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Comment by cool_dude85 | Hacker News Reader

Not sure where you're from, but in many places, "society and government" has not failed people the same way it has in the US. Even within the US there are some places where local and state government have performed much better than places like Florida or NYC.

That is to say, the problem is not, conceptually, "society and government", but instead, the American society and American government we have today. Don't give up! Don't withdraw! Organize and fight to improve the systems that are exacerbating this crisis.

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It's my conclusion that the system has failed as well, and it comes from things that are intrinsic to the system itself. Our civilization and systems are set up for failure. When "success" and "wealth" is determined by how much resources you can extract from the land and people, and how much control over access to those resources, it incentivized centralization and control over basic necessities. This would be food, water, shelter, warmth and clothing. Every one of those require money and participation in the economy. There is no fixing it, as every single possibility moves us towards eventual collapse.

The alternative is having the basic needs (food, water, shelter, warmth, clothing) be met by being a participant in the ecology. Where these things can be provided through decentralized means as part of regenerative processes. When these things are provided by regenerative cycles, families can live off of that across many generations provided that they are wise stewards of the land. This is better than Universal Basic Income. You can't eat money, and UBI still relies on the fragile global supply chain to meet basic needs.

Furthermore, because these systems are decentralized, it does not require collective action. It does not require organizing, or fighting against the system. It does not require waiting for leaders to Do Something About It. It is more like letting the weeds grow. Pioneering into depleted soil with tenacity and resilience. It requires a mindset shift, and connecting with the local ecology and local community.

This argument really doesn't work for me because you have nothing to compare the system to.

> Our civilization and systems are set up for failure.

I mean, it's succeeded so far. There have been and will be growing pains, but so far the standard of living has increased over time. To declare failure is just speculation.

> fragile global supply chain

Fragile compared to what?

> Every one of those require money and participation in the economy.

Sorry, but this is just the reality of being a living creature. You can go fully off the grid if you want and make all those things for yourself, but most people don't do that, because, spoiler alert, it sucks. It's more work than participating in an economy.

> There is no fixing it, as every single possibility moves us towards eventual collapse.

Citation needed.

You can point out problems with economies, government, etc. all day long, but if the system you're comparing it to is pure fiction, then what's the point?

> I mean, it's succeeded so far. There have been and will be growing pains, but so far the standard of living has increased over time. To declare failure is just speculation.

Industrialized society has been reducing the long-term carrying capacity of the earth for over a century. These effects, until recently, have been masked by intensification i.e. continually increasing consumption of resources for use as inputs of various processes (e.g. agriculture) that improve the standard of living. In the absence of infinite resources this method eventually reaches hard limits. Also, in a closed system negative externalities can eventually reach levels where they negatively affect carrying capacity.

> Sorry, but this is just the reality of being a living creature. You can go fully off the grid if you want and make all those things for yourself, but most people don't do that, because, spoiler alert, it sucks. It's more work than participating in an economy.

Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies. The accelerating Holocene extinction, ongoing for millennia now, has obviously made this harder. Climate change is making this considerably harder as biomes, generally, shift poleward at rates that negatively impact biodiversity and hence carrying capacity.

> Citation needed.

Not sure what the other poster had in mind here, but the CMIP6 models taking into account cloud dynamics (which also happen to most closely fit historic data) show climate sensitivity of 5-7C, i.e. doubling preindustrial CO2 levels will entail to global average warming of 5-7C. Do you think warning in this range unlikely to occur because you see the necessary immediate societal change as likely? Or do you think that given that degree of climate shift occurs it is unlikely to entail a societal and/or biosphere collapse?

> Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies.

Yes, grasshoppers are typically happier and less hardworking than ants. There's an old fable that comes to mind...

Yeah, I didn't expect that to go over well on a distinctly techno-optimist site.

You're welcomed to jump in there with the citation. I had no intention of citing anything because it was my personal opinion. And mainly because, I think the system is complex enough that no single model can definitively prove that it will always tend towards collapse.

I am going to add, what I have in mind isn't a move backwards towards hunter-gatherer, but a move forward, into a post-industrial sociey. And I think post-industrial means becoming decentralized, and in alignment with natural processes, and one where people largely follow ethical principles to live within the ecology.

Food forests are a good example. They can be created with perennials or self-seeding annuals that regenerates itself, even when harvested by the residents.

Family sizes will probably have to increase, or at least, we may be talking about pooling the resources at a neighborhood level. A nuclear family alone doesn't have the time or resources to really pull this off well, but a nuclear family is also the product of the industrial idea of "success" and "wealth".

