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Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

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Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#141

Post by skulk »

srackey wrote: post #108
cyber_kinetist wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communism (at least in an ideal Marxist form) has no relation to equity, it’s more of a liberal concept than anything else. People use the term Communism (both upper-case and lower-case) in various ways nowadays, but Marx’s original ideal form of society was "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" The ultimate goal is to create an affluent productive society that can provide all amenities…

Yes, and this will require violence to achieve (how else can you enforce the “from each” and “to each”?) Communism has been tried. Again and again. The utopian endpoint it tires to get to is not possible. The consistent result is mass death and poverty.

The "this will require violence" argument makes no sense. If you live in the US, everything you have is the end result of some horrific violence. Inferring a need for violence to achieve some ideal is a completely useless analysis.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#142

Post by sdwr »

jacknews wrote: post #70
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #19

The biggest problem domain worth pursuing is figuring out fusion. If we can unlock what is effectively limitless power a lot of problems become far more tractable. Everything else is a distraction. We need cheaper and more available power. Every physicist and engineer in the world should probably try dedicating at least one or two month of their life to figuring out fusion. If humanity could pay a trillion dollars to…

It's never going to be useful. D-T fusion is not as clean as is touted, and the economics just aren't ever going to make it viable compared to ever-cheaper solar, wind, batteries/energy storage, etc. Better fission designs OTOH are worth pursuing, and also deep geothermal, and maybe one or two of the CCS options though they seem a bit greenwashy.

15 years ago, solar and wind looked stupid expensive compared to fossil fuels.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#143

Post by skulk »

tomp wrote: post #35
ssss11 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.

[flagged]

When a measure becomes a target, it becomes useless as either. What is "productivity"? Does your definition accurately encapsulate all externalities? I'm going to tell you the answer: it doesn't. Stop using productivity as a proxy for that which is "good".

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#144

Post by PartiallyTyped »

leptoniscool wrote: post #25
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #19

The biggest problem domain worth pursuing is figuring out fusion. If we can unlock what is effectively limitless power a lot of problems become far more tractable. Everything else is a distraction. We need cheaper and more available power. Every physicist and engineer in the world should probably try dedicating at least one or two month of their life to figuring out fusion. If humanity could pay a trillion dollars to…

Is fusion really that great? Decades of research and billions of dollars later it's still not commercially feasible. Whereas solar power is cheaper than coal now. Also on the horizon is thorium reactors.

Fusion really is that great, but we could also use more efficient processes that recycle the byproducts of fusion.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#145

Post by llamaLord »

alexvoda wrote: post #41
tomp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

While communism does have it's flaws, i would argue it has in fact never been tried.

But don't worry guys... When it's ME given absolute power it will be different... Just trust me.

Not even a single Gulag...

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#146

Post by kerkeslager »

tomp wrote: post #35
ssss11 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.

[flagged]

Capitalism has been tried more times than communism and has failed to reward productive people more times.

It's 2023. The absurd idea that, for example, the billionaires pushing the Metaverse or burning Twitter to the ground got there by being productive, is thoroughly disproven. Stop pushing this motivated ideology.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#148

Post by kerkeslager »

llamaLord wrote: post #145
alexvoda wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While communism does have it's flaws, i would argue it has in fact never been tried.

But don't worry guys... When it's ME given absolute power it will be different... Just trust me. Not even a single Gulag...

What you're describing is authoritarianism, not communism. Authoritarian communists certainly exist, but there are plenty of anarcho-communists who directly oppose anyone having absolute power, including themselves.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#149

Post by Kon5ole »

eimrine wrote: post #12

A lot of a billionaires which: 1. Exist 2. Actively making us not noticing their existance by shitting us with some fake problems like gays, drugs, foreigners, terrorists, etc (different set of fake problems per country).

In the western democratic world billionaires are an inevitable side-effect of having a high standard of living for the general population. If you create a company that employs a million people and manages to remain profitable you'll be a billionaire even if you don't want to. The only way for you to not be a billionaire is to give up control of your company to someone else who will then be the billionaire.

We have yet to discover a system of government that both allows for a generally high standard of living yet at the same time prevents billionaires. Every variant that has been tried so far has inevitably led to total misery for the entire population.

I think the solution is not to prevent billionaires, but to prevent their ability to affect politicians, being very strict about anti-trust and so on.

By no means easy but I think preventing billionaires from even existing is a dystopian nightmare in any scenario.

Re: Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?

#150

Post by kerkeslager »

megalord wrote: post #116
alexvoda wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While communism does have it's flaws, i would argue it has in fact never been tried.

Communism has never been tried? Could you explain a little bit more? I don't know if you are joking or lacking knowledge. Or maybe I lack some knowledge you know about

I don't agree with the poster--I think communism has been tried, sometimes even successfully (i.e. kibbutzim).

However, the examples of communism which capitalists like to point at as failures, such as Stalinism or Maoism, didn't ever actually distribute wealth, instead merely changing the concentration of wealth. This points to a failure to actually achieve communism, rather than a failure of communism to work.

Unfortunately I don't think there are very good explanations of this out there. The best I can find is this[1] but that's pretty dense, assumes a lot of prior economic knowledge, and is (ironically) behind a paywall.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/089692050809085...

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