Well, what I was getting at is that my camp has warned of pretty much all of the crises we face now since the beginning. And the same thing that always happens is going to happen: the public will get to pay to clean up the mess that made the private profit. It's like the monorail episode of The Simpsons times everything. Or how South Park used to be a comedy, but now it's a documentary. How could we have seen this coming?! Please.
But I'm a little disappointed in myself for how I've been responding on HN lately. My comments have been low-vibration/egocentric/projective. Is it constructive to try to go after titans of industry who fleeced the public? Will they even pay? Will it solve anything? I don't know.
What I really wanted to say originally is that I wish we could look to the future, and that us hackers could come up with a machine that could cut out the lead pipe in-place and replace them with something like PVC, instead of digging trenches. If the problem seems insurmountable, then we should innovate a way to make cleanup 10 or 100 times less expensive.
But see, the powers that be that created this problem for us are the same ones that drive wealth inequality. So we don't have the time, money or freedom to do the real problem solving, because we spend all of our time working on mainstream tasks to make rent. Instead what will happen is we'll get pork barrel projects at enormous expense, and established players will profit a second time around from the cleanup. Pay to dig a hole, pay to fill it in.
From a progressive standpoint, I see how an informed populace participating in a democratic republic with well-funded public education could almost trivially solve (and prevent) these problems like healthy European social democracies do. But since roughly the GW Bush era of the 2000s, the libertarian voice to dismantle everything has managed to undo countless environmental laws, get the former president elected and pack the courts, among other things. Revisionist history has turned my Star Wars rebel beliefs into elitism and liberal rhetoric.
So I feel a crushing level of "equivocating wealth/power/influence/airtime with manipulation". I blame the uber rich for that lack of leadership, letting us succumb to divisive politics. But I acknowledge that many of them probably witnessed the public making stupid decisions and were just as powerless to stop it as we are. I just wish that one of them would step up and set a better example, instead of behaving as NPCs due to how their wealth is tied up in voting shares. I don't know how they don't know about the dangers of their attachments from a spiritual perspective.
the public doesn't care about the environment in general, they are in a frenzy about prices, inflation is the big boogie man.
so it's not surprising that as long as its not in my backyard it doesn't matter.
and you can see this in other problems too. there's a very unfortunate hivemind-level congnitive dissonance in this, you can easily find a few million very dedicated voices that want action (let's say in foreign policy, trade policy, crime, education, drugs, etc...) and then of course many millions who want low taxes, etc.. and that's how you get half-assed semi-solutions.. out of sight out of mind
of course propaganda works. there's a feedback loop. no doubt about it.
also, regarding commenting vibe, of course it makes sense to advocate for a more progressive taxation/redistribution system. and for more foresight, exactly because of these biases of society. of course many would then raise the usual excuses. the tyranny of the FDA, how public procurement wastes money, the defense budget, etc.
regarding cleanup. trenching is already extremely cheap. sure, for many big diameter pipes it's possible do do it without, and with higher pressure usually the same flow rate is achievable with the smaller plastic pipe. usually the cost is the last "mile", meaning to change the pipes in the buildings. but that's why usually adding these chemicals that prevent the lead from dissolving in water (and thus from leaving the surface of the inside of the pipes) works best. also pretty cheap too. what's expensive is shitty backwater towns with near zero economic value. and that's the real problem, not the lead pipes. the problem is that people are ossified into these hellholes, and then propaganda tells them to be proud of it, as that's real living. and so on.
...
people benefited from cheap prices, of not having to redo pipes (or to replace engines more frequently). was it worth it? I don't think so, but millions would swear that it did!
it's easy to fall into despair, became a libertarian misanthrope because the general public is irredeemably dumb/brainwashed. but it's easy to do the opposite, to say that it would be amazing if everyone would run around with PhDs. but reality is somewhere between. just look at how shitty academia is, and it's definitely not due to a lack of brainpower.
and, well, there's maybe some minimal comfort to he had that in the fact that these same Fortune 500 companies that of course fund a lot of lobbyists also tend to care a bit about their brands, and the same Disney that absolutely botched the last 2-3 SW movies also doesn't want to advertise next to neonazi posts on Musk's X. (and maybe it's just because they are shameless opportunistic amoral bastards who maximize profits through ads depending on public sentiment, but then this means that the same dumb public at least doesn't find neonazi content a good palate cleanser before/after ads. and of course due to historical path dependence even a minority can elect a President and Senate)
But I'm a little disappointed in myself for how I've been responding on HN lately. My comments have been low-vibration/egocentric/projective. Is it constructive to try to go after titans of industry who fleeced the public? Will they even pay? Will it solve anything? I don't know.
What I really wanted to say originally is that I wish we could look to the future, and that us hackers could come up with a machine that could cut out the lead pipe in-place and replace them with something like PVC, instead of digging trenches. If the problem seems insurmountable, then we should innovate a way to make cleanup 10 or 100 times less expensive.
But see, the powers that be that created this problem for us are the same ones that drive wealth inequality. So we don't have the time, money or freedom to do the real problem solving, because we spend all of our time working on mainstream tasks to make rent. Instead what will happen is we'll get pork barrel projects at enormous expense, and established players will profit a second time around from the cleanup. Pay to dig a hole, pay to fill it in.
From a progressive standpoint, I see how an informed populace participating in a democratic republic with well-funded public education could almost trivially solve (and prevent) these problems like healthy European social democracies do. But since roughly the GW Bush era of the 2000s, the libertarian voice to dismantle everything has managed to undo countless environmental laws, get the former president elected and pack the courts, among other things. Revisionist history has turned my Star Wars rebel beliefs into elitism and liberal rhetoric.
So I feel a crushing level of "equivocating wealth/power/influence/airtime with manipulation". I blame the uber rich for that lack of leadership, letting us succumb to divisive politics. But I acknowledge that many of them probably witnessed the public making stupid decisions and were just as powerless to stop it as we are. I just wish that one of them would step up and set a better example, instead of behaving as NPCs due to how their wealth is tied up in voting shares. I don't know how they don't know about the dangers of their attachments from a spiritual perspective.