My grandfather spent the last 30 years of his life in retirement collecting a pay check that he thought might be his last.

USPS's primary business, delivering letters, was by 2006 clearly in terminal decline, with no guarantee that parcel volume would increase to compensate. Many, many employees of newspapers—the other industry that in 2006 was facing similar danger—wish that Congress had mandated something like this for their pensions.

2) The USPS is supposed to be unprofitable--it's supposed to service everyone. If you are going to hound the USPS about profitability, then they should be allowed to drop service in rural areas. The easiest way to decrease pension obligations is to permananetly drop a whole bunch of workers from unprofitable areas, no?

The problem is that the arguments around the USPS aren't made in good faith. The goal is to bankrupt the USPS so that they have to sell off the extremely valuable real estate that many USPS facilities sit on.

I wrote that the newspaper industry was the other that by 2006 was clearly in decline for the same reason as USPS letter delivery: The Internet. Most industries aren't like this.

>2) The USPS is supposed to be unprofitable--it's supposed to service everyone.

I said nothing about profitability. The Constitution also says nothing about profitability or anything else about USPS, other than that Congress has the authority to establish post offices. That's it.

That said, Congress has historically required USPS to self-fund as much of its operations as is practical. Were this not the case, postage rates would never have risen in history, before or after the 1971 reorganization of the cabinet-level agency to the quasi-independent entity that it is today. Nor would it have consistently issued new stamp editions to sell to the public.

More to the point, making sure future USPS pensions are funded has nothing to do with profitability, at least directly. It's simply good sense given the ongoing and, in all likelihood, irreversible decline toward zero non-parcel volume. Even if the USPS were mandated by law to always run at a slight loss to maximize customers' savings on postage, pension prefunding would still be prudent.

>The problem is that the arguments around the USPS aren't made in good faith. The goal is to bankrupt the USPS so that they have to sell off the extremely valuable real estate that many USPS facilities sit on.

First, there is no major political movement in the US to "bankrupt the USPS", presumably in advance of a sale. No political party has such in its platform. (If you reply that the very absence of such is proof that the plan exists, I'll just throw up my hands and give up now.)

Second, there's nothing in the Constitution that would prohibit USPS from being privatized, which has happened in most European countries, usually with little controversy.

I'm not entirely clear on why this was, but it may have been that they were not fully insured or that promises made by the steel mills were not backed by anything. In these cases, some pensioners actually had to give money back [1].

This happened to my grandfather, who worked in the steel mills in western Pennsylvania. If you ever wanted to see him red-faced mad, this was the topic to discuss.

1. https://www.mcall.com/news/all-retirees1118-story.html

Yes, the backstop isn’t 100% and has a cap, but the pension is will never go “broke”.

I believe the coverage is something like 60% up to $64k/yr.

> If you look at multiemployer plans, those people worked in coal mines, driving trucks, in bakeries — typically physical, difficult jobs, and they certainly earned the pension they were promised by their union. Now, some of them are 70-years-old and in retirement and have the terrible prospect of having their pension cut.

> There’s a government backstop for private pensions, but the government backstop for multiemployer plans is very modest

[1]: https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/underfunded-pensions

If the entity that owes you does not have the power to print money, then there is always a risk of non payment. And how much of a bailout you get depends on your political weight.

> Welcome to PBGC! Since 1974, we’ve protected retirement security and the retirement incomes of over 33 million American workers, retirees, and their families in private sector defined benefit pension plans.

https://www.pbgc.gov/

> https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-b...

Unfortunately, it's not just the private sector pensions that have been mismanaged (or raided, as you pointed out) which are in dire straits. California, in particular, has a lot of public pension headaches that will be coming to a head (and in some cases already have):

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-crisis-davis-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/19/why...

The hourly workers (i.e., unionized) still got 100%, which was pretty unfair.

When Americans elect bad leadership, they ultimately have nobody to blame but themselves, and that damages the public attitude; I suspect one of the reasons "stolen election" conspiracy theories are so popular right now is that the alternative is one must simply be skeptical of the good judgment of one's neighbors, and people don't want to live like that.

This, too, is a pattern we've seen before. The several Presidents elected prior to Lincoln were known as the "Bumbling Generation." When America gets scared of its own shadow, it tends to elect ineffectual leaders because neither side actually wants an empowered Presidency, lest it reward their opponents.

(One major difference between the antebellum period and now is it's a little harder to see precisely what the cleave-line is that has America's hands around its own throat. In hindsight, slavery was obvious. But the battle lines here are not so brightly drawn... Class? Faith-based conservatism vs. modern cosmopolitanism? Tech savviness vs. technophobia? Possibly enough of all three to make a crisis).

People love being skeptical of their neighbors' judgement, what they're afraid of is being skeptical of their own. They can't handle backing the wrong horse, so instead they declare that the system is wrong

The problem is that workable solution within the confines of the system requires somewhat educated populace. Or maybe not educated given the state of education in US.

I do see signs of hope in the form of push to 'return to office' mandates ( I just threw a middle finger to HR for denying my remote myself simply refusing to come back ). People seem to rediscover that the rules are really 'by the consent of the governed' and there is strength in numbers.

Let's say there are sources of excess power like political corruption. You can gain a lot of power over a short period of time but you want that power to last long. You wouldn't want to be corrupt and become rich for 5 years, be voted out then be poor again, you want to be rich your entire life long after your political career has ended.

That excess power needs to be stored somehow. We use land and money to store this excess power. In my opinion, corruption wouldn't be as widespread if its impact didn't outlive the original act of corruption.

I suspect it's because the major politicians of one of the two major parties overwhelmingly tell them it was. Trump says so, the Republicans who follow him say so, and the alternative is to acknowledge the guys you support are trying to overthrow the government, so it must be "true".

Maybe it's instead about classic American entitlement?

It's two fundamentally irreconcilable worldviews, which are alluded to in TFA.

FTA:

>>One grievance that drove support for Donald Trump in 2016 was that American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in other countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland. And there was some truth to that! There’s also truth to the European version of it—that some elites in France and Germany and Britain feel closer to one another than to the working stiffs in their own countries.

>>Interestingly, there have been attempts to counter this international network of elites with an international network of Trumpist nationalists (however ironic that may sound). I can actually imagine this kind of international populist tribe becoming a stable part of a global community—but this isn’t the place to elaborate on that long-term scenario (which I’ve done elsewhere). My main point is that one big development of recent decades—the formation of international tribes whose cohesion sometimes comes at the expense of national cohesion—was bound to happen, given the direction of technological evolution; and it was bound to be turbulent.

>>And, leaving aside the inherent tensions of moving toward a global level of social organization, there are lots of other digital-technology-abetted (and sometimes specifically social-media-abetted) problems to worry about. Like QAnoners and other conspiracy theory tribes. And violent political extremist tribes. And intense animosity among even less extreme ideological tribes. And so on.

Wright (the OP) is sort of taking this for granted, and the phrase "global level of social organization" sounds pretty benign - lots of people from different cultures all over the world, getting together and organizing humanity ... sounds great, like the plot to a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Anyway, the two irreconcilable worldviews are wanting this to happen and thinking it's good and inevitable, and not wanting it and thinking it's terrible and represents an erasure of national and cultural identity.