Careful use of technologies can make this a much different experience than hunter-gatherer, or even horticulture. Among the biggest difference is the presence of the Internet -- specifically, allowing people exchange practical information and barter for things from beyond the local area. (So I am not talking about the current Internet dominated by Big Tech and aggregators, but more of what Tim Berner-Lee had in mind with permissionless architecture, and Richard Stallman's views of Free Software).

The biggest thing we'd have to give up is this notion that wealth comes from extracting resources from the ground and controlling access to them. As long as we continue to use that as a means to rank ourselves against other people, we will continue to perpetuate a mindset that takes resources beyond our fair share, without regard for the earth or for the people. That one mindset is harder to give up than the extra cars, eating out, cheap fossil fuels, indoor plumbing, because we feel that we are entitled to all of it, and we get jealous when we see others have when we don't. Wealth inequality is intrinsic to this model of wealth. It will always be there, no matter how much resources we keep extracting.

> Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies.

So is it a coincidence that 99.9% of hunter-gatherer societies have chosen to industrialize?

> Or do you think that given that degree of climate shift occurs it is unlikely to entail a societal and/or biosphere collapse?

My guess is that society wouldn't collapse, but again, this is so speculative.

> So is it a coincidence that 99.9% of hunter-gatherer societies have chosen to industrialize?

I don't think there is much evidence of this. Would you say that hunter-gatherers in Australia, Africa, or the Americas chose to industrialize? It seems more that agrarian society was forced upon them. Likewise, industrialization isn't much of a choice once you are already in an agrarian society as failing to adapt to it will see you outcompeted and displaced or extirpated.

Your question is like asking "why do 99.9% of people choose to have sex with me if I hold a knife to their throat?" It takes some serious mental gymnastics to construe that as them wanting to have sex with you.

99% haven't chosen to. It's more that those few that did, quickly wiped out or assimilated their neighbors. The ones that are left today are those who lived in regions too remote for that to happen (but it's still an ongoing process, e.g. in Brazil and Papua).

I have describe systems. There are demonstrator sites all around the world with people living with less dependency upon the system. It does not require 100% self-sufficiency to make a difference, and even 50% self-sufficiency with reslient and regenerative processes makes that family much more survivable.

But if you really want some case studies, the best one I have come across is this: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farm...

After the fall of the USSR, Cuba had trade sanctions, cutting them off from the global supply chain. Locals had to come up with something to survive, and they started building a number of local, decentralized food systems. This was all grassroots, though they were eventually supported at the policy level. These were the same people who developed a sneakernet, passing contraband information from the Internet via disks and thumbdrives along the gossip channels.

So no, this system is not pure fiction. There are working examples. There are practices in place that people have been developing for 50 years now. There are people who are living that way.

More to the point, I am already implementing these things at my house and working my way towards that. I don't need to convince you. I'm not here pointing out problems with economies and governments. I have come across solutions, and they don't require large scale changes in policy for me to start taking action.

No, it is not the reality of being a living creature. We can do better than that and we have the technologies and practices developed. There are some conveniences we have to let go, but there are a lot of the "work" is not as hard of a work as you think. It does not require a sudden change in going completely off the grid either. Small changes, over time is the way to go, one that works with the social customs and culture of the people involved.

Centralization? In America?

You mean how the tax authority distributes the work to Intuit and HR Block?

How housing is distributed to private owners, financiers, and realtors?

The problems we’re experiencing are due to the opposite of centralization. Arguments against it are ideological conservatism.

Post office was a model of efficiency and distribution for an org that size until the GOP saddled it with debt.

In fact MOST human need centric social services in the US historically did great work on a dime budget.

And consider how much duplication of effort we get instead. Instead of NOAA sharing accurate weather data, we get Accuweather who takes NOAA data and wraps it in story mode for the innumerate masses who still believe in literal human hierarchy dictated from top down.

Utilitarian centralization of needs can and has in recent history, worked fine.

It’s limbic systems riddled with memes of the past, that can’t express motor agency outside a restricted norm that are the problem.

The concepts themselves are just that.

Connect to the mindset of local and you’ll see central shared effort is how local thinks. It’s where those broader ideas of federal centralization grew from!

Centralization can work. What we have is a terrorist political organization fighting against the end of their ideology in the form of Republicans and Democrats who prefer fealty to the past story they know and read about all day. Not the emerging one thanks to shifts in technology and social agency.

