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Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

theguardian.com

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Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#291

Post by q1w2 »

jmount wrote: post #144
mattkevan wrote: post #52

Idiocracy doesn’t actually go far enough to match current-day reality. In the film, people were smart enough to understand they weren’t all that intelligent. Even the president was willing to defer to someone who knew more than him. The last couple of years have proven that to be rather naive when it comes to our real leadership.

Idiocracy is in indeed the easy case. Notice there is no villain in the movie. Even the sports drink company isn't pressing hard.

I envision a sequel to Idiocracy where the main character discovers a hidden wondrous island city of intelligent people who recognized the problem and hid there rather than deal with the ever-reproducing morons.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#292

Post by sershe »

pojzon wrote: post #289
sershe wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually numbers for this (that I'm sadly to lazy to look up on my phone), taking fixed inflation adjusted income thresholds, more people are moving into higher than lower brackets out of the shrinking middle, especially if you consider the starting sizes of these groups.

That might be true for developing countries like China but for sure its not the case in Europe and US. China by itself can skew global average by a huge margin due to sheer amount of ppl living there. But even in China market observes middle class crisis - slowing down or ppl getting back to lower class.

I wasn't even thinking about the global level, that's on another level of middle class becoming larger and richer :)

Some US data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america... (long term, not the headline)

https://www.cato.org/blog/middle-class-shrinking-households-...

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#293

Post by throwbynight38 »

netcan wrote: post #103

Idiocracy is fun, but the instinctive "OMG so true" is, IMO, wrong. The film riffs on a common fallacy more so than it's actually insightful. Statements like "people these days are so stupid/lazy/immoral" tend get an instinctive thumbs up. The slang, pop culture & consumerism of the future are the main way the film "demonstrates" that people got dumber. The premise of Idiocracy is that dumb people reproduce more and…

I consider this movie kind of like a slap-stick comedy, and I know others who regard it in the prophetic sense, and I have always had the feeling that it was a way to make themselves feel a bit superior, as if they don't have a part in the big comedy too.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#294

Post by chillacy »

SquibblesRedux wrote: post #198
quacked wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ is not rising; literacy rates are falling in the developed world. As an example, fewer people are literate in Massachusetts now than when it was founded.

I found a reference about literacy in Massachusetts [0] and literacy for all states [1], but nothing suggesting literacy rates are worse than over 200 years ago. I would presume literacy rates for over 200 years ago would be worse due to lack of public education, gender inequality, and jobs/trades not requiring reading and writing skills. I am suspicious of the literacy rates in [0] and [1]. It seems that someone who…

The parent said the metric was “people” not a rate of people normalized by total population, so by virtue of there being more people alive today than ever, many stats like this will be technically true but imo uninteresting.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#296

Post by pojzon »

sershe wrote: post #292
pojzon wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be true for developing countries like China but for sure its not the case in Europe and US. China by itself can skew global average by a huge margin due to sheer amount of ppl living there. But even in China market observes middle class crisis - slowing down or ppl getting back to lower class.

I wasn't even thinking about the global level, that's on another level of middle class becoming larger and richer :) Some US data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america... (long term, not the headline) https://www.cato.org/blog/middle-class-shrinking-households-...

The data you show is for up to 2016. More recent market info shows that middle-class property ownership which was once required to be considered as part of middle-class (definition was changed) is rapidly decreasing making it almost impossible to get from lower-class to middle-class and overall removing pretty big percent of people that are currently (by income) put into middle-class (but would not be if we used old definition).

https://www.rismedia.com/2019/09/03/is-middle-class-homeowne...

It doesnt matter how much money you make, if that money cannot buy you a shelter.

You might disagree but next years are only going to make that crisis worse and worse.

And more and more families will be not able to sustain the level of life our parents had - even whwn working 5 times as hard.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#297

Post by Emma_Goldman »

chrsig wrote: post #267
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Trump new about the severity of covid and downplayed it for quite some time Trump neither tried to hide the existence of COVID from the public nor thought it would topple civilization and kill him personally. He downplayed it and the risk it posed, but that is a different order of lying. Trump said exactly as much as he thought he could get away with, and no more. >There absolutely can be some fanatical base that wi…

You're right, it doesn't make sense. People do things that don't make sense. The president in Don't Look Up didn't think it would topple civilization and kill her personally. They thought the plan to break it up and mine it would work. They took a greedy gamble on the fate of the world and lost. In so doing, they took for granted all of the amazing technology that we have and disregarded expert opinions. Likewise wit…

I think this is a bit of a straw man. Yes, people sometimes do things that aren't in their rational self-interest, even capaciously understood. But we are talking about a specific scenario.

The question is: would the President, told of an imminent asteroid collision large enough to destroy human civilization, and knowing this information would leak if she did not announce it, elect to hide this information for a month until after the midterms for no particular reason?

