps.

People abusing the customer service model necessitated changes to customer service delivery in some companies. Abuse meaning any call not strictly required, or any longer than is strictly required, or asking for anything which is not reasonable to ask for given the price that is being paid.

I'm not presuming that any of the above apply to the above commenter or anyone else specifically, these are sort of general observations about society at large.

Further, I think many changes that people see as negative are also the inevitable consequences of the behavior that they also see as normal. For example, if a gigantic disparity in wealth/income is flaunted, people are surprised or upset when others are jealous of that wealth, though it should be an obvious outcome. There are many, many examples of this that could be given.


> Now it's like a 25% chance the credit card machine I'm using will not work properly. This is not a new technology.

I don't know where you live but I use my credit card around 2x a day and I can't actually remember the last time it didn't work. Conversely, I remember in the past having them bring out the manual credit card carbon copy machine when their system was done. I believe the last time I did that was around 2007 so it seems like things have gotten much more reliable since then.


Additional decay I've noticed.

Airlines have become horrible!


Additional decay: Spam calls. Very rarely used to have spam calls on the 90s now it's daily occurance.


I think we're on the verge/in the middle of a stagnating/shrinking pie. When we're not growing in population and wealth things get dark as people chase zero-sum short term gains at the expense of others.

Distrust runs rampant, people turn to the extraction of their peers vs expansion with their new friends.

It will get better.

Edit:

Think bigger than the extractors!


To add to this - the car guy might think he has something to prove by blaring his engine at 7am: "I'm going to show them all" or something.

An alternative thought is "I'm not going to do that because I don't want to upset potential friends/future relationships that will benefit me"

Likewise, it sounds like you're upset at all of these people and would like to just be left alone

An alternative thought is "Look at all of these people around me who are don't feel like they have a place in the community or that they won't have enough in the future. What can I offer to my community, and how can I get them involved?"


This is the correct response, whether or not things are objectively getting worse (I tend to agree with OP). The problem is this seems difficult; in reality, it's as simple as looking for ways to be kind to people or improve your community. Pick up a piece of trash, smile, wave, say good morning to people. Help someone who's dropped their things pick them up. Personally whenever interacting with anyone I try to make their day a little brighter. It can seem like this type of thing doesn't make a difference, but it's contagious. Someone seeing a person be kind to a stranger will be more likely to emulate that in the future. We can change the world one person at a time.


Exactly this. What can I offer my community. How can we be better to one another. There is no us and them. Find a cause, there’s plenty of them. I’m currently reading vendana shivas new book and it is inspiring to read and embrace the seed as a symbol of hope for the future. Plant seeds in the world instead of critiquing the garden


> I think we're on the verge/in the middle of a stagnating/shrinking pie. When we're not growing in population

If population were to decline, wouldn't that mean each person's piece of the pie is growing? If "piece of pie" is real estate or some other scarce resource that would seem to be the case.


Yeah a changing population has a variety of extraordinarily confusing effects

Certain resources would become more available such as land and housing, while others like say, new cheap speakers that rely on plentiful hands and brains, would become scarce. You may see people who are retired and rely on new speakers staying cheap use laws or force to maintain their same level of access to new cheap speakers, at the expense of everyone else. The newfound access to housing in desirable areas may also not be a panacea: with a decrease in hands and brains some neighborhoods may find themselves poorly maintained, abandoned, or even dropped from local utilities (like in Detroit when its population drastically changed).

In general I think, in the USA, a growing population is a good thing for our pie. There's some level of population where too many people is bad, but until then each person adds to the experience of everyone else.

Even for housing it would feel positive: if our population was growing quickly many wouldn't mind moving to St. Louis - today's St. Louis will be nothing compared to tomorrow's Mega Louis, for example!


No. "the pie" is total productivity, and "the pie eaters" is total consumption. Every human is both producer and consumer of this pie. The problem is not over/underpopulation, but the distribution of producers and consumers. Young people are more productive than old people, and that's why declining birth rates (and longer lifespans in retirement) are a problem. The scale is tipping to having more consumers than producers.


The pie is still getting bigger very quickly. It's the share of the pie that belongs to the 99% or even 99.9% that is getting smaller. Recall those stats saying "the top x richest people in the US have more wealth than the bottom y% of Americans". The ratios they present have only been getting more extreme over time. The latest report from Oxfam[1] says things like:

* In the last 10 years, billionaires have doubled their wealth, making nearly six times more than the increase in wealth seen by the bottom 50%.

* Since 2020, for every dollar the bottom 90% have gained, billionaires have gained $1.7m.

* 81 Billionaires hold more wealth than 50% of the world combined.

* During the worst of the pandemic, according to the World Bank, the income losses among the poorest 40% of humanity were twice as large as among the richest 20%, and global income inequality has risen for the first time in decades.

See Section 1.1 for the big hitter statistics. Chapter 2 goes into the whys, which corresponds pretty closely to a description of what you could call a cartel operation conducted by the global elite.

...so not only is the pie already insanely skewed, but the companies that these people control are raising profit margins on essential goods and services during a time where those who are already precariously-positioned in our economy are losing out on income opportunities so fast that global progress on income inequality reversed during this time.

This is literally entirely about the extraction being done by the class of people who have executive control over the policies and mechanisms of extraction -- minerals/metals/water/fossil fuels/generally physical extraction, predatory/extractive behaviors in finance, privatization vis a vis a minimization of accountability which acts as a force multiplier for extraction, etc.

These are those who pat themselves and each other on the back for flying on planes powered by kerosene to a centralized location to make non-binding, unenforceable gestures in the loose shape of policy at periodic COP and Davos summits. These are those who pacify and distract the masses with unified narrative-making campaigns to manufacture consent for the status quo -- lies like "recycling is an individual problem" and "privatization and unregulated markets are prosperous economies", as well as redirections and mislabelings like "wouldn't more cops (guns) in school mean children will be safer?" and "through our cameras you can see violent, out-of-state rioters in the streets".

A wealth tax is not an insane idea. It is a gentle brake that allows us to regain enough control of our earth-ship to maneuver around the imminent obstacles. We can talk about more radical steps if you want, I'm all about more active global economic management, but we need to recognize what this system is becoming.

[1] https://webassets.oxfamamerica.org/media/documents/survival-...


> flying on planes powered by kerosene

And at leasy until very recently, leaded kerosene. Long after leaded fuel has been banned for regular (car-driving) people due to it's known disastrous health effects.


This is pretty much just the inevitable consequence of a market-based, individualist society that is obsessed with removing any standards or expectations on behavior, cultural output, language use, dress, or anything else. Unfortunately, I don't expect things to improve until people start caring about their local communities (i.e. the other people around them) and "Society" in general in a concrete, actionable way, and not just an ideological, tribalist, abstract way.


Probably hard to do without religion. Dont mention europe. They have marginally larger governments.


I'm not sure how size of government is supposed to affect "expectations on behavior, cultural output, language use, dress, or anything else". Do European countries have Bureaus of Politeness and Decorum that send civil servants around to tell people to tuck their shirts in, queue properly, and be courteous to strangers?


Do we really need religion to care about other people? Perhaps we could first try to limit how much some individuals can extract from society and then redistribute that wealth to make people feel appreciated for contributing to society.


Hard to extract wealth. You can prevent Apple from making money off you by not buying their products. Also when you come for others wealth with guns don’t complain when your moral absoluteness generated out of thin air is not received well. Why don’t you demonstrate surpassing selflessness with your own wealth and time first.


Yes. Your prescribed remedy reminds me of Scruton's oikophilia.


Thanks for this suggestion, I have listened to a few lectures by Scruton but I’ve been meaning to read more of his books.


People notice and express this pattern every year for all of recorded history. People also express the opposite, seemingly as often and seemingly as perpetually.

It might just be subjective. There are countless things to see in the world and you can make a list of examples affirming whatever you want to (or dread to) believe.


Yes pretty much this. It’s subjective based on an enormous number of factors. Your lifestyle, your personal experiences, reading too much news (especially in the US), having a pessimistic attitude towards everything, your general personal beliefs and how they align with the world. The list goes on. Many of these factors can be personally influenced.

For example, I live in the Bay Area and love it, have lived here seven years now. I had a friend live here for three years and tell me how terrible it was and listed off all the terrible things about it. The experience was subjective and I respect that; he found a way to have a more positive life by leaving and good for him.

Not all things are equal, especially our perceptions of the world.


What I would love to know is what percentage of the population have a pessimistic view of the future currently.


> People notice and express this pattern every year for all of recorded history. People also express the opposite, seemingly as often and seemingly as perpetually.

These are not incompatible observations. The likely truth is that some things are getting better - but that should not mean that we need to tolerate other things getting worse. If housing is becoming less affordable then that is not mitigated by availability of shiny gadgets.


People express this pattern many times in history because it was indeed better to live in some eras than in others.


54 years old so here is the mixed bag I have seen in my area (South)

  1. Absolutely there is a decline in quality/cleanliness and low to mid restaurants in my area. I don't even bother checking my order and assume it will be wrong. Many places we go into look like a disaster so my family has just quit eating out. I was at a Red Lobster and two employees got in a scream fight because all the cooks just walked off the job. The manager eventually walked out and shooed everyone that did not have food out the door. I don't know the root cause but the degradation happened post Covid.

  2. People do seem less considerate of others. I have decided to not coach youth soccer anymore due to crazy parents. We had a street fight in my middle class neighborhood. Many other examples - maybe it's my local area but I have lived here most of my life.

  3. I am a middle aged white guy and even I am scared of the police. Scared mainly because they seem so scared and on edge.

  4. The "business" people have taken over IT. I do feel bad for the next generation. We are wealth generators for people that hate to be dependent on us.  

  5. On the plus side, society seems much more tolerant of minorities (race/sexual orientation/religion/etc)


> 5. On the plus side, society seems much more tolerant of minorities (race/sexual orientation/religion/etc)

I don't think this is really a case of increased tolerance but rather a change of who is in the in-group. There is still plenty of hate and discrimination tolerated when it is towards someone who is not in one of the currently protected classes but differs in some other way from the "norm". In fact, the current approach to race/sexual tolerance is all about dividing people into groups based on superficial or mostly irrelevant traits rather than just treating everyone as human.


I'm not saying that I agree with all of your points (the air and water were far worse in the mid-20th century in many areas, for example), but let's take it as given and advance an hypothesis: decreasing time horizon. The ever-increasing (because self-feeding) pace of technological change, means that there is less and less predictability about the situation in the future, so timescales over which people plan are shortened. This is most obvious in the example of software being made for a very short time horizon, with the idea that it will be regardless obsolete in a short time, and anyway faster and faster hardware will overcome software bloat. Whether correct or not, a shorter and shorter timescale in planning is probably inevitable if things change faster and faster, which they are.

Just an hypothesis.


To be clear I'm not trying to say "lets use waterfall to preplan the software"

I'm more saying things like "Does design, modularization, organization, or things like SOLID principles" matter at all? When i've had projects that I've had near total control over I've been able to get to a place where many product asks were trivial. Or the obvious extensions were. Things like "Can you add a new permission to the sytsem, or cover a new resource type with permission constraints?" I built a system where the other proposal would have taking a large constant amount of time to add each new resource permission (each permission was a bool column on the user table) . Whereas my design I simply added a couple string consts and a wrapped the resource's ORM portions in a decorator. Basically done in the time it took to have the meeting where the product person asked.

But these kinds of future value software seems to be denigrated because the opinion seems to be that its going to take far too long to implement, but in my experience the "good" solution and the crap ones (accounting for marginally excess bugs) are at most 10% longer to implement. Sometimes the crap implementation appears 50% faster to do, but then an observant person would note that it has pernicious bugs for months or years that destroys the team's velocity.

Also just an anecdote and hypothesis.

But here's an appeal to an expert who I agree with https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html


shorter time horizon could also be related to pervasive awareness of existential risks going unaddressed

maybe people also (in many cases correctly) intuit that any effort they put into their role in society, much less extra effort to help solve collective problems, is not only not matched but is likely be taken advantage of by people with outsize influence/power/privilege

a wicked incentive/alignment/coordination problem, in other words


The quality of some products is getting worse for sure because companies are enlarging their margins by saving as much as they can to reduce their costs with obvious repercussions on the quality. It is also part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Refrigerators used to last forever. I still have a 1993 refrigerator that is still working well. In the meanwhile with all brands except maybe for Subzero and other $10k refrigerators you are lucky today if the refrigerator lasts 6 years.


The appliance manufacturers blame energy-efficiency regulation for the massive drop-off in longevity. For myself, I'm 100% sure that they just saw an opportunity to cut quality and serviceability to nothing and blame regulations. It was sickening when I delivered appliances. So many stories about how they replaced their 20-year-old fridge 4 years ago and now they're replacing the replacement. There are no good options left on the market that aren't multiple times the cost of the already extravagantly priced Samsung wifi-enabled smart fridges.

"Oh, if people wanted to pay for longer-lastong appliances then they would still be on the market. It's really the consumers' fault that our $3k fridges only last 5 years"

BS. If I had a dime for every customer who said they'd rather have bought a smaller, less fancy appliance with more longevity for the same price, I'd have enough to manufacture my own line of fridges that don't crap out the day the warranty ends.


This is sort of what I worry about with the economy I’m a nutshell: everyone’s so worried they won’t get theirs so they cut corners and deflect when called on it.


>Landlords seem extremely greedy

>People are noisy as fuck

>General worker apathy is endemic

>Seems like everything is subscription model

>Police seem to not give a shit anymore

In my personal opinion all of these are related and it is like this because an average person has nothing left to strive for.

Example: a property I've bought 2 years ago went up by 20%. There's very few people who can keep up with such crazy price increases. Who can keep up with something like this? Certainly not a McDonalds employee, nor a regular policeman. Even if they do get a raise it won't make a much of an impact because it will be instantly devoured by a rent increase or by some subscription service raising prices. The numbers will go up but the standard of living decreases.

So why would they care? No one seems to care about the problems of these people, so what incentive they have to care about others?


Let's hope we're not headed towards Singapore or 14th century Venice, https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/46499129502/the-rise...

> Venice had prospered under a relatively open political system in which a wide swath of the people had a voice in the selection of the republic’s ruler, the doge, and successful outsiders could join the ruling class. But in 1315, the establishment, which had been gradually tightening its control over the government, put a formal stop to social mobility with the publication of the Libro D'Oro, or Book of Gold, which was an official registry of Venetian nobility. If you weren’t in it, you couldn’t join the ruling oligarchy.


What makes Singapore comparable to 14th century Venice?


https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/oligar...

> .. certain extreme concentrations of minority power in society can exist under a variety of regimes ranging from authoritarian to democratic. Oligarchic power in advanced industrial contexts, for instance, is almost universally fused to procedural democracy. Although it is impossible to focus on all the cases in the region of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore have been selected for the ways in which they help develop oligarchic theory ..


> Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time…

From the instant the idea to do something pops into management’s heads, or is explained to them by sales (who heard it from a customer), the clock is ticking. Actually developing the software necessary is just an irritating overhead. Something to be reduced to near zero. A one-dimensional “scalar”. This isn’t about building. It’s a sort of conditioned response, like a chicken pecking at a lamp to get a grain of corn. Quality, maintainability, simplicity, doesn’t come into it and all management hear from you is technobabble, like Scotty explaining why the dilithium crystals need time to cycle.


I dont understand why they dont understand the concept that goes like this

"If we do it this way, the next feature will take 10% longer, and it will cost 20% more to rectify. When we compound this our feature rate will grind to near 0, or you'll have to hire infinite head count. Your roadmap is 12 months long, and I have reason to believe this is the fastest path to that set of asks, and also sets us up for an excellent future beyond that too".


I don’t want to appear too jaded, I consider myself a realist. One component of this collapse of measurement into a single scalar is that many of us (us being those who either engineer software or are close to it, and the software lifecycle) need to do better at explaining the trade-offs. However, I would be surprised it even with better explanations the outcome, the reckoning, is any different. How many quarters ahead does your management plan? How many years? Average tenure for a Chief Revenue Officer is less than 4 years for example.


Indeed none of this is new. The extra complexity of modern software and hardware causes issues to pop up far more often than in the past.

I mean for fck's sake remember when the early Pentium CPUs had dividing issues (Pentium FDIV bug) back in the mid 90s? That was a bug that should of been easy to catch but wasn't because of the corporate/stockholder demand for more short term profits. No time to fix or test things because that costs money and we might not be the first to market.


> Quality, maintainability, simplicity, doesn’t come into it and all management hear from you is technobabble, like Scotty explaining why the dilithium crystals need time to cycle.

In his TNG appearance, Scotty explained to LaForge he padded every single estimate he gave to Kirk, because Kirk would inevitably ask for more or faster. The episode aired in 1992.


I see it as the battle between the jocks and the nerds. As frankly from my few decades in the industry, who becomes upper middle management are all the people who you dislike (or they you) in high school. It's just them trying to justify their value to those that truly built or are deemed to be responsible to build out a product/company for the benefit of the shareholders/investors.

This is the sort of environment that leads to [non]great ideas like 'swarming' resources on current 'fad/trend' projects (Mythical Man Month) or rapid development of features at a pace beyond what it took to deliver the 1.0 product (tech-debt inhibiting growth causing tech-death) which causes them to just "reinvent/reboot" the idea with yet another different spin.

You are seeing it in movies where even the scope of time they perform it is getting shorter and shorter. It's not like people are remaking Cyrano De Bergerac despite it's time being due (Roxanne with Steve Martin is my last recall) but they have to retread ideas from my own adulthood yet skip over others - like why reboot DeGrassi and not BJ and the Bear let alone Knight Rider or any of the dozens of other tech influence tv series of our youth.

The reason I think is mostly due to fear. Fear of risking what they didn't like before for something they felt was awesome but not influence by - like Sex in the City or even Return of the Jedi.

If it weren't for the amount of time that has gone by, I wouldn't be surprised if within the next 10 years there isn't an attempt to reboot Firefly with the hope that it hooks as much as people pine for it to have stayed on today.

We're told that most decisions are due to the investors wanting return on money invested - but if the employees are a large holder of the company shares, doesn't that mean that if they collectively feel willing to risk a different tact that it should be abided? Now-a-days it seems that those who are vocal and can pull it off become "king"... like Twitter.


>the water is poison

Putting aside the tons of pollution in lakes and oceans, what strikes me the most now is the abject failure and neglect in cities like Jackson, Mississippi and Flint, Michigan. How are people so powerless, governments so weakened, and politicians so detestable that something as basic as clean drinking water in cities is no longer functioning?