Imagine just getting a slip of paper in the mail with taxes owed?

Or not pricing 5 different package carriers?

This uncentralized waste playing ideology whack a mole is infuriating. It’s to prevent the centralized work habits, to enable authoritarian desire to grift on our work and game our agency.

“If the public were allowed to collectively build agencies that were successful, I might not be a rich important person!”

Yes, centralization.

Let's start with housing. We have this idea of property laws and property rights. Before the rise of civilization, we didn't have such laws. People squatted and lived off of the land as needed. There are also blended model. The Homestead Acts allowed people to claim territory, which, after certain requirements are met, would pass into their hands as legal ownership.

Property, then, is an example where the registration of ownership is centralized to the legal mechanism of the government.

Or, let's take a tomato. Like the kind I can get from Wendy's. That tomato probably came from California or Mexico. (Or during the winter, from the hothouses in Canada). It is grown there and then shipped unripen across country. There are multiple actors involved. You can argue that, because the government is not involved, this is not centralized.

The kind of decentralization I am talking about is a tomato that I grow in my backyard. That can be watered from rainwater harvesting. That can be fed by compost from other parts of my garden. Whose seeds I can save, and I can replant. Every generation, those tomatoes become more adapted to my biome (low desert). After the initial setup, there is no money involved to intermediate between me and the tomato. It is between myself and the land, and the local ecology.

> Connect to the mindset of local and you’ll see central shared effort is how local thinks. It’s where those broader ideas of federal centralization grew from!

I have no idea what you mean by this. I don't consider shared effort at the household or neighborhood level to be that centralized. That speaks more about coordinating efforts, and cooperating together.

Thanks for your comment. To expand on your point, a healthy society has a good mix of subsistence, volunteer/gift, exchange, and planned transactions. And when those are strong, theft is reduced.

I made a video about that about a decade ago: "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

Hoping more people understand that over time.

Let's see - US government instituted reasonably prompt lockdowns. They mailed one-time stimulus checks to everyone, gave 600$ unemployment insurance boosts, ramped up hospital capacities, opened up other support measures for businesses and allowed 50 parallel experiments (at state level) to see what works and what doesn't.

Was the response perfect? Certainly not. Did some other countries do better? I'm sure we could find a handful. Does this make the US a "totally failed shit-hole state"? HELL NO!!

And in case you think that the US is indeed one, it just means that you have only been exposed to Scandinavia and/or Singapore, or you have consumed too much of biased media which wants to maximize your anxiety and partisanship for their profits, or you are just trolling here to intentionally sow divisions. Assuming you are not in the last category, please go and learn about how things are in Brazil or India or sub-Saharan Africa. You will realize that the US is in a much better shape and things are handled far better than the media narratives.

The US has handled the pandemic worse than any country in the world, except maybe Brazil. Otherwise, I can't think of a country that has handled it worse.

Which countries are doing a worse job than the US in handling Coronavirus, in your opinion?

Apart from Brazil (which you mentioned), the US is doing a far better job than India and Bangladesh in terms of supporting the economy and social safety nets like one time stimulus payments, boosting unemployment benefits, aid to businesses etc. [Source: close families / friends living in those two countries].

The fact that US being compared with India and Bangladesh should already give you a hint about where the US stands.

Russia did very badly. First, lots of denial. Then, lockdowns so harsh in some places, Chinese could be jealous. And the burden was placed squarely on the businesses - the government effectively declared universal non-essential paid leave, but didn't subsidize it.

Oh, and the government successfully managed to use the epidemic as a cover-up for heretofore unseen levels of electoral fraud in the not-really-referendum on constitutional amendments.

Spain and UK all had a fair amount of drama and government incompetence, still have worse death/1M stats than the USA by a fair margin, and are forecasted to be hit harder economically (-11% vs -7% USA in 2020 GDP). It's still way too early to tell if they are actually going to end up worse, since this is still going at full swing in the USA, and there are a lot of uncertain factors, but I think there's a fair chance they end up being as bad or worse than USA.

The US had, by far, the poorest response to covid of any developed nation. Which is to be expected when the US is only a borderline developed nation.

Not really true. US had a terrible response at the start, made worse by the CDC test not working, putting us weeks behind ever other country. Then Trump decided wearing masks wasn't important and tons of people followed his lead, ensuring our case load stayed consistently high.

> Was the response perfect? Certainly not.

No, it was not perfect. According to [1] the US has 27% of all cases of COVID-19, 24% of all COVID-19 deaths and 29% of new cases yesterday. For comparison US has 4.3% of world's population [2].