To your point, about past presidents, it would be very very helpful if people on the left and right would just be honest about all of this. Instead it gets cloaked in a lot of technobabble or scorn or just taken for granted because, again, how could anyone possibly disagree with a global organization of humanity unless they're racists, right? That's the future we've all seen in the more utopic science fiction over and over again. Whether this leads to a hot conflict within nations, or just remains a cold-but-simmering civil war is a separate question.

But that was never going to happen, and the cross-national mixing has been passing the inflection point where things that seem anti-American to those disconnected from the rest of the world seem perfectly natural to those deeply plugged in.

It is worth noting, however, that there is strong push back in the broader west against the more aggressive American cosmopolitan ideas that half of the country here finds alien. Macron in particular seems to recognize this trend[1]. He seems like a genuine outlier, though, and his skepticism may be an artifact of the general weakness of the French left. This is to say, that while these ideas look and feel alien to ~50% or more of each country in question, they still did, in fact, emerge and gain prominence in America first and were then exported.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...

Multiple major issues with scientific and economic root causes are simply being ignored as stability and promises of improved prosperity provided by civilization is going backwards. This is meets my definition of falling apart.

>> Multiple major issues with scientific and economic root causes are simply being ignored as stability and promises of improved prosperity provided by civilization is going backwards.

How much of this can be explained by the fact that one third of adults in the US are obese as opposed to major scientific and economic issues?

Obesity is driven by systemic commercialization and sugaring of our food supply, combined with inequality of too low a pay, too many hours, to little vacation. Even funding of highway and road infrastructure over other areas is a contributor here.

Another large part of it is because we elect to keep both private health insurance policy which ends up being racially and economically biased, and what little social safety we provide is riddled with self-imposed rules of means testing and other red tape cutting the effectiveness of even the meager allocation of resources. Many very easily and economically preventable illnesses and deaths keep happening and that is a decline to me. e.g. https://www.propublica.org/article/black-diabetics-lose-limb...

I have trouble imagining that it would be better. Look at people who come into access with large sums of money for reasons outside primarily mental achievement - athletes after leaving pro sports, musicians after they stop performing, actors after they stop acting, lottery winners, and so on. Some quick searching turned up articles like this [1]:

"The researchers found that the athletes' weight held steady for over 100 years, with the majority of them weighing in at what is considered "normal," -- i.e., with a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 24.9. However, around 1991 the average player's BMI began to rise, and over the last 25 years nearly 80 percent of players fall into the overweight or obese category with a BMI above 25. "

There's a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and obesity, but that doesn't mean it's causal. Obesity is primarily driven by a lack of impulse control. If you force yourself not to over-eat, you could live off of even McDonalds without becoming obese.

[1] - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160930085937.h...

Here is a link to the actual paper [1]. Their concluding statement was:

"Professional athletes are not immune from the growing obesity crisis and may not provide optimal role models of health. Concussions have drawn attention to overlooked long-term health consequences of sport participation. Increasing body mass in professional baseball players warrants similar attention for its potential impact on long-term morbidity and mortality because these players hold a special place as role models of health and human performance in our society."

[1] - https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.orcp.2016.09.003

Now, there are lots of big boys in the NFL that definitely have a couple extra pounds on them, which could also be skewing numbers.

1. Modern food systems - fast food, frozen boxed food, and a severe lack of access to healthy whole foods

2. Income inequality - Obesity rates are far higher in lower income people and healthy food is far more expensive

3. Work culture - We work far more hours and far less physical jobs. Less hours to exercise and more cost to exercise.

Sure individuals can find ways around all these issues but the more roadblocks we as a society put in people's way the more that will fail. Which is is exactly what the OP is talking about, major scientific and economic issues cause far worse health outcomes.

In other countries where politicians care about citizens -> situation is completely different.

It all depends on agenda and food you sell to ppl.

https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2020/

This is closely correlated with the COVID-19 death rate.

https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-c...

Such as?

"but because those with the power are unwilling to engage fundamental issues."

It's possible that some issues they are unable to address because there are legal or practical hurdles. For example, obesity is a massive issue that is dependent on individual buy-in. Things like addiction and crime could use improvement, but they are both highly complex issues and not easy to solve. Of course most systemic issues are difficult to solve in a democracy simply because they need a lot of support to have any momentum, especially if individual and states' rights/liberties heavily protected in the democracy constitution.

If people want to choose to live shorter and less healthy lives, is there anything we can really do?

It's like the food industry is "conspiring" against you. Obviously they are not, they just deliver crap quality to make more money.

I don't understand why the discourse on this topic so rarely focuses on its root cause: food addiction.

Is it just easier to think of fat and obese people as weak-willed rather than addicted?

Is the goal to shame them rather than help them?

Usually the way these assertions are frame leaves anyone who disagrees in the position of having to prove the negative. Lack of evidence is no mater because "we know", while any trivial facts, even completely circumstantial ones, are held as proof.

For example, I spent many too many hours arguing with my partner that Epstein wasn't "certainly murdered", that not having camera footage wasn't proof. While possible, we simply didn't have evidence, and suicide was hardly inconceivable given the circumstances. Yet seemingly everyone I know seems to not merely believe that this happened, but that they know this for certain and that there is a mass conspiracy to cover this up. There's a belief that a) you have to take an absolute position of fact on unknowns and b) the case that attributes the most malice to the greatest number of the highest status people is always the correct one.

The result is kind of interesting to me, because you end up where a majority of "regular people" end up sharing a common view of the world, even without any coordination and often when their ideologies are polar opposite each other.

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

That's baloney. People have knowledge of Epstein. They see strong evidence he trafficked children (police findings), and strong good evidence he hung around rich and powerful people (photographs). The can see he was under trial for conspiracy, and that his two prison guards were convicted for conspiracy, and that his partner, Maxwell, was convicted of conspiracy. You'd have to be cynical to assume people put no thought into their beliefs.

Institutions that were supposed to lead us - failed us. Earth might be uninhabitable in quite a few places in next 30-50 years.

We will have climate refugees everywhere. Civil war in developed countries is something to worry about.

Our leaders cannot even agree on basic things to save the planet we live on.

We are in deep shit IMHO. I dont worry for myself, I worry for my children.

My parents and grandparents most likely are responsible for the hell my kids will have to live in.

If scientists dont see anything positive in next years, why should lay ppl be happy.

I think regardless of if he gets elected again, even if he only even serves one term, 50 years from now Trump's name is going to be plastered in more history books than any modern President before him (and possibly after). He truly did radically alter the party to an amount that will define different eras in political history.

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

I really don't see it that way - this isn't at all a new phenomenon. What feels different to me is the intensity and pervasiveness of division, but then again that could be attributed to being more generally aware of things thanks to the Internet.

I'm 39 and have lived in America all my life. In my childhood, I dimly recall bitter rows over whatever Regan was doing - my parents lost friends over their opposition to him. In the 90s, Clinton scandals were all people could talk about for a good while. George W, of course, took social division to new heights - or, at least, I was finally old enough to appreciate just how far-ranging the dividing effects of ideology can be.

I remember in my first job in the mid-2000s, my team was already socially-clustered based on political/religious identity - "Libs" weren't invited to some parties, and vice-versa.

Of course, Obama's election really triggered a certain section of society, there's no denying that, but all that is to say that none of this is really new. In my view, our "tribes" broadly descend from pro- vs. anti-slavery camps, and the different geographic targets of migration from different parts of England and Europe. (I highly recommend the book Albion's Seed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed), which explores the influence of regional cultures of 18th-century Britain on American cultures).

