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Wait for the baby boomers to die off. I'll be towards the tail end. :) Then humanity can go to the Moon, Mars, toroidal space stations, build high speed rail,

Wait for the baby boomers to die off. I'll be towards the tail end. :) Then humanity can go to the Moon, Mars, toroidal space stations, build high speed rail, maglev, and whatever else might be in the pipeline. Ignoring that everyone sold off the pipeline. With luck, my children's generation can rediscover government that isn't quite so comic book in its generation selfishness. With both left and right remembering to occasionally doing the things that are right and helps everyone. Like build housing, create and support public services, develop infrastructure and big national vanity (Apollo, Concorde, Bullet trains etc) and science projects.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I agree that the boomers didn't do a good job but I am not sure the next generation will do any better. It seems the best and brightest of this generation are busy building total surveillance infrastructure to sell ads. I don't see much movement towards more community oriented thinking.
- jahewson 7y ago
  People respond to incentives. If we as a society incentivised community projects then we’d see more of them.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    That's correct. I don't think we do though. Maybe there is some talk but the real money is in selling ads and other stuff.
  - shoo 7y ago
    individuals in government and society in turn responds to advertising, lobbying, influence, bribery from vested interests... So you can ask the question: if it would be rational for society to do $THING in its own collective self-interest, e.g. incentivize more community projects, then why doesn't it do that? And perhaps the answer is, within the current context, moving to that new state is no longer reachable...
    - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
      The other answer is the cult mythology that claims perfect financial selfishness is perfectly rational and no other moral system is tolerable. When your value system is narcissism with book keeping, the consequences are perfectly predictable.
  - inimino 7y ago
    At some point there needs to be a moral responsibility on the part of the people creating incentive systems. Including those of us in tech.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Neither am I, but I do see hope in that the younger folks seem to me to be far more group focused than my cohort. They also get to see the clear issues of what we created. Add in that climate fix will require government action on a scale unimaginable since WW2, and the very high degree of engagement of teens approaching adulthood, and I think there's hope for a better outcome. Whether it comes through soon enough is another question entirely.
turk73 7y ago
Maybe, but there won't be much left. The Boomers have been running the whole show for a very long time now. Every lever of power and every single thing around me was created by and for Boomers. The house I live in is a Boomer cast-off. It feels like nearly nothing was ever made for me. A major thing I resent about all of it is how I was treated when I first entered the workforce. My generation was looked down upon and were only there to be exploited as needed, otherwise ignored. We were not "part of the team" but rather dangerous youths who weren't to be trusted with important matters. I never had a mentor, I never got any good advice from a single Boomer-age manager, I only got indifference. My fortunes didn't change until my contemporaries started to take over those management roles. At that point it was too late in my career to do much good, though. Today, my managers are mostly younger than me. It's a Catch-22. It's like my generation was cursed. I love those memes that describe Boomers having worked all summer to afford college" and "first car" with a picture of a Corvette. Yeah, pretty much true.
JabavuAdams 7y ago
In 1968, the year before the moon landing, US cities were literally burning. Martin Luther King was murdered, and so was Bobby Kennedy. In Vietnam, there was the battle of Khe San The regression of recent years is disturbing, but the US managed to put humans on the moon in times when it was much more divided and unabashedly racist than today. I haven't said anything about greed in general, but remember that the largesse of those times was leaving out large untouchable chunks of the population.
- varjag 7y ago
  The gradient of social change in 1968 was pointing the opposite way than today however.
- lettergram 7y ago
  Ever consider that part of what got us to the moon was the divided and bashfully racist setting (perhaps not the racism itself)? Contrary to your comment, society - in general, was more uniform and ridged. There were faults, and obvious a repressed 20% or so that were not really even part of society (blacks, hippies, etc). But the norms, the suits, the ties, those who made up the vast bulk of society. They were all people from (or raised during) WWII which had a unifying effect. They were the people who got stuff done like going to the moon, not the 20% impacting social change. Both were necessary to achieve growth, one technological, one social. Today, we have primarily been focusing on the social aspects of society. Corporations, taking the place of technological growth. Largely, because society doesn’t want the technological growth from the government, they want social welfare and “fairness”. Both of which, we honestly seem to have diminishing returns on at this point.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    I think that means that it should be much easier to redo the moon landing these days. Not only is technology more advanced, but also the people trying to design and program this wouldn't have to wear suits and ties.
    - 7y ago
Sojuwa 7y ago
Not to mention NASA will be less and less white (IMO it should be burned to the ground and replaced with a new organization entirely with melanated folk), pushing us forward exponentially faster.
bluthru 7y ago
>Wait for the baby boomers to die off. I'll be towards the tail end. :) There's nothing inherently wrong with Baby Boomers; they're just the first generation to be raised on mass media and provide a stark contrast to an unbroken chain of humanity before them. Things are getting worse, not better. >With both left and right remembering to occasionally doing the things that are right and helps everyone. That's not possible when we have less in common than before.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I agree that the boomers didn't do a good job but I am not sure the next generation will do any better. It seems the best and brightest of this generation are busy building total surveillance infrastructure to sell ads. I don't see much movement towards more community oriented thinking.