It's worth noting that, in a country of 330 million people, you only came up with two examples. Those things are newsworthy because they're outliers.


There are more cases of subtler failures that are smaller in scope, eg. in the Chicago metro[1], or on the UNC campus[2].

I do agree with part of your sentiment. Those two examples are the worst case scenarios where misfortunes happened to align, and there are periods in history, as well as other countries today, where this sort of problem was/is rampant.

This is also not (exactly) a recent problem - the groundwork, no pun intended, was often laid long ago.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/21/lead-contami...

[2] https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article268...


Lead in water pipes is generally fine as long as the water is treated correctly.

With that said, we're now actually putting the money towards replacing them.

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/funding-...


Or perhaps I picked two top-of-mind examples that other readers would recognize in the name of brevity? Those are not the only examples: https://abcnews.go.com/US/map-ongoing-water-crises-happening...

And that list doesn't even include the tragedy of the commons situation that is California.

But going back to Jackson, Mississippi, it seems that elected officials refuse to properly fulfill their role in governing. Ie. serving the public. What does that say about an empire? It's not some accident that they are helpless in, more that it is in decline.


Alright, I'll moderate my argument a bit by acknowledging that I'd have to use both hands to count the number of places that ABC reported as having newsworthy municipal water problems. But that's roughly what I'd expect in a country that's doing pretty darn well at water provision! Elected officials focus on doing what will get them re-elected, and nobody gets re-elected by saying "During my time in office, I made sure the water department replaced their intake filters on the schedule recommended by the manufacturer."

When you consider the political incentives, it's an under-appreciated miracle that politicians in the US serve the public at all and that things shamble along as well as they do.


Here are almost 13 million examples for you.

https://www.nrdc.org/resources/lead-pipes-are-widespread-and...

“Lead service lines—the pipes that carry water from the water main under the street to residences—have long been recognized as the primary contributor of lead in drinking water (we’ll call them lead pipes for simplicity’s sake). After conducting a survey of these lead pipes in the United States, NRDC estimates that there is a range of 9.7 million to 12.8 million pipes that are, or may be, lead, spread across all 50 states, including those that claim to have none.”

This affects some 22 million people.


Maintaining (let alone replacing) buried infrastructure is expensive and few people are in favour of paying higher taxes. Politicians get elected by claiming that government services are full of waste, then demand a ten percent reduction in the workforce. Goodbye water quality test protocols! Things have been proven good so far, so obviously it’s not needed! Oh, hey, this other water source is cheaper, let’s use it. Phosphate balance? Can’t test that, the water quality tester was fired.

And that is how you get lead poisoning in Flint.


Kind of like when engineers build a new program from scratch, take their accolades and move on, then the MBA management cuts the budget for maintenance. The only thing junior developers see is declining product quality.


Clean drinking water in cities isn't the default state of affairs. We're all used to it, but we would do well to remember the open sewers and water carrying from wells and drinking from lakes, streams and rivers that have prevailed in human history.

Formerly, we wouldn't live in a desert if there wasn't any water. So we drilled deeper wells where the heavy metals are. We also put a lot of heavy metals into watersheds at the surface. As the watershed levels are dropping from drought or heavy draw, that becomes more of an issue.

Water is heavy and expensive to transport, treat and distribute. I don't think it's a simple problem to solve. It's a political issue to be sure, but it wouldn't be a political issue if it wasn't also an extremely difficult logistical issue at its core.

In the long run, it would probably be better for people to live where clean drinking water is readily and easily available. To be clear, that doesn't mean trucking in, treating and desalinization, it means people moving to areas with more rainfall.


A: It feels like society is declining, am I alone in seeing it?

Tons of replies: No, we see it too in X, Y, Z ways as well.

B: <Specific example highlighting said decline>

C: The decline isn't real, people abdicating their responsibilities totally isn't a problem, life has always been shite so quit complaining

Sorry, that's just what I see when you reply with:

>Clean drinking water in cities isn't the default state of affairs

Honestly, I'd say you are gaslighting here because you're trying to convince people that regressing from forward progress isn't a loss. Also, cities and civilization aren't the default state of affairs. There's millennia more of prehistoric time where humans lived in the unforgiving wilderness. Are you suggesting that we are not allowed complain until we're back to living nomadic lives, hunting wild game on the steppes? Like you said, anything better than that isn't the default state of affairs.


Depends on your definition of regression and forward progress. Water in cities isn't basic, it's a difficult problem to solve. It can be so easy to point the finger and say people are abdicating their responsibilities, while offering zero solutions.

If you define exponential population growth as forward progress, for instance. Or the status quo of watershed draw and depletion as "forward progress". It has worked well for decades and isn't working anymore. Just because the aquifers are running low does not mean anyone is particularly to blame, or that we have "regressed".


People, humane beings, have grown and prospered in the past because they were able to form and act as communities. We are good, really good at that. If you want a modern example of how effective functional communities can be, you can look at the Ukraine. Or at revolutionary war era Americans. Or hunting mastodons to extinction. As communities we do exceedingly well. If you take away our ability to form and act as communities then we lose this. The internet, which was supposed to be a way to be more effective instead has destroyed our ability to act as communities. Our way of building a common understanding has been destroyed by letting people track us and target us with lies.

Who can trust the internet? No sane person would trust the internet. We have fanaticism on all sides. And yes it I do mean all -your side too. No matter which side you are on, your ability to see what you have in common with others is impaired.

Have you listened to political ads on the internet, tv and radio. They are all of a kind "X is betraying you and has sold his/her/its soul to the devil" So vote for Y. There is nothing in those to build consensus or common understanding. There is everything to outrage us, embitter us, and divide us.

This is the problem.

Tracking ads are a social disease that can destroy our society by preventing us from having a society. And yes it is much more complex, but it is also just that simple.


The internet is no less made of people than any other community. The ads, the tracking, the fanaticism - that all is not done by the internet but by corporations and organizations that exist here in the real world. The problem is not the internet. The problem is that we do not hold people accountable for their negative externalities - on the internel and elsewhere.

I do agree with your more general point that a lot of todays ills stem from individualism, aka a lack of focus on community though.


You are 100% correct. And the fact that laws on the books often do not reflect the times they're in. I'm still shocked by how we haven't put into effect a national GDPR yet at the same time that Newt Gingrich's "Anti-Cell Phone Listening" law is in effect. The law was outdated before it was even ratified yet is still on the books today.

I think a bigger problem is the blindness in our tech culture to pursue that which takes away from us at scale without codifying limits or laws to enforce guard rails for when they're broken - and at a cost greater than the cost of "doing business" (like how Boeing is now facing Criminal charges for 737MAX after the Civil part has more/less gone the course).


This is spot on. I agree with all these points.

Personally, as a software dev, I feel like my career started to stall about 5 years ago in spite of being extremely driven and consistently producing high quality results. I've also observed unqualified people being promoted. I had to quit some jobs because the person who was promoted above me was not competent. Projects started declining within a year after I left.

It's obvious now that I'm not alone in having this experience.

In a twisted way, I feel somewhat avenged by the current situation. There is something oddly satisfying about being forced to leave a once thriving organisation due to bad change of direction and then later watching it all collapse. It's rewarding to know that it was people like me who were holding the system together.

Unfortunately it's the closest thing I got to feeling successful. My suppression and subsequent absence contributed to failure of the organisation in a very clear and obvious way. That's my version of success.

I think the core problems are wealth inequality combined with cronyism... People are promoted for being friends (or more than just friends) with rich people. They're not promoted based on competence.


Beyond the OP's points, some of which can be seen across history and aren't just a "now" problem, I feel that aesthetics have declined massively just these past 15 years. I remember the early web, and then the era of blogs and personal websites, the y2k and Frutiger Aero design styles I could see in ads on TV, on many websites, in many of the arts, etc. Nowadays, you can't find this except in individuals' work (e.g. those scattered across the web)

Every company's site is the same: a header image or a carousel, big sans serif text saying absolutely nothing of substance, no form nor function in their presentation. Both native software, web apps and smartphone's apps are converging to a braindead flat/material design design (and if you complain, UX people throw out arguments of accesibility (which are completely irrelevant to what UI style you choose to use), and many say that skeuomorphism is ugly (???), when in reality their UI choices are atrocious, reducing functionality by taking away options and even going as far as removing borders around most things, making it harder to know what is clickable. I've seen my parents and grandparents, neighbors and even people my age struggle with these "easy" interfaces)

I genuinely believe the effects of these design choices around everything in our lives are detrimental to our mental wellbeing, and thus I try to surround myself with 19th century furniture, and I use Windows XP for any non-internet related task. I prefer forums and personal sites in my browsing, and regularly use wiby.me and marginalia.nu's search functionality. I only play old games and indie games too. I know it's just a futile attempt to resist the passage of time, but I can't help it. I try to make things in this vein and I know that it's just a small drop in the ocean but I still do it.

There's this article from the Guardian in a similar vein https://theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jun/19/grey


Very similar observations about software trends and quality. Particularly the trends to remove essential functionality like one importat example in Windows 11 that you cannot put task bar on left or right side of screen and using ungrouped and fully labeled items. It's de facto unusable for my case because I need a lot of different windows with constant context switching between and was totally lost (went back Windows 10). Left/right taskbar has all items exactly the same place where opened, enought text to instantly indentify what program and what document/IP address etc. it contains, nothing moves itself and it's almost muscle memory to glance and see what program and window I need to open the current moment.

It's not the most popular use case for sure but if even 0.1% users like developers or other multitask heavy workers need similar overview on desktop workspace then that is like ignoring 10 million users. And for what? So that company can optimize away like two workers on Windows UI team for 6 months effort. Instead released broken Windows to RTM and 2 years later still essential functionality missing.

There have been problems in this area before, like Windows ME and some but those were more like broken drivers and things that were not or at least did not seem to be intentionally broken, just bad quality. Now there are more problems that are literally in the genre of f. u. user, we do what we want and optimize everything to 51% users, if you are in 49% then good luck.

Maybe need to adapt and accept that everything needs tinkering, third party tools and constant management after updates to be barely usable, still not fond of this method but what are the options any more.


To paraphrase, if everyone seems mean, we are the mean ones. We may be heading down a dark hole of pessimism here, at the end of which there is no light. Or we are just getting old.

We should reexamine our views of history. If we write the history books we would be inclined to paint ourselves and situations in a good light saying everything was great and everyone treated each other great.

From the perspective of someone who is not in the ruling class, we should try graphing our collective freedom and prosperity on a 2000 year scale. Things were pretty good over the last 50-300 years and are still not too bad.

We have short memories and tend to block out the bad stuff over time.

We may also just be spending too much time on the Internet and consuming news media.

Or maybe we legitimately live in crappy neighborhoods and cities where everyone treats each other poorly. We then have a tendency of moving somewhere else and bringing that negative, cynical and stressed out mentality with us, thus benefiting from other people's remaining goodwill and social cohesion while simultaneously destroying it.

It's more constructive to engage in our interests and build than to criticize and tear down others, we should concentrate on that.


The economy, social behavior, investing and most aspects of human society are “reflexive”.

People modulate their behavior and outlook based on what they think other people think.

Going even deeper, people absorb way more from other people than they first let on or realize. Over time, their own thoughts adapt to whatever’s in their RAM and they believe they truly believe what their brain produced. This leads them to have a greater conviction in their beliefs which leads to actions that further propagate that belief.

There have been several events in the last few years that have altered people’s internal sense of security and hope. With social media, people are far more exposed to the sentiment of other peers as opposed to a leader (or book) who would otherwise be responsible for reframing traumatic events.

The decision makers aren’t immune to these influences. So on multiple levels, society is regressing towards the mean.

Furthermore, the mean is also decreasing due to real reflexive effects in the economy and people’s sense of well being.

So a greater mass of people are content with not being as good as they were before.

Society will have to get fairly deep into the abyss before it realizes it hates being there and an exceptional leader will have to show everyone a path out of it.

People won’t realize that they caused the situation in the first place but only be focused on first order effects such as how bad they feel or how much money they have.

The sentiment that things are futile seems to have already captured you. The only thing you can do now is to realize the first thing you need to do is insulate yourself from being bludgeoned into mediocrity by all the noise around you if you want to effect any material change.


I think that the human mind is not evolved for, and does not cope well in societies at the scale we now live in. I think there's a certain tipping point where social cohesion begins to break down, and people's psychology begins to shift from participation in a society of their peers, to guarding themselves from a society of potentially dangerous strangers. I think this phenomena has been extrapolated to a large scale. I also think that the society consisting of people who are largely genetically different from yourself has an impact as well on social cohesion, and by extension, on how people behave in society.


>I also think that the society consisting of people who are largely genetically different from yourself has an impact as well on social cohesion, and by extension, on how people behave in society.

Rome existed for longer than the United States has existed without tying the legal definition of a Roman citizen to someone born in Rome (e.g. Paul of Tarsus, aka Saint Paul, was a Roman citizen and a congenital Hebrew from Anatolia), nevermind whether being born in Rome actually meant your parents were themselves from Rome too.

Phenotypical resemblance also never stopped any of the numerous and vicious civil wars and rebellions in Chinese history just as one example, nor did it stop the military aristocracy of Middle Ages Europe from constantly robbing, pillaging, and raping the peasantry and the clergy, so much that the Church had to issue numerous declarations and edicts to reign in the behavior of knights.


Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the Secret News.

Shhhhh. Here is the Secret News:

All people are afraid.

No one knows what they're doing.

Everything is getting worse.

Some people deserve to die.

Your money is worthless.

No one is properly dressed.

At least one of your children will disappoint you.

The system is rigged.

Your house will never be completely clean.

All teachers are incompetent.

There are people who really dislike you.

Nothing is as good as it seems.

Things don't last.

No one is paying attention.

The country is dying.

God doesn't care.

Shhhhh.

- George Carlin


The behavioral degradation of the US is very easy to see from the outside.

It's when you reduce all human existence to economy. But turns out money chasing is a bad substitute for morals, principles and social connection (the true version and not the shallow caricature that is sold online these days).


>The behavioral degradation of the US is very easy to see from the outside.

How could this possibly be seen from the outside the US? All I can see from the UK is a significant increase in the amount of whining coming out of the US, but that's just social media.


For example that mass/school shootings are just taken for granted, Trump becoming president, fentanyl epidemic, suicide trends. People in distress...


Companies have to continually increase their revenue or profits out of fear of their competitors becoming larger and taking over the market. The internet has allowed almost everything in physical space to become commoditized. You also have a society that does not appreciate quality. Combining all this together I don't see how things don't keep getting worse.


> You also have a society that does not appreciate quality.

This really resonates with my experience as well. But I can't tell if its society at large that appreciates quality less, or that the relative purchasing power of recent generations has decreased so much that your average-Joe no longer has a say in whether they can get a quality purchase or not. Or perhaps the issue is planned obsoletion. Taking a page from appliance manufacturers these days, literally all the major manufacturers appear to have planned obsolecscence built into their appliances these days. Contrasted with the 45 yo Maytag refrigerator in my garage still running as well as the day it was purchased.


There is a difference between a company making good products and a company that is making bad ones yet only by proxy of the revenue generated making something else.

Look at GE - it just recently spun off it's healthcare business from the parent and now only has the Jet Engines division left under the parent company. It used to make just about everything and did massive testing at one point - what changed? The company itself. It was in so much competition by others who stepped up their game or the company got into places it never should have been and lost. A long way from being the offspring of Thomas Edison and JP Morgan.

Hell, did you know that GE was even an on-line service at one time? GEnie. Who beat them? H&R Block for some weird reason (CompuServe). But not by much because Time magazine - the most read magazine in the world for almost 75 years at that point - thought it could do it all (AOL). The only problem: Warner Communications (Warner Brothers) - who seem to not have learned their lesson from Atari. But it was on top for a while. Now it's back to Bell and those who competed with them (Verizon).


Yeah, the world goes through cycles of sucking. It's not all one problem. It's just a bunch of problems piling on at the same time over the last few years. Most of it boils down to economics.

You can still be yourself and make the world a better place for others. Just because some people have problems doesn't mean you have to emulate their bad behavior. The golden rule still applies and lots of people are still looking out for each other. If you run into problems, get involved with your community to try to solve them.

Instead of focusing on all of the external problems around you, focus on how you're processing them. It's okay to get therapy if it seems like overload. It's also okay to just not do anything for a weekend so you can de-stress and relax.

Try tuning out from all of the noise for a little bit. There's probably some internet/news withdrawal at first but after you stop worrying about everything, it's easier to see what's directly affecting you.

Prioritize fun stuff like finding a good book and making some tea. Go hang out with friends and have an adventure. Be unproductive for a while. Do weird things. Take an art class or find a community group. Life is happier when you're in a positive community and having fun. Most people are still good.


Scale, mostly. Knock-on effects of greed and power, I suppose.

Individuals and companies operating at some level of scale and focused primarily on revenue discover that "giving a shit" is both costly and unnecessary, as the mass market doesn't care and will buy anyway. Artists care, which is why they're a pain in the ass and get kicked to the curb as soon as money grabs the power.

It's "difficult" to deliver a quality service/support experience if you have 2 billion daily users of your product. I'm not excusing Facebook, but that scale makes everything a hell of a lot harder than "you" think it is, and therefore they'll either mess it up, because that's unavoidable, or they'll just optimize for revenue, and they were never artists anyway. Applies to Google and Microsoft, too. Steve Jobs was an anomaly.

Nearly nonexistent barrier to entry in most respects in most areas. The noise, however that may manifest, vastly (vastly, vastly, vastly) outstrips the signal. If you assume 90% of everything is crap (a generous and optimistic assessment), and there is 10,000 times more stuff than there used to be, well, that's a whole lot more crap.

When your company can basically not fail, and has its fingers in everything due to acquisitions and consolidations and whatever, again, unless you're an artist, and you aren't, caring increases costs unnecessarily because the market doesn't care, and neither do you, so you don't bother.

If you are a probably underfunded law enforcement agency (or school) who basically has to accept the recruits you can find because nobody wants to do the job, because the scale and scope of what you're dealing with (ie: too many people, too many problems) is hellish, and there's no clear guidance on what or how to manage it, much less improve it, well, it can't end well.

Obligatory Kali Yuga here.

