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Comment by fartcannon | Hacker News Reader

As a former young man, and current middle aged man, my perspectice is this: Those old men were young people once, not long ago. You might not compromise your values, but in reality, you probably will. And your peers definitely will. A few generations will grow up and suddenly, you're the bad guy because, oh I dunno, all your cell phones and tablets used up all the bismuth or something. And you'll get old one day too, desperately holding onto the thing that lets you retire. Again maybe not you, but your peers will.

That said, it's not that you shouldnt keep trying, it's just interesting how it happens. We should break the cycle of blame, and make a lateral move to create the future we want on a new path.

It makes me think, "Render unto Ceasar".

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> A few generations will grow up and suddenly, you're the bad guy because, oh I dunno, all your cell phones and tablets used up all the bismuth or something.

I'm sorry, but the reason people are so critical of today's older generation isn't because of bad things they've done in the past. It's because they not only continue to do the damage, but also refuse to listen to any evidence to the contrary.

I'd be far more sympathetic if the dialog was more "Yea, I'm stuck in an industry doing damage, I didn't know it was that bad when I started." Instead it's "How DARE you tell me coal is bad for the environment!?! It's my god given right to burn as much coal as I can get my hands on!"

Perhaps it will happen in the future that I regret what I've participated in. IDK. However, I hope I've at least have the humility to know when I've screwed things up so I don't fight against forward progress.

The older generation isn't the bad guy for past mistakes. They're the bad guy because they are actively preventing future progress.

The executives at Exxon knew about global warming fifty years ago and buried it. They funded research that muddied the waters. They funded propaganda. They funded lobbyists. They even started wars.

The older generation is the bad guy, and it wasn't for their mistakes. This was intentional. Not all of them are complicit, of course, but now that the chickens are coming home to roost we're getting lecturing points from people like the person you're replying to about bismuth in our phones or other such flim flam.

The reality is that our generation has something equivalent: Surveillance capitalism. And you know what? Plenty of people from Google and Facebook have stepped forward and demanded regulations. Where were the same people from Exxon Mobile in the 70s?

Ethics and morals matter. The truth matters. And people with enough means are still pushing for more at the expense of others.

Ehm I think the lecturer, by their own account must be a Gen X. As an GenX myself I can confirm this attitude - everything’s wrong, everyone has a price - is typical of our hatch. For some reason, maybe TINA, the social traumas of the ‘80s we unwittingly absorbed, or the repression during the NoGlobal protests (Genova G8), turned us into these Grungy, navel-grazing, it-won’t-matter-anyway beat-downs.

We are the last generation that grew up expecting education to fulfill our mission, only to realize it was just a way to keep us off the unemployment stats, while the market just wants good janitors.

The article is literally about the select few people who are doing what you say, and have the financial resources to mount public misinformation campaigns. That’s not what the “older generation” is doing, it’s what these specific guys are doing.

You got a source for that? Voting intentions strongly suggest that it is the “older generation” that is doing, and if not doing actively supporting, the destruction of the biosphere.

I'm a "former young man" too. There is no age to be acting well or badly with regards to this debate, and there isn't even an absolute metric for how well or badly one does when it comes to the issue.

But I know I don't need to change to a new smartphone every year, likewise for my laptop.

I know the next time I get a smartphone (in years), I'll be much more likely to accept something of lesser polish for something which allows me to replace parts easily.

I know that my beef consumption is not an essential part of my life in the sense that I'd die without it, it's an accessory of pure hedonism, and I still don't entirely avoid eating a good steak every once in a while but I put mental efforts into curbing such consumption.

I keep in mind very strongly the strategy I want to adopt regarding the place I live in and the places I could work at, such that at equal levels of satisfaction I don't pigeon-hole myself into a place where a car would be an absolute necessity. Each person's strategy can change, but things to take into account include access to public transportation, remote work even partially, only partly using a car along the way if really necessary, and so on.

I'm keenly aware of the amount of plastic packaging around me and whenever I can I will prefer avoiding such products. Likewise for anything that can be refilled: do you really need to buy the same container for your detergent over and over again? Why not refill it if you can? etc.

I keep in mind all those issues when the time comes to vote, and in my own way strive to encourage this sort of awareness in the people supposed to represent me.

The list is entirely dependent on each person, but you can only start to make that list and to think constructively if you acknowledge the problem and leave aside nihilism and apathy.

I don't want kids, but that doesn't prevent me from having the awareness that the things I do (or don't do) can and will hurt other people's kids. Using my age as an excuse to not give a crap is disingenuous. Using the observation that others aren't pulling their weight either is disingenuous. I can't force others to do something but I can change what I do.

Doubtful that individual action will be enough. It didn't stop littering or racism. There must be collective action.

This post misses the point of what it’s replying to. Parent comment admitted that individuals can live responsibly, but that the bigger problem is a cycle where each generation protects its own lifestyle and blames the older people for what they’ll one day do themselves.

