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Comment by Touche | Hacker News Reader

I think you're looking at the world's history with rose-colored glasses. World poverty is at the lowest levels today than it has been in recorded history: https://ourworldindata.org/slides/world-poverty/#/declining-...

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a time in history when life was better than it is today. And if you did find one, it would be so long ago than population levels were a fragment of what they are now.

We can't go back. Get that idea out of your head. The question is how can we steer the ship.

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> I think you'd be hard pressed to find a time in history when life was better than it is today.

That's nice and dandy but what good is it if we can only sustain that maybe another 50 years if we're lucky?

I guess if we had foresight we could have prevented the industrial revolution which would had (likely) prevented climate change.

Of course, the industrial revolution was a force of economic pressure, not a decision the world came together and decided on in unity.

So to prevent the industrial revolution would have required a suppression of freedom and property rights unlike has ever existed in history. On a world scale.

It really is too late, I think. There's too much momentum, and too little control. It's like that situation just before the Titanic hit the iceberg.

> The question is how can we steer the ship.

You mean how we can fix the leaks.

Fix the leaks or find another ship (planet).

Now who's got the rose-coloured glasses on?

Thinking that organising a worldwide migration to another planet is going to be a practical option is as absurd as thinking that moving back to a pre-industrial society is.

To be honest, I'm not convinced anyone will try until a mass extinction is underway anyway, in which case you're only migrating your quota of humans for the rocket's load before the volcanic ash density hits 11 (or whatever).

"May you live in interesting times."

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