Fact: George Floyd wouldn’t have died if he didn’t resist arrest.

I’m certainly not pro-slavery, and agree people can be racist, but there is certainly something wrong if people can’t openly discuss taboo truths without being slighted as a racist themselves, utterly dismissed, or censored.

1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings...

Even just scratching the surface of this point, the data you shared fails to include details of whether the victims resisted arrest or not.

There have been dire national consequences of how the public views enforcing the law since Floyd. And claiming racism when a point seems obtuse to you is hardly productive

That's what your stated "taboo truth" amounts too, it's fine for police to kill people as long as you have judged them worthy of death.

Very far from anything to do with slavery.

There are things that are true and impactful and worth talking about, and some of those conversations get shut down because they make people feel uncomfortable. Your statement is not in that group.

There are statements that, while technically true, are misleading. They do not illuminate. They are so _obviously_ cherry-picked from the range of all possible statements that they reveal the bias of the person presenting them. Your statement is in this group.

Personally, I’m fine with people who reveal themselves to be racists to be labelled as racists. I’m fine with this category of statements being utterly dismissed. I’m fine with these statements being “censored”, as in people choosing not to publish them.

Your example hinges on the definition of the word “racist”. There are credible definitions where the answer would be yes or no.

If I had to guess how I’d answer after reading three pages of explanation on this opinion of yours, it would probably be “yes”.

The unwillingness to even consider other opinions and the abject expansion of what qualifies as racist (and it’s use as slur) is exactly what’s perpetuating our issues.

Why?

> unwillingness to even consider other opinions

What opinions? You labelled something a fact. Do you have an opinion to share? How much of my finite time on Earth do I have to spend on this opinion before I can dismiss it?

> and the abject expansion of what qualifies as racist (and it’s use as slur) is exactly what’s perpetuating our issues.

No. Definitely not. This is just detached from reality. Think of “our issues”. Whatever that list means to you. Society’s problems, our culture’s conundrums. Now, think of the list of things perpetuating those issues. If you put “the abject expansion of what qualifies as racist (and it’s use as slur)” anywhere near the top of that list, you are caught up in a delusion. I would sincerely suggest taking action to reground yourself.

You’re just stubbornly attached to your own beliefs. Most people are like this—they don’t like admitting when they were wrong. In general, the reason ‘why’ (above) is because it could benefit you to find a better conclusion if one exists. Do what you want, but very dangerous to burden society with the same handicap

On your topic of "taboo truths", personally I agree that we ought to be able to discuss things with civility and assuming good faith. It's not always or even often possible these days.

For example, I don’t understand how you expect a civil and good faith discussion by first labeling the opposing viewpoint as ‘pro slavery’ at the onset.

I was a "doomer" back when everything seemed fine. Nothing since 2019 has surprised me at all.

Things will continue to break down at a faster rate and more severely. However, one of my earliest realizations upon waking up to this was that as things become more obvious, people's denial will be not chipped away but rather strengthened.

The collapse of industrial civilization (and the non-zero possibility of species extinction) isn't just scary for most people, it deeply cuts into existential crisis territory. The vast majority of our strategies of copping with existence and our deep rooted fear of our inevitable death is a system of meaning largely created around our hopes in the future of society. As society collapse we are forced to start confronting things that terrify us, and the natural psychological reaction is often to just double down on not seeing it.

There are already so many things that we've normalized that would be shocking to someone from 2012: Global pandemic, land war with Russia, lake Mead on track to stop water flowing through the Hoover dam in 10 years, crop failures, supply chain crises, etc.

In a very literal sense "everything is falling apart". We have destroyed vast portions of the biosphere, we're seriously looking at ecosystem devastating ocean acidification, most of us will live to see a blue ocean event. But people will be unlikely to ever recognize this, rather they will continue to double down on "this is fine" and the associates madness and extreme cognitive dissonance required to maintain this illusion.

First, I’d want to say that we as humans love to simplify complex things. There are large macroeconomic trends at play that are boring or hard to explain, and it’s easier to blame immigrants, social media, or blame <X> because that gives us an outlet to make sense out of complexity. For politicians, depending on their political leanings, it gives them a way to avoid any form of accountability or responsibility. Regardless of party affiliations, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi - some of the leaders across both parties have been in power longer than I’ve been alive. They can blame Facebook or Twitter for what’s happening in the country, but in my mind, these “excuses” are an indictment of out of touch, entitled “leadership”.

America is facing a reality where the rest of the world is catching up. In chase of endless profits, we stopped producing things at home. And frankly, our standards of living or at least the expectations have risen - everyone wants <Y> now, without patience, and they need it delivered now or within two days. They want a standard of living that requires competitiveness globally, but in this country, we no longer want to work for it. On one hand, we have homelessness, housing shortages, issues with getting access to healthcare. On the other hand, we’ve sold the promise of America and glamorized it so strongly that so many people want to come here, when we cannot even take care of folks that are already here.

We’re getting lazier, more entitled, and under delusions of a God complex. In every Hollywood film, we continue to be the good guys that save the world. On one hand, we have zero trust in our politicians. On the other hand, the notion that perhaps we’re not really “good” guys in some international conflict - that it’s not so black and white - is simply incomprehensible.

The last part of my rant is on the rising intolerance. There is now only one opinion, it is the truth, and anyone willing to step outside this narrow circle is a racist, bigot, etc. Worst of all, the people pushing this narrative are the loudest voices in the room, and our corporate interests are happy to assist and provide these people the megaphones they need, on their quest for endless profits and infinite growth.

That’s not what I see at all. Most working people in the current generation are working more hours, at more skilled jobs, with more education than their parents, and yet the lifestyle they can afford (aside from tech gadgets) is worse and less secure than their parents.

I’m pessimistic about more young people studying subjects that are not useful, but I think in general this generation has gotten a bad (financial) deal in comparison.

This is just completely false. Both average working hours (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG) and labor force participation (https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...) has been trending downwards. I think more revealing than our hours of work is our attitudes towards work. Watch American Factory and observe the difference between Chinese and American workers. The Chinese workers simply care a lot more about getting their jobs done. I do think it's a good thing that we can afford to have higher standards for ourselves, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking this doesn't come with any downsides.

So the people who work tend to work hard. But a large number of people choose not to work or even seek work (for a variety of reasons, so lazy might be a little too catch-all).

In many parts of jobs that have public facing people, the perceived increase in the lack of civility has made those jobs much more difficult to accept for any length of time.

The combination of job loss, retraining for jobs that don't deal with the public, and acceptance of austerity (including moving back in with one's parents in some cases) to have an extended duration of no income means that you don't need to accept a job that pays poorly or deals with uncivil people.

I'm going to point to https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate that shows the unemployment rate equal to what it was in December 2019.

People want to work and are working - they've just changed what they're working.

If one wants to place blame on the "no one wants to work" I would suggest reading https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2022/03/03/are-boom... and https://wapo.st/39vvXxP

> service speed has fallen off a cliff

This has resulted in a reduction of capacity in many parts of the service industry.

> staff shortages are still in effect

A lot of people upskilled in the past two years and those staff shortages will remain until a new cohort of workers exists in that area that lack the skills to get the better paying jobs that don't interact with the public.

