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Is everything falling apart?

nonzero.substack.com

401–410 of 970 posts

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#401
post #368

Everything is not falling apart, though certain institutions may be falling apart. In America, there's definitely been a breakdown of belief in its own institutions. Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism and Silicon Valley; it really wasn't that long ago that the former was constantly salivating over the latter, but now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship because that caters to publi…

If you look at life expectancy in the America, it has been flat to reversing. Understandably with added pressure from Covid, but at a rate higher even with Covid higher than all other well resourced major nations. This not because we are unable, but because those with the power are unwilling to engage fundamental issues. Covid is not the only issue for which this is the case - it was happening before covid. Multiple…

>> If you look at life expectancy in the America, it has been flat to reversing.

>> Multiple major issues with scientific and economic root causes are simply being ignored as stability and promises of improved prosperity provided by civilization is going backwards.

How much of this can be explained by the fact that one third of adults in the US are obese as opposed to major scientific and economic issues?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#403
post #211

I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…

> They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from them at any one time. This doesn't need to be a ponzi scheme though. Even if population size is stable, if people on average work longer than they are retired, they have to pay less than they receive, all things equal. A problem here has been that people get increasingly older, so they spend a larger percentage of their life being retired, maki…

The biggest issue with social security funding is there is a cap on it. Once you put in so much a year, you don't have to put in anymore. It's essentially a regressive system. A guy who makes a million bucks a year only has to pay social security as if he made $147K. For example, in 2022, everyone only pays social security tax on their first $147K.

https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/maxtax.html

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#404
post #211

I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…

US real estate has gone up significantly in _desirable_ markets. There are plenty of cities in the rust belt where neighborhoods are in decay, you can buy a home for 20k if you wanted. What we’re going to see is either govts incentivize people move back to these places. Or more housing in desirable locations. I think the former will happen more than the later.

A lot of "undesirable" markets have become desirable. The remaining ones, the market has decided has too many external cost to make such low prices worth it.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#405
what is collapsing is the planetary ecosystem, thanks to industrial practice. Especially in North America suburban sprawl and industrial agriculture and waste have eaten into and degraded what was very recent a deep well of ecological wealth. I would call this a major impact on the American culture which built it's identity around that seemingly boundless wilderness, and as well our basic human psyche and culture for which (many argue) proximity to deep ecological process is a fundamental need.

The consumer culture and consequent wealth of things, especially images and meditated simulcra, really only echo the naive American soul in a wasteland of it's own making. All cultural realities are fundamentally ecological. We fill our lives with artificial realities so liberally because we are born into a culture that took massive wealth of natural resources and the experiences they provide for granted. As they vanish, we fill the gap with artificial things and experiences.

It's a dangerous game with potentially grave and unexpected consequences, and we have played it before many times on a much smaller scale: hunting food sources to extinction, turning rich farmland into desert, etc.

It seems that the collective human psyche it's unable to reflect accurately on the consequences of it's own actions with respect to our fundamental biogenic foundation.

Take for example the flooding of our nights with artificial blue spectrum light pollution. In evolutionary terms, this is a new event. For billions of years nights have been uniformly mostly dark with a regularly variating moon glow. Suddenly we change all that and dark nights are a thing of the past. Nevermind the massive affect on a whole ecosystems, nevermind studies that show a severe affect on the human psychological health, status quo says lighting up the night is normal, good, and safe.

And there are shootings at schools and terrible crime and massive loss of insect life and songbirds dying off and these quite extraordinary changes to the continuity of our bio systems and our lifestyles, and yet we don't see the connection. We blame the media or Donald Trump or the 1%. We don't see the problem as something we have direct control over. We blame our institutions or leaders or gods or what have you, anything but ourselves, and anything to avoid changing our lifestyles and behaviors.

So imo things really are falling apart, just not the things we think.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You break out a poll to cast a group as fringe. Other people bring up other polls (more recent ones) to counter that argument, and then you shift to a different line of evidence citing "historical trends." Please, take this advice to heart, you are clearly trying to justify a conclusion with whatever evidence you can grab at hand. Take a step back and ask yourself if tribal loyalty is clouding your judgement. We are…

The original point I was making, "republicans are a minority", is true, and the data shows that. This isn't a tribalism thing, it's a question of data analysis. Also, I take umbrage at your patronizing tone. Personally attacking me does not change the data.

Here, swing this one, a minority of Americans support the President, Democrat policies, and plan to vote for a Democrat in 2022. There's your minority.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#407
post #205

Things are not falling apart any more than they have in the past. What we are witnessing is a shift in power structure brought about by new communications technology. Humanity has been through this many times before. The invention of writing in the first place empowered the scribes. The printing press disempowered the scribes and empowered publishers . Radio disempowered publishers and empowered broadcasters. The int…

No post body was provided.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#408
post #8

The constant theme since the dawn of civilization threaded through all of history is that everything is falling apart. Change is continual. History is more like the seasons. Nations rise. Nations fall. Sometimes there's revolt. Sometimes there's peace. There's a continual game of King of the Mountain being played at all levels. So what can we say? Situation Normal - all effed up! Enjoy this phenomenon called life. Yo…

Every generation thinks the world is ending but eventually one will be correct.

The psychological tension that is inherent to capitalism (indefinite exponential growth is required, unbounded exponential growth is impossible) requires that the system be under plausible existential threat at all times.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from them at any one time. This doesn't need to be a ponzi scheme though. Even if population size is stable, if people on average work longer than they are retired, they have to pay less than they receive, all things equal. A problem here has been that people get increasingly older, so they spend a larger percentage of their life being retired, maki…

Raising the retirement age I think is not fair. Asking guys in their 60’s to do the same work as guys in their 40’s is not fair if the job is at all a hands on doing job. Anything as simple as a big flight of stairs can become a major obstacle. If all you do is go up and down elevators, talk, and use a computer then you can go as long as your mind stays sharp and you have the drive. Not everyone loves their job after…

In the UK the retirement age of 65 (for men) was set when life expectancy was 64. Now life expectancy is 81, and the retirement age is only 66.

Completely untenable when the generation retiring has also taken the lions share of property wealth, imposed student debt upon and consistently voted against the interests of the generation paying for their retirement.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one is trying to change sex or biological genders Except when they let men compete in women's sports. So if I have to choose between the new lefty version of gender, or what we had before, I'm going to choose the old way because it didn't result in comically ridiculous outcomes like that.

This is such a tired canard. Biological sex is an imprecise and discriminatory proxy for physical performance, and we can do better. Professional boxing already includes an additional objective measure—weight class—to improve match fairness. So not only is it possible to find a better discriminator, there is already one proven approach that can be used as a starting point today. Furthermore, using biological sex as t…

Great comment, this really changed my mind and gave me some different perspectives about how sports could be handled.

Especially the part where diversity makes it more interesting in team sports.

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