jahewson 7y ago
People respond to incentives. If we as a society incentivised community projects then we’d see more of them.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  That's correct. I don't think we do though. Maybe there is some talk but the real money is in selling ads and other stuff.
- shoo 7y ago
  individuals in government and society in turn responds to advertising, lobbying, influence, bribery from vested interests... So you can ask the question: if it would be rational for society to do $THING in its own collective self-interest, e.g. incentivize more community projects, then why doesn't it do that? And perhaps the answer is, within the current context, moving to that new state is no longer reachable...
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    The other answer is the cult mythology that claims perfect financial selfishness is perfectly rational and no other moral system is tolerable. When your value system is narcissism with book keeping, the consequences are perfectly predictable.
- inimino 7y ago
  At some point there needs to be a moral responsibility on the part of the people creating incentive systems. Including those of us in tech.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Neither am I, but I do see hope in that the younger folks seem to me to be far more group focused than my cohort. They also get to see the clear issues of what we created. Add in that climate fix will require government action on a scale unimaginable since WW2, and the very high degree of engagement of teens approaching adulthood, and I think there's hope for a better outcome. Whether it comes through soon enough is another question entirely.

turk73 7y ago

Maybe, but there won't be much left. The Boomers have been running the whole show for a very long time now. Every lever of power and every single thing around me was created by and for Boomers. The house I live in is a Boomer cast-off. It feels like nearly nothing was ever made for me. A major thing I resent about all of it is how I was treated when I first entered the workforce. My generation was looked down upon and were only there to be exploited as needed, otherwise ignored. We were not "part of the team" but rather dangerous youths who weren't to be trusted with important matters. I never had a mentor, I never got any good advice from a single Boomer-age manager, I only got indifference. My fortunes didn't change until my contemporaries started to take over those management roles. At that point it was too late in my career to do much good, though. Today, my managers are mostly younger than me. It's a Catch-22. It's like my generation was cursed. I love those memes that describe Boomers having worked all summer to afford college" and "first car" with a picture of a Corvette. Yeah, pretty much true.

JabavuAdams 7y ago

In 1968, the year before the moon landing, US cities were literally burning. Martin Luther King was murdered, and so was Bobby Kennedy. In Vietnam, there was the battle of Khe San The regression of recent years is disturbing, but the US managed to put humans on the moon in times when it was much more divided and unabashedly racist than today. I haven't said anything about greed in general, but remember that the largesse of those times was leaving out large untouchable chunks of the population.

varjag 7y ago
The gradient of social change in 1968 was pointing the opposite way than today however.
lettergram 7y ago
Ever consider that part of what got us to the moon was the divided and bashfully racist setting (perhaps not the racism itself)? Contrary to your comment, society - in general, was more uniform and ridged. There were faults, and obvious a repressed 20% or so that were not really even part of society (blacks, hippies, etc). But the norms, the suits, the ties, those who made up the vast bulk of society. They were all people from (or raised during) WWII which had a unifying effect. They were the people who got stuff done like going to the moon, not the 20% impacting social change. Both were necessary to achieve growth, one technological, one social. Today, we have primarily been focusing on the social aspects of society. Corporations, taking the place of technological growth. Largely, because society doesn’t want the technological growth from the government, they want social welfare and “fairness”. Both of which, we honestly seem to have diminishing returns on at this point.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  I think that means that it should be much easier to redo the moon landing these days. Not only is technology more advanced, but also the people trying to design and program this wouldn't have to wear suits and ties.
  - 7y ago

Sojuwa 7y ago

Not to mention NASA will be less and less white (IMO it should be burned to the ground and replaced with a new organization entirely with melanated folk), pushing us forward exponentially faster.

bluthru 7y ago

>Wait for the baby boomers to die off. I'll be towards the tail end. :) There's nothing inherently wrong with Baby Boomers; they're just the first generation to be raised on mass media and provide a stark contrast to an unbroken chain of humanity before them. Things are getting worse, not better. >With both left and right remembering to occasionally doing the things that are right and helps everyone. That's not possible when we have less in common than before.