> nobody wants to have kids/get married

While the marriage rate has dropped precariously, I'll point to https://www.statista.com/statistics/195951/marriage-rate-in-... and point out that the chart ends in 2020 and that weddings weren't things that were easily held in the past two years either. However, the trend that is shown in that graph is one that has lasted for three decades - not three years.

However, https://www.statista.com/statistics/183663/number-of-married... also shows an interesting chart where the number of married people has increased fairly consistently though the recessions are evident in there - I suspect we'll see another one.

The "no one wants to have kids" needs to also be put into context of the percent of the cost of raising a child against the income and wealth for the generational cohort.

https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index... shows a substantial increase in cost in the 2000 to 2010 timeframe. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-cost-of-child-care-... puts it in a different light.

Still, if one is paying off their own college loans it is difficult to think of adding to that putting away money for a child's college costs. If a household is living pretty much paycheck to paycheck or has significant debt that they're paying down for whatever reason, having a child with an additional amount of cost would be considered to be unwise for people who have a fiscally responsible mind.

I’ve been a fairly progressive or at least liberal my whole life. I also like to look at what the data tells us.

I’m not certain that looking at “data” means we have real facts. At best, we have some quantitative representation that fits the narrative being pushed by its creators.

Within progressive circles, I’ve seen data showing that the new generations are placing family on hold because they can hardly afford things, despite having “well paid” jobs. Other data shows that these millennials are all living with their parents. But then there’s another study saying something completely different. People slice and dice whatever information they have to fit whatever narrative.

I’ve personally become less willing to engage in conversation or debate when someone comes in and claims to have the data refuting what everyone is seeing with their own eyes and living day to day.

It’s like in Seattle. We have homicides, shootings about every week. A woman was recently beaten with a baseball bat at a transit station. But then the local government and its outsourced “activist” advisors say we cannot and should not lock up the suspect (who confessed) because he’s a minority, and minorities have faced systemic racism, etc etc. and the real solution is to increase taxes on billionaires. “I have some data, therefore I know more and I’m right and everyone else is wrong.” No thanks.

First, often I've had situations where the other party uses the "support it" refutation in some way. In an online environment, the time between the "support it" reply and my response gets responses like "[crickets]" suggesting that the other person won the argument - and that any who see the "support it" being the last post supports the position that I am wrong.

Second, it moves the burden of the previous "support it" refutation to the person without the data and telling a just so story ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story ) or working off of personal anecdotes. A refutation of my post needs data of comparable weight.

Third, sometimes I am wrong. There have certainly been times when I was tracking down the information that would support my position only to find that I was in the wrong. By providing the data up front, I save myself from this possible loss of face from posting an unsubstantiated narrative that runs counter to what the numbers present.

It's true that data must be judged for relevance & validity, but to just discard it in preference of your opinion is really egotistical.

Also, statistical data doesn't offer solutions; it only presents a broader perspective than one's collection of anecdotes.

So your example of Seattle choosing what you consider to be the wrong solution is not a very persuasive argument against collecting & using data itself.

Not at all.

I’m simply saying that anyone can fudge the numbers and claim to have “data” to support their argument.

> Also, statistical data doesn't offer solutions; it only presents a broader perspective than one's collection of anecdotes.

It offers an easily distortable “perspective”, and the same dataset is often misrepresented and twisted for convenience.

It’s a recurring theme, especially in leftist politics. Using “data” to spin a narrative and tell people the sky is pink when they can clearly see it’s blue.

This is why reproduction & peer review of methodology are such important steps of the scientific method.

You're not supposed to take a single person's word on what data is.

This is also why certain fields like psychology have something of a credibility crisis, because so many "discoveries" have not been able to be reproduced.

I'm curious though: Can you actually recall specific events of a "leftist" using a false data set or are you just engaging in general slander against your political opponents?

Why is that important? Because at those scales, a population isn't remotely homogeneous. On the contrary. The US is a massively complex nation with many complex histories, cultures, economies, politics and belief systems. Languages spoken in the US are a massive topic in their own regard. American linguistics is a huge field.

The thing is that all that complexity gets hidden by a few dominant narratives. Noam Chomsky has been instrumental in pointing that out through his career. [1] Even so, the role of the media is just the top of the iceberg. Far more interesting is digging into deeply ingrained belief systems and the formation of identities throughout the history of the US from when settlers first arrived until the present day. One can never really fully escape one's own past, and this rings very true for collective histories.

I wouldn't characterize the US population as collectively having become "lazier" or "more entitled". I think that's short selling a national identity. However, one narrative is that the US fully became a global empire after World War II. The effects of those 5 years, and the preceding decades, from 1918 onwards, have profoundly transformed not only the US but also the world as a whole. Global economic prosperity up to the 1970s (in France, they are called the "Thirty Glorious Years") and it's subsequent decline over the past 50 years are ripples of a turbulent first half of the 20th century.

The fact of the matter is that the US - just like the rest of the world - is facing a new, challenging future with many new, potential and real, fault lines that might give rise to conflict and tension. Many of which still being rooted in historical differences.

It's easy to see how that breeds uncertainty and a sense of "everything is falling apart". Old certainties, dynamics and beliefs that have dominated the thinking of billions for the past 80 to 100 years are now being challenged. The question is how the US, this complex nation such as it is, is going to rise towards the occasion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#News_media_and_pr...

Very true. So many people rate the president based on how the economy or market is doing, yet they have very little influence over it.

"we no longer want to work for it. ... The last part of my rant is on the rising intolerance."

If we're not busy working or "building" something, then the other thing people tend to engage in is tearing things down.

No it’s because it caters to the employees and owners of traditional journalism who have been dethroned by Silicon Valley.

Now we’re grappling with the full import of nonstop destructive speech coming from all sides and being amplified and mass-distributed. Nonstop shit talking and denigrating of our systems is what’s causing this drastic loss of confidence in them. Any imperfection will be amplified to where it looks like a total failure.

This is rewarded with political support, viewers, clicks on the headline. Even this article “Is everything falling apart”. Alarmist clickbait.

So if you’re society consists of too many people who simply act on impulse, instead of thoughtful consideration, how do you deal with that?

I’d argue less vitriol would help, but you’re incentivized in the opposite direction. Both the person who feels helpless expressing your outrage in the comments, or the media outlet trying to get viewers and clicks.

For example, when people stopped believing in Communism and the institutions of the Party, the USSR was done. All the nuclear weapons and KGB goons couldn't keep it together. When Roman citizens figured out that the legions would no longer protect them and they were better off paying tithes to a local feudal lord rather than taxes to Rome, the Roman Empire was done. And in the US, if nobody believes in the democratic system of government and the only way to keep their party in power is through insurrection or voter suppression, then the US as we know it will be over as well.

And mass media in general... Most of people I know lost any confidence in reliability of CNN, CBC, BBS, etc.

Like report on Russian shelling shows video of results of Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk.

I understand that they simply use better (in the sense of more horrible for westerners) picture but that is not a journalism anymore, really.

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

[2]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/150302-sy...

Facebook, Google and others are in the advertising business, competing with newspapers who have seen 2/3 of their revenue lost since 2000

It is not surprising journalists hate "tech-bros"

I generally agree that anti-instutional sentiment is at short term highs, but from what I've read it doesn't seem remotely as bad is it was in the 60s.

