Let's call it what it is: feudalism. The active income era of capitalism has largely subsided. When economic growth comes from active income all classes can see their wealth increase. When passive income dominates you get the opposite: certain sections of the owner class with the most powerful monopolies[0] cannibalize everyone else. And while "feudalism" is a historically complicated term, one common feature was economies dominated by passive income. In that era, wealth went to those who owned the land - a natural chokepoint to economic activity. Today the chokepoints are different but the effect is the same.
I would also disagree that half of HN is "just fine with the status quo" given that this community also likes to talk a lot about right to repair, abuse of copyright and patent ownership, DMCA 1201, platform capitalism, etc.
[0] e.g. copyright ownership over culturally relevant creative works, patent ownership over the most economically relevant inventions, etc
Now I'm not anti-capitalist, because capitalism is social darwinism and is a description of how resources get distributed under contention due to scarcity. It doesn't need defending. It also can't be stopped. So it doesn't care if you believe in it or not.
But the rampant corruption and crony/late-stage capitalism we live under today has metastasized. And most people don't know it. I'm sure that 50% of the people reading this are just fine with the status quo. They have high incomes and can take care of their families and that's great.
What they probably aren't thinking about on a conscious level is that the median income for individuals globally is right at $10,000 annually. An American making $36,000 is already standing on 3 other people's backs. HN viewers making $100,000-$250,000 are standing on about 10-25 people. A billionaire stands on 100,000 people. Our uber-rich each stand on 10 million people or more.
So what we think of as buying a $30,000 automobile and spending that again on fuel and maintenance steals 6 years of someone's life, not to mention the life lost by the owner working to make payments. A $300,000 home ($600,000 with mortgage interest) steals 60 years of life. A house is someone's lifetime. You can see where I'm going with this.
It's not so much that we can't imagine a life without fossil fuels. That's actually pretty easy: solar panels on our roofs and electric cars, home hydroponic robotic gardens, recycling of all things (even landfills), off-grid living. Solarpunk.
It's that we can't imagine ourselves at the bottom of the capitalist pyramid, toiling our lives away so that someone somewhere can be wealthy at our expense, forever separated from financial stability and self-actualization like the 7 billion people propping up the billion people in "developed" countries. So we project our generational trauma onto the people we depend on most.
That's what the Russia-Ukraine war is about. That's why the Middle East can't seem to get left alone. That's why the Global South struggles to eat. That's why we're seeing continuous decline in all things from economics to health to the environment. That's why we won't solve global climate change. And that's why the most likely future currently is a dystopian one.
We can't change the world, but we can change ourselves. As we each pull ourselves up by our bootstraps since the wealthy do nothing about any of this, we begin to manifest a viable future.
Personally I have stopped fantasizing about disruption and winning the internet lottery. Now I meditate on how to bring $10,000 of resources to every single person in the world through automation to free humanity from forced labor and enter the New Age.
Please tear apart this analysis. It's time to get to work to like, save the world and stuff.