"Hard problems that no one is bothering to understand clearly, without getting folks on the same page regarding why it's a problem, what solutions should be sought, and why." may be another was of looking at it.


Based on your post, it seems as though things in _your_ particular area are declining. If you live in San Francisco or New York, well, those places are the stinky rotten armpits of the United States (assuming you live here, of course). Police officers by and large aren't a problem. Hundreds of thousands of police interactions occur on a daily basis that go just fine. Police stories are almost always the case of an individual shithead that would've been horrible regardless of their job, and more uncommonly local systemic problems, such as the police department and/or the justice system. The media loves its drama, too.


Optimist view: it’s not. There has never been a golden age. There were anarchists blowing up things in the early 1920s, WWI followed by II, institutional racism, etc. Things have always been hard, just takes different forms.

Pessimist view: strong generations bring good times, good times breed weak generations, weak generations bring hard times, hard times breed strong generations. You happen to be born right after some good times.


Like tipping, subscriptions are out of control. Everything needs a subscription now. And a common trend is a company releasing a feature or service and then later degrading it, to encourage people to buy a subscription to restore original functionality.


My anecdotal hypothesis (at least from a North American perspective) is that we've slowly adopted a culture that favors individualism and growth over community and sustainability.

We had a period of extreme wealth and growth after WWII, and chose to re-make society in ways that were fundamentally unsustainable. Then in order to keep that dream alive, we continuously borrowed from our future, and ignored those who were cut out of this dream, all to prop up an increasingly individualistic eutopia that was doomed to fail.

Now the bill is coming due for all of us. But we've gone too long isolated from our neighbors, ignoring the cries of those for whom the system was failing, and losing our sense of community that we've forgotten how to work with one another to solve our real societal problems.

The world we built ourselves is slowly deteriorating due to the natural progression of time, and we've forgotten how to fix it.


I think it's hard to pick an overall narrative, because the world is complicated, memory is unreliable, and what's actually visible to regular people changes with the times.

In many ways, I think the trend for the individual person's most likely experience has been sharply positive over the past century. I share your frustration with the level of unpunished grift and abuse of power in our society, but I suspect that it's always been at least this bad.

However, there are some macro trends that are extremely ominous. As the years pass, human are evolving technologies that give small groups of people massive leverage over the shared physical and social environment. To name a few:

- Nuclear weapons

- Genetic engineering

- Chemical production / pollution

- AI

- Social media

- Nanotechnology

And we completely lack the governance at all levels to manage this. I think we're set up for all sorts of potential catastrophes and the collapse of the global economic complexity we currently take for granted.


Uh... there is governance.

>- Nuclear Weapons

The several non-nuclear proliferation treaties and disarmament talks that have reduced the number of warheads down by about 2/3? Just because there may be more "threat actors" doesn't mean that we're not safer. Look at South Africa, it was a nuclear power and gave it back.

>- Genetic Engineering

There are many laws in place. Some that are even hampering valid benefit (Umbilical Stem Cells). Some that are straight up asinine (Abortion Bans legal again) and some that should be observed but allowed (Crisper) as what we knew even 30 years ago is magnitudes more than the previous 30 to that. What will we learn 30 years from now?

>- Chemical production and pollution

When was the last time the Ohio river caught literal fire? It's been a while. My whole lifetime. But it did at one time. That one case was a tipping point for the formation of the EPA. The plastic island in the Pacific? It's being cleaned as we speak. Will we be zero pollutants in our life time - probably not, but the same could be said about racism or wealth inequality which is much easier to education and manipulate in contrast.

>- AI

Again, much easier to legislate and manipulate. The biggest problem: public understanding of how it's made and capable of to an uneducated population. Where it can go wrong? The profit motive. Where it can save us? It's already happening today in medical diagnostics.

>- Social Media

Same deal here... legislate and manipulate. The biggest problem is engineers and lawyers actively pursuing ways to game the system once sold to business people. It's already benefitted us to help provide places to discuss and connect in ways that were never possible without resorting to being held by a geographic or cultural chain.

>- Nanotechnology

See the other answers. However when the robots do a better job of co-habitation and evolution than humans, better be ready to swallow one's pride as they hit singularity before us.


You have vastly more faith in the ability of human society to manage these technologies than I do. The problem is not a question of whether the vast majority of actors will do the right thing the vast majority of the time. It's that very small groups of people can do incredible amounts of damage, on purpose or even just accidentally.

Given the horrors we've seen committed by large groups of people over protracted time frames, I absolutely believe horror magnified by technological leverage is inevitable.

Life is pretty great right now, but we are living in the aberration. I expect that I'll live to see the end of the equilibrium that has allowed this aberration to persist.


> The several non-nuclear proliferation treaties and disarmament talks that have reduced the number of warheads down by about 2/3? Just because there may be more "threat actors" doesn't mean that we're not safer.

That's exactly what it means. That the US and Russia can only kill the world two times over instead of three times is irrelevant. It only takes one actor for a nuclear catastrophe.

> Look at South Africa, it was a nuclear power and gave it back.

And if think any more contries are going to give up their Nukes after how well that is working out for Ukraine, think again.


I've noticed similar things as well. Especially in contexts where no observability is available as CCTVs or other people. People will behave badly if they can get away unpunished.

I disagree with most of the other comments that its a question of wealth. I know religion arguments are unpopular in this crowd. But in my opinion, lack of similar values derived from religion is starting to cause these issues. Because atheism is de-facto dominant in most of the west today, people don't have the same values anymore. The things you mentioned are simply not regarded as immoral for those people. Everyone will say they can do whatever they want, they don't want to adhere to your values, they have their own unique ones. But at the same time, we cannot deny the fact that how others act around us does impact our mental state as well.


What are the religious values that you feel the non-religious do not share?


I think no values are shared between all non-religious. Some folks value family and kids, other folks will hate you for that (with unfair advantage & environmental concerns argument). Some folks value community and respect to each other, other folks think it's boring & tyrannical (why should said person listen to rules that there shouldn't be loud music at night?).

To get to the first part of the question, I think religious values do provide certain guarantees. For example, family is placed quite high in all religions. This results in "don't be a loud asshole at night", because whole neighbourhood's parents are tired, kids needs to sleep. In a community like that, the person with loud motorcycle at night will be pressured to stop doing waking up others.


Read Bowling Alone. It was written by a Harvard sociologist in the 80's. The American community is steadily breaking down and he quantifies it over the decades.

I considered myself a liberal most of my life, and still do to an extent, but it needs to be recognized as a double edged sword. Values like "tolerance" must have boundaries if you want to avoid the normalization of negative social behaviors that degrade the fabric of society.


Read “Denial of Death”. Ideas here are based on that book.

The plain reality of existence is that there is no inherent meaning and we will all die. That is too much for anyone to bear.

We can live “normal” lives only so far as we can distract and deceive ourselves from the base reality with our own constructed meanings.

Truth, science, knowledge, are inevitable and unstoppable. They eventually expose the deceptions and distractions we create.

We don’t have a good next collective deception.


Sounds like you live in a bad neighborhood. My rust belt neighborhood doesn't have those issues, and it's very affordable on a tech salary. Vote with your feet.


This could be true. I definitely am not in the cheapest part of town. And people sometimes get wide eyes when they hear how expensive my place is. But it's also certainly not the "fancy" part of town either.

I could probably find a place that's about 25% cheaper. and a "fancy" place would be about 2x.


You don't even need to move that far. I moved away from Seattle but still in WA and it's been quite nice. Issaquah, Tacoma, Olympia, Gig Harbor are all quite nice, for instance. Especially in the burbs. Seattle is still close enough to some of them even. I'm lucky enough to have been in software for the last decade so it's plenty affordable.

Still better than the midwest where I came from.


-- i live in Seoul - agree with the post - how does that square with your comment? ---


I live in Warsaw, Poland and don't agree with the post. How does that square with your comment?

but I'm sure I could find a person who does


-- "sounds like you live in bad neighborhood" - make no sense in this context - its a global question - no? --


> People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there's someone with loud as exhaust on "sportish" car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained.

That is a very local problem, and is not a global question or observation.

> Landlords seem extremely greedy and do terrible rent seeking tactics like fees upon fees

I've had a few landlords in my life, and none of them nickel and dimed me with fees like that. They just raised the rent by maybe 5% every year. If it bothers you, try a new landlord, neighborhood, or city. Or buy a house.

"But houses are expensive where I live" I hear you say. You are the only person forcing yourself to live in California, NYC, London, Vancouver, or wherever. Smaller cities and less densely populated areas are generally cheaper, quieter, and less polluted. The people might be friendlier, too.

> General worker apathy

> Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I've noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world.

There's lots of places and cultures in the world that still show humanity towards strangers.


underlying all these problems is the quite simple kernel: we lost our religion. you see, religion long served as the reference point for morality. you had to be a good person in this life lest you spend eternity in punishment and torture. many weak nations throughout history have endured terrible rulers (and often converted them) by their staunch adherence to their religion. the roman empire becoming christian is one such example.

unfortunately, religion reached beyond its domain (of the metaphysical) and attempted to explain all human knowledge in terms of revelation and the so-called holy books. thus, when a new method of discovering new knowledge via observation began its triumphant march towards explaining and predicting natural phenomena, religion was found wanting. it suffered the double blow of losing authority in the physical realm as well as the metaphysical. and since then, imo, we have struggled to stand morality, and more importantly, your responsibility to be a good person, on any firm grounds. biology (and evolution), which likens us to animals, seems to throw a wrench in any effort: we’re animals anyways, we’re within our nature to be animalistic.

at present, we live without universal morality. we have substituted what it means to enjoy your life with another measure that renders it a given that the person living in the future most definitely lived better than who lived a millennia or two away. below, that’s the sort of counter-arguments/counter-observations you see. it’s unfortunate. we’re living in a mess. adults are twerking on innocent kids again (after an intermission than banned child sex, child marriage, betrothals, polygamy, &c). the reversal to banality is markedly celebrated as freedom and progress. but is it really?

so someone will point you to the article that demonstrates scientific progress. don’t let them dissuade you. what you’re concerned about is moral depravity. essentially how onlyfans isn’t despicable but celebrated. from here, at our current velocity and acceleration, it only gets worse. brace yourself.


We are going to make it. Our trials today are the same magnitude of trials faced by those of the 20th century.

Try optimism for a change https://effectiveaccelerationism.substack.com/p/what-the-f-i...


Climate change?


The big one for me is the death of publicly funded education here in the UK. Before Thatcher's cuts in the mid 80s grants covered the total cost unless you had wealthy parents. Around the same time the Fair Rent Act was abolished. I date THE GREAT DECLINE from this point in history.


We are seeing decline in some areas where there are monopolies. Companies used to be afraid of competition. Not being able to produce enough product or raising prices too much meant someone else was going to come along and take over your market. But, once a monopoly or oligopoly has been achieved, companies have far more pricing power. It takes about four major players before you get price competition, from an EU study. The US is down to 2 or 3 in many areas, from drugstores to cell phone services.


Its all peaks and valleys, crests and troughs.

It will get better, it always does. Just takes a while. Make strategic moves and maybe it works out for you.


While that may be true, nobody knows how much time will pass between crest and trough. It could take days, years, decades, centuries.


I really think a lot of these problems can be traced back to the introduction of the iPhone.

Physical reality has taken a backseat to the digital world, so physical reality has been neglected. Living in a world of physical neglect has hurt our health, and affects our ability to build the digital one.


Yes, I agree. Some of the particulars look a bit different here, but the spirit of it is the same.

One thing it fits well with is progression through the Demoralization, and possibly Destabilization, phase(s) of ideological subversion as described by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov.

Decent legibility charts e.g. here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220412064205/https://wyomingtr...

(EDIT: The organization hosting those charts is rather opinionated about the interpretation and context. Even so, I'm leaving this reference in as the legibility of the charts themselves is higher than for many other copies/scans on the web. Originals can also be found e.g. in the linked https://ia800301.us.archive.org/25/items/BezmenovLoveLetterT... )

Some prior HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30470856

A sizable share of the recorded media materials: https://archive.org/details/yuri_bezmenov_all_interviews_lec...

It's hard to prove something like that as a cause, for obvious reasons, but I think the relevance for the features of what we're seeing is hard to deny.


I live in a different place in world, but objectively everything is getting better by the day.

- There is visibly less crime, statistically at an all time low record every year.

- Drug politics are getting way better, leading to way less drug criminality

- People drive smaller, more economical cars. Less noise, less polition

- You can find polished software for a small monthly fee for nearly any use case that works on your Phone, Linux, Mac or Windows. Only few years ago most good software was expensive and platform exclusive. Also mostly big coorperate where some software companies today are one person or a small team.

- We finally started talking about our environment in a serious future thinking matter. We don't yet act like it so often, but we are getting there.

- Crypto made 'normal' people rich, crypto changed to live of so many people. Not all about crypto was bad, not all is a Ponzi or Scam. Plus we finally have a low fee world wide money transaction method, which means so much freedom for a lot of people that are used to heavy restrictions.

- I think it never was easier to do your own thing and life from that. Whatever you do, if you are passionate enough it could be your job.

- The subscription and microtransaction trend is a huge pain in the ass and hopefully will die one way or another.

My point is, or should be it's all about the perspective and a lot about choice.

If you don't like loud cars, criminal & busy neighbours why don't you move somewhere that better fits your lifestyle? What makes you living a life you don't fully enjoy?


The social contract has broken. I think we’re about to experience even more disturbances until we reach a new one.


The neighborhood I moved into isn't exactly pretty nor clean, but overall liveable. Then, I am continuously annoyed at littering, finding puke on the pavement in front of the appartment building I live in, people can be loud, etc.

Thing is, I remember the area from visiting when I was a kid (like 30 years ago) and it was in a worse state back then.

Recently in the just-for-fun soccer practice team I met a guy probably in his mid-60ies who - after practice when we hang around - told a story from his childhood growing up next to the red light district. I asked where that was, and he grew up 200m away from the place where I live, same street.

The town I grew up in was just generally gray. Now its painted, has pedestrian zones, etc. When looking for an appartment a landlord showed me the storage area of an apartment in the basement, this storage area, he told me, had been in the past rented out to labourers, as in bunk-beds for 6 men. I asked him when it was and it turned out that this was during my lifetime (not turn of the 18th to 19th century or something, more like "the 80ies").


Ok I’ll bite. Problems exist on several levels of detail and it won’t do justice to address these concerns with broad generalities. However there are a few root causes which have outsized impact on society - namely, business, government, and world leaders who are detached from reality. People who fly in private jets preaching about the perils of climate change DO NOT DESERVE TO BE HEARD!


Yeah, things have gotten markedly worse, objectively worse. Which is not to say things have not been bad before, or even worse before. I definitely think we’re in a local decline and I expect the decline to continue.

It’s harder to escape crime and noise. It’s harder buy decent food. It’s harder to earn a decent wage. People are increasingly narcissistic. I think lobbyists have gotten better at their jobs at corrupting politics.

But there used to be razor gangs roaming the cities, Charles Babbage was hounded to an early grave by street musicians. Rancid food would be laced with dangerous chemicals to cover up the smell. People used to be proud of having the Disease of Kings (gout), and is hard to imagine a greater corruption of politics than the South East India company, or the Robber Barons.

I think it’s a reversion to the mean; It is post WWII America that is the aberration and we’re now living in the afterglow of that. We seem to be trending towards some kind of feudalism and that is really going to suck for the vast majority of people.


Your post is on the worldwide web. Saying that you notice things getting worse where you are and not saying where "where" is and equating that to everywhere is what the problem is.


If you live in USA or western europe, real living standards have been decreasing for decades now. But thats probably not something youd particularly notice over 5 years.


Yeah i mean over several 5 year blocks like a sort of tempo/cadence.

It seems like I can see a distinct decline between Now and 5 years ago. And between 5 yrs ago and 10. And between 10 and 15... etc.


Measured by what? The quota of people able to read/write nears 100%, child deaths are down, etc etc


Will Durant once expressed his conviction that the world only seems to get worse because as we develop morally and intellectually, we're less tolerant of evil but simultaneously more able to perceive it. In empirical terms things have been getting better for a long time, and probably still are.


How do you expect a society that thrives on the exploitation and murder of other life forms to have peace and joy? There's a spiritual crisis happening right now and if you don't change the way you treat other life, yours will continue to get worse.


Talking about animals? That has always been a thing


without bringing veganism into it. I think they have a point about Homo Sapiens too.


When I see posts like this I think “How would I measure this over time?”

Software projects were notoriously late and brittle in prior eras. (Ask anyone supporting a mainframe that they’re afraid to reboot)

Fraud and monopolies are as old as money. (Look up the history of Wall Street and railroads)

It’s very hard to come up with good time series data so here is my wish list to test the “we are going to crap” hypothesis:

- Air Quality Index over time.

- % of the World Population with sub-0 net worth over time.

- % of World Net Worth in discovered financial crime.

- % of technology projects overbudget and overdue weighted by dollar value over time.

- % of population literate.

Some these are hard to measure. I’m open to other measures. Absent that it’s about as accurate as asking someone “Are you busier than you were 20 years ago?”


Read Karl Marx, what we're seeing is basically what he described as the end state of capitalism. Everything gets shittier and shittier as costs go up and profits shrink. People and businesses are getting more desperate to prop up profit or make a buck. Everything suffers--worse products as costs are cut, worse service as wages stagnate to cut costs, people are more angry and stressed as their standard of living declines from frozen and falling wages. It doesn't end well... (for capitalists at least). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_theory


Lol I'd never imagined I'd see a comment like this here of all places.


There's a large cross-over audience from reddit on HN.


There are plenty of socialists and non-capitalists in tech.


Me for example, I am Communist.


Definitely a fun character class for social media!


That's somewhat of a misrepresentation of what Marx wrote.

When Marx lived in 19th century England, he saw first hand the effects of laissez faire capitalism: workers working themselves to death, workers dying by the score in industrial accidents, children working and dying in mines, etc.

He predicted with certainty that this trend would continue and lead to a revolution of the many (workers) against the few (capitalists), after which the world would become a classless society free from oppression and exploitation.

Except that never happened.

