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Comment by teraku | Hacker News Reader

Why is everyone trying to find technical solutions for societal problems?

Because there are some technical solutions to some societal problems. Are there technical solutions to the ones we are discussing? Possibly, possibly not, you don't know until you look.

the societal problems are solvable only through technology. At least that is the main premise of Das Kapital - the progress in the tools and means of production is what drives societal progress.

I dare you to name a societal problem which was solved independently of the technological advancement state of the time, i.e. a problem that could have been solved the same way with a significantly regressed state of technology when at the time of its actual solution.

Prohibition of alcohol

i don't understand what societal problem you do you mean here - the prohibition or the alcohol. If you mean that the societal problem was the prohibition then we do know that it was solved by the bootlegging at a massive scale which relied on using cars and machine guns with modern communication of the time - telephone - playing a significant role too. If you mean that the problem was alcohol - i don't see where and when it was solved at all.

Bad laws were the problem, caused by societal pearl clutching. The prohibition of alcohol was solved by repealing it, not by cars and machine guns.

If cars and machine guns solved prohibition, then no substance would have ever been prohibited after alcohol. Those were not solutions.

Today we're still solving prohibition of substances, starting with marijuana, by simply repealing bad laws.

Bad laws become "bad" and get repealed when they become untenable to maintain. Cars, boats, planes, guns, drones, global financial system, crypto, social media, scientific development of our understanding of addiction - it all leads to the untenability of the current drug regime and the resulting progressive decriminalization we see.

Clearly that's incorrect though. We're only seeing legalization of socially acceptable drugs. Tech has nothing to do with it.

Nobody is fighting for meth, cocaine and heroine to become legal in the US. We also have plenty of prostitution going on thanks to technology but that won't be legal anytime soon either. It will happen when people decide they're OK with it, not because technology makes it easy.

It’s not “Social News.”

Because technology is something they feel they can have an impact on.

I mean are we just going to ask people to mask up and social distance and not work on a vaccine?

Those are both useful solutions that work together to solve the problem. This is a poor example.

Technology is the first mover in human affairs.

That's a truism. Could be true, could be untrue, it is unfalsifiable. Do you have any elaboration that would demonstrate this?

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