I really enjoyed this article! I believe we should produce mass amounts of cheap 3D printed housing that anyone can afford with a part time minimum wage job, and then fill in the labor gaps with general purpose artificial intelligence and robotics. Then people can chill out and ignore the more dystopian aspects of society and instead enjoy this wonderful resource of infinite education and entertainment we've created. I think the answer lies in making a good enough standard of living the default for everyone and then there will be less negativity in the world.

It's not that expensive to build massive amounts of housing that anyone can afford. But it looks like this:

US version: [1] USSR version: [2] French version: [3]

"You can't stack poor people who drink."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15elections.t.htm...

The problem I see with these kinds of housing developments is that you're taking stressed out people with problems and sticking them in small boxes very close together. That's going to compound social stress and amplify bad influences. Something like 3D printed housing seems better to me because you could give each person an entire house to themselves and give them enough of their own territory to where they would feel secure and comfortable.

Having seen people who seriously campaigned against installing wifi in a community library because they feared it was going to give them cancer, I think the same people you're trying to help will reject such an automated infrastructure out of fear of technology they don't understand. Although I'll eat those words when I see mass-market self-driving cars (I think people will campaign against those too because there's nobody to blame/sue when a self-driven car accidentally kills a bunch of people).

Engineering a better future is one thing. Selling it to the public is a whole different ball game. Which is sort of the other side of this article. People have the technology for better living (like strong end-to-end encryption) and they're scared of it.

Let's not forget that the transition between the worst days in the 19th century to the best days of the 20th Century we had an enormous amount of war.

That's a sad read. But he's not wrong.

Nobody knows how to organize a society to effectively use the technology we have.

Haha, if you read this as entertainment it's great. If you read this seriously, it's hopelessly shrill. Life has never been as good before.

There's never been a better time to be rich, white, and male with a 1st world passport!

There's never been a better time to be a poor black female with a 1st world passport either

It's just that the imbalance between how good it is to be either is so big.

Is it really ? I have multiplied my income by 10 in the last two years and it hasn't made a huge difference in my lifestyle. I can afford nicer versions of everything, but the improvement is marginal. Like going from pressing my own fruit to pushing a button on a Juicero.

This is why stocks are shown on graphs with logarithmic scales

How many poor black females do you know with the income and need/interest to get a passport? Honestly curious.

Well, Here in Belgium poor black females would usually have a passport to visit their family in Congo/Rwanda.

It's also looking pretty good for the rest of the world, compared to the past.

https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ourwor...

> Little to no mention of the revolutionary technological progress in life saving medicine

They do mention this, but then note how the US government is trying to restrict healthcare despite this.

I didn't take away that this article was just complaining about tech. Instead I felt like their point was that culturally we are regressing, unable to use this incredible technology effectively. Hunger is still a problem, and our energy/waste is nowhere near green.

And all of those things make the things being ridiculed in the article less worthy of ridicule how exactly?