Workers gained many rights, like limits on work-hours, social insurance, free education for their children (who were banned from working dangerous jobs). Most governments creates successful interventionist policy that "de-fanged" the worst parts of capitalism. I would venture a guess that 19th century workers would kill to live or at least send their children into the 21st century. I presume even terrible jobs today would look positively heavenly for someone who was forced to inhale coal dust and destroy his body for 18 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Marx's "theory" was proven wrong by the events that took place since his times. Nothing he predicted came true. This even became apparent during the 19th century, when pro-worker reforms were being introduced in Britain, which caused Engels, Marx's sponsor, to first explain this away by pointing out that Britain's riches originate from its colonies, making Britain "the burguoise of the world", and then blame Britain itself for not going along with his and Marx's grand theory: "It seems that this most bourgeois of all nations wants to bring matters to such a pass as to have a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat side by side with the bourgeoisie."

(I can almost hear him getting more and more upset at the unruly masses who, instead of misery, revolution, and utopia, chose reforms and democracy).

It must be said, at least, that Marx was coming from a place of good. His heart went out to the suffering masses he lived amongst. His writings are full of compassion. But we must be fair and accept that he was wrong in his theories and predictions.

Now, because I know this will come up, as it's a popular doomer trope: there is suffering in the world. Children sew tshirts in 3rd world sweatshops. Factory workers jump from roofs working for Apple, the world's most valuable company. Numberless people live lives of quiet desperation. Without a doubt, all of that is true.

But, comparing the world of Mar'x lifetime and the world of today, it would take some hardcore rhetorical maneuvering to ignore the fact that more people than ever before live comfortable, safe lives with plentiful opportunities for self-actualization.

This can be interpreted in many ways. For our discussion, I want it to serve as evidence that we shouldn't give Marx's writing more credibility than they deserve.

Personally, I chose to interpret it in a way that means that we're simply not done yet. We've made great progress. But our work is far from done--there are still many humans out there that enjoy the most meager fruits of this progress. This must be remedied.


> Workers gained many rights, like limits on work-hours, social insurance, free education for their children (who were banned from working dangerous jobs). Most governments creates successful interventionist policy that "de-fanged" the worst parts of capitalism.

Why do you think that happened? The creation of well fare state was a direct consequence of the existence of the USSR, the presence of socialist/communist/workers parties in democracies everywhere else and the threat it posed to the status quo. Better give some rights and postpone a rupture.

Just notice that after the fall of the USSR, workers rights didn’t improve anymore, in fact it gets worse by the day: any attempt at unionizing gets crushed, wages don’t increase with productivity, and the economy is turning into an “app economy” where workers are not formally employed and live in an even more fragile situation.

So, categorically stating Marx predictions were “wrong” can be a premature conclusion; the alternative is that we have not lived long enough to see a rupture yet, but the rope has been visibly stretching in the past decades.


At a certain point this kind of stuff becomes unfalsifiable, but the steady erosion of hard won worker rights and laws, as well as wages still fits in pretty nicely with his theories about end stage capitalism.

He certainly did not foresee the rise of the welfare state, but that doesn't mean the end of capitalism is going to be much different, its pretty easy to see how things are following the same trajectory in the end.


The supposed late stage of capitalism is something used to call contemporary state of affairs for some 100 years now.

Two more weeks until RoP goes to 0!

Trust the plan!


What’s r0p?


Rate of Profit (which has a tendency to fall)


YMMV of course, but literally none of these apply to me, partially because of luck maybe, partially because I steered clear of bullshit.

Funnily enough, IMHO Pinker is a fool : in the West we have been living above our means since at last the 80s and the bill started to come due since at least 2008 : I expect things to get worse, and not start to get better for decades, maybe more, depending on our choices and sheer luck (and some places will be better off than others).

Speaking of frauds, I wouldn't trade my life with any of theirs, they are going to pay dearly for them, and already started to.

(Paragraph numbers would be nice in such a varied dump.)


1) We just went through a globally historically unique event, the likes of hopefully won't be seen for another 100 years.

2) If you log off social media, your life will improve remarkably. That said, I love TikTok because I find it so inspirational, at least my feed is.

3) Depending on where you live, your sentiments can definitely be true. I feel California has gone downhill a lot in terms of safety, affordability, etc. But if you turn off social media you probably will feel this a lot less.

4) If you go outside, travel, etc, you'll find that it's not so bad. Unplug and travel is probably the best thing to do.


What inspirational videos do you see in TikTok? I have never used TikTok but I usually hear it described as entertainment more than motivation or inspiration.


While the "things are actually better" argument is certainly true when you look at the data, from a first person perspective people have definitely become very very self absorbed in American society. Not only in the US kind you, but in the west generally there is absolutely a massive cultural malaise in play right now.

Even speaking just about culture, look at how stagnant things are. Fashion, film, music, books. They are all stuck on repeat, making the same old things new again with no actual innovation happening on noticeable scales.


I would like to point out that prior to the EPA rivers and lakes catching on fire was a yearly thing in some sections of this country. Yes pollution is still a thing but it's NOTHING like it used to be.


The EPA is 50 years old. Older than many of us. OP is not saying that things have never gottent better, only that (some) things currently seem to be getting worse.


Regarding subscription services, most people don't know how to use them. I use subscription services, but I only pay for the time I use. For example, if I need an app today, I will pay the subscription and cancel it next week when I need to do something else. I subscribe Netflix to watch one or two series, and cancel after it is done. Most people think it makes sense to keep paying a subscription for months on end, just for the sake of keeping it alive. These are the ones who are getting poor and filling the coffers of subscription services.


Having to "manage" your subscriptions is itself a decline over one-off payments. I shouldn't have to remember to cancel a subscription. That's why I avoid almost all subscriptions - my only atomatically recurring payments are housing, internet/mobile connection and my VPS. That's getting harder and also more expensive all the time though as subscriptions for everything become the norm.


One thing I noticed are buildings: many old buildings are very good-looking, with a lot of details and passion put into them and using the best materials available, most of the new ones are just usable, with the cheapest materials that do the job.


In many measures of health, education, lifespan, and income my state ranks in the bottom half. Yet the state had a record budget surplus. What did they do with it? Fund things like education or roads? Cut the state gas tax that is one of the highest in the country? Nope. They gave people a $140 check. Sure, that is nice but it would be better to invest in long term improvements. Yet, in my state, one political party has a supermajority in state politics with no sign of that changing any time soon.


I thought it was me getting old (in my 40s now, with little kids, life feels like shit). My thoughts:

1) Globalization caused massive changes to this world that have not been properly acknowledged. Sort of like none of the politicians cared about redistribution. In aggregate, the average person is better off, but there are significant structural impacts. A lot of people in the west, got hit badly (e.g. manufacturing). Conversely, a lot of people in Asia (specifically, China and India) have had spectacular improvements in standard of living.

2) Mobile & Internet: info travels at the speed of light. Along with general computing advances, this makes everyone more efficient, but simultaneously more starved for human contact and with little to no downtime.

3) We are still paying the price for the 2008 fiasco. Interest rates were down too long and inflation measures not accurate. House prices (and other asset prices) went up dramatically. This simultaneously increased wealth inequality (those with assets gained, those without got left behind), and made the so-called American dream harder to attain.

I was very romantic about democracy growing up in countries without it. Now that I am older, I can see how messed up the system is (even in the West). I remain optimistic that the Internet and computing will somehow improve things, though I don't exactly see how.


I think you're somewhat off base. It's hard, because some of your examples are correct, others are not, but in general most of them (in my estimation) have different causes, and should be treated as individual cases rather than as part of a general statement. As you note, some things are getting better. A good theory would have to fit both the positives and the negatives.

One reason I don't agree is that I try not to say "good" or "bad" when thinking about big, systemic things like that. It's more useful to describe the way things have changed. I'm not talking about moral relativism, I'm talking about inputs and outputs: by looking at what has changed, you can sometimes trace it back to a cause, and then try to figure out how to change it again. But just saying things have gotten worse seems a capitulation to inevitable forces outside anyone's control. Like an apple, rotting, rather than a boat with a hole in it: You can fix the boat if you find the hole.

Anyway, I think it's an extremely complicated question. I'm probably a bit more conservative than a lot of HN. My kneejerk reaction to many things is that, yeah, people suck more now. But, that's a dangerously convenient intuition which should be examined very carefully — like almost everything else in life.


I believe that social media is contributing to these feelings. It seems that social media, being an amplifier for "shocking" stories, tends to exacerbate the negativity of the world around us. Only the most controversial, sad or frustrating stories get eyeballs.

It's been this way with traditional TV and radio newscasts, of course. But TV now has to compete with social media and is moving towards the same hysteria. Podcasts for sure and some radio programming are also playing the doomsday soundtrack as well.

I don't actually think the world is in a much worse place. I do believe that America (and probably the world) is changing culturally, how we treat others, human rights, respect. There seems to be a new awakening towards minority rights, gay rights, race, and police abuse. Negative things have always existed, but it's becoming harder to hide them with the ever present social media lens looking at us. We're changing our societal perspectives and discourse as a direct result of the extra focus.

So maybe it's a good thing. Maybe all these negative feelings and observations are a technology/media driven renaissance of sort. We're possibly just at the dawn of a new age of awareness and respect for others and the world around us.


Everything was normal until it wasn't, and if it wasn't back then, nobody else paid that much attention because that wasn't normal, so they hoped it went away.

That is, our bias tends to be towards supporting and reproducing the norms we're familiar with. Acknowledging a problem with the norms is much harder than ignoring and dismissing an actual problem that contradicts them, because it's often a challenge to faith to resolve conflicts between closely-held values.

It's the disruption to norms, not specific events, that leaves a pit in one's stomach.

Here's what I suggest you do instead of looking for specific evidence of decline. Go read "Joe vs Elan School"[0]. Get angry and upset at the story, and then note that this is really a story that, while covering mostly the last few decades, has threads from as early as the 1950's, a decade where things were "normal" relative to now. Except, if the story is to believed, they weren't. They couldn't have been!

And then...focus on virtue ethics rather than norms. Norms are exhausting, a perpetual "babies vs parents" game of shifting around boundaries and responsibilities such that some people(e.g. billionaires) can behave like children, while other groups must attend to and explain the child's actions - and that's how a place like Elan can exist. We can curse that darkness, but nobody has time to work out all the ways in which they could properly live better instead of succumbing to a norm; you have to lead with strength and hope others follow.

[0] https://elan.school


Focus on the good.

Reject the bad, evil, dark.

Focus on the good, true, love, kindness, compassion, right, lovely, righteous.


I don't know what good, true, love,... is, the only thing i know is humor.


For one I strongly agree with your premise.

Imo, the reason things have gotten worse is finanicialization brought on by an extended period of low interest rates which causes societal surplus to flow to capital intsinve activities at the expense of everything else. To understand the reasons behind thisid recommend to look up Triffin's dilemma.

Basically it says, that any country that has a reserve currency, by nature of being forced into a structural trade deficit, will be forced to prioritize Financial activities over productive activities and that this force will increase the longer you hold the reserve currency.

Basically we used throwing the working class unfer rhe bus as a strategic lever at the end of ww2, but that didn't really start playing out until the 80s and has gotten much worse since then.

Now everyone is a nihilist because no one believes the game is fair anymore because we have structurally set things up so everyone in capital intensive activities gets obscene gains and everyone else fights for the scraps.

This has permeated beyond its first order effects where people embrace this system and actively encourage it without really understanding its causes.


Don't forget that lifetime expectancy has declined in the US for the 2nd year in a row and that real income has shrunk in the face of inflation.


> It's like no body seems to give a shit about anyone except themselves anymore. Whats the cause of this? What's the solution?

Be the change you want to see. If you want your police be tougher on crime, then get informed and involved in local politics. Participation in anything but national politics is completely abysmal, and practically non-existent if you don't include the seniors. Most people don't even know the names of their DA or city councilors, let alone their positions or how competent they are.

> And then they use RealPage to collude to make prices higher[1]

Along the lines of being more informed, this almost certainly is untrue. Realpage is a service that landlords use to find the optimal pricing for their units. Unless RealPage controls the entirety the market, which they don't, the optimal market price for each individual landlord would be different from the colluded price, and they would be offering a substandard product for landlords. The price that landlords pay to use their service is based on square footage, so they have no incentive to facilitate collusion anyways.


Its difficult to have an objective view about this. For starters we must at least define what timescales we are talking about and which region or social-economic system.

Talking about the so-called western world and a generational experience in my mind there is no doubt there is a huge mismatch of people's expectations versus their creaking and failing reality that is what creates this sense of falling apart.

What is falling apart is a tower of falsehoods. Very fundamental ones: About where the energy and the food is coming from. About where cheap stuff is manufactured. The inability of consumption and money to fill in destroyed social bonds. About the fitness of corporate structures and regulation. Political corruption and skyrocketing hypocricy and deceit.

So its in reality a mental / moral decline and it is entirely self-inflicted. Objectively none of that should be happening.

What is fascinating is that the mechanisms to reverse that dynamic are not readily available. Religions and political revolutions are discredited so we are left seething with nowhere to go.


I don’t get why people keep complaining about streaming subscriptions. The whole appeal of something like Netflix is the unbundling of cable packages and getting rid of annual contracts. I don’t need to subscribe to things I don’t want to watch (unlike a cable bundle where you pay for channels you don’t care about because they’re part of the bundle).

Even more importantly, there’s no annual contract. Subscribe to Netflix for a month or two, watch the 4 shows you care about and unsubscribe for the rest of the year. Switch to a different service for the next couple of months. This is amazing - I basically get to watch the best shows available on any service for under $20/mo (this was never possible with cable). No one asked you to keep all of your subscriptions active all of the time. I always subscribe to these services via iOS and so canceling takes exactly 5 seconds (you don’t ever have to call anyone or go hunt down the unsubscribe button hidden deep inside some website ever).


Implosion and looting of the old empire, evicerated middle class now cannibalizing itself. Welcome to the fourth industrial revolution.


I think there's a very good point to be made about general anti-social behavior and a handful of downwardly mobile elites that defend it (see: defense of shoplifting, turnstile jumping etc) but I see the opposite from the American perspective for the last two years alone.

- The unemployment rate is the lowest it's been in 50 years, while inflation is ticking lower

- The Dow is at 34k and this is considered "bad" because we hit Dow 36k last year.

- Real GDP per capita is the highest it's ever been

- We're meaningfully pushing the needle forward on Fusion, and abundant energy deployments like wind turbines and solar power installations are accelerating

- Battery and semiconductor manufacturing is rapidly coming back onshore just within the last year

- Machine Learning hit at inflection point with diffusion models and large transformers

- We are involved in no wars and drew down our involvement in one

- Cars are getting better and EV adoption is at an inflection point

- The MRNA revolution is just beginning

- Crime is ticking down from the highs of 2020 but is still lower than even the early 90's.


Well sure, civilization may be in decline, climate change is going to get worse, etc.

But not everything is getting worse: there are still some things to be thankful for! Look at phones and laptops from 10, or even 5 years ago. Many of them are so bad by today’s standards I wonder how we ever put up with them. I bet in 5 years time these things will be even better still!


Assuming you live in the US like I do, definitely watch this video and read Dalio's book (I bought 2 copies)

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio (2022)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

Basically we're on the downward part of the cycle of wealth. That has NOT happened in our lifetimes, but it's happened many times before to other countries (Netherlands, Britain, China).

Some things go in 150 or 250 year cycles and they're hard to see.

Basically the idea is that in the long term, countries need to actually produce wealth in accordance to how much money they print.

HOWEVER, the problem is that you can actually get away with NOT doing so for 50+ years -- the span of more than one generation. Particularly if you have the reserve currency of the world, as the US currently does.

Dalio links a lot of our ills to Nixon's untethering of the dollar in the early 1970's.

That reminds me of a good tweet -- What if your entire personality depends on low interest rates ?

The idea there is that the habits and culture we've grown up with have been enforced by this distortion of wealth.

---

To create wealth as a country, you need education, rule of law, cooperation, trust, etc. There has to be real output, and people have to push in the same direction.

But if you can just print money instead of doing the work of those things, then why bother getting educated? Why not just rip people off?

Why not rip off the government? They're just printing it anyway. So the social order is hugely affected by monetary policy.

TBH I didn't come around to this until ~2020 ... In 2016, everyone I knew thought the sky was falling ... But I was living in wealthy area with a good job. Now that I'm a bit removed from that, I see that the rest of the country is having big problems

I think Jeff Bezos has said -- "I don't worry about next quarter -- it was already determined 5 or 10 years ago". Unfortunately the social trends for the US were determined 40 or 50 years ago. But that doesn't mean everyone should give up and do nothing! Don't be a nihilist

Honestly software is one of the places where you can create real wealth (not fake, extractive riches) with a few people. People in other industries aren't so lucky

(Related to a previous comment about gambling and crypto: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33910537 -- if huge portions of society engage in NEGATIVE SUM games, then that has consequences. I conjecture that gambling is commonly banned because societies that banned it are the ones that survived. Others went down in flames.)


maybe it's the tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_prof...

anyone who can manage to get some blood out of the system, even if it's just smoke and mirrors, shoots to prominence. i won't name names.

for everyone else there's less and less. landlords squeeze harder, workers are stretched further because there're fewer of them, and because there're are fewer of them everthing slips. and so on. basically, as the rate of profit falls over time, everyone squeezes harder and is squeezed harder, everything gets worse. what's kept a lid on it since the great depression is the government dumping money on it, in various ways. perhaps that mechanism is running out of juice.

hopefully we don't start a war with russia or china to create demand.


> Is anyone else noticing that for several 5 year blocks (pentad) the world just seems to get markedly worse? It's like no body seems to give a shit about anyone except themselves anymore. Whats the cause of this? What's the solution?

I used to think that random people on the internet could be trusted, now my attitude is (essentially) "if I don't know you, then fuck off and fuck your opinion too"

I'm not saying this directed at you OP, I've felt the same thing you've felt about the world becoming worse off

In 2018-19 I'd think about making a blog connected to my IRL credentials. Now, this isn't really something I'd consider doing. I used to want to write an autobiography, now I'd rather not say anything

And with respect to this:

> And at the same time, we get these cases where a dude like Tyre,

That whole thing makes me feel physically ill. If people are capable of that kind of cruelty, what does that say about our society?


If you live in the U.S., there is a substantial chance your demographic has been affected by lead poisoning. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119

I think many of the problems you talk about can be traced to things like this.

What I see is that after some inflection point in industrial development, a race between stupid decisions and smart solutions began, on a massive scale. Antibiotics is a good example of this sort of thing, but it's not just technology that gets rushed but laws and ways of living. For example the GI bill created a standard of suburban living that we still expect to this day. And for what? We're not in a war.

