I am disappointed that SV is shifting to a disregard for the dangers of monopolies and monarchies.

I don't need a space station with space tourism only the richest can afford and will be still very dangerous to see the stars right now.

What you will see is how Starlink satelites will poisen our atmosphere at re-entry.

and they would have been 100x more brutal.

What world do you want to live in? A monopoly where a corporation can decide who lives and dies? Because that’s effectively what you are arguing for up and down this thread.

The stolen land meme is a good example. My parents in 60s migrated to the u.s and in no way am I to blame or responsible for what occored just because of where I live.

Do I feel bad for what happened? Absolutely. But those were nethanderal times where everything was primitive instinct. Its not the world we live in today.

I also have to point out that the effects of that history persist and affect this generation. Lots of financial effects still affect our society.

The US spends up to $4 billion a year just to keep a few people alive on the ISS. And they can’t stay there too long because it’s too dangerous to their health. The idea that we’re going to “colonize space” in the foreseeable future is laughable.

Starlink is a global phenomenon, good ISPs were at best a local phenomenon.

For what it's worth, this also happens with printed books.

I wasted the latter half of my teens taking New Age occultism and magical powers as a profound topic rather than a literature and culture topic, thanks to a combination of a bookstore chain near where I grew up and a mother who also took this all very seriously.

i feel like all these problems people come up with stem from the fact they suck at parenting and have to project.

i and most people i know don’t have these problems. we actually care, and our parents cared about us.

when i was growing up it was kids who drank or smoked (we didn’t have smartphones).

just avoid them.

these days if kids are glued to the phone that’s the parents fault. bad parenting.

take kids to the museum or get them to a classical show or something.

if parents make excuses why they can’t, again L parents.

Also let me guess, you have high speed internet avaiable at your house so starlink isn't your only high-speed option right now?

I’m not against advancing in this area, but there is nuance. Progress can be short sighted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_%28New_York_World%27s...

This vision is absolutely horryfying, yet at same time incredibly interesting.

We need to ensure our progress is balanced taking into account the whole system instead of just one part.

You are seeing this in this thread. I doubt anyone likes to be described as contra-progress. But nevertheless people would rather conserve the current night sky than see it transmute into a shimmering sea of a million artificial satellites. It's not really obvious to me why one state should be preferable to the other.

Not only you didn’t get the point, but you still hold on to your delusions:

> life for our kin will only be better.

Right? In this subscription economy? Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved? You can’t afford to rent the house you loved let alone buy it? (previous generations could afford) the list goes on and on.

Maybe stop spreading lies and see things more objectively?

services meant for the LCD. and those people pay for them.

all the context was there. you failed.

lol at you

What a horrible existence we live in, just the absolute WORST.

People truly had it better in the past, watching their children die from easily curable infections, enduring routine tooth extractions without anesthesia, working six-day weeks around lethal machinery, watching entire neighboring towns slowly starve to death in famines, living in huts that were crawling with insects, subject to the brutal whims of whoever their local thug ruler happened to be with no human rights at all, and often being enslaved by the millions and worked to death in brutal conditions. Those softies just couldn't possibly imagine how truly hard we have it today.

I mean just the other day I got SPAM in my inbox and they used a dark pattern so I had to click THREE links instead of ONE before I was off their list!!!!!

For a planet which gets warmer and warmer.

When did you became that compliant?

But do you really think life has been getting better in the last 10 years say?

Do you think trickle down economics works?

Are you happy with the way things are going under this administration, which favours those BILLIONAIRES you mentioned, but couldn’t really give a damn about the rest of us or the commons?

Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?

Uh, yeah. My TV's much better, my video games are better, programming is easier and more fun with these new AI options added on top of better frameworks than we had in the past, there are way more restaurants serving better food, way more great shows and movies, there's mainstream awareness of the ills of social media, I can take driverless taxis around my city, I can tap to pay pretty much everywhere, wayyyyyy more of my friends work remotely. I'm 40 now, and myself + most of my friends + family are making more money now than we were at 30.

> Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?

You sound like you've been reading a bunch of gloom and doom scenarios. Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights. Stop reading so much negative news that's telling you the sky is falling and that everything is going to shit.

Of course there are massive problems and inequities we're solving, of course! But that's always been the case. Relax. Breathe. Put it in perspective.

Your response is basically 'Works on my machine!'.

And speaking of touching grass; what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) under this administration will mean to our commons?

I'll tell you, it will mean that the new rule will make it easier to legally destroy wildlife habitats. And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back, because solar is woke or something. I guess you're OK with that too, since it doesn't impact you (yet).

Even though living standards have improved in the last 100 years overall, that it's not a guarantee that it will continue like that, if we let the Robber Barons take full control again.

The majority of people in Western countries are not in the lower income brackets, but in the middle and upper brackets. Plus extreme poverty has been in decline all across the world. In other words, things are working well on MANY people's machines, not just mine. And they're beginning to work better on many more.

> what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)

> And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back

Yes, there are new+continuing problems in the world. Duh. And not everything is getting better all the time. Duh.

These things will always be true.

What's your point? Why do you and other people like you feel compelled to bring up obvious statements like this anytime anyone tries to say that things are generally getting better? You act as if when people say things are getting better they are saying things are perfect. Nobody thinks things are perfect. But you react as if it's some sort of crime against humanity to list ways in which life is genuinely getting better for many hundreds of millions, if not billions of people over the decades.

What is this allergy that you have toward acknowledging progress when there is progress? Why do you think that somehow warrants some totally unnecessary lecture about how there are still obviously problems in the world?

> it's not a guarantee it will continue like that

Again, has anyone ever said or even implied that progress is guaranteed to continue happening automatically?

To address your 'What's your point?' question - here are a few things:

- Society needs a strong middle class and social upwards mobility. The middle class is shrinking and this is by design. If we continue to vote in Billionaire backed politicians, who rig the system so it favors them and screws the rest of us over then the middle class will continue to shrink and poverty here will increase.

- Under this administration, the progress we've made to address our pressing problems (like global warming) is being rolled back. Are you OK with making it easier to destroy natural habitats and increase pollution, just so some Oil or mining companies can make more money? Are you OK with consumer protection rights being weakened?

- Mr Doge thought it was a good idea to plunch many more people into poverty or removing vital resources to the poorest of the poor and causing their death, e.g. cutting USAID because he thought it was woke. You good with that?

But hey, I'm glad you've got a better TV now.

The main reason the middle class is shrinking is because the upper class is growing. And we do have a strong middle class. The fact that it has been stronger at times in the past does not mean that it is weak now.

> - Under this administration, the progress we've made to address our pressing problems (like global warming) is being rolled back. Are you OK with making it easier to destroy natural habitats and increase pollution, just so some Oil or mining companies can make more money? Are you OK with consumer protection rights being weakened?

> - Mr Doge thought it was a good idea to plunch many more people into poverty or removing vital resources to the poorest of the poor and causing their death, e.g. cutting USAID because he thought it was woke. You good with that?

No, I'm not okay with it. But again, I keep asking you this, and you keep not really explaining: what is your point of bringing up arbitrary things that are bad? I've already acknowledged that there are bad things in the world and that there will continue to be bad things in the world. In a world with a thousand axes by which to assess progress, there will always be some axes that are in the process of backsliding.

Progress is not a monotonically increasing thing.

Based on your original post you seem to only see overall progress from a zoomed out view. Yes we've made immense progress, but my point is that in the last 10 years things have gotten way worse.

You don't seem to acknowledge that the divide between rich and poor is rising immensely (e.g. your 'disgusting BILLIONAIRE' snarky comment) and is the root of many of our problems and that voting for Billionaire backed politicians like the current President and the likes - will lead us down a path where we will lose our democracy and end up like Hungary did or god forbid Russia.

And since you're not OK with those things I mentioned this administration is doing, I hope you'll make your vote count and vote out the threat to our democracy and world order.

