Uh, smartphones? Bad battery life and, at launch, not very good features? What about LCD? Worse colors than plasma and CRT and more expensive. Drawing tablets f

Uh, smartphones? Bad battery life and, at launch, not very good features? What about LCD? Worse colors than plasma and CRT and more expensive. Drawing tablets for computers, which cost a fortune and were a janky mess to begin with. Battery powered earbuds; also bad battery life, frustrating bluetooth behavior and cost a fortune? The common story on all these things is that they improved as technology matured. And in regards to cuckolding ourselves (poor phrasing on your part), we've taken out a big metaphorical loan to live like we do, from the planet. To get here, we've filled the ocean with plastic, poisoned the rainwater with PFAS and ruined a whole lot besides. We have not found a nominal equilibrium yet. Our operations at large scale still come with tremendous unanticipated negative externalities, whether it's the cultivation of supercharged diseases and pests through heavy use of chemicals on crops and the creation of large monocultures, polluting water bodies with huge fertilizer runoffs and the contraceptives we excrete because of our addiction to consequence free sex or rapidly draining aquifers for water to drink or just waste in hour-long showers. We pollute our own bodies in this way, with plastic particles in our water, our meat. So, we can't keep doing this. We do need to curtail how we live amd find a better way that isn't necessary going to be sexier or less work. Even if we do, there remains the open question about how other countries can even advance, as the world can hardly afford more first world countries that live at the standard that you or I do now.