Ultimately I think we live in highly experimental times. You could have cutting edge benefits or cutting edge annoyances and combination thereof.


>have abandoned decades of experience showing how to create reliable, robust, reusable code that is both great the customer, fast to iterate on, and only a tiny tiny bit slower to write.

This era you think existed… didn’t. All of the trash code from 10-20-30 years ago is long gone. The only stuff that remains is the <1% that was simultaneously written with quality in mind while also remaining useful.

The quality of software is absolutely irrelevant if you build the wrong thing, so you need to iterate quickly unless you’re lucky enough to know exactly what needs to be built. And even in that case, you need to weigh the engineering cost against a cost of a failure and the cost of expensive maintenance.

Many times, 100 lines of very use-case specific python that can’t be re-used is absolutely the correct engineering call. It might not be what you like as a programmer, but you’re not paid to navel-gaze.


I think most people in this thread might benefit from the book called Factfulness. I'm a bit sad it's called that because it sounds like I'm calling people 'unfactful' / fake news, which is not at all what I mean. It just happens to be called that. Instead, I think people here are basing their worldviews off of the news' and social media's presentation, which is inherently more "omg you must see this"-type negative than realistic.

Book: https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/

The short quiz with which the book opens: https://factfulnessquiz.com

If you live near-ish to Aachen, I would also be happy to lend you my copy.


I think availability bias and confirmation bias may play a role in things seeming worse. Incidences of violence, unrest that in the past would have gone unreported, unnoticed is made obvious and immediate on social media. Social media makes it easier to compare one's social status to someone else.


Yeah probably a result of "doom scrolling" and the modern news cycle. The general crappiness of service is driven by inflation and worker shortages, companies need to do more with less, standards of quality will drop as a result

But yes, judging by OPs posts, people being noisy, landlords and subscriptions, anyone can pick out negative stuff they see. The big ones others would say are the ukraine conflict and polarization of society politically


Yeah this was definitely a thought.

Was everything always crap and I'm just more aware of it now?

The picture hasnt changed the lens just got clearer.


Things are bad, but... things were always bad:

- Things in the past seemed better just because you didn't care enough and now you are becoming aware of it. - There were always wars, famine, diseases, poverty. You (or humanity) in general didn't care enough or couldn't care (information took longer to reach people). - Software were always bloated, but now we have machines that run faster, they had bugs but they were simple programs before. There were injustices in the area, they were not as common because there were a lot of less software engineer and methods for them to share their discontentment. - Things were always poisoned, because of the substance of the moment: Mercury, Lead, Asbestos, Plastics. - We already opened hole in the ozone layer, it's recovering, now we are heating up the planet.


Having moved from the US to Sydney in the last year, Sydney feels like the US mid-2000's, where generally things still felt more stable, prices weren't terribly crazy (except for buying a house), and the streets are extremely safe. Kids still wander around and take public transit by themselves like I did as a kid in the 90's in Europe.

In terms of "rosy retrospection" there's probably a bias on the other side — things can get better or worse; they shouldn't always be improving. The last five years seem markedly worse than the five years before that, in terms of stability and safety etc.

However- I think this period of instability is might lead to the next positive shift in how we live our lives and our relationship with technology. (e.g. collectively we'll be moving away from social media)


It sure seems like it, but I think things are getting progressively better.

Look back at any time in history and unless you were pretty darn lucky, you had a short and miserable life compared to today’s standards.

I think the perception of the decline on civilization is just being amplified like never before.

Scary things grab our attention and we now have a major portion of the world’s economy built on capturing and keeping people’s attention.

Vying for consumer attention is not new, it’s just technology has allowed us to scale it up to crippling proportions.

I think people are generally better to each other today, in most places and in most ways. I think we’ll save our environment well before it’s too late. I think humans will be just fine.

Though, I also think, as today and as 100 years ago, 100 years from now will sometimes feel like the worst time ever to be a human.


I agree with other commenters that rosy retrospection may be at play, and that in many regards the world today is better than ever before.

That said, you might enjoy Scott Alexander's essay "Meditations on Moloch", describing how many aspects of our society are multipolar traps / races to the bottom: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

A sample:

  Imagine a capitalist in a cutthroat industry. He employs workers in a sweatshop to sew garments, which he sells at minimal profit. Maybe he would like to pay his workers more, or give them nicer working conditions. But he can’t, because that would raise the price of his products and he would be outcompeted by his cheaper rivals and go bankrupt. Maybe many of his rivals are nice people who would like to pay their workers more, but unless they have some kind of ironclad guarantee that none of them are going to defect by undercutting their prices they can’t do it.

  Like the rats, who gradually lose all values except sheer competition, so companies in an economic environment of sufficiently intense competition are forced to abandon all values except optimizing-for-profit or else be outcompeted by companies that optimized for profit better and so can sell the same service at a lower price.


Also recommended is this remarkably clear explanation of the mechanisms at work here, and how things could in theory be much better:

https://equilibriabook.com/molochs-toolbox/


(Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...)

A way I sometimes think about it: humans have made great technological leaps, but every day is a battle against decay. Everything that actually looks stable is mostly kept that way through effort:

- most large internet sites that seem automated actually have engineers on-call 24/7. it requires constant operational work

- every machine has parts that must be replaced periodically

- the friend group tries to meet at least twice a month so you can all remain in each others' lives

So it is not unusual to see progress happening concurrently with decay. I feel similarly to the OP but I think we're bound to end up with a bunch of things that are getting worse in a given year.


I understand the strong temptation to think like this. One very specific thing that I am sure has declined is journalism. The ad-supported model that was basically a patronage to writer-artist-philosophers is dead. As a result, I think we have very low quality information about what our world is like today, and much of what’s written is paid content or panicked clickbait. That means a whole lot of people get told every day that the world is burning.

But if you shut off the screens, I think you will find we live in a world that’s safer, richer, and more just than at any other point in history.

Personally, my main concerns are geopolitical and environmental. Either could knock us off this relatively great pedestal we sit on. To respond to that belief, I have aimed my career at contributing solutions.


You're not off base regarding the cars and the crime. It is well documented. There has been an increase in traffic accidents the last three years and I have been following it because I wondered myself if I noticed it. NHTSA gives an update biannually I think. Road traffic deaths per mile driven increased in 2020, 2021, and 2022. I think it's still unknown if this is starting to revert to the pre pandemic mean but I haven't checked in about six months. It's related to the increase in crime although I have heard people suggest that there was simply a madness that occurred caused by empty streets during the covid lockdowns. Perhaps people got used to a lack of enforcement and being able to drive at much higher speeds on roads and they are set in their ways now. Police are somewhat unwilling to start enforcing this aggressively in my area because they have to take officers off of patrols and because it leads to an increase in violent officer encounters when they pull people over. The reality is they have bigger problems and not enough staff.

The cars you are talking about with modded exhausts could be just the area you are living in but there is a car culture involving loud, fast, sporty cars and the people who drive these cars are pretty apathetic about whether it annoys anyone. It's unclear to me if this is growing but I think it is anecdotally. Maybe it's worth looking into this further. It wouldn't be hard to track car sales and the growth of modded Japanese cars. I remember this always being a thing since Fast and Furious but I thought it died out for a while. not sure =\

Regarding the subscription revenue thing I think this comes from business schools and public companies wanting to secure revenue streams for investors. I think it is definitely overdone. In the cloud business it kind of works but I think this model of business is being applied to other businesses due to its success. You see almost everyone trying to convert their business (ink for printers!) into some kind of a subscription model. It's probably just a dumb trend that's being propagated by 'experts'. This is also me speculating.


> There has been an increase in traffic accidents the last three years and I have been following it because I wondered myself if I noticed it.

Since you're not citing any, I'm going to just go off the first figures I found which go until 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Yes it went up, yes you should pay attention and fix it if reasonably possible. But keep it in perspective: it went from a near all-time low of 1.1 "Fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled" in 2019 to 1.3 which is roughly the level of 2007. For every five hundred million miles, you'd see one more fatality (or, per hundred million miles, 0.2 more). You cannot convince me that anyone can tell this difference more reliably than a coin flip could, even if your job involved being on the road.

Is a three-years-in-a-row increase unprecedented? No, just three years before the start of this three-year increase also saw the end of three consecutive years of increased road fatalities, and starting from roughly the same value (~1.1) to end up a bit less bad than now (1.2 vs. 1.3). How much above statistical significance that is, it doesn't say.

Deaths aren't the whole story but after clicking on the 'more info' link that leads to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...>, the graphs and tables are basically all labeled 'deaths', 'killed', and 'fatalities'. Maybe the crash rate is noticeable, but people aren't good at noticing slow trends. I'd not be surprised if the average person wouldn't notice a 50% increase (provided proportionate news coverage, i.e. same amount of air time per crash) when smeared out across a year and starting with a "rare but definitely not unheard of" value which is what road accidents currently are (I've never been in one after a decade of driving, but I know people that have been so it's not surprising to hear of it or to end up in one). More likely, the news coverage went up, or someone mentioned that the stats were up and then you registered subsequent crash reports more.


It's plausible people might not notice traffic deaths but this assumes there is absolutely no correlation with general driving experience and road safety which is unlikely. Also, this is thousands of extra deaths and on a year over year basis that happened since 2020 when it had been trending down previously so I think it's quite plausible that people notice and it happened rapidly. But that is just one particular statistic the NHTSA published to extrapolate from. There is an older study showing an increase in speeding incidents in 2020.[1] This is a 50% increase which seems likely to be noticeable although this study only counted a short period in one location. The problem with a lot of the statistics besides NHTSA traffic fatality I have tracked is they tend to be specific to one area and not nationwide. But, we also know speeding is associated with higher traffic fatality per the NHTSA.

I kind of suspect you are just looking to downplay the statistics but there is another metric that can be used except it is not tracked by the NHTSA and could be biased. But a quick search for "increase in road rage incidents" will show that a number of states have had this issue since 2020. Unfortunately, there is a non profit that may have a bias collecting the data but it has been reported on.[2] Basically road rage murders increased a lot in 2021 and 2020 and all over the country it seems. This is not what is tracked by the NHTSA since these are murders as far as I can tell. To me it seems like quite a stretch that there can be increases in road rage incidents which are associated with speeding and aggressive driving and that there is a corresponding unnoticeable decline in driver etiquette. It's likely quite noticeable.

As I said, I am following this issue because I noticed a change but I don't think there is going to be any easy way to prove anything given how long it takes to collect statistics and a lot of what can provide proof is not recorded in any usable way. I also said the issue is well documented and you can find a lot from disparate sources.

update: NHTSA launched a campaign to remind drivers not to speed recently. The campaign page has related information and statistics relevant here. https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-launches-new-camp...

[1]: https://www.iihs.org/topics/bibliography/ref/2258

[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/road-rage-shootings-guns-2021/


> Basically road rage murders increased a lot in 2021 and 2020 and all over the country it seems.

These incidents are a tiny tiny fraction of all non-accidental injuries or unnatural deaths occurring. Yes it went up, yes you should pay attention and fix it if reasonably possible. But again: keep it in perspective. Singling out a metric that went up while, say, the total burden of disease (on the scale of comparing to other countries and across decades) essentially stayed the same[1] and... okay honestly I'm having trouble finding a metric where the USA improved over the last years (or, if 2021+ data is not yet available, even the last decade). Still, not sure that means things are suddenly bad. OP's sentiment and a lot of this thread is that the world is going to shit, which is objectively not true if the USA maintains its quality of life and not-so-wealthy/healthy places are continuously improving.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/dalys-rate-from-all-cause...


ah ok not sure about going to shit, I probably wouldn't say that, so I don't agree with OP that things have gone to shit. I don't feel that way. I do think road safety worsened slightly but it's not Mad Max bad and I think eventually it will revert to the mean hopefully.

Yes, it's a small increase in a long term decline of road deaths and I haven't seen second half of 2022 data yet but my last understanding was that traffic fatality may have peaked in 2022, idk. It's too early to tell and people might not care a year from now if things improve. I should have been more clear about what my position was because yes a lot of things worsened and are much higher concerns than road safety and it's definitely not a major issue but I just happen to be following it. It's just a temporary thing I imagine. But I do want to warn people just to be slightly more careful.

But I am fascinated by some of the data because there has never been a lockdown before and I am curious if it affected driving. It could have implications for traffic safety, road design, and traffic shaping. I should've avoided any other implication.


My gut feeling is that we're entering into capitalism's end game phase. The endless growth is unsustainable and is eating away the only planet we have. Once it becomes apparent that business as usual isn't going to work any longer and that cost of living will eat away any reserves one might have, I expect things to get very bad for a lot of people. I feel this outlook might influence a lot of that: Get as much as possible now, so you might make it longer. So start collecting bottle caps now :-)


OP, At the risk of sounding like self promotion, I have 2 products that I am working on and really want to be as "just" as possible. ( One of them being https://mergeclouds.com/ , it is still work in progress ) .

1) Non-recurring , fixed price .

2) The software will not stop working even after privacy / terms update ( you are not forced to agree to use keep them ). They will just work based on last configuration of privacy policy when you bought them .

Basically treating software like a physical product, you pay for them once and regardless of how manufacturing changes does not change how product you already own functions. At-least from my side as a developer I completely agree and am trying to stay true.


>General worker apathy is endemic everywhere I go people seem aggravated I would dare to check my order and point out they didn't put in the ketchup i asked for, or the napkins, or whatever. Or when I dine in the tables are dirty. Or the gym is filthy, the cleaner just drags the mop around looking busy but accomplishing nothing. But in many instances they keep asking for more tips.

I don't think I'm off base in asserting that _this_ attitude is a major contributing factor to why the world feels "in decline" to you.

Perhaps if you went through life with a little more empathy for people who are almost certainly living in or around poverty, you'd feel a little more of a sense of community and less hostility toward strangers.


Somewhat offtopic but I've found reading Gwendolyn Leick's comprehensive history of Mesopotamia (~4000BC->1000AD) and it's really helped me understand how civilizations --- successful ones, at least --- consent to ebb and flow.

There have been, in history, periods of hundreds of years where the tide went out on civ. Because their civilizations were more-or-less designed for this, it was ok. Whole cities were abandoned when rivers changed their courses over hundreds (or in some cases, dozens) of years. And this was painful, but it was also ok.

Our civ is not nearly as well-engineered as all that, however. We got so obsessed with planet-scale development we forgot century-scale development. Fast and brittle, like driving a Ferrari offroad.


I attribute it primarily to lack of appreciation for the foundation of civilization: Private property.

Violations of private property are primarily done through the state, which socializes costs and thereby both reduces incentives for responsible behaviour and increases incentives to be dependent and irresponsible. Less wealth is created, more wealth is squandered.

Many who raise democracy to an practically religious status also contribute to this decline, as it overshadows much more important cultural values, such as free and open public discourse, decentralized / local governance and of course private property. It's almost as if, as long as you're in the majority, anything goes, perverse incentives be damned.


Some counterpoint though I don’t totally disagree.

- had a guy playing loud music outside our building in the middle of the night, called police regularly and they would come and address it, mostly useless but at least they cared. - another guy did the same thing, I asked him to stop and he did, no trouble - my current landlord is about as good or slightly better than other landlords I’ve had over the last 15 years - other people on my block (Brooklyn NY) are mostly very friendly, neighbors help each other out, say hello, etc. - I have approximately 1 bad encounter with someone per year in transit, which is about what I had when I lived in another major metropolitan area in a “friendlier” country 15 years ago


It's part of a long-term decline that accelerated markedly in 2015 but started much earlier, with 9-11 being a major factor. The US had problems before that, of course, , but 9-11 engendered a siege mentality accompanied by a severe failure of confidence.


Must be American thing.

Where I live things either do not change much or improve because of tech advance.

Of course I don't know anything about US other than some websites. But I think that US issue roots with disrespect of police. You do remember how you forced policemen to kneel? That looked terrible for me. We don't do that. Now police don't want to work, so you get loud people, stealing, higher crime, etc. Solve that thing. Stop bullying police. Respect them. If they killed some criminal, applaud, not judge them. World is better without criminals with drugs in their blood. Don't treat criminals as heroes. Even if they're of black colour. That does not make them saint.


https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=tyree+nic...


i'm nearly 70 years old. believe me, things have generally got better, except possibly for the quality of fish & chip shops.


https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Lin...

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege


I was at a walgreens in SF yesterday for ~30 minutes and witnessed 3 separate incidents of homeless people stealing as much as they could carry without consequence. I don’t see how this microcosm depicts a sustainable society.


Hard to explain all the points you've mentioned with one single root cause, but if I were to pick one I would say: people don't care anymore because they're bored.

We've reached a level of comfort for most of the population that is probably akin to the wealthiest people at the worst point of decadence of the Roman Empire. There is nothing to do, nothing to thrive for. The nation is not even working towards anything as a collective. Leaders have no interest in solving the current challenges (poverty, homelessness, hunger, etc) because they help keep the population in check.


I believe you are right to sense a change in our zeitgeist (each era has one). In this case I think it is caused by a feeling of impending doom, perhaps mainly because the prospect of nuclear war has bubbled up (again) lately. This particular doomsday prospect has the curious property that we block it out from our minds as too horrible to even think possible, and anyway nothing we can do to prevent. In some this creates a general sense of gloom, in others it creates a hedonistic urgency, because "après moi, le déluge", in yet some a feeling of general and roaming anger.

My two cents


I believe the narrative that tells me everything is good and I shouldn't complain, and also that I should get really upset at things that the screen tells me to. I am an individual who expresses my individuality by conforming to all the trends and the world owes ME happiness! Your whole post seems negative and like you're denying all the progress we're making in allowing people to live their own truth within the confines of the neoliberal global order's approved options. Please report / ban for hate speech. Only positive vibes please!


Don't forget we just got out of a couple of terribly turbulent and damaging years of pandemic response, and before that we've been riding quite a high.

Things will get better, but they might get worse first.


You are not off-base. Your reflections on your society are sound, and you do right in raising them for discussion. The fact that you can (and should) is part of what democracy is about. If you think something ought to be better, then why not try to engage and influence your community with your ideas? Don't leave it to the politicians (and companies) to dictate what is valuable in your country.

Easier said than done, I know, but imagine if we all actually made an effort to shape our society, and took responsibility for it.


> Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time today.

Because SWE's report to engineering managers, who report to other layers of management who report to the executive suite who report to a board who report to those who own a majority of shares in the corporation. The message coming down from on high is fast, fast, fast, features that will increase next quarter's profits, or even this quarter's profits. Everything flows from this.