> Did some other countries do better? [...] it just means that you have only been exposed to Scandinavia and/or Singapore

Did some countries do worse? Italy is often cited as a badly hit country (and is not Singapore nor in Scandinavia), but if you look at their total cases curve [3] you'll see it has become nearly flat and new cases have been suppressed to near ~200/day from the peak of ~6k/day. For comparison, the corresponding plots for the US show a bungled attempt to flatten the curve followed by renewed exponential growth [4]. Daily new cases were only suppressed to ~1k/day from the peak of ~2.7/day.

> Does this make the US a "totally failed shit-hole state"? HELL NO!!

Well, what are the inclusion criteria? I'm asking, because when it comes to COVID-19 the US is doing so badly that now only 26 other countries have had more cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic than the US added yesterday (73,388) [1].

[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

[3]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

[4]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

> the US has 27% of all cases of COVID-19

has 27% of all the known cases - FTFY! Do you honestly believe the reported number of cases from the populous developing countries known for their corruption and a lack of functioning systems (I come from one, so I know first hand how they work)?

> I'm asking, because when it comes to COVID-19 the US is doing so badly...

so badly in terms of what? Reported number of cases, which is miserably under-reported due to a lack of testing / credible systems in the majority parts of the world (at least by population)? I know that people are losing jobs in the US, businesses are bankrupting but where I come from, people are starving and a 12 yo was begging for food when my sister went for grocery shopping, since his family hadn't had enough food in 2 days.

If you are in the US and haven't experienced a poor society first-hand (beyond a 2-3 week vacation in the tourist spots in such places), please count yourself lucky and appreciate what you've got!

Withdrawing and becoming independent from state systems isn't giving up; it's probably a first step towards a more organic, liberated society.

the action can have a variety of impetuses, but @eaandkw literally stated they're giving up.

Giving up on one approach vetsus another, because the incentive balance has shifted. From a consequentalist point of view, the impetus is secondary- if you think people would be better off being less reliant on the state, then any time they take actions towards that, it's good.

The context of what I mean by saying that I am giving up is that institutions, government, and corporations are unreliable. I can't make decisions based on conditions as they are today because as soon as I do the rug will be pulled out from under me and leave me on my butt. This means that if I had a great idea for a business I will decide not to start that business. That vacation that I was planning won't happen anymore. Certain cities I may have been inclined to visit I won't enter anymore. Heck I even have to self-censor myself now for any thoughts I have because who knows who is going to get offended and try to prevent me from having a job, credit card, or even an opinion.

That is mostly what I mean.

What we need is a plan and a leader that will pull us out of this gridlock and death spiral that we're in. We need a diagnosis of what exactly is going wrong, a concrete plan of action, and mass participation.

My diagnosis:

- Hyper-partisanship is causing politicians and the electorate to harden into uncompromising tribes. This hyper-partisanship also serves to increase the size and scale of the fringe wings of both parties, leading to events like the infamous white-supremacist Charlottesville rally.

The cause(s):

- 1. News as a business, particularly if that business is publicly traded, is not in the 'truth-telling' business. It is in the 'maximizing profits' business, as all (publicly traded) companies are.

  - 1.1. Therefore, truth is ancillary to any for-profit news business. This will manifest itself in different ways depending on the monetization scheme of the business. 

  - 1.2. In the case of 24-hour news networks, like Fox and CNN, they are advertisement driven and therefore seek to maximize 'eyeballs'. Therefore, a constant stream of engaging content must be produced: for both Fox and CNN, the result is hyper-sensationalism. The creation of outrage, controversy, and even facts that don't exist. Further, because Fox is so partisan, it has effectively forced CNN to become partisan too. 

  - 1.3. The above is also true, and *especially* true, for ad-driven online news sources. Clickbait is a well-known phenomenon for, again, maximizing outrage and controversy for ad impressions. Visit an average article on CNN, Fox, or Breitbart and count how many ads you see. Now ask yourself: is it *really* in their best interest to be partial and nuanced?

- 2. Twitter and Facebook allow us to create echo chambers of politicians, pundits, news organizations, and peers.

  - 2.1. The 'like' and 'share/retweet' mechanisms incentivize divisive, emotional, and simplistic posts/tweets. 

  - 2.2. And given that a small subset of users actually tweet or comment or post, those that do tend to be more radical, which lead people to believe that the majority opinion for ${POLITICAL_PARTY} is reflected in the comment section. This leads to a true 'Overton shift' for those in ${POLITICAL_PARTY} and opposite polarization for ${OTHER_POLITICAL_PARTY}.

