Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

I have stronger value judgements on people enforcing religious believes on others, don't care so much for pyjamas.

I attribute it primarily to lack of appreciation for the foundation of civilization: Private property.

Violations of private property are primarily done through the state, which socializes costs and thereby both reduces incentives for responsible behaviour and increases incentives to be dependent and irresponsible. Less wealth is created, more wealth is squandered.

Many who raise democracy to an practically religious status also contribute to this decline, as it overshadows much more important cultural values, such as free and open public discourse, decentralized / local governance and of course private property. It's almost as if, as long as you're in the majority, anything goes, perverse incentives be damned.

> Zarathustra first announces the Übermensch as a goal humanity can set for itself. All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings.

Quote from Wikipedia above

I had heard the term uber mensch before but I had presumed it referred to something else entirely.

In this context your question of whether the bigger thing needs to be "true" seems subjective. Is wanting human beings to work towards a better present and future for others a "truth"?

But in the sense that it is something true and not fictional like god, then yes to me true here means real and logical.

I don't understand what you mean by the "hold everyone" part though. If you mean that everyone on earth could adopt this philosophy or identify with part of it, obviously that would be great but quite impossible.

However you say "vulnerability" to the uberman, so having only given the Wikipedia article a quick once through, am I to understand that the idea presented is flawed or taps into a flawed part of humanity that wants to believe it to be possible?

I think your comment is probably the most curious I've been about getting an answer ever on HN.

You are not off-base. Your reflections on your society are sound, and you do right in raising them for discussion. The fact that you can (and should) is part of what democracy is about. If you think something ought to be better, then why not try to engage and influence your community with your ideas? Don't leave it to the politicians (and companies) to dictate what is valuable in your country.

Easier said than done, I know, but imagine if we all actually made an effort to shape our society, and took responsibility for it.

> There has been an increase in traffic accidents the last three years and I have been following it because I wondered myself if I noticed it.

Since you're not citing any, I'm going to just go off the first figures I found which go until 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Yes it went up, yes you should pay attention and fix it if reasonably possible. But keep it in perspective: it went from a near all-time low of 1.1 "Fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled" in 2019 to 1.3 which is roughly the level of 2007. For every five hundred million miles, you'd see one more fatality (or, per hundred million miles, 0.2 more). You cannot convince me that anyone can tell this difference more reliably than a coin flip could, even if your job involved being on the road.

Is a three-years-in-a-row increase unprecedented? No, just three years before the start of this three-year increase also saw the end of three consecutive years of increased road fatalities, and starting from roughly the same value (~1.1) to end up a bit less bad than now (1.2 vs. 1.3). How much above statistical significance that is, it doesn't say.

Deaths aren't the whole story but after clicking on the 'more info' link that leads to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...>, the graphs and tables are basically all labeled 'deaths', 'killed', and 'fatalities'. Maybe the crash rate is noticeable, but people aren't good at noticing slow trends. I'd not be surprised if the average person wouldn't notice a 50% increase (provided proportionate news coverage, i.e. same amount of air time per crash) when smeared out across a year and starting with a "rare but definitely not unheard of" value which is what road accidents currently are (I've never been in one after a decade of driving, but I know people that have been so it's not surprising to hear of it or to end up in one). More likely, the news coverage went up, or someone mentioned that the stats were up and then you registered subsequent crash reports more.