Antisocial behavior has been on the rise since the pandemic. You aren't imagining that part. Fight on planes, petty theft, car accidents, murder all up.

Not so sure about the rest of your complaints.


It’s cultural rot. Those values that you cherish are not seen as important by a growing portion of people in society, and those values aren’t being transmitted to their children, etc.


And kids are listening to strange music and don't respect their elders and dress funny, and all these people demand their rights!

Sorry,smarky,but virtually everything you mentioned seems specific / personal / localized / variable. I'm fairly sure that loud motorcycles and evil landlords existed previously. It's even entirely possible your specific neighbourhood and/or workplace is in fact getting worse. But it's a big world out there!


The noise complaint is the one that resonated with me. My pet peeve is the phenomenon of libraries being converted into some kind of community center/day care centre. In my day, libraries were as quiet as tombs and the noise standard was enforced. Now library staff put out kids’ board games to play. Or tolerate grown adults having long cell phone conversations in the library. This is not Starbucks; get out. Even noise canceling headphones isn’t enough.


Lots of my friends have been discussing and thinking the same things. Sounds like you’ve been feeling it too. Something is off. Plus everything you said, I feel like my clothes never wear as well the next day from the past, my hair never falls in quite the same way, and even my coffee tastes...wrong. Our institutions are crumbling, nobody trusts their neighbor anymore, and we stay up at night wondering to ourselves...How can we go back?


Things are better now than they ever have been in some regards, but yes in others we are entering the "find out" era after the "fuck around" era.

Low fuel and house prices. Not worrying about the environmental impact of humanity's excesses. Pointless wars when we all thought we'd learnt better.


Forty or so years ago, quite a number of people seriously thought that we were months away from thermonuclear war. Thirty-five years ago, crack cocaine was a big deal, distribution of it was violently contested, and murder rates were high in a lot of cities. As for poisonous air, I don't know that it has recently been as bad as it was in Pittsburgh back when a temperature inversion killed some number of people.


Yes, some things are getting worse. But the truth is that some things are getting better in some contexts, some things are getting worse in other contexts. It seems you are focusing on "what is getting worse FOR YOU". This may be an example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias


The mix of complaints points to two causes

(1) Noisy people, young people not caring about quality, etc - it's caused by a phenomenon called "aging", I'm struggling with that myself.

(2) Major metrics going downhill, etc - the problem here is that you are caught in the spreading epidemic of "watching the news" while at the same time, metrics keep moving up and down and good and bad things keep happening, as before.


I'd add to others' points here: if you can afford to, live somewhere that provides an atmosphere that makes you happy. The seven years I lived in Seattle made me deeply unhappy in many of the ways you describe. Moving somewhere where people are generally kinder and more conscientious of one another has had a considerable positive impact on my outlook on "global wellbeing."


Not 100% sure.

What I do notice is the frenzy with which certain people attack those small parts of the globe where these things are less of an issue (the usual tired assaults upon Singapore and Japan for their crime of being cleaner and safer).

So maybe the answer is - the people that matter don't think the juice is worth the squeeze when it comes to a more civilised society. And the rest of us just have to suffer.


We live in a loop.

Remember that we still have unlimited source of food and water, that should be enough to be happy and optimistic, but probably we need a world war (again) to value what we have now.

Remember when we were free to work in whatever we wanted, do whatever we wanted, go out or not, travel or not, spend hours on the internet doing things like discussing on hacker news with the fridge full?... good times...


I don't entirely disagree with you but I've experienced differently. In software, for example, I have seen precisely the opposite: there's been a lack of long term decision making. Instead of saving developer time overall there's a push to write it even if it is bad. Then it goes into production immediately and it becomes very difficult to get it fixed correctly


We agree with eachother. My point was the lack of longterm thinking. Not that projects have to be delayed but much but 10% today can have a compounding ROI for 2-5yrs (or however long that system lives) .

I noticed this on gitprime btw. My code churn rate was waaaay below my peers. So basically if I merged a line of code to main, it tended to not need updating for years.


Gotta satisfy the stockholders and all they care about is the earnings in the next quarter...


But that makes no sense because the ROI on any feature is easily >12 months. You can't pay an engineer $20K for a month to build something and hope to make that $20K back that same quarter. The ROI on software development is easily 12 months, often years. So the investor is already betting on a future that exists 12 months from now, why not make it the best 12 month outcome?


You too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

[https://www.songlyrics.com/baz-luhrmann/everybody-s-free-to-...]


Independently of amoral and shitty behavior in a lot of industries, which you could probably debate back and forth whether or not that has gotten better or worse, I think that the general health of the population is in decline. It is likely multifactorial as to causes, but I don't really it's even debatable, and this will make EVERYTHING worse.


Complete speculation, but this sounds like a decline of community, where interactions are more transactional rather than personal.


The digital world has advanced ; the physical world was left behind. We did not adapt. We placed hurdles regulation and rentseeking traps in anything but the digital.

The root of this is in demographics of course. Different generations focus on different kinds of wealth and will defend it till the end of their lives. In democracy, it becomes a numbers game


If there is one thing that always stays the same, it's every single generation coming of age and saying "Everything is headed towards ruin!"

Believe me when I say, everyone before you, going back thousands of years, have said the same thing.

"Kids these days don't listen to their elders and don't value work!" - carved into Greek walls


“Play long-term games with long-term people. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.”

Idk, maybe for whatever reason right now, as others mentioned, the macro environment or maybe your micro environment is incentivizing this behavior but it won’t work out in the long run.

Just gotta do you, and do good, OP.


> Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time today. ... >it seems that people get promoted away from their problems so they're not the ones to solve

This has been going on forever and it's anything but software specific.

You're just getting old.

Things have always been like this.


From Worse is Better (80s) and The Cathedral and the Bazaar (90s)... ending up in software shipped with some custom Docker container to make it work and nodejs modules doing trivial operations breaking a lot of things. Software has a clear trend. Not all of it, but a significant part.

I'm not saying we should go to mainframes and waterfall development. Speed improved a lot but quality only marginally (relative to tools available).


I studied Econ in college because it was a particular interest of mine. I hated it. I also wanted to understand it, so that I could know why it rubbed me the wrong way and live intentionally to push against it.

There was this moment when I was in a grad course and the professor was talking about self-optimizing markets. That's when it hit me. I literally stood up in the class, interrupted everything and went like "wait, the math isn't optimizing for income inequality". It was kind of funny watching more than 100 little economists in training suddenly start tearing apart the equation at once. You could literally hear the sound of frantic spreadsheeting and charting.

In the end, the professor himself said that it was true, you could achieve a fully "optimized" economy with literally everything being owned by a handful of people. Made me think.

How is a system supposed to be beneficial for us all when the mathematics at its core don't actually consider societal benefit?

If an economy is fully "optimized" but everyone is sick, sad, and angry - is it actually optimal?

A mathematical model can make sense without being sensible. This is why I have an implicit distrust of algorithms and other systems of optimization.


So when were things better according to you? During the 2010s post-housing-bubble crash? The 2000s with the dotcom bubble and 9/11 and subsequent wars? 1990s AIDS epidemic? 1980s with Reagan's trickle-down economics and all the insanity of the cold war? 1970s and the Vietnam war?


Things are getting better, broadly over time, but you hear more and more about the wider badness. Stress reduces compassion to others and so you yourself may miss the good in others.

There's a never ending cycle of impending doom broadcast on all channels.

Things _feel_ worse. That doesn't mean they are.


Maybe you had good parents who shielded you from shit of the world and now you're getting older.


Wow, I’m sorry you feel this way. And I’m glad I don’t have to wake up as you. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but get a grip. Life has always been and always will be mixed with good and bad. No matter if you choose a “pentad” from Roman times, today, or 600 years from now.


Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants!


>the world just seems to get markedly worse

the world = US? Cause your irl examples (people are noisy, police, environment quality) are very very US specific. And even then I guess it's hyper local in the US too.

But tbh I'd not be really surprised if you really meant that the world = US


Just read the first two sentences, disagree with this in Europe. I feel family and friends caring. I feel there's quite a bit of good faith among strangers. I do feel a bit of that people seem emotionally too blocked, but I think that has always been there?


Might not be one of the most important things but some of thr best videogames I played have been released in the last 5 years, so things haven't necessarily gotten worse.

Keep in mind that covid has been here for the last 3,affecting everything (yes, 3 damn years!)


I will address only one of your complaints:

>General worker apathy is endemic ... the gym is filthy, the cleaner just drags the mop around looking busy but accomplishing nothing. But in many instances they keep asking for more tips. <

I have held many jobs in my life. I learned to clean the kitchen and cook as a child and later to sweep, mop, rake, etc. once I was big enough to do so effectively. I learned to take orders and to work with others on a task.

Every time I see "the cleaner just drag[s] the mop around looking busy but accomplishing nothing" I offer to show them how to mop. They always allow me to do so! [I can hear the Tom Sawyer jokes now!] The root problem is that they don't know how to mop!

I explain that I once did lots of sweeping, mopping(grocery stores et al), cleaning and that there is a method to all of it. I take them through the procedure:

- wetting/drying the mop,

- when to change the water/soap,

- drying(squeeze) the mop,

- patterns to use in mopping, etc.

In all of that I emphasize safety for themselves and warn of accidents I've seen/caused while mopping.

Employees really don't know this. I know it only b/c I was explicitly taught (in pieces over my earlier life) or experienced it.

The root problem is that some facilities have no one who knows how to do basic tasks such as cleaning. It is assumed that such knowledge is acquired by magical cognitive osmosis in the past. Often an employee is shown a mess, a mop bucket (complete with dirty water from the last use) and told to "clean it up!".

It helps to be humble: I'm not the boss, I'm not ordering them to follow a procedure and I'm not correcting them. I show and tell them what I once did and how I was taught and that I was once "in their shoes" and did the same task. I am no better a person than they are and it is always a worthwhile and good thing to work safely, to do a good job and that their work is valued.

FWIW mopping accidents are wildly varied from slippages and falls to mixing the wrong mopping ingredients [entire store cleared out due to HCL acid gas - don't mix cleaning fluids]:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mixing+wrong+cleaning+fluids&t=ope...


Inflation, easier access to negative information, sped up automation, fear of replacement by robots, military tensions, global warming. It's not every 5 years, more like long phases when superpowers become like supermassive blackholes and implode.


We’re sliding into that post capitalist world that is depicted in so many “scifi” books. It’s apparent but everyone just seems to accept it. Things are going to be very bleak in 50-100 years with most people living in poverty with a tiny rich elite.


I've often wondered if 2,000 years from now historians will place the height of our civilization maybe somewhere in the mid 1800s or something like that and call our time "the crisis of the 21st century".

It's kind of fanciful but who knows


Some of what you said resonates with me, but it seems like you're not looking objectively for evidence to the contrary. Some might be generally true, some generally false, and some might be locally true but not society-wide problems.


Try traveling around. You’ll see that the world outside of your immediate vicinity is actually pretty good. That’s the way I can view the world as positive even when I see the weaknesses/negative aspects of my immediate surroundings.


We didn't start the fire. The world's been always burning, since the world's been turnin'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g


You’re just more aware. It’s been like this for longer than five years - lol. For some of these issues - it’s been a while.

Our entire media system is built around attention. Your attention is more easily grabbed by bad things than good.


A more pertinent question would be what can one do about it realistically? And analysis of why things are declining is generally futile simply because involves societal/govt change that doesn't happen easily.


People are gonna people. My main priority is my own mental wellbeing and my sense of inner calm among all the chaos you see. Self care, and self love instead of selfishness.

'Hell is other people' as the saying goes.


Most of your points sound easily resolved by simply moving. Sounds like it can't be 'worse' in your view, and America is full of ~1 million pop cities that'll be a different experience.


If you're not allergic to reddit, the collapse sub might interest you.


Are you in California? Specifically soCal? I've noticed this too but it seems to me to be mainly here in SoCal. I go back home to Phx, AZ or other parts of the US and don't notice it as much.


You are too ingrained in the internet news. If you just turn off your news and actually look at things that directly affect you, you will find out that it is pretty great for Americans right now.


Maybe you are getting “grumpy old person” disease. We all get it at some point.

I agree with many of your complaints about landlords though, but it has been going on for much longer than 5 years.


Global poverty has decreased by more than half in the last 50 years.


> Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I've noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world. Folks stealing shit. People driving absurdly dangerously in cars that are not designed to travel like that. (tailgating, lane switch, accelerating at the fastest I've ever seen a beat up Sentra do...) . I never see cops hit lights and sirens at them

People say this like a truism. Go to a store, like Walmart or Target, fill up a basket with some goods, and then not pay for it. See how well it works. I do noy endorse this, but may as well put your words where your mouth is. People make these blanket statements because they sound convicting or popular.


>Go to a store, like Walmart or Target, fill up a basket with some goods, and then not pay for it.

People do this all the time and get away with it. Home Depots have famously been ripped off by people filling carts with power tools and walking out with staff barely batting an eye.


yes, but this does not prove crime is worse or lawlessness. Shoplifting is as old as stores. The small but definite risk of being arrested is the deterrent.


>but this does not prove crime is worse or lawlessness.

I didn't make that claim. You said "See how well it works" and my response was essentially that not only would it work but it is common.


I think this comment would be equally right in Victorian times.


The world is becoming every day more greedy.

The low interest rates environment increases wealth inequality and the rest is catching up to because wealthier as others.


You're not off base. Paul Ehrlich was right, the population bomb has exploded, the Earth's resources are stretched and breaking. That's the trouble at the root.


The Southpark episode calling noisy Harley riders fags aired in 2009 so its nothing new.

I've found the noise of vehicles was jarring after the long periods of quiet covid lockdowns.


I'm afraid this will happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYD0qLY1orU

before things get better.


Hopefully not including "inclined not to talk' because of covid restrictions a form of 'declining'


Noisy people are all over the place and 24/7 noise is horrible for my health. The only way I know to escape noise is pay more for a better neighborhood.


...And no one can write anything without profanity. It's so ugly! Why make the world an uglier place?

Somewhat sarcastic, but I'm making a point too...


You might enjoy the Triggernometry podcast. Some of their guests discuss what society seems to be losing. Some are more optimistic than others.


I think it's just the current stage of capitalism. A lot of the products that meaningfully improve people's lives have been created so now it's more profitable for companies to just start rent seeking in every place they can.


It feels like so many of these complaints on your list are things that have existed for decades in western culture. I'd argue things are getting better.

Greed has always existed.

Anecdotally I find people less loud these days compared to when I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Remember boomboxes?

No one's really cared about quality when it comes to low skill labor. Western culture typically doesn't carry that kind of value or pride in work.

Police don't give a shit? Crime has been steadily falling over time.

Pollution: look at the industrial revolution.


You should read factfulness by Hans Rosling and realize the opposite. Both from a health perspective and economic and violence


I will just throw in some counter anecdata: in my little corner of the US, people are at least as nice as they were before.


I blame it all on Hollywood and media. If you watch the trend of media in the last decade it keeps getting darker.


https://ncase.me/trust/


you can find safeheaven in China/Russia if you commit crimes in the west and vice-versa.

Its become easy and shameless to commit crime. You have Britain gets $100 Billon dirty money every year and its a champion of free world.

My country spent a lot of money to bring back a human trafficker from Britain but failed. Its neo colonism.


Automation is playing a part here. "Software is eating the world", which means that many interactions are now based on software - that is buggy.

The level of customer service in any e-commerce website today would be innacceptable in even the shitiest of brick-and-mortar store.

Try buying shoes without getting the wrong size of the wrong model delivered to your neighboor's former address.

Try booking a plane with using your real first name if you daaaaare having a dash in it.

Try getting a refund for _anything_, canceling a subscription to _anything_, basically doing _anything_ that commits the now cardinal sin of "reducing someone's A.R.R.)

Try getting billed for just the amount of electricity / gas / water you consumed in the previous month, as opposed to some estimation based on what the prince of Nigeria would use if he was not in exile.

Try answering a phone and having it be someone you really want to receive phone calls from, as opposed to someone trying to sell you something else.

"Capitalism theory" has it that bad actors should get replaced by better competition - however we have (inevitably) stumbled into a "local extremum" where _everything_ is crappy, but people just get on with it. So there is really no incentive into making anything work, except maybe for some luxury items - though, I suspect those are getting shitty and full of buggy software, too.

On the other end, we still have relative peace for at least of couple months.


The world is getting objectively better in nearly every way. That’s my whole response to your post.


America is a recently dead empire and you are observing the corpse twitching and going into rigor.


I think it’s part of growing up that you become a lot more aware of all the problems in the world.


IDK. Things are going well for me.


Could be, but also you read bitter and jaded by life. May want to look deep into yourself.


Excellent, I was attempting to articulate something similar.

"Don’t be overheard complaining... Not even to yourself".


Covid absurdity (vaccine policy, riots, too much money printing, rabid conspiracy theories, government incompetence, etc) ripped a hole in the social fabric


The thesis is hard to falsify and your methods of proving it seem less than rigorous.


For example this post being on the front page reminds me of how HN is declining.


I am convinced that this is the case. The reasons for it, I think, are actually quite simple.

* Software automation has destroyed the human role in society. No one knows anything anymore bor are they allowed to accomplish anything anymore. Just 15 years ago, I could call Amazon and get an American worker on the phone who could contact other departments directly and solve exceptional problems. I distinctly remember doing this in one instance where the person actually cared about getting me a single book. Now, I am lucky if I can even get the automated service to get me a person on chat, and even then the person is basically only allowed to do what the system allows them, but for exceptional cases they can maybe override it. This really destroys motivations of both customers and workers because we're just literally pawns in a massively connected and ubiquitous but wholly dysfunctional software system. I recently had a weird delivery issue where the customer service person didn't even have the capability or knowledge or want to just call the shipping warehouse. I had to just wait weeks until the system was able to handle it.

* The other thing is inequality is just off the rails. People realize that hard work and doing the right thing doesn't matter. This really beats people down when everything continually gets more expensive and more hidden behind obtuse systems. Companies do not care about individual customers anymore. A customer is merely a statistical model. All of this is because capitalism worships scale, which further drives inequality. Inequality creates this "every person for themselves" attitude.

We're in the age of "the computer says no". Technology and capitalism are destroying individual human value. This is literally the matrix. The architects are just the super rich.


Can you expand more on the five year (pentad) pattern and what you mean by that?