>People who I would consider "normies" even don't trust law enforcement and the FBI anymor

Ehh I think this is mostly short term partisan politiking

I’ve spent a lot of time looking into that kind of skepticism. It turns out, the vast majority of people who say they are "skeptical" of journalism adhere to far right, conspiracy-laden fringe news sites that create fake news and cast doubt on science. It’s safe to say that the entire "skeptical of journalism" meme can be traced to a handful of billionaires who have used dark money networks to go after journalists who have dared to investigate and publicize their malfeasance. These billionaires use the far right blogosphere and fringe news sites to encourage public mistrust of journalists for this reason. Sites known to do this include the Gateway Pundit, Newsmax, OANN, Breitbart, Fox, and most notably, the NaturalNews disinformation and propaganda network run by Mike Adams.

In any case, intellectual honesty is needed here. The case against journalism comes primarily from those on the far right, from people who peddle pseudoscience, and from the rich and powerful.

They don’t want to be held accountable, and they don’t want the public to know what they are doing. Anyone who has spent an hour looking into this issue knows this is true.

Billionaires like the Kochs and Mercers (and many others) have people on their staff ready to do a hit job on any journalist or media organization who dares to shine the light on their behavior.

Going after journalists is what all good authoritarians have on their wish list. Anyone who sides with this kind of bad behavior and has been taken in by these anti-democratic impulses is part of the problem.

For what it's worth, the decline of trust in institutions is primarily among "Republican/lean Republican" respondents, who are a minority of American voters and likely a minority of American non-voters as well.

The problem with this line of thinking is that "Republican/lean Republican" is not a fixed trait. People can switch to that category instantly, overnight; so dismissing them just because the last time there was an election the other party managed to curry more votes after having every advantage possible - that's quite dangerous from a societal coherence standpoint.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-bidens-approval-...

Yes, there is a clear political tribal alignment between the current "out-group" and skepticism of institutions, but the rise of that iconoclasm on the right seems to be correlating with its growth as a whole.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-preferen...

We are all allowed (at least in the United States) to change our minds on things, but we can get in our own way. Lots of people seem to be changing their minds these days based on recognizing that their trust in some institution, process, or brand was misplaced. That might be you in a little while, and if it is, don't hate who you once were or once believed. Here's wishing you a good journey on your search for truth.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-preferen...

What's interesting is each reader of the above comment will take something different away from it, based upon their political alignment.

What is interesting is that society hangs on by a thinner thread than we imagine. Chaos lurks just beyond a corner. Preventing it is much easier when in union.

Globalization caused rise of powers: China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc.

I think that world will be in better shape after that - concurrency and need for consensus among more than one player.

Journalism is everything to these journalists. It shouldn't, but it seems it does.

Hence, these journalists think everything is falling apart.

But our everything is much greater. And it's not falling apart.

<50% believe in God/higher being, down from 80%+ in early 00s.

40% point drop in 16 year olds getting a license since the 80s as urbanization puts people closer to stuff and ride share appeared.

Youth participation in sports, especially full contact sports, had been going down since before covid which just accelerated it, leading to forecasts of a major contraction in commercial sports.

“Essential workers” are pretty fucking pissed millions sat on their ass with no clue how to feed or care for themselves, while being paid minimum wage. They are not showing the same allegiance to shit jobs and moving on.

We engineered away stability for JIT, covid came along and proved to many we live in a Banana Republic exporting memes of exceptionalism, while most people can’t grow a potato for themselves.

Given sentiment nurses, teachers, “essential” workers just experienced from their neighbors during covid, why not tell the so called gritty masses who melted down over hair cuts to find new solutions.

People who are not alive yet have no obligation to carry our sensibilities forward after we die.

* We engineered away stability for JIT

Yep. It would not kill us to recognize that globalization went 20% too far, and that supply chains in the US is good for us. We also have to deal with the fact that job loss v. cheaper goods has gone too far too. We need to swing back to a more US focused economy. Ex: I recently ordered brakes from a US company. They were out of stock of my model. I asked when it'd be back in stock. They said their suppliers didn't have the stuff. We're talking car parts: aluminum rotors, metal calipers, brake pads. We're not talking chips. Apparently this US brake company is just an importer and paper-pusher.

I think we also need to recognize that almost all real gains since 1985 have gone to the top 5%. Seen locally or tactically year-on-year that's not per se the rich's fault. But it nevertheless needs a course correction. Cheaper medical, education, housing is what other 95% could use. Congress is a part of the problem here too being more aligned with corporations instead of the middle class.

None of those are "leftist".

Staff support is entirely different than institutional corporate support. Is Amazon leftist because one of its warehouses just unionized? No, it fought (and is fighting) that union effort tooth and nail. Similarly, Google has punished staff who were too open with their leftist beliefs.

Nor is support for the Democratic party "leftist". The Democratic party is split between neoliberals (who would be considered right of center anywhere else) and social democrats (who would be considered center left anywhere else) for the most part (with some rare Democratic Socialists who might actually qualify as leftist).

Hillary Clinton is a prime example of this. Anywhere but the United States, she would be considered solidly center right. It is only in the United States, where Fox News, et al have dragged the spectrum so far to the right that anything less than neo-fascist or anarcho-capitalist is considered left, where you could even pretend these corporations had a less than rightward slant.

Edit: I will note, this dragging of the spectrum is one of many, many reasons why I try to avoid spectrum based labels (left/right, etc) and stick to actual ideological labels. There is no single "leftist". There are Democratic Socialists, State Socialists, Communists, various flavors of Anarchist, etc who all get grouped together as "leftist", but generally don't agree on much. The other group of ideologies that get grouped with leftist are those supporting historically oppressed minorities - antiracism, antipatriarchy, and pro-lgbtq+ rights. Again, these are discrete ideologies and while people who subscribe to one often subscribe to the others, just as often they don't.

Similarly on the right, neo-facist, neoconservative, paleoconservative, evangelical theocrat, and anarcho-capitalist (the proper term for US libertarians) all get grouped together under the heading "right". When many of these ideologies are (or should be) completely at odds with each other.

[3840x2160px jpg of Shannon Bream] https://gn-imgx.fubo.tv/assets/p14696422_i_h8_ae.jpg

[1080x1080px jpg of Shannon Bream] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f4/65/08/f46508d597bef8ddb558...

/me crawling back into his hide, making fox noises ;->

I agree with you that the core of this is money in politics leads to money having too much influence with politics. On the supreme court, I think that republican federalism has control over the court, that's the clear place where the 'ideology' of dems would lead to different results. But this isn't a secret, the parties encompass multitudes of views, because we squish all views into two fairly narrow groups with our accidentally designed for two-parties political system.

There are people who are trying to bridge that divide. I recommend Breaking Points and the whole ecosystem they're trying to build around themselves.

> Cheaper medical, education, housing is what other 95% could use.

Eds, meds, and beds can't be outsourced, which is why they're increasingly too expensive for workers. Fix the first problem above and the second will follow.

Education has been forcefully disrupted, by the institutions themselves no less: Zoom School proved what most of us knew all along, most institutions are just costly degree mills with little to no emphasis on truly educated their students. I personally attend a CompSci program from a university in the UK and it's quite flexible and affordable when compared to US standards.

Meds can and should be outsourced where ever possible: US,,Switzerland, Germany and France are the gold standard for reasons I don't time have to explain here, but there is no reason we couldn't just acquire their drugs and medical devices at wholesale prices from the aforementioned nations if the US pharma complex refuses to play ball and compete on price.

