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Comment by mikercampbell | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how bad it will be, but I'm just tired. I'm tired of living through "once in a life time events" every decade or less.

I'm tired of the world insisting that every company must be growing in order to be valuable, and then when growth stagnates, people ditch it to cause massive losses.

Can we not just have moderate success? Can we create a system that doesn't self implode every so often? Can we create a system where making money at all costs (including the decimation of the planet, the wage-slave workforce, and the engorging and toppling of governments through cronyism) isn't the the default?

I have to remember that people are _generally_ good. I have faith in the next generation of leaders, thinkers, and doers. What will happen will happen, but I have hope that the youth who have seen wave after wave of "being at the brink" might be able to create a system where this isn't the norm.

That's a ramble, sorry. But it's just what I'm feeling. I have to ride this wave, take care of my partner and children, do what I can for others, and hope it ends soon.

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> Can we not just have moderate success?

Step outside of the news and step outside of cutting-edge tech companies and moderate success is basically the norm. There are many companies out there that are chugging along, doing okay but not really shooting for the moon. They're not making headlines or coming across your social media feeds as the hottest companies around, though, so you're not going to see them unless you go looking.

The catch, of course, is that the average moderately successful company pays a lot less than the average high-growth startup company. You might find that you're less pressured, of course, so it's not exactly unfair. However, many of us are drawn to high-paying companies, and high-paying companies generally correlate strongly with high-growth expectations.

IME the vast majority of startups actually pay terribly, because they can lure a bunch of inexperienced people in with the prospect of making buck in the longer term. I'm sure there are startups which pay well, but I suspect they are a small minority, working on things which are even less likely than normal to become a unicorn.

I don’t think the above commenter was referring to startups. It’s very easy to fall into the though that all tech companies are either FAANGS, Unicorns or Startups.

The vast majority of tech companies are ones you’ve probably never heard of. They don’t pay spectacularly like the SV shops but they don’t underpay either.

I currently work for an digital agency in Ohio. You probably have never heard of them and you likely never will. They don’t make headlines but they’ve chugged along for over a decade, making a healthy business out of building applications for local companies in Ohio as well as some larger companies you have definitely heard of.

Companies like these are the majority, but you never hear about them because the media is focused on a few select companies, mostly consumer tech, that everyone’s heard of and generate headlines.

> Can we not just have moderate success?

Sure, but Hacker News is a strange place to lament about that.

The country is full of exactly what you're looking for. Go work in an IT department in a medium size business, or a non-profit. Join a consulting group that does software development outside a major metropolitan area. Join a software company that's been around for 20-30 years running the same product. Join the software development team at a company who focuses on the development of their internal proprietary applications.

(I'm not insulting these place. I spent half my career at them. There's nothing wrong with them. They're just different. And they tend not to have the focus on growth.)

There's a lot of companies doing exactly what you want. They just don't make the headlines. And they're definitely not talked about on Hacker News. It's a bit like vegetarian showing up at a steakhouse & acting surprised.

Great point. That said, I read the OP as complaining about the boom-bustiness of the world and modern life in general for everyone, not limiting the perspective to just one's employment, nor limited just to the perspective of if one is a software engineer. A stable job helps a lot but does not totally insulate you.

Hang on, what mid-sized independent software companies have been around with the same corporate ownership since 1992?

In today's world of corporate growth via acquisition, having a modestly successful job with a modestly successful mid-sized company in no way insulates you from the economic forces of the outside world.

Legitimate modest success tends to result either in a series of endless acquisitions where a mid-size business gets absorbed into incrementally larger businesses time after time - or where the business gets acquired by one of the larger, monolithic players in the industry. With any acquisition, restructurings, layoffs and product changes have substantial impact on those moderately successful staffers.

Alternately, stagnation or modest decline typically results in vulnerability to market forces which results again in a buyout by another player in the market, or a buyout by a private equity group who cuts costs, lays off staff, and tries to leverage whatever assets they can to maximize their return at the expense of the business itself. The effects on the staffers are even worse.

Sure, you can find a boring, moderately successful job for yourself. It may last 5, even 10 years. But the days of being able to have a modestly successful, boring job with the same company for 30 years appear to be completely gone.

I'm tired of seeing the people who caused the 2008 financial crisis not going to prison, and things like the Mossack Fonseca leaked panama papers being a hot news item for maybe a few days and then disappearing.

There is so much to be tired from. Lots of stuff repeats itself over and over again and nothing (seemingly) ever changes. Only yesterday the mass shooting in Texas. I'm not a US citizen, but every time I wonder how many times more do US people need to suffer before finally changing 'something'. I'm not in for a political discussion about a solution, but it should be obvious that there is a problem. No other country has this problem (on that scale). How many times more?

You need to take a break from social media. You’re not even a US citizen but US news tires you?

I certainly don’t lose sleep over what happens in Australia for example.

I don't have social media (the big ones). I rarely read news papers. Nevertheless I don't miss bigger events. This is actually not about a specific event. You must have misunderstood me.

What's tiring (and turns people cynic) is, that even though a problem is visible for everyone to see, nothing ever (seemingly) changes. That seems like a universal behavior that can not only be seen in the US, but everywhere humans are involved.

