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Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
161–170 of 835 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'll also add that in many countries outside of America, it is just the default to care about your appearance when in public. Like forcing women to wear headscarves in Iran. The reason your argument is not self evidently true is the reason it’s not important FWIW.
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My response is neither low quality nor trolling. There is absolutely a connection between the OPs attitude towards pyjamas and women being allowed to show their hair in Iran. It’s the same social mores except one opinion on how others dress is palatable to some and the other not. Which is particularly important given the on going struggle in Iran.
Likewise the OP should consider how their opinion is reflected in that light.
And your style of empty comment is the one that’s explicitly discouraged in the site guidelines.
Edit: oh lol, you are the OP, I assume that touched a nerve.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#163> Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time today. ... >it seems that people get promoted away from their problems so they're not the ones to solve This has been going on forever and it's anything but software specific. You're just getting old. Things have always been like this.
From Worse is Better (80s) and The Cathedral and the Bazaar (90s)... ending up in software shipped with some custom Docker container to make it work and nodejs modules doing trivial operations breaking a lot of things. Software has a clear trend. Not all of it, but a significant part.
I'm not saying we should go to mainframes and waterfall development. Speed improved a lot but quality only marginally (relative to tools available).
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#164You should read factfulness by Hans Rosling and realize the opposite. Both from a health perspective and economic and violence
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#165> Anyone else have other examples? Elected president who is so crass and generally offensive he wouldn't have gotten close to being elected 50 years ago. Elected president who is showing clear signs of age related cognitive decline (so they say) but continues to occupy the office. Elected presidents with criminal behaviour that is far worse than what previous presidents were impeached or resigned for. Mental illness,…
Yeah the stock trading in congress is another one for your list. I sometimes feel like America is the most corrupt country I've ever encountered. it's not overt like "Pay me $50 and you can avoid a ticket" but it's pernicious and wide spread.
- Law makers trade on what they're going to vote prior to voting it
- charging people a different price for the exact same procedure, at the same location, under the same market conditions simply for the reason of their income/insurance/whims
- nepotism and politicking in executive class (boards, Csuite etc), their lobbyists, and the ruling class ("elected" officials) etc. as an example Stock Buy backs are being decided by these groups and benefiting those groups' stock based income despite the duty to maximize shareholder value.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#166It feels like so many of these complaints on your list are things that have existed for decades in western culture. I'd argue things are getting better.
Greed has always existed.
Anecdotally I find people less loud these days compared to when I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Remember boomboxes?
No one's really cared about quality when it comes to low skill labor. Western culture typically doesn't carry that kind of value or pride in work.
Police don't give a shit? Crime has been steadily falling over time.
Pollution: look at the industrial revolution.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#167[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#168“Play long-term games with long-term people. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.”
Idk, maybe for whatever reason right now, as others mentioned, the macro environment or maybe your micro environment is incentivizing this behavior but it won’t work out in the long run.
Just gotta do you, and do good, OP.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#169Read Karl Marx, what we're seeing is basically what he described as the end state of capitalism. Everything gets shittier and shittier as costs go up and profits shrink. People and businesses are getting more desperate to prop up profit or make a buck. Everything suffers--worse products as costs are cut, worse service as wages stagnate to cut costs, people are more angry and stressed as their standard of living decli…
The supposed late stage of capitalism is something used to call contemporary state of affairs for some 100 years now. Two more weeks until RoP goes to 0! Trust the plan!
What’s r0p?
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#170Optimist view: it’s not. There has never been a golden age. There were anarchists blowing up things in the early 1920s, WWI followed by II, institutional racism, etc. Things have always been hard, just takes different forms.
Pessimist view: strong generations bring good times, good times breed weak generations, weak generations bring hard times, hard times breed strong generations. You happen to be born right after some good times.