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It's worth considering whether the premise actually holds. * Yeah, there's a feeling of malaise, but if you look at e.g. surveys of trust in government (Pew, O

It's worth considering whether the premise actually holds. * Yeah, there's a feeling of malaise, but if you look at e.g. surveys of trust in government (Pew, OECD, etc.), it's a fairly slow decline over decades and the end point is that most people are still fairly okay with how government, education, media, the judiciary etc. are run in many democratic countries and if you look at overall happiness (Eurostat etc.) then that seems to be fairly stable or even going up a little bit. * Most artists do get little reward for all the benefit they provide, but we can't have everyone be artists so there has to be some way to disincentivize people from becoming an artist, no? * Big banks and big governments suck, fine, but compared to what standard or compared to what point in time? * The gap between the haves and have-nots keeps widening. OK, that one's probably true. * Software stacks keep getting more bloated, but in exchange programming has gotten a lot easier, which seems like a wonderful trade-off. * Governments like the European Union are absurdly complex, but overall it seems to have been a net boon to the countries that have joined it: travel is easier, paying is easier, your rights as a consumer are better protected than ever, etc. * App Stores are pretty great for most people, even though 30% is a bit absurd. * The Bay Area is not the world. There's probably a lot about modern society that needs solving, but the first step has to be to think really long and hard about precisely what does suck, why it sucks, whether it can be better.

cblconfederate 5y ago
> we can't have everyone be artists so there has to be some way Why not? The online attention economy is apparently worth trillions , why shouldn't creators be rewarded? Attracting the attention of other people is work even though it is all captured by BigTech Inc. We have automated so much of the workforce that it makes a lot of sense that being an 'artist' should be a job that more and more people will do.
colinmhayes 5y ago
Yea I find it hard to believe there has ever been a better time to be alive than now. Obviously we've got a long way to go, but things have been continuously getting better overall, not worse.
- abbub 5y ago
  I mean...based on what? We have more stuff, that's for sure. Our healthcare (when we can afford it) and nutrition is probably better and more consistent. Are we any happier? I'm not sure.
  - IAmWorried 5y ago
    I honestly believe that if you remove social media from the equation, there is zero doubt that modern life makes you happier. There are so many awesome things you can do nowadays with modern tech, you have practically unlimited entertainment. But now you also have on-demand comparison, and as they say, comparison is the thief of joy. The sooner society realizes that social media is the REAL thing that is making people unhappy, the better.
    - abbub 5y ago
      "...you have practically unlimited entertainment." This is a tangent, but I feel like I enjoyed things more when I didn't have practically unlimited entertainment. Video games before the digital era with Xbox Game Pass, PSNow / PSPlus, etc were limited to a few games that you bought and really invested in. Videos before streaming where you were limited to what was sitting in Blockbuster or in your physical collection. Music was limited to what the radio was playing (which you had no control over) or what you had in your tape/CD collection. Because physical media was something of an investment, it sort of led to a sort of 'automatic curation' that's much harder with having just about every game, movie, tv show, and album at your fingertips. Maybe it's an age thing, but now I have 'back catalogs' for all of this stuff, and there's a constant feeling of 'missing out' if you choose one thing from your unlimited supply over another thing. It's exhausting.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty and https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction which show that the world population is getting wealtheir and that is making them much happier.

cblconfederate 5y ago

> we can't have everyone be artists so there has to be some way Why not? The online attention economy is apparently worth trillions , why shouldn't creators be rewarded? Attracting the attention of other people is work even though it is all captured by BigTech Inc. We have automated so much of the workforce that it makes a lot of sense that being an 'artist' should be a job that more and more people will do.

colinmhayes 5y ago

Yea I find it hard to believe there has ever been a better time to be alive than now. Obviously we've got a long way to go, but things have been continuously getting better overall, not worse.

abbub 5y ago
I mean...based on what? We have more stuff, that's for sure. Our healthcare (when we can afford it) and nutrition is probably better and more consistent. Are we any happier? I'm not sure.
- IAmWorried 5y ago
  I honestly believe that if you remove social media from the equation, there is zero doubt that modern life makes you happier. There are so many awesome things you can do nowadays with modern tech, you have practically unlimited entertainment. But now you also have on-demand comparison, and as they say, comparison is the thief of joy. The sooner society realizes that social media is the REAL thing that is making people unhappy, the better.
  - abbub 5y ago
    "...you have practically unlimited entertainment." This is a tangent, but I feel like I enjoyed things more when I didn't have practically unlimited entertainment. Video games before the digital era with Xbox Game Pass, PSNow / PSPlus, etc were limited to a few games that you bought and really invested in. Videos before streaming where you were limited to what was sitting in Blockbuster or in your physical collection. Music was limited to what the radio was playing (which you had no control over) or what you had in your tape/CD collection. Because physical media was something of an investment, it sort of led to a sort of 'automatic curation' that's much harder with having just about every game, movie, tv show, and album at your fingertips. Maybe it's an age thing, but now I have 'back catalogs' for all of this stuff, and there's a constant feeling of 'missing out' if you choose one thing from your unlimited supply over another thing. It's exhausting.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty and https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction which show that the world population is getting wealtheir and that is making them much happier.