Protopia • Hacker News Board

Re: Protopia

#31

Post by bko » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #19

bko wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mass surveillance I hear this complaint here a lot and I guess there are more cameras, but arrests have gone down in absolute terms in the US despite growing population. > The total number of arrests in the U.S. fell sharply in 2020 during pandemic-driven shifts in public activity and enforcement—and it has changed little since then. The 2024 arrest total was 25% lower than in 2019, the year before the pandemic, an…

>> D[r]one warfare > Isn't this better than boots on the ground? The answer to this question depends on whether you firsthand experienced sleepless nights in a city when drones fly directly over your house while you wait for them do dive or get missile defenced into it, a neighbour's house, or somewhere else, and then hear explosions and wait for the morning news to learn how many people died this night, to such litt…

The answer to this question depends on whether you firsthand experienced sleepless nights in a city while an invading army advances toward your neighborhood, while you wait to learn whether soldiers will enter your street, your house, a neighbor’s house, or somewhere else, and then hear gunfire and explosions and wait for the morning news to learn how many people were killed that night, to such little grief in the news’ comments it makes you wonder if there is any hope for humankind at all.

Re: Protopia

#32

Post by bko » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #26

boxed wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Economic decline > The middle class is shrinking, but the upper and upper-middle is growing. Growing is size maybe, but the middle and lower classes are both getting much richer.

> Growing is size maybe, but the middle and lower classes are both getting much richer. This is an illusion caused by poor measurement. You can argue all you want about how much a pickup truck's safety/bell and whistles have improved, but from the 60s - 80s, a day laborer carpenter could purchase a new truck on a third of their salary. Now a truck that serves the same function is 1.5x their salary.

That's fair. Unfortunately regulatory standards have made cars increasingly expensive. China has trucks under 20k. Obama era fuel standards and other mandates made affordable new cars impossible and programs like cash for clunkers reduced used availability

Re: Protopia

#33

Post by ShinyLeftPad » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #32

Avicebron wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Growing is size maybe, but the middle and lower classes are both getting much richer. This is an illusion caused by poor measurement. You can argue all you want about how much a pickup truck's safety/bell and whistles have improved, but from the 60s - 80s, a day laborer carpenter could purchase a new truck on a third of their salary. Now a truck that serves the same function is 1.5x their salary.

That's fair. Unfortunately regulatory standards have made cars increasingly expensive. China has trucks under 20k. Obama era fuel standards and other mandates made affordable new cars impossible and programs like cash for clunkers reduced used availability

PRC subsidizes the hell out of all manufacturing. There are costs to that, like suppressing domestic consumption, weak labor protection, etc

Re: Protopia

#34

Post by paytonjjones » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

ang_cire wrote: post #7

I like how the author defines dystopia as > reckless uprisings, a long dark age, the collapse of institutions, climate disasters, a black mirror of stunted humanity descending into chaos. rather than the much more common understanding or portrayals like 1984 or Handmaid's Tale, which in fact feature incredibly, overly -strong institutions, and a tyrannical lack of autonomy (so not a whole lot of 'reckless uprisings')…

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"

There are many forms of dystopia and picking two that prominently feature absolute institutional control also seems like cherry picking.

The Hunger Games, World War Z, and Fallout are also dystopias.

Re: Protopia

#35

Post by forestrywat » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:17 PM UTC

Telemakhos wrote: post #13

forestrywat wrote: post #6

This sure suggests that we're all choosing to build this dystopia we're trending towards. I agree very much with the idea that we should be making the world better little by little, but better... better for who? Who benefits is a genuinely important question to answer. I believe "better for most", which means using our wealth to lift up many. Others believe "better for me" or "better for my tribe" or "better for my n…

There’s an unquestioned assumption underlying “using our wealth to lift up many,” namely that wealth lifts people up. A great deal of money has long been thrown at social problems that remain unsolved. Another way to look at it is that self-control lifts people up, and the accumulation or dissipation of wealth is consequent upon self-control. Pro athletes and lottery winners who never learned to manage budgets growin…

I'm not super interested in debating the specifics because I was trying to point out that people will disagree about what "better" means and prevent progress.

Thank you for so succinctly and promptly demonstrating that point, even knowing my post was an obviously simplified example for the purpose of brevity.

Re: Protopia

#36

Post by forestrywat » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:18 PM UTC

boxed wrote: post #23

forestrywat wrote: post #6

This sure suggests that we're all choosing to build this dystopia we're trending towards. I agree very much with the idea that we should be making the world better little by little, but better... better for who? Who benefits is a genuinely important question to answer. I believe "better for most", which means using our wealth to lift up many. Others believe "better for me" or "better for my tribe" or "better for my n…

> This sure suggests that we're all choosing to build this dystopia we're trending towards. Citation needed. Humans have never been richer in medicine, tech, social mobility, pick your measurement.

They've also never had stronger access to mass surveillance, had more militarized and capable police forces, dealt with a global climate catastrophe, or had more people in prison.