If rich people got 10x poorer, would that make you equally as happy as if poor people got 10x richer?

If rich people got 10x richer and poor people got 5x richer, would you be upset?

Genuine questions.

That's why. Historically, when wealth concentrates at the top, it tends to stay there unless there’s strong counterpressure.

Wealth brings political influence and that influence is often used to preserve the status quo and not change the system so the poor would get 5x or 10x richer.

If everyone were genuinely getting better off, i.e. the necessities of life not getting more expensive or wages rising in accordance to things getting more expensive, then the rich and poor divide wouldn't matter as much.

The problem is that’s not what we’re seeing. What we get is:

Wages for many people haven’t kept up with key costs. Housing, healthcare and education have surged. Meanwhile, gains at the top have massively accelerated.

So it’s not “rich up 10x, poor up 5x.” It’s closer to gains being concentrated while a lot of people struggle to keep up.

Your previous statement that the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up is not 100% correct. Some move up, but most decline.

That’s why inequality matters. It’s not about envy. It's about preserving democracy, rule of law and not falling into a pit of corruption.

See what's happening with Mr Doge, he's happily using his platforms to meddle in foreign elections. Recently supporting Le Pen (another criminal, found guilty of embezzling European Union funds) and also supporting AFD and other extreme right wing parties. You have to ask yourself why.

My thoughts:

1. Wealth is indeed super duper concentrated. IMO we need a more effective tax system with fewer loopholes. But there's limited specific popular support for these measures, as they typically are getting co-opted by much vaguer messaging like "eat the rich" and "there are no ethical billionaires" and things like that, which politicians can easily shrug off.

2. Wealth is indeed converted into political power in very powerful ways. To me, I think this is a bigger problem than #1. Although yes, they are related. But it's also largely a cultural problem, as half the country has been happily VOTING for this to happen for decades.

3. Democracy, imo, is quite healthy. Despite the increasing political power of wealthy individuals, there are other shifts happening as well. 70, 60, 50, 40, and even 30 years ago, a very small number of wealthy and powerful gatekeepers controlled almost all public messaging. There was less chaos as a result, but also an extreme limitation in the diversity of viewpoints. Fewer independent organizations. Less investigating reporting. Worse suffrage, in general. It was harder for citizens to organize and communicate cheaply. Etc.

4. I highly disagree that the quality of life across income brackets has gotten significantly worse for people at the bottom. I think this is based on misinformation and cherry-picking data that supports that case

So let's just look at #4.

Housing, healthcare, child care, and education are indeed way too expensive, especially in certain regions. But it's also the case that real wages have risen for almost everyone, and in post-pandemic years that's even more true for lower-wage workers. Also, not everything is getting more expensive. Lots of things have gotten cheaper and more accessible: consumer electronics, communications, clothing, appliances, lots of manufactured goods. And then there's quality and variety, too: we have bigger houses than ever, safer cars, more effective medical treatments, far more affordable and varied entertainment options, better phones and computers and connectivity. Technology in general is vastly better, and it's an extremely democratizing force that tends to improve quality of life at the lower ends more intensely than at the upper ends.

So it's not super duper clear to me things are so much worse.

If you went back to the 50s and 60s, sure, rich people weren't making as much money. But were lower-income people suffering less financially? I don't think so. Based on all the data I can find, there was much more widespread deprivation. People without enough food, with inadequate housing, with no plumbing, with very low consumption, or living in abject poverty. The US is far better off today. But at the same time, yeah, there's less security around housing, healthcare, and affordable education.

So ultimately I don't subscribe to any messaging similar to "the sky is falling" and "things are worse than ever" and stuff like that. To me this is misinformation, and an extreme oversimplification of what's actually going on today.

When you actually look at the data and you look at the information and you actually compare a broad perspective of today to the past, it's not at all so clear that things are worse for the lower income brackets, and in fact I think there's a much stronger and easier to make case that things are better.

> Your previous statement that the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up is not 100% correct. Some move up, but most decline.