You say "They thought the plan to break it up and mine it would work." At the time of the decision of whether to announce the existence of the asteroid, and create a plan, there obviously was no plan. So no, she didn't think that.

>"Likewise with trump, who had worked to dismantle the existing pandemic playbook[0] took for granted how well our medical response would be. He regularly disregarded expert opinions, or simply did not speak with them[1]. He even worked to make it difficult for states to get help, because he lost the vote there[2]."

Again, this isn't the point. Even Trump never tried to deny the existence of COVID. Clearly that would not have worked and would have exploded in his face.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#298

Post by sershe »

pojzon wrote: post #296
sershe wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't even thinking about the global level, that's on another level of middle class becoming larger and richer :) Some US data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america... (long term, not the headline) https://www.cato.org/blog/middle-class-shrinking-households-...

The data you show is for up to 2016. More recent market info shows that middle-class property ownership which was once required to be considered as part of middle-class (definition was changed) is rapidly decreasing making it almost impossible to get from lower-class to middle-class and overall removing pretty big percent of people that are currently (by income) put into middle-class (but would not be if we used old…

The 2nd link has later data. Housing is an arbitrary metric (home ownership is only one aspect of class; it's very us specific - renting is far more normalized in other places; there may be unrelated shifts towards renting, e.g. for millennials supposedly leaving suburbs for the cities), and even with that the article doesn't even quantity a problem - it just points at some expensive cities, and some potential issues, while showing median income is still easily enough to buy a median house, etc. There's no metric according to which middle class is becoming poorer over any reasonable term in it.

And any very recent change was probably caused by pandemic and reaction to it, not a part of some trend.. to revert it, we should stop doing what we were doing for the past year or two :)

Btw iirc price to income ratio in the us is also one of the lowest in developed countries, or on par.

Long term, I think the thinning middle class narrative is closer to being merely humanities grads complaining that they cannot afford to live in NYC and SF, than to any real issue ;)

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#299

Post by pojzon »

sershe wrote: post #298
pojzon wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data you show is for up to 2016. More recent market info shows that middle-class property ownership which was once required to be considered as part of middle-class (definition was changed) is rapidly decreasing making it almost impossible to get from lower-class to middle-class and overall removing pretty big percent of people that are currently (by income) put into middle-class (but would not be if we used old…

The 2nd link has later data. Housing is an arbitrary metric (home ownership is only one aspect of class; it's very us specific - renting is far more normalized in other places; there may be unrelated shifts towards renting, e.g. for millennials supposedly leaving suburbs for the cities), and even with that the article doesn't even quantity a problem - it just points at some expensive cities, and some potential issues…

How can middle class not become poorer if inflation alone is making us able to buy less stuff that matters.

How can you say my grandpa that was able to afford a big house and feed 5 children working alone as grandma was taking care pf the house - was not living in better financial condition than me who makes 3 times as much money as he did but I cannot afford half of what he could…

The current definition of the middle class is constantly changing based on income only - which makes no sense. It should be calculated towards buying power you have.

And buying power over the years for ppl like me and younger only decreases. Thus -> middle class crisis is going to hit the fan like really soon.

It already did in China and its going to hit US too.

Re: Idiocracy: A disturbingly prophetic look at the future

#300

Post by sershe »

pojzon wrote: post #299
sershe wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2nd link has later data. Housing is an arbitrary metric (home ownership is only one aspect of class; it's very us specific - renting is far more normalized in other places; there may be unrelated shifts towards renting, e.g. for millennials supposedly leaving suburbs for the cities), and even with that the article doesn't even quantity a problem - it just points at some expensive cities, and some potential issues…

How can middle class not become poorer if inflation alone is making us able to buy less stuff that matters. How can you say my grandpa that was able to afford a big house and feed 5 children working alone as grandma was taking care pf the house - was not living in better financial condition than me who makes 3 times as much money as he did but I cannot afford half of what he could… The current definition of the middl…

All the numbers in the above data are adjusted for inflation.

Anecdotes are not data. According to this (quick google): https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ inflation adjusted median price increased by about 80-95% since ~1970 (assuming ~25 years per generation for "grandpa"), depending on whether you include the COVID spike. According to this, however: https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-... median house size since 1970 increased by ~75%. That both calls "big house" into question, and puts the increase in price into perspective. Also, inflation adjusted income has increased by ~50% in the same time frame: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-.... So, housing has become expensive somewhat faster than income (but by far not 3x that you describe), in part because the houses are now much bigger (and not half the size that you imply for the 3x cost).

To put it more bluntly than in my previous post (and for reference I did not grow up in the USA), the main difference between your US generation and grandpa's, is that yours is far more entitled, while representing a far smaller slice of world economy. And, if my West Coast experience is any indication, the sub-slices of the generation tend to feel more entitled in inverse proportion to their actual economic contribution...

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