Think of most people, who are too busy broadcasting their personal information everywhere, given the chance. People like you, me, and most of HN are a statistical anomaly.

Those fools leaving their DNA all over everything. Didn't they watch Gattaca and remember the part about your whole world being torn apart by a strand of hair?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

Sure, they watched it, ate popcorn, and felt better about their lives by comparison. Most people don't watch things like that for the lesson, they're just entertained. The rest of us find it hard to believe, but go to a NASCAR rally sometime... you'll see. There are all kinds of people there, but there are vast swathes of... fools. Fools who you could never hope to reach or educate, even if they wanted you to do, which they vehemently don't.

The problem facing the Western world, and America in particular, is that the attributes and skills required to get and maintain a job are orthogonal to what society needs to survive.

Being handsome, tall, white, heterosexual, male, aggressive, assertive, ruthless and remorseless can make you an exceptionally successful person within the business world. It's also not the sort of thing you'd want society made out of. Every day would be a struggle for survival for most, but for the tiny few that've fought their way to the top and can now have others do their fighting for them.

There's no room for things like wisdom, intelligence, for care or concern, for the pursuit of long-term goals instead of chasing short-term gains.

Management doesn't care that you've saved the company a billion over ten years if your project makes them come up 5% short on the Wall Street projections this quarter. Politicians don't care that they're destroying an institution that's saved millions of lives if they can get re-elected because they saved money. People don't give a shit if their neighbour gets thrown in jail because they're an "illegal" even when they're the one committing crimes: Dodging taxes, stealing from their workplace, bribing a school executive to admit their stupid kid...

It's a rough world out there, and the thing that's killing us is a lack of long-term vision.

I've spent plenty of time working in a cubicle. I've overheard my coworkers say a lot of dumb stuff. Going a NASCAR race seems like an Ivy League board meeting by comparison.

Look in the mirror. Odds are you're just as bad plus or minus a few %.

Working in a cubicle could mean a lot of things, including working at a call center. I'm not seeing the relevance, other than as an opening to take a personal swing because I assume you're offended.

I strongly suspect that this is a rearguard fight and that - barring something along the lines of a French revolution - sooner or later this will all be made acceptable and what few jobs will be left are going to come with mandatory genetic testing, assuming it isn't done at birth and made part of your files which are either made public or will be accessible in the same way credit records are today. Medical privacy is on the way out.

I think you'd be right, but I'd guess that we'll be failing as a civilization before the worst privations can come to pass. War, chaos, and dissolution is more likely our future, fueled by climate change and global conflict.