Comment by scanny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scanny | Hacker News Reader

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It's just apathy, and the difficulty of perceiving how it can impact any of the 'people' the individual level.

Every person feels like, often rightly so, that they have enough fiscal and social stress that immediately impacts their lives.

For an (U.S) example, Presidential elections: the results of which undoubtedly impact the entire nations population in, potentially, massive ways in every sphere (social, economic ect.). You cannot really escape it either, it permeates news cycles at all levels nationally and globally.

Since 2000 it turnouts have been bounced between 50-60%. Given that, how many people are really going to be concerning themselves with something like climate change? Tax policy rattles more people than climate change ever will, they may even recognize it themselves, and yet people just don't care (or have more immediate concerns).

If you want someone to care, they have to be moved enough by being directly impacted. In climate change's case, it will be too late to do anything. But that's just how people (including myself) work.

There's a coating bliss of social rhythm. When jobless I was 24/7 on collapse subjects. When working, I was busy doing my job, I was happy going there in the morning, seeing everybody doing their thing, eating and sleeping ready to go for the next day.

Which is why a green dictatorship is the only way to go. Democracy will lead us to extinction.

If you are serious, this might be the scariest comment I have ever read on HN.

I am, indeed, serious. Democracy offers us to satisfy all our immediates needs, without any regards for the long term concerns. Democracy will be our doom.

North Korea actually fits the bill pretty closely right now.

Now there is only the "small" problem of constituting a dictatorship that is selfless, humanistic, and relentlessly benevolent. If you say that, in the face of existential threats such as climate change we don't need it to have these properties, I'll argue that such a construct will likely not provide any survival benefits or even modest improvements over the status quo. There is ample precedent that all dictatorships pretty much exist(ed) only to further the status of the ruling elite, and to the degree they differ(ed) from each other at all, it was mostly only a difference in the flavor and scope of the atrocities they committed.

I get the desire for a single unified initiative that drags us out of this mess, even against our wills. But no entity capable of doing that exists. And the bigger ethical question is indeed whether it should exist to begin with. If we can't solve these relatively simple problems of ensuring our survival and provide a reasonably fulfilling existence for our fellow humans, why does our species deserve to exist?

The point would merely be to buy us some time, if we go back to aroubd 1800, we will have lots of inequality and problem, but we might have another round to go on and to improve.

> But no entity capable of doing that exists.

I agree, this is a pipe dream. The reality is that there is absolutely no hope. Hence, my choice of not having kids.

Trusting a dictatorship to stick to any ideal instead of just using it as a pretext for power is very unwise.

Religious dictatorships didn't lead to peace or even actual embrace of the principles, communist dictatorships didn't help the working class, and green dictatorships won't help the environment.

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