This is false. "Most decline" is not true.

Yes, people move out of the middle class in both directions. But all the data I could find concludes that more people have moved up than down. The reason the middle class has shrunk is much more to do with people graduating into the upper income brackets than falling into lower income brackets.

But of course this never gets talked about. Because it contradicts the narrative that things are getting so much worse, and that narrative is Sacred and Unquestionable.

So in fact, the exact opposite gets said, "The middle class is shrinking," and then it's just left at that, in order to imply something negative. But it's just a straightforward lie, it's total misinformation. Yet it spreads, because people like to repeat things like this.

And that's kinda how I feel about this "things are getting worse." The actual facts and complexity of the situation are taking a backseat to the fact that people just like to spread this narrative.

But I don't think it's about screaming the sky is falling down... anyway, more thoughts on this later.

> But all the data I could find concludes that more people have moved up than down.

I based my comment on research done by Pew, OECD, and economists like Saez/Zucman. The middle class is shrinking both upward and downward, but a significant share is moving down or stagnating, not up!

Even billionaires themselves comment on this: https://fortune.com/2026/07/17/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-artifi...

So you're right, we made great progress since WW2 and no the sky isn't falling down.

But my point is we're now going down a dangerous path that leads to authoritarianism. If the convicted felon and his gang aren't being kicked out then corruption will increase, more surveillance (i.e. Flock and Palantir), more austerity and more loss of our freedoms.

> 3. Democracy, imo, is quite healthy.

It's not though. Listen to historians like Snyder or Heather Cox Richardson. Or listen to financiers like Anthony Scaramucci and his guests. Our democracy is being dismantled and if we don't stop them, then we'll end up with a sham democracy like in Russia.

You're just not someone who has to deal with these problems. Are we solving them? Not sure what you're being that of.

> Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights.

I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective

Almost every major measure of human progress and prosperity over time?

What are you basing your doom and gloom beliefs on?

> I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective

I would wager my perspective is much broader than yours. Being so anxious and pessimistic that you only focus on the negative, to such a degree where when people point out real positive progress you feel COMPELLED to say something negative, doesn't mean you have a broad perspective. It just means you're miserable.

But I'm not talking about luxuries like super cars that most people couldn't afford.

I'm talking about the necessities of life. Food, shelter and energy have become more expensive and under this administration's policies it's not getting any better.

Poverty rates have barely improved and under this administration desire to reduce SNAP budget heavily, what do you think this will do to child poverty rates?

A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.

> A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.

The vast majority of humanity has benefited from progress, compared to most decades and certainly centuries in the past. So I don't really know what your point is here?

A significant portion of the human populace still lives like this in various degrees today. You are just blind to it because you'd rather live in your delusion for comfort.

I believe it should’ve been possible to not leave so much people behind and so much behind. Requiring those at the front to not leave people so far behind (and forcefully funneling away their riches if they do) would’ve been enough.

I don't think this is true. Of course, rich people will always benefit the most from any technological advances. But there is no indication that the average Joe will be worse off in say, 20 years, compared to today. Medical advances alone coming down the pipeline will likely tip the scales towards future average Joe being better off compared to today. If I have to make a choice, for example: do I want to cut the deaths from diseases by half and fill the sky with Starlink satellites, or do nothing? I am picking the better medicice and Starlink-filled sky.

> Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved?

You know how many movies the average peasant watched in the 1800s? 0. The closest equivalent was live theatre and that was an expensive luxury. You'd also likely get see one or more of your children die to diseases that are trivially treatable or preventable today.

this is why it is important to give toys and distractions to the masses and meaningless grind so they can stay busy and happy.

while other people actually build the world for them.

Markets require competition and customers.

There will always be people like you, who will accept every single shit, then call them “gift from builders”.

The issues you enumerated were very well addressed in the socialist USSR.

I have no problem with billionaires. Or trillionaires. I do have a problem with monopoly because it destroys the very ecosystem that creates the increased well being you describe.