And you're missing the fact that what the current generations in power are doing is not sustainable in the sense that regardless of what young generations do right now, they DEFINITELY won't be having the lifestyle that we're having today.

It doesn't matter what their kids end up blaming on them afterwards, we won't be there to see it. The defeatist attitudes about the now are cop-outs though, because WE are living in the now.

> I know that my beef consumption is not an essential part of my life in the sense that I'd die without it, it's an accessory of pure hedonism, and I still don't entirely avoid eating a good steak every once in a while but I put mental efforts into curbing such consumption.

Also because, let’s be honest... you can’t really find proper a proper stake in any supermarket let alone do it justice without the right kitchen equipment. It’s better to let a professional do their work than to attempt a sad re-enactment with cheap, mass produced ingredients

There is zero chance that future cell phones will be easier to repair.

That depends on what you mean by "cell phones": all of them? Some of them? Because Fairphone[0] is 7 years old and is proving you wrong, showing that AFTER the advent of smartphones a company emerged to drive things in the other direction. And they could very well be only one amongst many as people change their attitudes.

That, by the way, is how you act at your own level.

[0] https://www.fairphone.com/en/

Uh, there is exactly 1 Fairphone out of an entire market of un-repairable, sold already obsolete, throwaway models.

While cute, it’s just a token gesture

You're telling me there is "zero chances that future cell phone swill be easier to repair", I just proved you wrong. If you don't want to put your money where your mouth is (or if your mouth isn't there anyway) that's an entirely different debate about your pessimism. And cute is a subjective word that has no place there.

No, I’m just putting your statements into context: a 0. market share product makes for nice Wired covers, but not much more unless you use it as a feasibility study to lobby for governmental regulations.

But I’m a bit fatigued by grandiose hot takes, let’s just leave it here

Exactly this. Young people have plenty of outrage to go around, and they think they can change the world. Most of them don't do anything about it, though; they just get outraged, virtue signal on social media, change meaningless behaviors (but make sure everyone knows they did), and carry on exactly as their parents did.

Things in the world move slowly, and after a decade or two of caring (or at least aggressively claiming to care), young people turn into old, cynical, jaded realists.

I vote. I make small, pragmatic changes to how I interact with the world. I see what happens over the course of many decades and how slowly things move. In the end I'm glad I won't be around to see how terrible it's going to be in 100 years. Good luck.

The end of your message is so much worse than whatever you imagine young people to be doing. "Good luck", really? Condescending much?

Also you're pretty damn wrong about those young people: they're way more active than you think. But you seem to be quite aware that it's going to be terrible in a few decades yet you're happy simply making small changes and seeing "what happens over the course of many decades". Wilful ignorance much?

The cognitive dissonance in your words is strong, and instead of actually looking inwards you're content thinking that the people who are barely out of their teenage years should bear the blame for being born with a smartphone in their pockets (thanks to which generations again?).

I sure am glad that they aren't learning from your attitude as they work towards being in a position to be directors or politicians or CEOs. You or I might not be there to see the worst of it, but I'd take their attitude over yours any day of the week.

edit to the person pointing out the word "decades": I replied to a message on their own terms. I'm fully aware that things are unravelling right now, but I don't even need to shift the point and start another debate in order to prove them logically wrong.

> in a few decades

decades?

Decade = 10 years.

I know what a decade is, however I believe that it will be bad in less time than decades, plural.

Ah. Sorry. In that case, agreed.

On the other hand, there’s the suffragettes, the Civil Rights movement, the Velvet Revolution, etc. If less people made excuses and instead joined the youth, change might happen.

The young people may be the most passionate, but the ethos that puts saying the right thing ahead of doing the right thing, is a broader societal indictment that seems to have skyrocketed in the last decade, and it’s not tied to one generation.

Maybe it was social media. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way it’s shockingly counterproductive.

Uh not quite. History is full of examples where generations turned the world on its head over the course of a couple years (for good or bad... mostly worse, I concede)

While true these barons escape the consequences they knowingly inflict. To stop the cycle soft education like schooling is not enough. The hard education of prison time is necessary.

And even if somehow they can prove ignorance it should not relieve responsibility. They certainly have the resources and time to investigate the outcome of their industry.

I propose that regulators and executives be required to test randomly and be required to hold their weekly briefings in the most polluted areas under their supervision. And on these live broadcast they must drink from the most polluted (yet rated 'drinkable') water.

The true illusion is that there be true barons: they are us, in our multiple guises of investors and pensioners and account-holders and wage slaves. Some tower over others (the Gates and Bezos of the world) but in truth they’re just an outsized outlier. As long as we engage in the artefice that we are beholden to evildoers who lord it over us, we will never be free.

You use the words "illusion" and "being free", so I feel comfortable putting the issue into terms where those words also have similar connotations:

I commit a crime if I buy heroin instead of acknowledging my issues and getting therapy, and that's absolutely a problem I need to curb. I'm not even really happier with it, but I don't find enough support, better education about myself and the world, to get better. I'd be happier without, but I don't know that yet and I'm strictly convinced I can't live without it!