Loss of religious grounding.

Christianity was the north star for our societies, it organized people, align them to work together, put the future(love) before personal interest(excess pleasures, sins)

Without religion we are going to fail. There never was a working society without religion. Yes we are in a different time, we have to update our stories, but if we throw them out we are going to collapse.

Ex: does a doctor does what is good for him or for his patient? What about a regulator in the government or a scientific working at Pfizer, Twitter a bank or Google?

If people stop putting truth and love on top(christianity) and put personal gain higher not much of what we have will keep on working for long.

Personal side: we have never been more materialy comfortable yet we are more depressed, more anxious, more medicamented.

Family: We no longer have enough kids or manage to keep a couple long enough to bring kids into adulthood. Kids to single parent household do worse in almost every metric yet we don’t care or don’t look.

On the flip side a lot of people are looking for the missing pieces, are trying to reintegrate the wisdom that we had in an modern framework: Jordan Peterson, Verdake, Jonathan Pageau and others.

It’s very hard to reverse. If people no longer believe to higher power (truth and love) we default to a lower version of ourselves, our animals instincts and we don’t know how low we will go: should successful men have only one woman? Why not? People are free to do whatever they want. Could a billionaire have a huge harem of thousand of women ala Genghis Khan? If not, why not?

There is no rules anymore (beside obvious immediate harm). We have discarded our ancient wisdom as useless, so we create all the harms that are on a longer timescale: trust, family, society.


The downvotes are showing that you're right. People have lost faith.

Today people believe science. It explains that humans are born not because of love, but cells interaction when people have sex. Science explains way more things than religion.

At the same time (and paradoxically) people have stopped respecting the truth. The power is what matters. Because people with power are those who create the truth that affects you and your life.

The consequence is that societies are transforming into hierarchies, where top levels feed on lower levels. Just like in the animal world. Just like what we do with cattle.

Thus, the modern sense of life is to reach the higher position in hierarchy. To raise your status. The ever expanding gap between rich and poor only catalyzes this primal meaning of life, causes everyone else to follow it. Otherwise, you and your descendants are doomed to stay low for many generations ahead, and extinct in the case of cataclysms.

For example, in Ukraine many civilians have died because they couldn't leave their homes in the war zone - they have nowhere to go and no resources to afford living elsewhere. At the same time, some deputies and oligarchs are freely travel to Dubai or other luxury places, while there is still war in Ukraine.

This world is fucked.


I find more and more that downvote of HN are a sign of a good post.

I was on the leftist side all my life without knowing it, it was the water I was swimming in.

I agree that love/truth in the christian sense is what is missing. The secret ingredient that make everything work much better.

People think that without religion we will just be rational good humans and we will create an utopia. It turn out we become closer to our animal part that is more ready to grab and fight then self sacrifice for future generations or for the other humans.


I'm curious how you explain Japan. Their traditional religions have never been very big on moral instruction, certainly not the way Christianity is, and today a supermajority of the population doesn't take religion seriously at all. And yet you have a generally well-behaved populace, low crime, very low rates of out-of-wedlock births, and so on. They have their own problems, of course, but not so much these particular problems.

I guess you could argue that a particular self-reinforcing system of social norms could be considered a sort of orthopractic religion, but that would be a bit of a definitional stretch.


I don’t know much about Japan. I know they have a huge problem of low birth rate, they could be on a path of extinction.

For sure there is a mix of cultural norms that are mixed with religions.

I see religion as knowledge that span multiple generations, saving the new ones from falling in the same mistakes as the previous ones. The religions that produced productive and resilient (and combative) cultures thrived, they others disappeared. In a sense like our dna they are evolutive adaptations, but they can evolve much faster and can spread horizontally.

I think they all end up reflecting patterns from reality in a way that is transmissible between humans of different level of education and cognition.

Now, we look at them with very skepticals eyes (for good reasons) but they contain wisdom that we cannot get in one human live. I think we have gone too far in pushing them away, now we need to look at them with humility, just like we wouldn’t modify our dna without care.


The police enforcement should be viewed as a pendulum swing: in the US at least you can see periods of heavy enforcement, political upheaval, periods of laxity, increased crime and misery, right-wing backlash, enforcement, backlash against that and progressive movements, periods of laxity... and that's where we are today in the pendulum swing.

The pluses are we're treating new and more diseases, exploring technologies that cure the previously incurable, and making progress in areas like energy efficiency.

There are all sorts of downsides and challenges, like alienation due to online personas and the diminishment of the value of in-person interaction; people who believe the online is reality and are forever seeing evil in everyone (the -cisms, the harassment, all those things the online connected world facilitates).

Those too will lead to some sort of correction.

It's a difficult time for sure but it's also a time for adaption. What other choice is there?


You caught the woke mind virus. Stop watching the news and it will fade.


Close your eyes people!!!


Have you come across this meme?

Bad times create strong men, strong men create good times

etc.

Let me know your thoughts.


I'd tell you the reason for all that stuff with data, but I'd get my post flagged. If you want a whole bunch of bad answers and maybe one or two decent well thought out uncensored answers I'd try asking on an uncensored forum.


Meta commentary:

Does anyone else notice that the comments which appear to agree with OP seem to be lacking both data and historical and contemporary world knowledge?

Pure speculation: OP and supporters are living through their first economic cycle inflection as working adults.


you’re 5 years older.

you may have been young five years ago now you aren’t.


Everything is pretty much the same as it was. Fees and fraud have been a part of urban society since urban society was invented during babylonian times.

Some things that have changed:

You can walk into pretty much any standing structure, drink straight from the tap, and not die a horrible death from bacterial infection.

Fast food is historically the most nutrition per-weight per-dollar that's ever existed.

There's a cure/vaccine for most diseases and conditions. Yes some companies are witholding preventative treatments in favor of money. On the same hand, having categorized continuous treatment for most existing conditions is a marvel of science.

It your only complaint is "People are rude and why does stuff cost money?" then I recommend indentured servitude as an alternative.


Literally not one thing listed is a new. All of that had been going on for my entire life and I've been here about a half a century.

Seems like you are just finally noticing what's always been and are upset by it.


You’re way off base by almost every measure.


You are suffering from perception bias.


Well, I can tell you from my own experience… greater productivity means everyone is overworked. And better technology could benefit everyone if it was open source, but instead it helps only thoss who have amassed a lot of economic and political capital (large corporations and governments). When it comes to Web2 and Web3, it seems to have been completely captured by grift and profit motive, and has no good open source applications for communities! The public just has no tools to serve themselves. And because of this, the governments and corporations will soon force everyone to use digital ID and central coin to do anything. This isn’t hyperbole — check the links in the description of this video: https://youtu.be/uwRSzNTp2ko

People often hate Big Tech and Big Government overreach and surveillance capitalism and war and … but there is no viable alternative.

Since 2011 I have been writing, with my own dev team, at my own expense, an open source platform so communities worldwide can have an alternative to Big Tech. We reached 11 million users in over 100 countries and translated to 15 languages.

But most VCs and investors don’t understand it and say we are doing too much. You can use it here: https://github.com/Qbix/Platform

Then in 2018 I launched a spinoff company to create Web3 smart contracts for communities to govern themselves, manage their own currencies and generally run software they don’t have to trust any central parties.

But here on HN many people knee-jerk hate and downvote it because it’s Web3 and blockchain based. You can grab them and use them for free: https://intercoin.org/applications

So I don’t know… to build these things for the good of the world takes a lot. It took me 10 years and $1 million dollars so far, and my team probably several man-decades put together. And we give it all away. But what I have noticed is that people don’t really get why something is important until they start to use it in their life.

Also we started two youtube channels where I interview people including regulators and sociopolitical thinkers and tech people. This Thursday I have Noam Chomsky and David Harvey on a panel, for instance:

https://youtube.com/IntercoinOrg

https://youtube.com/QbixPlatform

If I needed people’s appreciation or VC investment I would have given up long ago.


Greg, the problem you frame has significant jumps, incorrect assumptions, and holes, and is painted as helpless.

If we want to survive as a species, we will have to overcome the forces of disunity and come to common ground of understanding, and ensure the people who have the power to enact necessary change listen.

The issues you mention all stem from breakdowns of the fundamentals that made things work. The fundamentals have been known for quite a while. Structurally much of what you mention is misunderstanding these fundamentals, and instead seems to be just an emotional grouping of associations.

We all have it sometimes but knowing the cause gives us agency and allows us to address the issues as opposed to having it stripped being unable to act.

Here are some questions that may help you refine your understanding:

Should people be compensated more for exceeding expectations or production goals.

If they create something once, are they obligated to always improve and maintain it without reasonable compensation.

Should a majority of everything be automated, what benefit does that provide society who relies on wages for food, and work experience as growth that sparks insights and progress. Automated obviously means these companies pay out no wages beyond shareholder profits and management.

Surveillance capitalism will continue because no one has stopped it.

This allows interference into important parts of our lives that compose our identities. What generally happens to people when interference in that area reaches a certain level and is intractible, isolating, or stripping of agency? If that doesn't spark thought, What happens when prisoner's are kept in solitary?

Would your children be able to live in the world you are building (through action or inaction) and deal with the deceit, misinformation and lies. Will they have the same agency you enjoyed, and the same benefits and opportunities, if you couldn't prepare them for example if the bus factor happens.


entropy of the object or the observer


Another good piece of "doom porn". "fraudulent crypto schemes" is an oxymoron. crypto itself is fraud.


Daily reminder, America is not the whole world. Conservatives, neo liberals and capitalists have pillaged your country. Other places are doing a lot better.


Seasonal Afective Disorder maybe


> the world just seems to get markedly worse?

The world is significantly better than the year before cause the world is not just USA. Imagine being gay even 20 years from now. Imagine being black during slavery. Imagine being a woman in the 50s. Imagine having your country colonized. Imagine dying of polio before the vaccines... This is endless. Things are still broken, but we human as a whole still improve.


Kids, get off my lawn!


1. We're in late-stage capitalism. Things are optimized for capital, not for people.

2. You are a victim of the fact that sensationalism drives views and clicks. Things aren't getting any worse, you're just exposed to the worst of it.

2. You're getting older.


What about WWIII?


You should read Factfulness by Hans Rosling.


Do you mind giving us a brief bit why it relates, and why it'd help?


29yo woman here. I passionately share the bitter sentiment that most things are declining. Some anecdotal evidence.

* The built quality of the average fridge, car, phone, piece of clothing, sofa feels lower. A few years lifespan at most. One has to pay big bucks to get great build. Also, we repair much less and replace much more. * Community and family bonds are extremely weak. People in my city used to go to church on Sundays and socialise. We used to have family meals weekly. Now each family is locked in their house I feel. People don't have kids and think they can get an equal level of fulfilment from work or hobbies or traveling. * Many transaction, not many interactions with people. Attention spans have become super short. People very self-centered. No ability to listen. Not even interest. Genuine conversations f2f in decline. During my childhood people used to sit out on their balconies and have conversations with people who passed by. Kids used to play outside. I feel kids were more smiley, vibrant and full of life. * Aura of laziness and entitlement. I feel in general people have less appetite to go out and do things. I also think we are way more fragile and mentally weak growing up in this societies whilist being protected from any adversity from our families. * We are more connected than every but feel the least truly connected. A result of digital communication I believe instead of real f2f touch and talk. * Nobody of my friends can afford a house. My parents had one at 25. We are 30 and most of them are still stuck at entry level jobs (various reasons). 30s are meant to be our career peak. * Brother coming fresh out of university and it is impossible to get a job. I had no trouble, parents, not even. * Every building looks the same. Not attention to detail put anymore. Furniture too. And ofcourse software. Every landing page every product feels kinda the same. Minimal they call it. Where is the soul? Where is the craft? Emotional design? * The people successful online are the ones who shout the loudest not the ones that have the highest quality or are most legit. This holds for 'creators' and for businesses that are trying to sell you something. It is all about sneaky loud marketing. * Woke culture. Don't even get me started. * We are more productive than ever but work just as much as we used to. It used to be that human progress was measured by the amount of labor one had to do to make a living. The less the better. This metric has barely moved. * Gentlemen are hard to find and not appreciated. Craftsmen. Good ethical businesses - everybody is looking to make a quick buck with little care and devotion it feels. What was once considered the peak of human flourishing is extremely hard to find.

Sure there are so many things that got better like access to knowledge, power to create our own opportunities, cheap travel, conveniences like UBER or online bookings, improved healthcare(?), generation that cares about doing the right thing(?) but do they balance out the negatives? I am not so sure. Again; I am talking about Western societies. And these are just observations and feelings of one person. I don't have data to back these.

I am really trying to check if I am objective or if I am being driven by emotion aka nostalgia for the good ol days, as many in the comments mention. But I still hold the position that the at least Western societies is getting worse.

By many measures of wellbeing personally I am better off now than in the past: salary/material wellbeing, fitness, number of friends, freedom, skill, self-awareness, wisdom, emotional maturity, peace, finding my mission in life, having an unbelievable partner, great bonds with family etc But still I truly, objectively think life is not as good as 90s - 2010s


Serious answer, the earth's magnetic field weakening is accelerating [1] [2].

It began declining in 1859 [3] but the changes have increased in recent times, with the magnetic pole shifting significantly such that even airport runways had to be renumbered [4].

The weakening geomagnetic field leaves earth more vulnerable [5] to inclement space weather [6].

It has been shown in mice, the negative behavioral effects of increased space radiation [7]:

"Studies in murine models have shown that exposure to high-energy 56Fe particles, which are the largest effective dose contributor in the space radiation environment, impairs cognitive function. These impairments include deficits in spatial learning and memory, object recognition, and operant conditioning, which parallel the cognitive decline observed in aged animals. [...] These behavioural studies, taken together with investigations into low dose HZE radiation effects on neurons and neural tissue, illustrate the risks that space radiation may pose to human health."

and [8]:

"Acute and chronic tissue alterations arise from the damaging effects of highly energetic charged particles that penetrate the spacecraft and traverse though the tissues of the body. These fully ionized nuclei are derived chiefly from solar ejection events (e.g. protons) or galactic cosmic rays (GCR) composed of light and heavy ions (Z from 1 to 26)

Past work with rodents has demonstrated that whole body and/or brain exposure to charged particles can elicit various behavioral decrements that can be linked to impairments in the hippocampus, amygdala, basal forebrain, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and other brain domains."

If this model holds true, we can expect things to get worse and worse at an increasing rate in the coming years/decades until the field strengthens.

[1] (2014) Earth's Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now https://www.livescience.com/46694-magnetic-field-weakens.htm...

[2] (2020) Earth’s magnetic field anomaly: Scientists have no clue why it is weakening and if it will disappear https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/article/eart...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

[4] (2021) https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/airport-runway-names-shift-ma...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field#Signi...

[6] Space Weather Prediction Center: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration https://www.swpc.noaa.gov

[7] Space-like 56Fe irradiation manifests mild, early sex-specific behavioral and neuropathological changes in wildtype and Alzheimer’s-like transgenic mice https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48615-1

[8] Persistent nature of alterations in cognition and neuronal circuit excitability after exposure to simulated cosmic radiation in mice https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/j.expneurol.2018.03.009


"everything is subscription model [...] pay N times to access something thats only worth 1-3x" For me, 10 bucks a month for music and ~15 for movies/series (~1.5 concurrent subscriptions on average) adds up to less than a percent of my net income. For that, I can watch basically any series, any movie I want, and listen to any music I like.

Compare to 99ct/song that was allegedly a very hard sell for the music industry, under that model my Spotify library would be worth 1150 bucks, and I paid about 1200 for it across a decade of subscription. I get to listen to any song as much as I want without committing to paying another 99ct, under the iTunes model I'd be constantly wondering if this is worth spending another euro. Not spending money every time you do something that costs money makes you feel worse than clicking the 'buy' button once, and the math works out to within the error margins so I'm happy with that deal. And it streams on any device, no need to move oggs/opuses around or have a NAS/HDD for the TV to play music. It's a value-add for the same price.

I also have ~annual backups, so if Spotify dies the way that Grooveshark did, I don't lose my music library. Since there are competitors where I can get all the same music on a whim, I feel like I do own my own library.

"People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit." No more than before for me. Less, even, after moving from the Netherlands to Germany.

"Police seem to not give a shit anymore." Haven't noticed any change here. I got my first fine in Germany for turning left across a through line at 2am with nobody on the road. Keeping ðem lawless people straight, they are!

"Landlords seem extremely greedy" I'm waiting on my service costs invoice from 2019 still, and rent hasn't changed since we moved in in 2018, not even indexed for inflation or anything. They brought us an actually huge pile of bottled water when water went out after our city was flooded by a river in 2021, no charge. The deposit returns alone must have been worth fifty or a hundred euros.

"there's a ton of little things too like the water is poison, the air is poison, the food system is poison or crashing" The heck kinda news are you getting? We learn more about the effects of the things around us more than that our food is of worse quality than what our great grandparents ate (who, in most of the world, likely didn't have food at all on occasion; whereas starving is absolutely unheard of for 7 out of 8 billion people today). We feed more mouths more and better food than a hundred years ago and besides yearly fluctuations that certainly happen, if you look across something like a decade (any recent decade), the trends for healthcare, education, etc. are positive anywhere in the world except for inside direct war zones.


>and rent hasn't changed since we moved in in 2018

This sounds incredibly lucky and rare and not the norm. I guess you have a private landlord and not an institution in a big city. BTW, can I ask in which city that is?


Yep, not what I expected either, but I think it goes to show that things can also be different and aren't necessarily bad across the board. You rarely hear someone 'complain' that their rent hasn't changed compared to the alternative, so the situation will always sound/feel worse than it is.

It's a city of around 50k people in west germany, close to other cities that are much bigger, and my building is less than ten minutes walking from the transport hub that takes you to one of those cities. Without service costs (main constituent: heating), we pay 600 euros for ~100m² (but a bad layout, so it's not all as usable and spacious as another 100m² apartment would be).


Sure, but just because things are great for you, doesn't necessarily mean they're not bad across the board for many other people. It's called survivorship bias.

For example, my rent has been going up every year on the dot as the company who owns the building has an obligation to its shareholders to increase revenue.


Money in politics.


It's called late stage capitalism


I know this might not be a popular opinion, but: late-stage capitalism. Not (necessarily) from the /r/latestagecapitalism everything-sucks capitalism-sucks stance, but more fundamental than that.