There are another dozen reasons, I'm sure, including: money in politics, constant campaigning, a genuine uptick in racism/anti-semitism, and many more. I think exploring the idea of a crowd-sourced website listing these reasons and proposed solutions would be quite valuable.

> I think exploring the idea of a crowd-sourced website listing these reasons and proposed solutions would be quite valuable.

100% agree...a crowd-sourced website that does this and a whole bunch of other things is desperately needed.

I believe with strong certainty that the current state of affairs (in Western countries at least) is that our political, corporate, and media structures, combined with the "collective consciousness" of our population, have basically brought us to a point from which these same organizations haven't a hope in hell of undoing the mess they've put us in. I think something outside the current system, a completely new grassroots approach to decision and sense making is required to get us back onto a sustainable path.

How might we get such an initiative underway?

A really deep dive of this topic can be found here: https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html

> has not failed people the same way it has in the US

Not yet. It ain't over yet though, even though it might seem like it elsewhere. Basic facts are: herd immunity is prohibitively expensive from the fatalities perspective (although it may be our only long term option), a vaccine is not guaranteed to ever exist, and C19 is now endemic, so it will come back. Oh and also, for the society to function people must be able to work.

To poster below who said that no vaccine == no herd immunity. That's actually not true. For a vaccine to be approved it needs to be safe. Herd immunity will just happen eventually, no approval needed as the virus itself doesn't care if it's "safe" or not. Paradoxically, the society will likely prefer to tolerate higher body count due to not having a vaccine at all, rather than smaller body count for a vaccine that is unsafe in a small, but not completely negligible percentage of cases.

If a vaccine cannot happen, neither can herd immunity.

I read it has been eliminated in New Zealand, so elimination is possible with good government: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/new-zealand-coronavir...

> elimination is possible with good government

Good government, plus living on a small island that can close itself from the rest of the world. Most countries aren't in that situation.

Most of the vectors of COVID spread in the US have little to do with failing to close itself off from the rest of the world. If you have the political will, you can implement quarantine for international travelers, which will catch the overwhelming majority of externally-sourced cases.

The US did not do so, because it was too disruptive to business, and because good, sober governance has been an explicit non-goal for the past few decades, on both state and federal level - but especially in the last few years.

How did nyc mess up? I can just think of the nursing homes, but that was due to cdc guidelines, which coumo had to implement additional guidelines.

It was the subway.

Extensive use of the subway is what sets NYC apart from all other cities in the US, and it was the main vector. NYC should have been much more diligent about cleaning the subway and limiting concurrent access. I understand due to the sheer volume and necessity of subway use the chosen policies may have been the best. But the subway has been overcrowded and near the breaking point for years and little was done to maintain the system before COVID.

I've been in a lot of subway cars where you're so packed in, you can't move an inch. Even if the NYC subway was twice its capacity, I don't think you would have had the level of social distancing necessary to do much about COVID. Maybe it would have been less bad, but I think it's hard to say.

And remember, if the subway capacity was increased, subway ridership would likely increase as well, as it becomes a more appealing mode of transport.

What NYC really should have done is shut down businesses on March 1 instead of March 15. But... I don't know, I think that's a lot to ask of politicians. The public would not have responded well to schools being closed and restaurants being shuttered. We needed a wake-up call.

By contrast, I feel like Florida, Georgia, etc have really had that wake-up call, and have chosen to flout it anyway. I don't have much sympathy.

"If transit itself were a global super-spreader, then a large outbreak would have been expected in dense Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million people dependent on a public transportation system that, before the pandemic, was carrying 12.9 million people a day. Ridership there, according to the Post, fell considerably less than in other transit systems around the world. Yet Hong Kong has recorded only about 1,100 COVID-19 cases, one-tenth the number in Kansas, which has fewer than half as many people. Replicating Hong Kong’s success may involve safety measures, such as mask wearing, that are not yet ingrained in the U.S., but the evidence only underscores that the coronavirus can spread outside of transit and dense urban environments—which are not inherently harmful."

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/612979/

This seems to be a widespread problem. Nobody wants to spend money on maintenance. You can always find a grant to build new stuff, but maintenance you have to pay for yourself.

But those increase were before mask wearing requirements were in effect.

You have other countries where subways service are still running with no major breakouts. ny has resumed service, and no major breakouts either.

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/612979/

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