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Is everything falling apart?

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Re: Is everything falling apart?

#601

Post by throwawayboise »

sleepdreamy wrote: post #441
Clubber wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. Why do people think of an entire generation of people as a single minded entity? Might as well say, "women," or "men," or "humans." Did you know the majority of baby boomers weren't hippies? Looking at documentaries of the era, you'd think they were. Many boomers hated h…

Is this sarcasm? It's truly laughable if you don't think boomers had a clear advantage in comparison to Millennials, Gen X, etc; I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally ga…

What was your in-laws annual income when they bought the $60,000 house?

What would be the income of someone today, looking to buy the house for $800K?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#602

Post by incomingpain »

mikkergp wrote: post #371
incomingpain wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He said if he’s successful, that both the far left and far right would be equally unhappy, has he made any kind of statement to suggest his goal is to “get people back on the same team”? I.E. his goal is to get people to trust the platform, not each other. Basically what he just said is that he won't be allowing violence or calls to violence. When you boil down or remove the perjorativeness of 'extremism'. You can h…

I'm actually curious to push on your idea that "we can all agree that violence isn't the answer". Because I think there are more and more people who think it is the answer. I would guess you're saying the vast majority rather than all (Sorry if this sounds pedantic but it's not meant to be). Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet says that you were joking? I do not think there is not agreement on what…

>I'm actually curious to push on your idea that "we can all agree that violence isn't the answer".

Survivors always universally agree violence isn't the answer. I'm not saying literally 100% of people are opposed to violence. Will Smith just ruined his reputation and ended his career with violence.

> Because I think there are more and more people who think it is the answer. I would guess you're saying the vast majority rather than all (Sorry if this sounds pedantic but it's not meant to be).

The federal government has many responsibilities but 2 of the fundamental ones.

1. Military and police to prevent all violence. Government gets full monopoly over violence.

2. Borders to define where violence isn't allowed.

Fundamentally the government who represents everyone is the 'all'. Obviously it's more complicated than that because violence is allowed in some examples. Boxing -> MMA for example, but my understanding is that it's well regulated.

Even more complicated yet, there will always be a portion of every society who wants to kill. It's an evolutionary thing that Joe Rogan likes to call Chimp Brain. For whatever reason they are wired to the point they need to kill. Imagine the helicopter scene from full metal jacket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06nIz4scvI

Those people exist. Even in Ukraine right now. There are Russian soldiers who are doing this. Everyone is the enemy and needs to be killed. Stupid ukraine for whatever they did to force me to be there. I'm going to punish ukrainians equally, they all need dying.

These people are going to push toward violence. You have to proactive to avoid this.

>Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet says that you were joking? I do not think there is not agreement on what a violent extremist is.

Great question, and what is the 'correct' solution? I dont care about the next tweet but perhaps you are banned until you delete the tweet? Commonly that's what twitter already does.

Unfortunately there is a disagreement over calls for violence. It's difficult to find examples of calls for violence from the right wing. Obviously that is well censored. Yet there's lots of examples from the left-wing that go unpunished. The entire 'punch a nazi' thing from the left is insidious and bad.

Here is a verified checkmark on the left calling for violence as an example: https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1086707229137485825

The context is that this is an off-the-cuff comment during the early part of the Maga kid Nick sandman story. The truth hadn't come out yet. That is to say that nick sandman was completely innocent and now rich after multiple settlements by media who smeared him. Obviously a ton more verified checkmarks called for violence toward the maga kid. Lets not even mention the number of non-checkmarks who never had their call to violence ever censored.

That maga hat represented much more than the situation really did.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#603

Post by rootusrootus »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #556
TimPC wrote: 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…

On the flip side, a collapse in real estate prices would be an excellent entry to the property ladder for people who previously couldn't afford it.

At the expense of all current property owners. Maybe a net win, maybe not.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#604

Post by unethical_ban »

freebuju wrote: post #589

I concur with everything the author says here. If you want to visualize this for yourself, just take yourself back to the whole science/anti-vaxx debate we've had the past 2 years. That was a pretty accurate picture of the biblical tower of babel. Social media as a tool keeps sowing more division than ever because that's the growth incentive and we are too afraid to kill the golden goose. Once the metaverse becomes a…

>China is soon going to overtake the US as the world hegemony.

I don't think this is guaranteed. I think the world should be prepared for it, be resilient against it, and (ideally) undermine it if possible.

Six months ago, I don't think many would have guessed that all of Europe, including Germany, would unite in ending their relationship with Russian fuel. Perhaps at some point, the free world will unite in diversifying or ending their relationship with Chinese manufacturing.