Thousands of nurses are on strike right now as we speak in Stanford, and many more are expected to quit the Industry entirely in the next coming years nation wide after being abused by the system during COVID.

This could be the perfect time to re-negotiate the terms imposed by the AMA and the Industry as a whole, ideally opening the roles to more practitioners and thus lowering the costs.

Housing, is sadly the last (investment) refuge of the dying middle class' networth in the US: I highly doubt that will be disrupted until 3-d printing of homes becomes common place, continuing the remote-first work place will definitely help in that, but right now the transition is that high paid tech workers can move and gentrify previously affordable areas.

I under stand that it's partly creative destruction, and to be honest as a digital nomad with no real need to stay in the US, I'm staying the hell out until these things are resolved--which I'm sure they will in time.

I see no real need to be in the US if my quality of life and standard of living is only going to continue to be impaired to prop up the decaying business models of archaic monoliths who have systematically reduced the standards of living for so many.

I'm not sure how things are in the UK, but the sentiment in the US is that Zoom schooling was an unmitigated disaster.

I was bullish on remote education prior to COVID, but interacting with the output of remote learning (at work and in volunteer work) has completely changed my mind. COVID was nowhere near a perfect experiment, but what evidence we can glean overwhelming contributes to evidence to the "remote learning sucks for at least a majority of students of all ages" side of this debate.

I feel it's still rather early to say that, we're still on at the optimization level but it's clear things definitely need to be improved (I still haven't received my final scores despite knowing I have 1st honors for my first year with a plugin that has a SQL lookup), but with that said I also got to sit in Master level lectures in AI and ML at Stanford with Dr. Andrew Ng while I was attending my intro courses and for not much money I could have gotten credit for it, too.

I think this appeals most to autodidacts as we get to choose what and how I want to learn, which as a self-taught programmer helps a lot to stay motivated. I'm on a Performance based admission enrollment: previous fintech founder, with professional experience in a mega-corp after being head-hunted for said fintech startup.

It could also be because I was so deeply disillusioned with my first BSc in Biology that I see this as a more suitable outcome for a working professional; I had launched my 2nd business my Junior year of HS and it was starting to get quite a bit of traction in the middle of my Freshman year. University was always my plan B and I treated as such, but since I was paying for it I valued flexibility over actual substance--my discipline and focus as a cellular and molecular biologist was widely used in research but despite going to a good research university in the middle of the Capital of biotech (San Diego) it was woefully underwhelming.

I still speak with my one of my Biochem professors and things haven't progressed much from back then, either.

In my experience after having worked at a megacorp in tech that came from an open-source project (Bitcoin, or Blockchain) I just don't think the on-campus model has done much to earn my trust either. People with MSc and PhDs were showing some incredibly sophomoric mistakes with even basic things like annotations that I thought were understood when you started to make learn to make commits on github. I could make a prototype with limited supervision, despite being forced to do it in Soliditiy which remains a horribly buggy lang, where as they couldn't do much without lots of hand-holding from someone that was forced to learn how to code from free tutorials, youtube videos, hanging out #IRC and tons of hours on Stack overflow.

I self admit I'm not even very good as a developer either, I just knew what I didn't know and knew where to look and how to ask the right questions: which is something I took away from a lecture in a PhD level Virology class I sat in by accident my senior year in University.

See also: Shipping container houses.

I think it's part of the problem, consider the massive boom/bust cycles and material shortages that occur in this Industry. I used to do framing in the off-season of my farming apprenticeship and I can tell you cost of construction and labour is a MASSIVE cost because things always run longer than expected.

I think that 3D printing can achieve several things, but you're right the latter issues are a major problem in major cities in SV, but honestly that place is such a cesspool that I don't even put it into my calculus anymore.

As Starlink gets rolled out more and more, I think development in more rural areas will seem more favorable than major cities.

Now, on the other hand, if I was running Congress or the Executive branch I'd do a Consumer reports on steroids for "eds, meds, and beds" (a nice rhyme BTW - borrowing it) which would,

* publish medical costs (now mandated to be available I believe) and ranking them

* publish costs of 4 year education by basic degree category vs. expected income and ranked so student loans are NOT forgiven while students are helped and advised to not spend stupid amounts of money on dumb degrees with no ROI.

* While theoretically government student loans help the borrower not the school, there may be a perverse incentive for some schools to raise tuition and board if they think students can afford with loans

* And good lord, would it kill us for the Fed to negotiate prices down on pills? Not it would not! I'm annoyed that private companies threaten the public with higher prices and/or less innovation. I say, let's see where it goes!

* Maybe the federal government should make generics. I mean if the private sector doesn't play nice, take competition to them.

The larger point is that in meds the consumer has fundamentally less control than say a customer purchasing a service. In a typical setting the consumer knows more about the price and price spectrum going into the sale, and the servicer needs the client to pay. So they both gotta get along. In meds the billing prices are less clear and the paperwork for billing goes between the servicer and insurance company. I do not like that. I want the medical provider to know I have the money, and if I don't know or like what's going on, prompt payment is a question.

Cars are a lot safer now and last longer. I think houses are bigger. The Internet is new. Most consumer electronics are new, and TV's are way better.

I guess teaching kids to trust in science and not in imaginary friends is slowly paying off.

There are clear benefits to organized social stuff. For whatever reason, religions appear to be more effective at this than secular groups. One of the more "fun" theories I've seen is that this is because religious beliefs are often nonsensical and costly.

For large scale events, I'm not convinced that nations that tried to do away with organized religion got better outcomes for it.

So it literally did nothing, because Communism doesn't exist in real life?

> tempered dictatorial control of many despots in the middle east

[citation needed]

Looks like this is helping the argument that religion is a net negative

The cold war propaganda was ratcheted down some time after Gen X; to a super-majority of under-30s, even conservative ones, this probably sounds more like a knave's laugh line than a sincerely held belief.

Getting rid of organized religion does not get rid of the fundamental aspects of human cognition that give rise to certain types of group dynamics.

Since the 1800s, non-theists have warned that getting rid of religion is not an unmitigated good. "God is dead" was a warning.

> 40% point drop in 16 year olds getting a license since the 80s as urbanization puts people closer to stuff and ride share appeared.

As a young-ish person neither of these seems particularly “wacky”, and if places actually are re-urbanizing to any significant degree I’d say that’s a good thing given the changes we need to make to address climate change. Doesn’t feel like they are in the moment though.

They never had allegiance, they didn't leave shit jobs because of fear and the fact that moving between 2 minimum wage jobs likely wouldn't improve their circumstances. People are switching jobs because its an option now where it wasn't before and it's a good way to make more money. Do you honestly believe that pre-covid people worked at McDonalds because of their desire to provide food to people?

> We engineered away stability for JIT, covid came along and proved to many we live in a Banana Republic exporting memes of exceptionalism, while most people can’t grow a potato.

This is progress. Do you believe a world where everyone grows their own crops to feed themselves is an improvement? People don't grow potatoes because it is a waste of their time when you can buy a giant bag of them for next to nothing. Something only possible because of the modern JIT economy. What you call stability is actually inefficiency and waste in disguise.

Remember how hospitals didn't have PPE, because they could always get more shipped in 2-3 days? Works great. Until it doesn't.

You can ramble off the memes etched into your meat based tape recorder all day long; others do not owe putting agency into routines you prefer to avoid.

Such sentiment approaches thought policing. You are still one of seven billion to those other meat bases tape recorders.

