Thank you for the comments. I apologize for my recent quiet-mode, I've been dealing with family matters relating to my 96-year old Mom being moved to Memory Care, a positive move that was partly luck (there's a waiting list everywhere that isn't dreadful) and mostly due to months of effort by my sister, who did the heavy lifting. I am in-state to assist a bit with the tedium of the cleanup.
What I find fascinating about the degradation of the foundations of a decent standard of living / quality of life is how little impact AI (and all the other tech "solutions") have on these human problems generated by greed, perverse incentives, etc., as those benefiting from our broken healthcare systems and declining health, etc., have no incentive to change anything--and certainly not because AI spits out a "solution."
Equally interesting is the lack of impact of nuclear power and the flood of natural gas from fracking and other technologies: the unstated idea here is that abundant energy will solve all our problems. A lack of energy is a problem, to be sure, but a corrupt system teetering on the edge of social disorder due to extremes of wealth/income inequality and unaffordability will not be "saved" because AI data centers can be powered by natural gas / nuclear power.
I suspected that Real Life™ had intervened. Nice to have you back. You are quite correct to target corruption as the source of many of our major problems. But it is only to be expected when everything has been sacrificed on the altar of eternal grown for the sake of growth. But why 1985? Why not go really retro and pick 1950? :) In reality each time has its own share of issues, when the rose colored glasses are removed.
We would no doubt have much better energy security, in the absence of government granted and protected monopolies in this and related market sectors. Endless lawfare and hysterics have made our best base load source of power (modern nuclear) uneconomic. Which is just another aspect of a terminally corrupt system. Government in any guise is not a solution to any of our major problems. It is the root cause of most. Until enough people understand that, they will keep chasing the glorious Peoples Utopia at the behest of those who Rule.
Thank you for the comments. I apologize for my recent quiet-mode, I've been dealing with family matters relating to my 96-year old Mom being moved to Memory Care, a positive move that was partly luck (there's a waiting list everywhere that isn't dreadful) and mostly due to months of effort by my sister, who did the heavy lifting. I am in-state to assist a bit with the tedium of the cleanup.
What I find fascinating about the degradation of the foundations of a decent standard of living / quality of life is how little impact AI (and all the other tech "solutions") have on these human problems generated by greed, perverse incentives, etc., as those benefiting from our broken healthcare systems and declining health, etc., have no incentive to change anything--and certainly not because AI spits out a "solution."
Equally interesting is the lack of impact of nuclear power and the flood of natural gas from fracking and other technologies: the unstated idea here is that abundant energy will solve all our problems. A lack of energy is a problem, to be sure, but a corrupt system teetering on the edge of social disorder due to extremes of wealth/income inequality and unaffordability will not be "saved" because AI data centers can be powered by natural gas / nuclear power.
warm regards, charles
"What we’ve lost are the foundations of a healthy standard of living / quality of life."
it is guaranteed to get worse gradually year after year through the rest of this century.
It is interesting
I am an observer myself
It’s fascinating that with all the “innovation” things just get worse
PFAs in our food and drink
Fertility crashing
Insane wealth inequality
Grok argues but at least our wealth inequality not as bad as Rome at time of collapse
Why does our society award one tech billionaire all the money when his company has hundreds of thousands of employees?
Weren’t they part of the story
That said tech hasn’t improved things but has it slowed decline?
Or is it just random Brownian motion or a deep state conspiracy
I only have questions myself
However our population over past 150 years has exploded exponentially despite two world wars
And still growing so likely things will only get worse
I suspected that Real Life™ had intervened. Nice to have you back. You are quite correct to target corruption as the source of many of our major problems. But it is only to be expected when everything has been sacrificed on the altar of eternal grown for the sake of growth. But why 1985? Why not go really retro and pick 1950? :) In reality each time has its own share of issues, when the rose colored glasses are removed.
We would no doubt have much better energy security, in the absence of government granted and protected monopolies in this and related market sectors. Endless lawfare and hysterics have made our best base load source of power (modern nuclear) uneconomic. Which is just another aspect of a terminally corrupt system. Government in any guise is not a solution to any of our major problems. It is the root cause of most. Until enough people understand that, they will keep chasing the glorious Peoples Utopia at the behest of those who Rule.