We're living in an era of human history where core growth has effectively halted; and most "growth" since the 80s-90s has been synthetic. Real growth overwhelmingly comes from one place: rising population rates. The net rate of growth of our population, in the economies that matter to our global perception of the world, has effectively hit zero since the 70s; the excess deaths caused by multiple back-to-back recessions and COVID-19 close the gap on any small lead the birth rate may have had over the death rate.

Some people say "efficiency gains from automation will help close the economic gap caused by a declining population". Barely, but keep hope alive. Automation is extremely expensive, requiring complex machinery, complex software, smart engineers to build it, and smart operators to keep it running. All of those components have dozens of steps in the supply chain to get from raw material or babies to an effective, non-brittle system. The jump from "farming by hand" to "a tractor" is FAR more capital efficient than the jump from "a tractor" to "a tractor that drives itself". Why are Ubers so much more expensive than Cabs? Because Uber has to fund a massive engineering and logistics effort to automate the delivery of its services; cabs don't.

The more pertinent point to try and answer is: Why is the birth rate declining? There's a ton of proximate answers to this question, but the root cause of all the problems is really: declining growth in raw resource deposits and virgin land. This decline in growth has caused material things, and thus services, to all become more expensive over time.

These are the four things that keep an economy running effectively: People, Resources, Land, and Automation. When they fall out of balance, too much or too little, things start falling apart in both obvious and insidious ways. Wars are fought over countries having too much land and resources. Too little of them, and people can't afford to reproduce. Automation can help close some of the gap, but too much of it leads to expensive, brittle systems and non-productive bureaucracy to support them. An imbalance stresses the system; it stresses the people in it, it forces them to do counter-productive things like resort to robbery, it causes hormone imbalance which can lead to aggression, which influence the polices' default response from friend to foe, its a forcing function on today-over-tomorrow in businesses meeting demands from customers, taking shortcuts like not fully researching the harms of deploying some new chemical in food processing or dumping waste into the ocean or not properly responding to carbon emissions. Macroeconomics influences everything; it can raise people out of poverty, but it can also destroy them.

There's a few good things on the horizon that may improve the situation, though we're talking timescales of decades.

* There are large parts of the population whose labor has been under-exploited by the capitalist system. As China declines, SE-Asia is picking up some of the slack; and there's an entire content of people in Africa. Continuing industrial-scale exploitation of these people will help sustain us a bit; we've got a good start with e.g. diamond and cobalt mines in sub-Saharan Africa, and I expect we'll see even more over the next decade. The birth rate in these countries is still a lot healthier than the West/East; but, naturally, it won't stay that way as industrialization and fighting for workers rights happens, leading to improved standard of living; they're just a few decades behind us, but they'll catch up.

* COVID-19 reduced the population pretty substantially. Global warming will continue that trend into the next thirty years, killing and displacing in the eight to ten figures of people. Contrary to some previous points; this will actually be good for the short-term economy, though quite bad for the long-term one. Reducing consumption will be good. Mass migrations of desperate people will be good to keep the labor supply going. More deadly natural disasters will give the government the credibility it needs to spend money without triggering concerns about inflation or insolvency (similar to COVID-19). Just watch out for natural impacts to raw resources in the supply chain, like flooding in the US bread basket or wars in eastern europe over natural resources (ope).

* Space, I guess. If we, as a species, can start sustainably living, producing, and reproducing in space, either independent of gravity wells or within other ones; that's basically the only out without a massive disruption to civilization. Of course, there's challenges with space; but the sheer amount of resources should pretty easily overwhelm most of those challenges. If you're paying attention to what is happening and will continue to happen in the world: building technologies that will push forward the colonization of space destinations proximate to resource rich areas is the single most important thing humanity should be working on right now. There's nothing else. EVs are cool and important; but not the most important. Ad technology isn't important. Stopping climate change is long-past being attainable; but we're not talking about "escaping to space and leaving earth behind", we're talking about finding more balance, being able to send resources back to earth, creating optionality.

Late-stage capitalism not from the sense that capitalism always terminates in a world where we're living today. But from the sense that no global economic system is sustainable without growth. We can find more growth, or we can live in isolated communes at a thousandth the population size and subsistence farm (though given global warming this probably isn't an option anymore).


You are not wrong, things are markedly worse, and they will continue to get worse because the people who have been put in charge have decided for you that when things fail, its because not enough resources were provided. Unlike engineers, they claim we need more resources, more power, more of everything, and it will always fall short as structural issues often do.

To understand how we got here you have to understand things which are no longer taught.

I would not expect a solid answer here or on any other social media. Given the complicity of social media platforms, most of what you see is fabricated and warped to increase engagement.

Most intelligent people rarely participate because of the ease at which censorship, amplification and deamplification occur.

To address some of your points, Landlords in most respects are the victims of the people who funded them to purchase property (the banks). There are cases where that is not true but they are a minority (i.e. Blackrock/Private Equity purchasing up 40-50% of the market in some areas). The cost is passed on.

Second, People are generally indoctrinated, and they have had that happen over such a vulnerable and long time that they become unthinking, and their ability to communicate with others that might reign them in has been interferred with intentionally.

They are not taught how to recognize harmful or manipulative content, and fall into a psychological state where some might argue they are no better than animals. This is one state.

Apathy is the other state where people can't react, its a direct attack against our way of life. If you can polarize large portions of the population into either of those two states, you can historically change governments. Tactics that cause disunity, and the inability to organize is what prevents us from responding.

Software has always been motivated and driven by the motives of people who develop it. There has been a long drive to push people to answer the 'can we do this', instead of the 'should we do this'. Hubris plays a large role here.

The idea of technology solving certain problems is laughable. The faith in science in that respect is a lie and completely ignores the brutal aspects of humanity which most are taught as sugarcoated versions. I've known people where they don't understand why most other countries hate or think Americans are stupid.

As for subscription models, this is what happens when you have a concerted and unopposed effort over 50 years to weaken property rights, and strengthen control in the hands of company's who have consolidated their marketshare to the point of monopoly. This isn't capitalism. The people you voted or didn't vote for chose this for you along with the other 200k+ people they represent. The most good for the most people... which isn't good at all.

The core driving force for why we have progressed so well was the division of labor, you can learn more about what was known by reading classic books like "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith (1778). Its a very fine balance which has been broken for quite some time.

The core of the issue, is money over time enables corruption. Money isn't bad, but a Ponzi inevitably leads to loss because its unsound, and relies on deception. What do you think our current (no longer fractional a/o 2020) banking system is? (A ponzi).

Based off what you've written, you appear to be vulnerable, and unable to critically identify truth from misinformation. This is a very dangerous state to be in. I would cut out social media and reeducate yourself on how propaganda works. You may find the book Influence by Cialdini useful in identifying the psychological blindspots that are often employed.


I think I disagree with all of these things.

* Real estate is expensive. Landlords take on a lot of risk. A small example is that my landlord noticed that their water bill is absurdly high. Now they have to give everyone notice that they need to look for the source of leaks in their apartment; while the legally-mandated waiting period is going on, they are just losing money on paying for water. Combined with things like rent stabilization, mandatory lease renewal, etc. they might be losing money on rent, even though you think it's "too damn high" or whatever.

* People being loud outside bothering you inside is under your control. Get an apartment on the back of a building. Use double-glazed windows that isolate noise.

* General worker apathy is a product of being paid very poorly. People that would do an excellent job serving you food have found higher-paying jobs; those employers can pick and choose who they employ because the higher salary attracts a steady applicant pool. Again, I think this is just a product of where you eat. Yeah, they are going to fuck up your 99 cent cheeseburger. Go to a restaurant that's $300 a head, and you will probably get exceptional service. You pick what's important to you; money or service. Fortunately, laws ensure that the food at any establishment won't poison you, so at least you don't have to "pay" for that.

* I really think getting something out today is more valuable than making something perfect tomorrow. I can see how this feels bad; software is your craft and mentally you can spare no expense to make something "the best". I feel this way for personal projects, but not for products where I'm being paid. Before I gild the lily, I have to see if anyone even wants the feature. If they do, then refactor and make it perfect. If they don't, delete the experiment. I'm not that upset about this. (As a team lead, I always encourage my team to plan projects to make the codebase cleaner than it was when they started. If we want feature X that depends on subsystem Y, and subsystem Y is falling apart, I always advertise feature X as depending on subsystem Y refactor. You know subsystem Y is getting used because it's already in there, and you know it's important for feature X. So now is the time to improve it! Clean up tech debt and deliver a new shiny for users in the same project. You feel like you're paying down tech debt. The business feels like it's increasing the value of the product. Win/win.)

* Everything is a subscription because everything is a subscription. Gone are games that you play by yourself alone. Now games are online; new content every month, player vs. player, etc. The servers and software engineering behind that cost money. "Pay $60 now to use something forever" is risky financial engineering; $5/month is the real cost.

* I don't know if police don't give a shit about theft, but it's rather a problem that is more difficult to solve than it looks. If you see someone stealing stuff, what do you do? Have a salaried and pensioned police officer on every corner? Should they use deadly force to save your insurance company $100? I don't see an easy answer here, other than to consider all property the problem of an insurance company.

* Many of the people you mention are in prison for their scams. Scams are as old as the human race. It's just something humans do. Not a new phenomenon.

* There is more we can do for the environment, but the US before the EPA and the US after the EPA are dramatically different places. For centuries, you could pour toxic waste into people's drinking water. A lot of people died of dysentery and cancer. There is always more work to do, but we're moving forward, not backwards. Lead isn't in gasoline anymore. Gasoline cars are on the way out. It only gets better from here.

TL;DR: The world isn't going to shit. And you have a lot of control over how noisy your apartment is.


I disagree everything is declining. A lot of things are working really well these days, but there are places worth improving. My thoughts here somewhat shaped by living abroad a few years and learning to better appreciate US along with reading favorite blogs like Noahpinion

It’s hard to forget a few factors involving news in the USA. It’s the 3rd largest country and has substantially more free press than the first 2 populated countries (one of which has no free press and the other is 150 out of 180 on the freedom scale). Also police generally acknowledging things happen. So the big picture stories here tend to blow up around the entire world but they almost never ever directly affect us. Other countries seem like Utopia or something just due to not appearing in the news as often due to their smaller populations. I believe this is a large part of what fuels “life in USA is on the decline!” topic.

Regarding the police: I reported my car stolen about 2 weeks back. The police found it and got it back to me in an hour after I called. Yeah, the tech helped them, but I wouldn’t call that not giving a shit. Their help in my time of need helped me appreciate their response times.

Economically, North America is still fairly abundant in resources. Canada and US jointly get to enjoy these due to free trade policies. And much of the confident has policies preventing resources from just being stripped off of or out of the earth as quickly as possible. We could be entirely fuel independent if we had more refineries. This is an economic advantage few parts of the world can enjoy.

Religiously, becoming a secular county has been positive for all kinds of equality. I say this as somebody raised in church!

Guns: the bipartisan gun safety policies coming out the past two years are exciting. I see news about red flag laws being applied (even in like Florida?). It required liberals to dial down the “take all the guns” and it required conservative to dial down the “guns at any cost”. I hope both parties can make more progress on these lines and 10-20 years down the road we can look back and say things have really improved

Sure, there are situations that need some work:

* water availability. Not looking so great in the west! But we can afford to build enough desalination to get California off the Colorado river if we wanted to. Everybody is so scared to build these plants we can’t really access economies of scale for them.

* street people - homelessness is a poor word for what’s going on in cities. People down on their luck who lose their homes can get back on their feet many times. The people who are occupying the streets of cities are the ones who have traditionally been housed in asylums, which closed to due public frustrations of care quality. Society should have worked on making those more ethical and improved patient care instead of removing them. Newsom’s forced care law might actually lead to asylums coming back?

* birth rates - maybe one day the GOP will wake up and realize their electorate is declining due to this and decide to make a 180 about government funded childcare support. Tax credits aren’t enough anymore.

* housing - it seems to me like a lot of people live alone which pushes up rents. Roommate tax credits seem worth exploring.


Anything bad that happens around the world is now spread instantly via social media and is messing with people’s heads. Good news never gets attention, only the worst. Over the past half decade or so smartphones have reached saturation. Hundreds of millions of people who never learned to filter what they see online are experiencing the same craziness many of us first saw in the 90s for the first time. It’s the eternal September to its final extreme.

This has infected society in a way that is similar to what happened when TV reached saturation in the 1960s. By the end of the 60s everyone was convinced the world was going to hell because every time they turned on the TV it was war and hysteria. That’s what gets ratings. But it was just a blip in retrospect. BTW, watching Easy Rider is hysterical - truly clueless Boomers in their late 20s bitching about the good old days. They basically sound exactly like this post.

Then a new generation grew up knowing how to filter what they saw on TV and things cooled down for a while. I’ve always assumed the term “YouTube” was chosen because of its similarity to “BoobTube”. By the time I was in my teens in the 80s, we all knew what we saw on TV was mostly crap. Remember your mother bitching about the “garbage” on TV?

I feel we’re experiencing another social shift of similar proportions. Constant negative news and inability to filter is messing with perceptions.

The facts are that the air is cleaner than it has been in generations and EVs now make up more than 5% of the market and growing, which will lead to even cleaner air for our children. Water out of the tap is still the best in the world for the vast majority of the country. Crime is the lowest it’s been in decades. Children are safer now than ever. When I grew up, parents beat their children as a matter of course (I was for sure), now that’s considered the abuse it is. Illiteracy is a thing of the past as literally every man woman and child has what were once considered super computers in their pockets which need basic levels of literacy to use. And each smartphone is able to access any piece of information and tutorial one can think of regardless of socioeconomic status. Bigotry like racism, sexism and homophobia is finally being noticed and called out as is abuse of law enforcement. All things which used to be hidden away is now being pulled out into the light of day. Not all of it is pretty, but just because we can finally see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there before. It was and it was worse. Ever talk to your grandparents and were shocked by their casual prejudices?

So yeah, we’re in a trough of low public morale, but it will get better. I’m as shocked as most of us who helped create the internet as we know it, in how everything seems to have gone sideways instead of the universal education and enlightenment we were expecting. But it’ll happen. Generation Z is already almost immune from the bullshit they see on their phones and are taking advantage of all the opportunities it provides to educate themselves. It’s amazing to see.


I didn't read the whole thing because the answer is simple.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was not the end of the Cold War and the paranoia, distrust and apathy you sense now are the culminations of Russia's Eastern German techniques to the West.

We have been in an almost entirely psychological war since 1991. The decline of the West was primarily due to the fact we had a high trust society that foreigners from Europe took advantage of in order to utilize their Old World schemes.


tell me more please.


Europe is an ethnocentric battleground that has exported Irish Unions, British Racism, Jewish Banking, Italian Mafias, Russian Dystopianism, French Elitism and German... well, Germany, to the rest of the world. At various times these groups have worked together, not unlike American Suffragettes and Teetotalers or Abolitionists and Federalists, to advance their own agendas. Russia, after the fall of the Berlin wall, needed technology and access to foreign markets in S. America and Africa so they joined political forces with the elite of these European networks to do just that.

A new Global Oligarchy began to emerge and they have relied on the techniques Russia used to depress and subjugate it's vassal states to the peoples of Europe and America for the purpose of creating the confusion and paranoia necessary to short-circuit civil action against the consolidation of power and wealth within those countries by their elite. Primarily done through media and manufactured conflict.


is this an anti-semtitic conspiracy or a possibly more delusional russia disinfo conspiracy.


Points 1, 2, and 6 are why every generation eventually figures out why suburbs exist.


Have you tried asking to speak to the manager?


You should strongly consider seeing a therapist, in all honesty. Read some books on mindfulness, consider putting the phone down and staying away from news headlines for a while.


That can be good advice for OP (I suspect it is), but also OP can have a point: things can largely be getting worse, not staying the same or getting better.

> General worker apathy is endemic everywhere I go

I have noticed a major increase in this in my day-to-day interactions


Most workers I've hung out around recently, at least in the service industry, seem cheerful and friendly as ever. Most of my remote coworkers in the current gig are some of the friendliest, most intelligent working people I have had the pleasure of working with.

But again, I've stopped looking LinkedIn, disabled or deleted and stopped engaging on the majority of social media platforms (HN remains as a final crutch), and have taken up meditation, therapy, and art as well, so it's not just empty words.

The only thing I have really noticed that's different on a multi-year scale is some companies went fully remote that weren't prepared for it or didn't really want to, which made 2021-2022 my own personal hell with career stability.


Workers in the service industry are cheerful and friendly to each other, but not to me...

e.g. in Best Buy the other day I walked up to a group of 4 workers chatting together about 10 meters from the checkout counter to ask if any of them could open another till so I could purchase the microwave I was holding.

They told me in an ultra-polite passive aggressive way to wait in line at the single checkout that was open.

Obviously no big deal: hourly workers in their teens and 20s have always been less than stellar. Except the worsening trend has been noticeable.


Despite you getting downvoted, I appreciate your input.

I do understand how this might help the observer, but it also feels a bit like just look away and act like the problems aren't there.

Like we call could meditate for 30 mins a day and feel better about a shitty existence. Or we could spend 30 minutes a day (billions of man hours) doing something about it?


Thank you. This is about increasing your ability to put those man hours to work in a way that makes sense, the most useful thing spending 30 minutes a day meditating does, at least for me, is realign priorities for that day in a way that makes sense.

Whether work related, or just figuring out how to find a way to volunteer in the community more in a way that you are passionate about. You might not be able to stop global warming, but maybe you can donate a book on the legal system to an organization that sends books to prisoners so they can better understand and navigate it.

Honestly this is going to be my last comment on here. It’s time to break the habit once and for all.


You either ride wit' us or collide wit' us It's as simple as that for me and my n1.! War time, (war time) it's either yours or mine Outlawz be on the grind and a mission to shine - Tupac

Seems your not doing enough in your community to make it a better place. On the sidelines saying gee, everything is bad! Best cause of action. Become the community you want to be part of.. you either ride with us! Or collide with us.


> Police seem to not give a shit anymore.

If we listen to our less privileged friends and neighbors, we hear _very_ clearly that the police have never given a shit. Rape and sexual assault have been rampant throughout much of US history and rarely taken seriously. Organized crime has often been allowed to be an ally rather than a target of investigation. Lynchings have gone uninvestigated.

The concept of police is just silly from first principles. Expecting that this mechanism will give a boost in your quality of life is wishful at best, bigoted at worst.




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