One cannot wave away reality for philosophy.

I'm a millennial and I worked for 2 of the big 3 German Auto manufactures in Supply Chain and Logistics and then went to work for a US megacorp, I can assure you: many of us of from all ages have been sounding the alarm since of an imminent crisis since at least 2016. No one cared, the MBAs in collusion with the executive board were too busy asset stripping and optimizing business models for short-term gains and massaging PnL sheets to make it look like the future was filled with endless profits.

The reality is that accounting displaced it's responsibility on to the SC and Logistics side to the absolute limits to the determent of accurate forecasting and modeling in order to keep the 'make believe' narrative alive.

> Each community must grow some amount of food locally or their continued survival is reliant on there being enough food to make it profitable to ship food thousands of miles.

To be fair, 2020 marked a high-water mark for CSAs in the US [0] due to the COVID shortages, sadly it was soon forgotten afterward. People have short-term memories, and the appeal of outsourcing this vital component of keeping Society functioning has little effect on people until it's often far too late.

0: https://www.small-farm.com/wp/2020/04/24/2020-csa-shares-sol...

"Waste" is running an O(n^2) algorithm on a task that already has O(n logn) solutions suitable for the same dataset.

"Slack" is having 100 USD cash in your pocket even if you do not immediately plan to spend them.

In fact, I expect most potatoes will not be touched by a single human hand until they reach the person who actually cooks and eats it.

Second, the extra people you employ, aside from the obvious mind-numbing drudgery and hard labour you're ruining their lives with, would have a carbon cost.

Third, I can see that some pest-control chemicals are bad for the environment. However, it seems also clear that the demarcation line between eco and non-eco is not the same as the line between organic, and non-organic. In fact, it seems like there is no relation at all. There are many chemical pesticides that are not environmentally damaging, and many traditional farming techniques are environmentally damaging.

That's for soil based farming, personally I think Hydroponics (raising plants in water with no soil), Aeroponics (Hydroponics but grown in vertical towers), and Aquaponics (closed ecosystem using fish to fertilize the water the plants are grown in) are the only real way to feed a growing population and not destroy the environment. The Netherlands is already the leading European exporter of food, here is a great youtube video that touches on some of the ideas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5clOYWsNhhk

Bottom line is that traditional Organic farming isn't the answer anymore than modern factory farming. AgTech is something I'm passionate about and I honestly believe that if we don't adopt more modern science will we face a large crisis in our food systems sooner rather than later. Some crops will need to be soil based (grains and related crops mostly) but nearly everything else grows faster, more reliably, and with out the need for chemical treatments. There are a large number of Hydroponic and Aquaponic farms already in operation but the percentage is still very small.

Aside from the no-till/permaculture stuff (which has been around for decades now, and has never seemed to take off), what you are talking about is ultra-automated, extremely centralized farming - and in general, I kinda agree that it's a part of the future.

One issue is just that if you're trying to convert solar energy into calories, you naturally want to spread out over a large area (a field) then use an efficient process to do this (photosynthesis). You then want to make these calories easy to process with machines (monoculture), and to defend them against pests (sprayers), etc. So there are advantages for traditional farming that are rooted in simple physics and economics, and a lot of that won't go away.

I do think the use of robots to apply pesticides in a more targeted manner is probably something we'll see more and more of, but I think for most crops, building a super-controlled green house is probably never going to be economical.

Just because YOU think 'progress' is making something more efficient & less wasteful at the cost of stability does not make it fact. I, and probably many other people, would consider it a foolish approach. Progress, to me, would be making the food industry less fragile (i.e. more stable).

How much so? FOr all the talk of techno-utopian ideals amongst the HN crowds, it isn't until you reach the 'I'm burned out, so I'm going farming' phase of a tech worker (I did rather early at 26) that most here will take any level of consideration in making any effort towards that end.

For most, it seems like a contrarian past time to argue the merits of conventional vs organic food becase: 'carbon is carbon.' Not realizing the underlying aspect of most of the local and organic movement is to strengthen the food supply that had been vastly consolidated by the pharmaceutical corporations in the late 70s who filled your plate with pesticide-laden franken-food shipped from all over the World and made us more food insecure (in non=processed junk) and diseased than ever in the US history.

In short, simply going to the farmers market once in a blue moon to have a story to tell here isn't living up to your rhetoric, and it seems that salary/TC alone isn't enough to compel some of the most well paid workers in the US to opt for making the food supply less fragile at all.

We’re just going to ignore the trend of states eliminating general licensing for that age group and replacing it with time-, purpose-, and passenger-restricted provisional licensing that happened between the 1980s and now as a driver of that trend?

Is it urbanisation? I've noticed this trend in the suburbs in my country too and there seem to be a couple of reasons:

1. Driving tests have gotten progressively more difficult and more complex over the last 10-20 years.

2. The cost of learning to drive is insane and getting more expensive.

Personally, I put off learning to drive and now that I'm in my 30's I'm finding it very hard to justify the cost and time investment necessary, despite wanting to get a license. Until I need it, I think I'll continue putting it off.

The skyrocketing cost of living all over the country means that parents must work more, sometimes multiple jobs, in order to make ends meet.

Anecdata only; if anyone has data, I will happily retract this statement.

In the USA DLs are by far and away the most common form of identification. Many people don't have passports, just DLs.

I know 3 people that have renewed in the last 6 months. They all commented that the experience was weird. They'd be told that they would need to do all sorts of exams, but never end up having to do them. They would just get the new license.

Renewal of a license is mostly just updating the photo.

You can also transfer licenses between states with no exam. Not necessarily between countries though, some allow it some don't.

I think the OP was talking about an initial license though - for the most part exams are not very hard, you just need a basic level of skill, and some knowledge.

If true, this is a massively good thing.

Top responses to “why not get your license” point to availability of public transit, ride share, viability of walking, or biking, all of which are not an option for folks beyond the suburban fringe.

That's offset by teen driver education being a fucking racket though. The entire thing is just a scheme to extract a grand from mommy and daddy.

Wait till you're 18 and suddenly the need for that course and the hours of supervised driving will vanish. Pass the driving test and the written and boom, there's your license.

But sure, driving education requirements should be more thorough across the board, not just <18.

> <50% believe in God/higher being, down from 80%+ in early 00s.

Source? The only recent poll I could find on this was a 2020 poll from Pew, and in that poll the number is still over 80% [1]: "more than eight-in-ten American adolescents say they believe in God or a universal spirit."

> most people can’t grow a potato for themselves.

Not new, especially if meant literally, but also even as an abstraction. Non-farm employment has been WAY below 50 percent for most of our country's history. The inflection point was in the mid 1800s.

Incidentally, I know how to grow potatoes thanks to rocky west virginia soil.

I'm not sure why I would, though. Spending a lots of time and an acre of land on a personal vegetable/fruit/spice garden makes tons of sense in terms of quality and price. Growing your own potatoes is just silly in every way unless you either LOVE potatoes or have land that's not productive for anything else. But even then there are probably better options.

> Youth participation in sports, especially full contact sports, had been going down since before covid which just accelerated it

This reeks of "Bowling Alone".

Contact sports are in decline because we learned a lot about concussions. Just like bowling leagues died because we learned a lot about smoking and drinking in a previous generation. People aren't "bowling alone"; they stopped bowling because they stopped drinking and smoking, and for most people bowling was a thing to do while drinking/smoking during the winter months. People didn't stop socializing, they just stopped spending their free time in the town's primary smoke+alcohol+child friendly indoor space. Lanes were replaced with places like coffee shops and gyms.