Re: Protopia

#37

Post by NooneAtAll3 » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:22 PM UTC

paytonjjones wrote: post #34

ang_cire wrote: post #7

I like how the author defines dystopia as > reckless uprisings, a long dark age, the collapse of institutions, climate disasters, a black mirror of stunted humanity descending into chaos. rather than the much more common understanding or portrayals like 1984 or Handmaid's Tale, which in fact feature incredibly, overly -strong institutions, and a tyrannical lack of autonomy (so not a whole lot of 'reckless uprisings')…

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" There are many forms of dystopia and picking two that prominently feature absolute institutional control also seems like cherry picking. The Hunger Games, World War Z, and Fallout are also dystopias.

isn't fallout post-apocalypse?

and hunger games is about institutional control and rebelling against it

Re: Protopia

#38

Post by ang_cire » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #10

ang_cire wrote: post #7

I like how the author defines dystopia as > reckless uprisings, a long dark age, the collapse of institutions, climate disasters, a black mirror of stunted humanity descending into chaos. rather than the much more common understanding or portrayals like 1984 or Handmaid's Tale, which in fact feature incredibly, overly -strong institutions, and a tyrannical lack of autonomy (so not a whole lot of 'reckless uprisings')…

> mass surveillance I hear this complaint here a lot and I guess there are more cameras, but arrests have gone down in absolute terms in the US despite growing population. > The total number of arrests in the U.S. fell sharply in 2020 during pandemic-driven shifts in public activity and enforcement—and it has changed little since then. The 2024 arrest total was 25% lower than in 2019, the year before the pandemic, an…

That *opinion* article is by a literal anti-climate-science hack. He cites none of his numbers, and it's because they're complete lies.

Here's some actual cited evidence:

The WHO fact sheet on heat and health [1] says:

> The number of people exposed to extreme heat is growing exponentially due to climate change in all world regions. Heat-related mortality for people over 65 years of age increased by approximately 85% between 2000–2004 and 2017–2021 (1).

> Between 2000–2019 studies show approximately 489 000 heat-related deaths occur each year, with 45% of these in Asia and 36% in Europe (2). In Europe alone in the summer of 2022, an estimated 61 672 heat-related excess deaths occurred (3). High intensity heatwave events can bring high acute mortality; in 2003, 70 000 people in Europe died as a result of the June–August event. In 2010, 56 000 excess deaths occurred during a 44–day heatwave in the Russian Federation.

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha...

The author claims:

> A century ago, almost half a million people died on average each year from storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and extreme temperatures. Over the next 10 decades, global annual deaths from these causes declined 96%, to 18,000. In 2020, they dropped to 14,000.

In no universe is this remotely true, if he's attempting to be accurate about climate deaths. The US alone had 4,000 direct heat exposure deaths annually as of 2020, and an average 47,500 cold exposure deaths. As in, people literally dying of extreme heat and cold exposure. That doesn't include every other climate impact death, and, once again, that's US only.

That's from Yale [2], btw:

> In a new study, YSPH researchers found that while cold weather continues to be a leading contributor to U.S. deaths annually, deaths linked to heat exposure surged more than 50% over the past two decades. Cold-related deaths rose from about 44,000 between 2000 and 2009 to more than 47,500 between 2010 and 2020, a 7% increase. Meanwhile, deaths associated with high temperatures climbed by 53%, from an annual average of 2,670 between 2000 and 2009 to more than 4,000 between 2010 and 2020.

[2] https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/warming-us-climate-linked...

Globally, heat deaths alone in 2023 were over 178,000 [3].

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266667582...

I'll leave debunking the rest of this misinformation to others, as this comment is already long enough.

Re: Protopia

#39

Post by arcwhite » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #18

forestrywat wrote: post #6

This sure suggests that we're all choosing to build this dystopia we're trending towards. I agree very much with the idea that we should be making the world better little by little, but better... better for who? Who benefits is a genuinely important question to answer. I believe "better for most", which means using our wealth to lift up many. Others believe "better for me" or "better for my tribe" or "better for my n…

Ideally, it's less "redistribute billionaires' wealth" so much as "figure out what parts of the system allow some people to accumulate money orders of magnitude more than the effort they've put in, and tune them to allow anyone who works to afford a comfortable life". As it is, money makes money, while effort alone makes barely enough to scrape by (or not even that much). There are many, many paths to fix it, and the…

We can do both, adding some additional upper tax brackets and clamping down on tax evasion can go hand in hand with other reforms.

Re: Protopia

#40

Post by paytonjjones » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:34 PM UTC

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #37

paytonjjones wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" There are many forms of dystopia and picking two that prominently feature absolute institutional control also seems like cherry picking. The Hunger Games, World War Z, and Fallout are also dystopias.

isn't fallout post-apocalypse? and hunger games is about institutional control and rebelling against it

Dystopia just decomposes to "bad place", of which there are many and varied types

Yes, institutional control features heavily in The Hunger Games, but so do "reckless uprisings, a long dark age, the collapse of institutions..." which is why it came to mind.