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Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#81

Post by Nomentatus »

friedman23 wrote: post #4

> an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries This is a stupid premise. People illiterate in both physics and economics seem to think that economic growth is bound by the laws of thermodynamics. This is easily proven false by contradiction: Let's say you have a few 2x4s and nails, by rearranging them into a chair you've created economic value. No extra raw materi…

A less constructed example showing this even more strongly:

I used to buy distilled water from my grocery store. The water had to be shipped to the store, that took gas. Not green, not efficient compared to: Now the same store has a reverse osmosis machine, available because of new technology, that uses regular city water and filters it. It's half the price. No gas is used to transport the water to the store, it flows through a pipe to get to the store. This increases GDP, the same amount of water (at least) is bought, but lots of peole have some extra money left over. GDP increased, pollution decreased substantially.

BUT. The discussion does go on from there. The people with extra dollars might spend that on something polluting - maybe even as polluting as trucking water around - but they might well not.

Even so, as with the original example, only better, this is an example of economic growth that actually decreases consumption, taken by itself. (Now comes the argument about knock-on effects such as what the freed bucks get spent on, and the named law (word) saying that when you make a good more efficiently, demand for it increases.)

If you're a Marxist you can substitute "freed labor is spent doing" for "freed bucks is spent on" above, I suppose.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#82

Post by singularity2001 »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #16
Forge36 wrote: post #5

I am a firm believer that the world has always being going to shit. It's called change and accepting that has made life much more bearable. While change is increasingly happening faster, the changes are (mostly) smaller. We're in one of the longest periods of “peace time“ and threat of war/death continue to decrease (while not evenly distributed that's not a reason to lose hope).

This period of peace time is, admittedly, because world war 3 will end human life on earth and it’s making leaders slightly more shy than usual It doesn’t even have to be a world war. It will only take 1 nation to make the choice We’re one mistake from extinction

WW3 ending humanity might be a wrong assumption.

God forbid we might be entering the "big proxy war" between all mayor powers. (If India and china start supplying the ukraine front etc)

To contextualize with OP: yes the world is always changing, but the next decade might become extremely uncomfortable.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#83

Post by soulofmischief »

solarmist wrote: post #79
danny_codes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a risk that plants can't adapt fast enough to climate change and die off, causing a domino effect. Phytoplankton, for example, produce 50% of the earth's oxygen. So if they go, well, we might be along for the ride.

Possibly, but even if 90% or even 99% of humanity dies it still isn't an existential threat. If 100k humans survive that's more than enough to carry on humans and civilization as a whole.

This take always rubs me the wrong way because it conveniently ignores the fact that letting 90% of humanity die is wrong and should be avoided given that 1% of humanity is more or less to blame for this mess.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#85

Post by benwad »

fasthands9 wrote: post #9

Per capita emissions in the US and other western nations are declining even when you account for production shifted to other countries https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-... I don't truly see the "no one knows how to do anything end to end". This is somewhat true - but I don't know if 500 years ago the same person necessarily knew how to work with bronze and to raise cattle and to preserve fo…

One glaring omission from that article is any mention of per-capita emissions. The author keeps asserting that US-based measures to combat climate change are ineffective because China pollutes more, but the US (and all Western countries) have a far larger per-capita footprint than China. Policies to reduce this footprint could have a huge effect on emissions globally, even though the US isn't the total biggest emitter in the world.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#87

Post by chki »

HKH2 wrote: post #47
chki wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There seems a pile of circumstantial evidence that the rotating series of crises may merely be a device for controlling the masses through fear." And who is doing the controlling? Wouldn't it be easier to control people if they are happy and content, given that in human history revolutions were almost always a product of suffering and unhappiness? Isn't it much more likely that the many crises we perceive are a prod…

> Wouldn't it be easier to control people if they are happy and content, given that in human history revolutions were almost always a product of suffering and unhappiness? It's easier to rule happy people. If you want to control them, you can lull them into inaction with vices, then control them with fear. We're all individuals; divide and conquer.

Sorry, but the difference between "rule" and "control" seems more like a play on words and less like a coherent argument. Also, "divide et impera" might be reasonable if you are in the business of ancient roman foreign policy but I would need to be convinced that it holds true for the inner workings of modern democracies. I don't have the feeling that the people around me are particularly afraid all the time and if they are, it leads to them wanting change instead of being paralyzed.

The connection between - media producers make money by grabbing attention - grabbing attention is easier if you create threats and crises --> the media tends to overblow things

seems so much more straightforward.

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#88

Post by chki »

vinyl7 wrote: post #48
chki wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There seems a pile of circumstantial evidence that the rotating series of crises may merely be a device for controlling the masses through fear." And who is doing the controlling? Wouldn't it be easier to control people if they are happy and content, given that in human history revolutions were almost always a product of suffering and unhappiness? Isn't it much more likely that the many crises we perceive are a prod…

I think most "crisis" are developed for election marketing and grifting. Horrible situation such'n'such is an existential threat! Vote for me or give me money to save all of humanity! The other side of it lately has been creating crisis that divide and conquer society. Most of the "crisis" in the past several years have been terribly polarized. Keeping people divided stops them from focusing on the real issues that p…

>I think most "crisis" are developed for election marketing and grifting. Horrible situation such'n'such is an existential threat! Vote for me or give me money to save all of humanity!

I think that's much more reasonable. I wouldn't agree with you that it's "most" but sure, that's certainly happening to some amount.

>Keeping people divided stops them from focusing on the real issues that politicians can't/won't tackle, and it prevents them from uniting against politicians/corporations/etc.

This part however, I don't buy. That's a conspiracy theory. Who exactly is carrying out this nefarious plan? And how do they manage to have that much influence to be able to do that in most countries?

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#89

Post by badpun »

aristofun wrote: post #65

This is a very dangerous narrative, for some reason popular nowadays — the scarcity mindset, the story of “limited resources”. If you go back 5000 years ago you’ll see there’s only so many people the planet can feed. The actual fact is that people _create_ resources when they cooperate (this is why now our planet can afford so many people that ancient would never imagine possible). It’s not about the technology but a…

> Please spread good constructive beliefs, not scary destructive ones.

What is the objective truth is "scary"? Can I spread it then?

Re: Ask HN: Is the world going to shit?

#90

Post by badpun »

imgabe wrote: post #18

> there's no way of our GDP keeps growing indefinitely while reducing our ecological footprint. Yes there is. We are vastly ineffecient with our use of energy. Fusion power, better use of solar, wind, geothermal power, better energy storage. The amount of solar hitting the Earth every day is several orders of magnitude larger than what is needed to run society at our current level. There is no shortage of energy, onl…

Energy problems is just one of ways in which our societies can get into a decline. There's also loss of arable land (industrial farming is slowly but surely destroying the soil across the world), destruction of biodiversification, leading to freak incidents (one pest/disease wiping out lots of crops, forests, farm animals, or humans for that matter), depletion of minerals in the Earth (who knows if even right now there's even enough lithium available for widespread deployment of electric cars etc.
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