But if I'm the guy who moves a literal ton of heroin across the border, and I have 5-10 orders of magnitude more money than the other schmuck, AND I use a mere fraction of my benefits to lobby all around and get PR firms to make other people turn away from addressing their issues and more towards my product.. well, how to put it.. I'm a tiny bit responsible, you know?

Thinking that this is just an illusion is magic thinking: sure, everyone could magically address their problems today and the crime rates would drop! Suicides would drop! How wonderful.

But how about we look at the actual world and offer insights/education/support to that first person, while making sure we keep the other one heavily in check or prevent harmful activity much more actively?

That's better education for the former and stricter regulations of all sorts for the latter. We all have a role to play in this. This article simply talks about the pushers who rightfully deserve to be exposed, that's all.

Let's please stop entertaining false dichotomies. It's not all on the voter to magically be wiser, and it's not all on the big company to stop trying to do what it's built to do (drive profits). It's on both.

> Let’s stop entertaining false dichotomies

Agreed. That’s the spirit of what I meant. I sincerely thank you for synthesising it thusly.

Yeah, let's distribute the blame into a billion tiny pieces so nobody has to feel bad.

I mean sure, BP dumped 210 million gallons of crude oil into the gulf of mexico, but it's the people using plastic straws who are the real problem here.

It IS distributed into a billion tiny pieces.

Do you know if your computer is using oil from BP? Do you know if your car is running on gasoline from BP?

The manufactorers of plastic straw aren't responsible for the disposal of them that's a job of the individual societies, which all consist of taxpayers who are voting their politicians into power.

The disconnect is the idea that BP is evil while we are innocent bystanders. BP and the other oil companies are a net benefit to society and 80% of what you consider modern living is based on some sort of oil based derivative.

These companies have significant influence over government. This has lead to public transit being gutted and most people being forced to own a car. Car companies invented the concept of "jay walking" to banish people from public streets.

People in our current oligarchical capitalist society have little choice but to engage with it. It's not a moral decision that most people can make. Individuals and corporations are compelled to ignore negative externalities.

We could have public transit and cycling, use reusable glass containers, have more locally based economies, and also have better, more fulfilling lives than now. But we don't. And we are bringing cataclysmic damage to our planet and ourselves in the process.

There is not a single piece of scientific base for any cataclysmic damage, on the contrary fossil fuel have made the world safer for those who use it.

These 'outliers' have an outsized effect on government which is more representative of our ideal choices.

You can't stop systemic problems like these by blaming the little guys living in food deserts making minimum wage. They have few choices to significantly change things when greener options are out of reach. Yet lobbies bought and paid for at the direction of these barons do.

As someone else who isn't young: we'll figure out other things but climate change thing is a much bigger problem. It's fundamentally unlike how we fixed CFCs/ozone, lead levels, DDT, or anything else in human history. We should all endeavor to fix it even if it requires bribing oil executives for a generation so we can involve something that is a closer to a French revolution outcome for the class that is causing this problem. It's an existential issue for the young.

An oilman's constituents are his shareholders, so this is really an issue for Congress.

If businesses are not required to account for externalities (such as environmental impact) then they generally will not do so.

If the petroleum industry couldn't make political donations (and wasn't very aggressive about doing so), I would agree with you more strongly.

You’re probably just noticing how rigged the system is and declaring defeat without ever trying.

Do your civic duties!!! First off, learn how your local, state, and federal governments work. You’re not powerless if you go to their public hearings-be polite and well informed, write your representatives, and do anything and everything else you can do. It’s actually quite a lot. Right now much of these meetings and representatives hear from only the most limited view sets. The world actually still has most of its power in democracies and democratic republican governments.

If we threw money at this problem we could definitely find and implement ways to get ourselves off oil and counter or mitigate what’s already happened. But that won’t happen without the political will to do it.

There will of course always be ill informed youths because there will always be ill informed people. Don’t be one of them. Look for ways to make the world better yourself and ignore or fight (better) the bullies.

> You might not compromise your values, but in reality, you probably will.

Well, I'm almost 60 and it hasn't happened yet.

Boomers are a special generation, though. They grew up in a great expansionary period but did not have to experience the insecurity and horrors of WW2 firsthand. I personally believe their morals were corrupted by the easy band-aid of universal growth and profits, since they came to rely on it, and expect it will continue forever (hence the "you'll get old and corrupt too" mentality).

suddenly, you're the bad guy because, oh I dunno, all your cell phones and tablets used up all the bismuth

Hipster devs are writing code that makes the data centre industry emit as much CO2 as aviation, and they know it too, they just don’t care. They’re already setting themselves up to be the next generations bad guys and they don’t even know it.

So, they know it, or they don't know it? Confused.

They know they’re writing code that is massively inefficient but they don’t yet know they’re the next generations bad guys.

Just say no to JavaScript kids.

I'd argue it's VC money/public market shareholders licking their lips at thrse hipsters that trump responsibility. Yep, take a look at that screen, now turn it off. Reflection can scare ya.

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