(1) Stagnant real wages with decreasing buying power means that even with two incomes financial stability can be tenuous
(2) decrease in community interaction means parents must give more focused attention on their kids, versus letting them run with the neighborhood kids.
(3) housing prices push necessary space into extravagant luxury
(4) political gridlock leads to a sense of ennui and fatalism. The information sources used to get clarity about the world are or are accused of profiteering and muckracking, leading at least one side of the political aisle to have existential fear about crowds, the other to have existential fear of their neighbors
(5) brazen disregard of the law being applied to elites degrades the reliability of justice. People pick up on this
(6) technocrats think the solution is more technology. Were we facing an issue as simple as lowering fixed costs and improving systemic inefficiency, as an economist I'm on board. However, I think the issue is more political (power-structure) than economic, and technology favors the currently empowered (as they have funds).
Not just the elites. Law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion can be (is) abused at all levels. It can create bias based on income, race, status (ie if you are part of that same system as a LEO etc), political identity, etc. Rule of law has become a joke and it's essentially an oligarchy since the people in power can choose to ignore the law and we lack proper oversight of the people who run the system.
Right now, the working class is needed for it's labor. I'm sure you've all seen the hiring signs. That isn't going to last forever. Can you expect a better life for your kids if they may not have a job?
So much would have to change to make full automation a good thing for everyone.
My sense is that this is getting better over time but sensitivity and viability to the issue is increasing. This makes it particularly challenging to meet expectations
I think the same is generally true of the economic in equality.
Unfortunately this is incorrect in the US.[0,1]
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
[1] (Entire article: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...)
[2] Commentary on OECD countries generally: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/inequalities-in-hous...
As a parent of three, I've definitely noticed how much they expect my attention versus what I can recall of the same from my parents (my childhood memories are primarily about playing with my siblings).
The best book on this subject is "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War" by Robert J. Gordon.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/d...
Many of these problems are political/societal, and not technical: the stagnation of wages in particular. I would argue that instead of a lack of change being the problem, the issue is that society is still trying to desperately adapt to the increased rate of change that's happened during the last century.
Peter Drucker has argued that the 60 years leading up to 1914 were the most innovative years in human history. A person born in 1860 and dying in 1940 would live through the first lightbulb, the first power plant, the first power grid, the first electrified city, the first electric street cars, the first combustion engine, the first cars and trucks, the first telephones and then the growth of the telephone networks to include every household, the first great oil boom, the first submarines and the exploration of the underwater seas, the development of germ theory, the sterilization of the hospitals and so the first safe surgeries, combined with the first true anesthesias, the first airplanes, the first radio as telegram and then in 1920 the ability of radio to carry the human voice, the invention of the television, the first sulfa drugs followed by the invention of the first true antibiotics, the first plastics, the invention of textiles made of plastics (nylon), and so much more than I can list. A person born in 1860 and dying in 1940 was born during one epoch of the human race and died in a completely different one, much more so than any person born in any other year. The best and most recent book on this subject is "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War” by Robert J. Gordon.
[ Also, you write about "personal computer, the internet, and the mobile phone" as three separate inventions, but it's really just 2: computers and better multi-plexing, and even the multi-plexing is because computers got better. ]
I recognize that household income has stagnated and there's significant disparity in wealth. However, if you're going to claim that the median standard of living has decreased in most of the West over the last 50 years, you're going to need to cite some evidence.
It's shocking to see pushback on the transformative nature of modern computing on Hacker News of all places.
> Thamus inquired into the use of each of them, and as Theuth went through them expressed approval or disapproval, according as he judged Theuth’s claims to be well or ill founded. It would take too long to go through all that Thamus is reported to have said for and against each of Theuth’s inventions. But when it came to writing, Theuth declared, “Here is an accomplishment, my lord the King, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom.” To this, Thamus replied, “Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...
This data effectively disproves the statement "Standards of living have decreased in much of the US and EU".
It might already be too late to stop catastrophic climate change, so we need to cut down dramatically right now. Not in 5 years or later.
Without things like high carbon tax and credits in place we just don't have the incentive structure to get enough innovation and wide adoption to make a difference with technology in a meaningful timeframe. Instead we still have countries subsidies or give tax cut to fossil fuel companies. It's bonkers.
We could solve this with technology in the needed timeframe, but I don't see the political will and ability to create the right incentives and get this done globally in the needed timeframe.
We could probably cut back dramatically, maybe even to zero, in 5 years. But it would require more than just the technology today. It would require massive political and lifestyle changes.
Instead of degrowth, what about just taxing high-income conspicuous consumption, for example a tax on luxury cars, boats.
I have no opinion on whether this will require human population reduction (and I hope not) but definitely economic reduction is in our future. Whether that will be through catastrophic climate change + large-scale migration + war, or whether it will be through conscious effort to avoid such worse case scenarios is still up to us. For now, it seems we are chosing the former.
Start doing something about climate change then.
Something that seems to be missed in these discussions is that the argument over how bad the impacts will actually be (vs how bad the childfree people think it'll be) aren't actually relevant. It is a problem and the issue is that we've largely tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. That creates a feeling that we're incapable of solving any of societies problems which is probably the psychological root of the issue.
And wanking about fusion reactors doesn't start fixing anything.
We can't even do anything to eliminate and shut down scam phone call schemes, which is a problem created entirely by technology.
Start doing things to address climate change, address wealth inequality, address private issues caused by technology and other technology ills rather than just blindly hoping that more technology will magically fix the problems caused by prior technology. Those would all increase confidence. Right now what we have is a crisis of confidence in society on the whole.
I'd argue that technology and science is the problem, not the solution. For instance, fusion reactors would simply give us more energy to destroy ecosystems faster than what we can do now.
Kind of hard when so many reject these things.