Comment by 1bc29b36f623ba8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1bc29b36f623ba8 | Hacker News Reader

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1bc29b36f623ba8

I'd argue that the major change is that people often aren't allowed to benefit from their property the way they used to. That places us in a situations were we are limited in a manner that I guess could be compared to feudalism. I'd say it's a completely new thing though, humanity hasn't really done what we're currently doing before.

This time around it's the middle class that's taking the hit. Our consumption fuels the process that does result in a certain re-distribution of wealth, and yes, some of that does indeed reach the poorest. That's good. Most of the cash flows up though. The richer do become richer, and the middle class is probably going to be a thing of the past in 30-40 years. If we continue down the pre-COVID path then the middle class will be replaced by a consumption economy powered by debt, and where the richest own the debt and the rest will have to live a life constant work in order to pay their debt.

Mind you, this won't necessarily be a horrible existence; people will still have access to modern technology, will still have streaming services, phones and whatnot. Compared to how average people lived 500 years ago it will most likely be quite a step up.

The former middle class, on the other hand, will have much more limited freedom, and far less influence on their own situation compared to today.

Time to re-read "The Space Merchants" again.

> Compared to how average people lived 500 years ago it will most likely be quite a step up.

What about the clear regressions we’re seeing in quality of life for poor communities in America? Flint, MI hasn’t had clean drinking water for several years now. The quality of aggregate healthcare in states like Texas is being compared to countries like Russia. Access to affordable healthcare is a major issue for millions of Americans today.

Nobody cares that life will be better than it was 500 years ago, people care that it’s worse than it was 40 years ago, and wealth inequality is major driver of this decline in quality of life.

> people care that it’s worse than it was 40 years ago

Agreed. And since we're currently in an unprecedentedly long period of prosperity it's only a matter of time before some people will be taking quite a few steps back.

My largest worry is that society will simply cease to have a purpose for some groups of people, while still preventing those people from trying another path. In the past such situations usually triggered large migrations of people, but at the moment, there isn't really anywhere for them to go. It's a situation that needs to be resolved within the next 10-20 years if we want to avoid civil unrest in the future.

> Nobody cares that life will be better than it was 500 years ago, people care that it’s worse than it was 40 years ago, and wealth inequality is major driver of this decline in quality of life.

It's not worse than 40 years ago, it's worse than 5 years ago, but short intervals aren't that good in predicting larger trends. Flint, MI seems to be a unique issue, as far as I'm aware, it's an outlier and not the rule in the US.

> Flint, MI seems to be a unique issue

As many as 20% of Americans have been exposed to unsafe drinking water at least once in the past decade[0], Flint is in no way an outlier. The cost to upgrade old pipe systems is completely out of reach for poor communities throughout America.

Between the flight of manufacturing overseas hollowing out jobs in cities from the Northeast all the way through the Midwest and Southern US and the introduction of the private equity model, life is indeed worse for millions of Americans. Just look at the political climate we’re currently in, that anger is coming from a very real place. Spend some time in Detroit or the Rust Belt, it’s a profoundly sad experience.

0: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/14/63-million-am...

Oh, I wasn't aware of the water delivery systems being too old in that many counties, though it does say "potentially unsafe", e.g. one incident was "not building a cover for one of its water reservoirs". Still, it's obviously a problem that's going to cost a lot of money.

I don't know how good it was in rural towns 40 years ago, though. Detroit was certainly doing better, but I'd also assume that testing and requirements have changed since then, so you might still have a similar quality today, but it's not considered safe today.

Whether that's responsible for the political climate, I don't know. We've seen lots of changes in Europe as well and we don't face infrastructure issues of that magnitude and our dying industries are a bit more spread out over the country, so you get fewer pockets of absolute desperation.

Not long ago, 90% of humans were exposed to unsafe drinking water every day.

20% of Americans exposed at least once in the past decade does not sound too bad. Does that include people drinking from streams while hiking?

Middle-class in developed countries, and largely specific to the United States. The Chinese middle class grew from 29M (2% of population) to 531M (39% of population, and almost double the total population of the U.S.) between 2000 and now.

> Middle-class in developed countries, and largely specific to the United States

From what I've seen, it's a phenomena in most of the Western World, and not just in the States. But you are right, of course, and as I mentioned there are more people who are living under decent conditions now than 500 years ago and that applies world-wide. I have no doubt that we'll keep going in that direction for some time yet.

However, as save_ferris pointed out above, the groups that don't stand to gain from this won't care. They will be forced into a lifestyle that might not be terrible and which will be far better than their ancestors had 200 years ago, but which they cannot opt out from and which will still be far worse than their parents had.

But, considering the pandemic and the amount of war-mongering going on at the moment, I guess we should all consider ourselves lucky if we don't have to pay our food with bottle caps in 20 years...

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