1. Spending years of your life earning enough money so that you can begin to live at some later date is not a good way to live. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, and even if it was, you will be different and everything and everyone around will be different.
2. Human beings are not meant to live away and disconnected from everyone else. We are community creatures, even if not always very social.
I do think people overall would be happier if it was culturally, socially desirable to be, or at least come across, as humble, and consume little, especially the more resources you have. Think Warren Buffett -- maybe he does spend a lot on himself, but at least he does not come across as if he does and he certainly does not brag about it. The opposite of Instagram culture. Anyone going against this would see fierce backlash, reputational damage etc.
A new religion of sorts.
Perhaps then people would not feel the need to keep up with the Jones' as much, always feeling as if they don't have enough, worrying about their status. Once people have enough, they can have more choice in what they work on, and perhaps the economy can restructure towards more activity that actually makes people's lives better.
As is, people can't seem to stop even using Meta products or X or buying Tesla cars, despite most people likely having poor opinions of the people at the top of these companies. I do not really understand why. It is easy, these companies have no moats, there are easy alternatives, and it would change the world.
It can easily reorient itself (and arguably, already has) to serving the demand of a small minority of asset owners rather than the majority of people. E.g. people building luxury yachts and working to maintain them, working in luxury restaurants, maintaining luxury gardens etc. instead of working in roles that improve the lives of the majority.
Because most people are working on things that improve the lives of the asset-owning minority and not of the majority, the standard of living of the majority is not improved, they have to work more for less.
How many high-paying jobs today actually do anything that benefits the 'common man'?
5 years ago there was a lot of talk, even on here, of getting rich from NFTs and memecoins, discussing airdrops etc. Bored Ape Yacht Club and the like.I was just wondering what happened to those, particularly NFTs of 'digital collectibles'. As I understand, most of the ones that sold for hundreds thousands or even millions are worth 0 now?Did you get heavily involved in that space? If so,...
Following up on earlier thread about what setup to use for main email account. Consensus appeared to be 'Get a custom domain (e.g. with Cloudflare) and use it with e.g. Fastmail'. The plan is to then make that email address the cornerstone of my online security, use it for password manager recovery etc.The domain registrar and the email hosting then appear key to the whole security model – if...
Which email provider would you recommend for your main account? (Banking, government + other important stuff)With Gmail, I am concerned that I could get arbitrarily locked out of my account with no recourse. Also, I wouldn't mind moving away from Google in general to support a more decentralized internet. If it is based outside of the US, even better. But these considerations are secondary.So I...
The big difference/problem I think is the social aspect. With AAA at least you can expect large numbers of people enjoying them at the same time, so you can share the experience with others (and even then, good luck finding anyone IRL to relate to if you're 35+). People tend to be social creatures, and are largely driven by what 'everyone else' is doing. It's amazing how peoples' tastes miraculously change depending on what their peer group is at.
But if you discover some gem of a game from 1997? You will unfortunately likely feel quite alone playing it.
I don't really have an answer to this. I somewhat envy the game streamers that have a small community around them, so they can play some old game live and get the experience of enjoying it with others.
I enjoyed Monkey Island 1 a lot, but with 2 there was a combinatorial explosion of items/locations, and it just seemed too difficult/unfair. I got the impression they wanted you to have to call the hint phoneline.
It is amazing what some games managed to do with the limited graphics capabilities of the time. Metal Gear Solid 1 used a colour palette so well to hide the graphics limitations. Many games shined with clever use of pre-rendered backgrounds (FF7 is one of them, but also the Resident Evil series come to mind).
Even from an earlier time, Monkey Island is all the funnier for the pixelatedness. System Shock 1 is still amazingly immersive and atmospheric (and was way ahead of its time!).
I think part of what makes games from late 90s so special is that the tech was good enough to allow plenty of creative freedom, but still simple enough to allow for relatively small teams with relatively small budgets to make the games and add their personal touch to them. That is why Deus Ex 1 is much more personal than the later more polished installations etc.
I was once in Kanazawa and randomly walked into the phonograph museum. They had a room there where you could pick an LP from a pile and play it on a phonograph. I grabbed one from a box at random, and the music was amazing - I had no idea what it was at the time. Turned out it was the Macross DYRL OST. That got me hooked.
Recently finished FFX and now playing through FF7 for the first time. I feel like the games from that era tend to be more engaging - they cannot rely on the graphics to sell themselves and had not yet been 'hollywood-ised', so tend to be more creative, not take themselves too seriously and are just more fun.Plus, there is the test of time - easier to know what the gems are after some time has...
A lot of religions/philosophies - Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity etc. - are great for dealing with these problems for yourself, assuming you are already here. None, however, inspire the creation of new life to deal with this stuff. E.g. "Virtue is the highest good and its own reward" is great, but why create new life to have to deal with this if it can be avoided? It becomes circular and meaningless.
Any kind of dopamine-based pleasures are also somewhat degrading to one's humanity once you realize you're effectively being the mouse pushing the button, and are certainly far removed from having any meaning. What difference does it make how fast you were running on the hedonic treadmill if you're going to die?
Yes, I agree with you that you have to create some meaning in your life, make up something and convince yourself to believe in it, because there is hardly another option.
I found it very strange and sad that after the lifting of lockdowns people went right back to the way things used to be. Did we learn nothing? Such a squandered opportunity.
What happened to just meeting up in a street or at someone's place and 'hanging out' informally? At what point did it become near-obligatory to have a sit-down dinner or 'go out' to enjoy the company of friends?
I remember 2 years ago there were a lot of posts/comments from people having significant chunks of their net worth (e.g. 3M$ out of 4M$) in NFTs or cryptos.Were you one of them? Would be interesting to hear your story. Was it a wild ride for you? How did you manage? What are you doing now?
I am seeing rental yields still under 3.5% (zones 1-2, Victorian terraces converted to 1-2 beds).