Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

ajabardar1 t1_iy834e6 wrote

Reply to comment by ScaleneWangPole in How will the space economy alter society? by Gari_305

way better than before, that is a fact. it has problems, yeah. but by every metric possible the industrial revolution was a net positive for all. well at least for humankind.

8

dookiehat t1_iy9eb70 wrote

That is why we make less money than our parents did, because the world is objectively better. Also why authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, and why homelessness has been rising since 2008 in western economies. Elon Musk has plans to make starlink spell out “eat poop, earth” so we can always see how quirky he is. Also you’ll never own anything because we are in post scarcity so why would you need to own anything that a corporation can’t own and manage for you, it is so much easier that way!! Yes, the boomers are extending their lifespans and you have to live in one of our podrooms in one of our leisure campuses, where you can use new technologies all day long and forget being lonely, you’ll have lots of neighbors! Like the good ol days in college when you saw people irl. you don’t have to worry about those big person jobs that are scary with all sorts of responsibility because your parents can do them for another 60 years now while they add a wing to their suburban boomer palace that you visit with less frequency as they always vote against the leisure class, that’s us, but one day you think maybe they’ll come around. The future is objectively better, that’s a fact

1

ajabardar1 t1_iy9fz8g wrote

i mean, come on. you think before there was less authoritarianism? are you trolling?

1

dookiehat t1_iyat4zr wrote

I’m not, you should read capitalist realism by Mark Fisher. Honestly i feel like I’m a serf in one of the most opulent periods in history. Social progress and technological progress are not the same thing and when technological progress happens that doesn’t mean social progress happens.

1

ajabardar1 t1_iyau97b wrote

yeah being a serf is such a recent possibility.

1

Uvtha- t1_iycb501 wrote

The fact that there are still classes and injustice doesn't mean that there's been no social progress made, there quite obviously has been. You live a far more secure, socially free, and politically relevant position than any 17th century peasant, and to say otherwise is pretty silly.

1

dookiehat t1_iycgpuw wrote

HA HA HA HA, you have no clue what you are talking about dude. I’m about an inch from homelessness. You can’t apply an objective measure to subjective sentiment or individuals and say things are objectively better so therefore my feeling is invalid. Your conception of what objectively better means is purposefully ignoring subjectivity, which i claim has worsened in quality of life in the past few decades. People feel worse about life therefore it IS worse.

There is something toxic about the world right now that i feel like everyone can feel the underlying tension but they pretend things are dormant or that nothing can go wrong. Tell me in twenty years the world is better and that it hasn’t been the most chaotic disorienting upheaval of social order you’ve ever seen.

1

Uvtha- t1_iyd24lz wrote

I mean, yes, you can apply objective measurements to peoples subjective experiences, that's the whole reason we make an effort to gather empirical data rather than just relying one how we feel. Obviously people can have a flawed perspective, and also some people will be on the bottom end of the bell curve in any situation. Neither of which are invalid positions when in regard to individual... but when you are trying to express the general state of the world it's not useful to try and frame it through the lenses of one persons subjective experience, you know?

It sucks to hear about your situation, mine's not very good either. That said I know that my life isn't the only or even anything near the most average example of life in the modern age in general.

I in no way think that either the world is dormant or that nothing can go wrong, quite the contrary. The world is full of injustice and inequality, and there are very real looming existential crises... That said, just because it sucks doesn't mean it's not an improvement on the past. Most of human history was really really horrible especially for people in the lower classes.

1

ScaleneWangPole t1_iy86dzb wrote

I don't think that's a fact. It depends on your definition of better. Have their been technical advances and innovations that make life better? Sure, but at a cost to society, the health of the planet, and betrayal of the human condition.

Cottagers in the late 1700s had a great thing going until economics forced them into pauperism due to not being able to compete with big manufacturing plants. Maybe they didn't have many physical items, but they lived a simple life near family and local communities. Their needs were met. They didn't have cell phones or access to the worlds knowledge at their fingertips, but they didn't get those things in cramped cities either living to make some rich guy more money.

0

ajabardar1 t1_iy874u9 wrote

cottagers in the late 1700 where specifically? and what percentage of population where these 1700s cottagers? 0.001%, 0.1%, 1%, 10%?

society is way better in every metric possible. that is just a fact. ted, please, your manifesto was wrong. idealism is not a metric.

7

Shillbot_9001 t1_iy8ffzc wrote

>society is way better in every metric possible.

People back then had enough kids to prevent population decline, that's one catastrophic metric right there.

0

BKGPrints t1_iy94u04 wrote

No it's not. There are indications that prosperity leads to lower birth rates. A lower birth rate is not necessarily a bad thing.

It took thousands of years for the population to increase to two billion by 1900. It took less than a century to get to six billion and then another twenty years to get to eight billion.

During that time, most of the population growth was in impoverished countries in Asia, Africa and Indonesia.

As the economies of many of those countries have improved, so has the birth rate decline. But at the same time, recognize that a significant part of the population decline is because many of the population is just getting older and dying out.

And to support that poverty increases birth rates. The population for Nigeria, which more than 90% of the population is considered to live in poverty, is expected to double from it's current population of 210 million to more than 400 million by 2050.

1

ajabardar1 t1_iy8kreb wrote

less kids die today. i guess if you just measure quantity yeah, you are correct. if you want to measure quality, infant death is a great metric.

0

1015267 t1_iy87faj wrote

They also died of paper cuts and mama/aunt sally was buried out back because she died in childbirth. Uncle Reg was locked in the upstairs attic because ghosts had sickened his brain.

The whole family had worms and scurvy

3

ScaleneWangPole t1_iy88swy wrote

There are plenty of people in the US post industrialization still believing in ghosts and sky man and unfortunately eugenics for that matter. But at least they weren't filled with microplastics and their food wasn't poison. They didn't die from the sun or peanuts. We can only sit here and say it's better now because we've robbed the global south thanks to industrialization. These exploited countries aren't gaining from all the innovation that they paid for.

2

Shillbot_9001 t1_iy8fjjr wrote

>and unfortunately eugenics for that matter.

Eugenics are real, just not very ethical.

1