The rest of your analysis I agree with - the automation/"AI" process marches on. Ownership of production and capital continues to concentrate, and population grows while employment needs will shrink for non- and semi-skilled workers. Oh, and climate.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#606

Post by judahmeek »

ozzythecat wrote: post #552
shagie wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody really wants to work anymore In many parts of jobs that have public facing people, the perceived increase in the lack of civility has made those jobs much more difficult to accept for any length of time. The combination of job loss, retraining for jobs that don't deal with the public, and acceptance of austerity (including moving back in with one's parents in some cases) to have an extended duration of no in…

I’d like to make a meta response to your post not about specific points you raised but how you made your point. I’ve been a fairly progressive or at least liberal my whole life. I also like to look at what the data tells us. I’m not certain that looking at “data” means we have real facts. At best, we have some quantitative representation that fits the narrative being pushed by its creators. Within progressive circles…

All you're saying is that you like your narrative & you intend to stick to it despite any contradicting evidence that may be presented.

It's true that data must be judged for relevance & validity, but to just discard it in preference of your opinion is really egotistical.

Also, statistical data doesn't offer solutions; it only presents a broader perspective than one's collection of anecdotes.

So your example of Seattle choosing what you consider to be the wrong solution is not a very persuasive argument against collecting & using data itself.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#607

Post by somenameforme »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #220
machinevision wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel we should not try? (genuinely curious in your PoV)

I can't see that there's a moral way for people exit the solar system boundary out "into the stars." No one making that choice can arrive there, or even experience an appreciable part of the trip in one life. It's committing generations to be born, live and die for no purpose except to exist and to breed for some future goal of some past people. I believe this to be wicked. People have always migrated into the unknow…

The idea of going multiplanetary is not to abandon Earth out of necessity, but out of precaution. When you make a backup of your hard disk, it's usually not because you intend to go use your other one for target practice. Waiting to leave Earth when problems become clearly insurmountable is akin to waiting to backup your HDD until you notice it's failing. Indeed the very first thing we should start doing once we begin colonizing our second planet is planning to colonize the third.

There are countless ways human civilization, if not the human species, can come to a rather abrupt end: supervolcano explosion blotting out the sky, directed gamma ray burst destroying the atmosphere ( hypothesized as one of the reasons for the great ordovician extinction ), comet impact acting similar to the supervolcano, random evolution creating a supervirus, and so on. And the countless ways we might manage to kill ourselves go without saying: nuclear war, nukes, deploying weaponized viruses, even far more innocuous things like fertility Many of these causes can, have, and will happen abruptly.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#608

Post by pojzon »

ravenstine wrote: post #111

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…

Tbh last 50 years is a constant journey towards the bottom.

Institutions that were supposed to lead us - failed us. Earth might be uninhabitable in quite a few places in next 30-50 years.

We will have climate refugees everywhere. Civil war in developed countries is something to worry about.

Our leaders cannot even agree on basic things to save the planet we live on.

We are in deep shit IMHO. I dont worry for myself, I worry for my children.

My parents and grandparents most likely are responsible for the hell my kids will have to live in.

If scientists dont see anything positive in next years, why should lay ppl be happy.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#609

Post by TimPC »

RspecMAuthortah wrote: post #378
TimPC wrote: 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…

> In my city of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone from 2x average income in 1972 to 16x average income today. To continue growing at this pace they'd have to reach 128x average income by 2072. Places like Toronto are generally an outlier. Part of it is due to high skilled worker immigration (to read it differently: more well off people emigrating to Canada) and high concentration of jobs in cities like To…

I think it's hard to classify Toronto as an Outlier, especially if you mean the GTA. There are 38 million Canadians according to the 2021 census. According to the same data source 6.7 million of them live in the GTA. This "outlier" is 17.63% of the data set which to me is closer to a quartile of your data than an outlier.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#610

Post by dehrmann »

RivieraKid wrote: post #146
mrits wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a much different experience. I have a dozen family members that were part of the auto industry in Michigan. They were on top of the world for decades. It ended with most of them thinking society has collapsed in the 80s and doubting they'd actually get their pension. My grandfather spent the last 30 years of his life in retirement collecting a pay check that he thought might be his last.

Why did he think the paychecks would stop coming?

In the last few years, there's been some nostalgia in the US over pensions, but people tend to forget that they're tied to employers, so people feel tied to jobs because they're building up a pension, and the pension is often managed by and dependent on the employer's business in some way.
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