> leading to forecasts of a major contraction in commercial sports.

Maybe. But there's also way more televised skiing/climbing/dirt biking/etc. than there was in the 90s. The MBA/NFL/NBA cartels aren't owed an audience, and shifting attention to other sports doesn't necessarily portend a decrease in interest in commercial sports.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2020/09/10/religious-be...

Same goes for traditions like coin and paper money; they consume a lot of stuff and energy. That’s become a repeated talking point when polling people why they are interested in crypto, which was unexpected.

The data models I’m asked to build include more than just opinion polls though, as it’s felt by the folks I work with opinions are biased by media, anxiety of going against the grain, and frankly, lack of imagination and considering alternatives on the part of the public.

See a quote commonly attributed to Adam Smith about extreme division of labor resulting in humans dumber than animals; there’s no exploration across contexts; a farmer is a farmer and that’s it. Proper Anglo tradition of staying in lanes dictated by aristocracy.

Generational churn won’t end reality itself, or be so dramatic we stop using English. It will curve agency away from old forms of agency to new. A lot of people freak out about that.

Do you have a source for this? From what I could find, participation has been roughly flat for the last ~20 years.

https://health.gov/sites/default/files/2019-10/National_Yout...

This is hyperbolic. The US is not a banana republic. Why would you expect the average person to need to know how to grow a potato?

Compare this to my grandfather's generation, he knew how to frame houses, plumb, electric work, auto work, gardening, etc, and he was not alone. If he needed something done you'd get four of your buddies and work on the project for the weekend instead of hiring a contractor. In my dads generation fewer people knew these things but still, a lot of people learned from their dads. In my generation otoh it seems like no one knows any of this, and therefore any issue around the home or the car becomes this catastrophic repair since you have to hire a specialist who charges hundreds an hour because you haven't learned very much that's actually practically useful for your life.

For other tasks, some things have simply become a lot more complicated to work on. Electronics were a lot simpler in older times, for instance; swapping out a surface mount quad flat package will require a lot more "finesse" than swapping out a 1960s capacitor. Cars too have gotten more electronics and software. Despite this, there are definitely still people that have the skills to repair modern electronics and cars. (I will say that these types are often hampered by manufacturers that seem hostile to the idea of users being able to practically repair devices, hence the "right to repair" movement being a thing these days.)

Same way you can ask a ton of people gen X and higher how to open a Word document, many of them don't know. They don't even know where to get the information besides asking family and friends, because that's their modus operandi. Tons of human support still has a job only because these people can't figure things out without another person helping them.

Every generation currently alive has a large degree of learned helplessness. The areas where they are helpless just vary.

Your buddies today have dramatically greater material wealth due to worldwide supply chains and mass production, but don’t know how to turn an unshorn sheep into a blanket or sweater or build walls out of mud and sticks. Today it’s no longer worth even fixing most stuff because the labor costs to do anything as a one-off are prohibitive compared to buying a new one from a streamlined (capital and energy intensive) factory.

- re-graded slope of dirt in back yard (by hand, oof), trenched and added irrigation (to code), and seeded a successful lawn

- rebuilt upper valve train on my minivan (5 failed hydronic lifters)

- reframed my garage, which had massive termite damage and wall was 1.5” out of plumb, roof sagging badly

- wired new 60A circuit for EV charger (to code)

- excavated (by hand) and replaced 10’+ section of sewer lateral

- rebuilt washing machine pump, added dynamat sound deadening so quiet when on calls in garage

- re-heeled my wife’s shoes

- designed / built custom bunk/loft/desk for my sons’ shared room (Baltic birch, flat packable, surprisingly beautiful)

- re-roofed and reflashed chimney to fix leak (then re-drywalled 1/5 living room ceiling, skip trowel texture)

- abs so on…

Not trying to humble brag, but I hadn’t done a single of those tasks before (except framing, drywall, electrical, plumbing, which I taught myself in last decade). Push comes to shove, people can get a book from the library.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOBoDT-3oM0

https://www.worldstopexports.com/palm-oil-imports-by-country...

In general a food system that is industrial in scale has terrible costs, just not usually economic costs.

Low effort consumerism, freedom to, takes freedom from others.

Freedom to be yourself cannot cost others freedom from the same. We’re a caste system that uses concepts like net worth as the measure instead of religious sigils and totems.

Freedom to sit at home on a laptop takes freedom from others in measurable ways; making less for work laptoppers want to avoid but need is kind of a joke system.

Remember millions of real people are being pinched harder and harder. That’s never ended well in human history. You can’t simply point at a philosophy and demand well understood biology to deal with it forever.

What’s hyperbolic is a defense squishy meat bags very much like passed squishy meat bags aren’t just larping the same old. That somehow magically it’s all different.

Keeping stats in the right place just makes truism out of political bias.

Tech oligarchs who were all “Disrupt!” are now all “Wait not me! I’m a rent seeker now!”

It’s a predictable circle of life given the common and fundamentally unchanged from any past iteration over the last thousands of years, human condition.

It's always been an empty platitude from the SV disillusional masses: when the business model is 'grow at all costs, even if you lose money' in order to cash out on an over-inflated IPO, it was clear that it was never to disrupt anything. It was t:o build something seemingly novel, raise funds to fight a war of attrition, moat, weaken the opposition and take majority market-share and then cash out.

Plan B is selling out to some megacorp/tech oligarch in order to rinse and repeat as a 'serial entrepreneur' until you eventually get to a position in which you get on a board and you can ossify something like Twitter, too!

This is an interesting manifestation of the incompleteness theorem. :)

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-... [2] https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2... [3] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-religious-countries...

“ In one comparison made by the World Health Organization, the per capita prevalence of unipolar depressive disorders is highest in the world in the United States. Among Western countries, Finland is number two.”

Is it possible that believing a lie increases ones chances of being happy & less depressed?

Sure, but that doesn't make it worthwhile.

Thus, you apparently can be genuinely happier if your worldview is based on a lie.

Still not worth it.

I don't think I've ever heard of a religion that is so airtight that it blocked any ability to reason on how the others might not be a lie also.

Almost no religions state this, it might be an interesting thought experiment to steel-man your arguments :)

History does though & the history of religion is that extremists who are religiously exclusive are much more likely to affect someone else's life due to their zealotry.

That why there are so many wars & crimes linked to religious exclusion.

This is a philosophical statement.

From where cometh this objective truth? :)

This subjective truth, however, comes from my value for integrity, which you apparently lack.

If you have no moral qualms about having a worldview based on lies, then more power to you.

An excellent point.

When I was a child, we just grabbed our mitts/bats/balls/frisbees/whatever and went out to play with our peers and came home when it was dark/raining/time for dinner.

Over the last 30 years or so, it seems that (not that such things didn't exist 30+ years ago) in most places it's difficult to engage in sports without an organized group/league, especially in places where greenspace isn't within walking/biking distance.

As such, most kids need adults to get them to/from sports and there's not very much in the way of pick-up games[0] and the like.

The lack of unstructured sport leaves many kids out of sports (given that parents need to spend time and money to get their kids involved and to/from such activities)

N.B.: The above is definitely a US-centric viewpoint.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick-up_game

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#Hot_and_cool_...