The US people aren’t suffering. Unless you count first world problems

Working class people suffer in every downturn. It is very difficult to break out of paycheck-to-paycheck when you’re working for $7.25 an hour. When I worked for minimum wage they still took out close to 30% so increased gas prices hurt (have to get to work to get money!) cars break down (can’t afford a reliable car because they’re more expensive) food is expensive (can’t afford to eat cheap and healthy because working all the time). God help you if you need medical care or get sick and miss work, or have an unexpected $500 expense. Or have an expensive vice like smoking or drinking.

If you’re trapped in that rut like tens of millions of people are in the US, a downturn hurts.

I’m currently not in that rut, but I count my blessings every day that I escaped and a feel for people who are.

Idk where you're from, but people are definitely struggling in the US relative to the system they're stuck in, and "first world problems" in its usual usage is not relevant in these regards.

Are you assuming that only those who have it worst can truly suffer?

Or are you in possession of the true meaning of the word 'suffer' and stand above us all to decide whether someone is suffering or not?

Without being actually affected by all this (not a US citizen), I can say that your comment is flawed either way.

Your comment reminded me of this handy chart regarding the developed world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

WHA8m says >" but it should be obvious that there is a problem."<

It being so "obvious", perhaps you could clearly state the problem. And then you might possibly also have a solution (as do so many commentators today)?

If you've studied complex social systems (e.g., the USA's socio-political environment) nothing is "obvious" about them and most "solutions" prove to be illusory.

-"Life is a bitch and then you die."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/10/16/life-hard/

Dude, really?

The problem being that every 3 month there is a mass shooting with about 20 casualties. Including schools.

How about you also read the first part of the sentence you cited me on:

> I'm not in for a political discussion about a solution

I explicitly stated that I am not in for that. For the exact reason you want to blame me for. Maybe read more careful next time or put up a little more good will. Especially on a delicate topic like this.

CEO's learned to never put anything controversial on record. They imply to underlings dodgy requests so they can blame them later if bleep hits the fan.

> people are _generally_ good

People came up with the idea of good, being good is essentially acting in consensus with society therefore it is unsurprising that most people are good.

I disagree. “Goodness”, which I think is more accurately “fairness” is an emergent behavior of social species. The idea of helping others who need it, wanting to be treated (roughly) equally by peers, and avoidance of doing things that hurts others (at least within a tribe) are all things that can be seen in more than just humans.

Maybe the idea of “goodness” is a layer on top of that, created by consciousness, but it’s not a completely invented thing by society just to make people conform.

It's just a mechanism to enable more efficient, larger scale cooperation to kill the folks next valley over who have the less efficient version.

I think that people are generally neutral rather than good. Most of us conform to social norms and do what is expected of us and no more. It's a pretty severe lowering of the bar to consider that good in my opinion. We are neutral and generally motivated by harmless self interest for ourselves and families.

There are people who are genuinely good and almost without fail, they are people who have devoted their lives to helping others. Often they fly under the radar and aren't very well off. They don't make the news but you know one when you meet them and they have a huge impact on those around them.

There are also bad people, if you'll forgive the Marvel level depth of that proclamation. There are people who make the world worse, usually for their own benefit or entertainment.

Generally I think 95+% of people are neutral - just minding their own business. Is that virtuous, or just the minimum?

I lean towards thinking 15% of people are good 15% are bad and 70% are distributed somewhere in between but mostly follow the herd/social conventions.

Life is hard. That's just the plain truth.

But we have it much easier than previous generations. We've got better health, wonderful technology, more information than ever before. There's less poverty and less disease. Less racism. More empathy.

Consider the folks who were around for WWI. It was followed by a flu outbreak, huge stock market crash, Great Depression, then WWWII and Korean conflict.

Life is hard. But we don't have it so bad.

> Life is hard. But we don't have it so bad.

That doesn't mean that there aren't parties that are responsible for much of our current troubles - be it the state of the education/healthcare systems, the state of the housing market, the state of salaries/wages, environmental issues, human rights, as well as the ever growing trend of identity politics and a variety of other issues.

It is also not infeasible that these problems might have actionable solutions and that change for the better would actually be possible with lots of effort. Ergo, accepting things as they are because "it could be worse" isn't a valid stance that would motivate one for whatever actions are necessary to improve the world in whatever capacity possible - be it protests, exercising your rights to vote, or calling out problematic behavior.

We are in agreement, we should not just accept the status quo. We should vote, call out inequalities, strive for efficient government, etc. This is how we advanced from prior states to where we are today. We simply keep going, and keep improving.

The system works. (Maybe not as fast as we like sometimes, but it absolutely works.)

> Life is hard. But we don't have it so bad.

Life is relative. It's not an argument to say "yea but we're better than the Ancient Egyptians!" So what? That isn't meaningful.

Using World War 1 really tells. That was a century ago. No one is even alive from then anymore.

You're meant to live through a lot of "once in a life time events" every decade or less. There are many different "once in a life time events", and they are spread out throughout your entire life.

Rather misses the point of 3 once in a lifetime recessions in the space of 23 years.

What gave you the impression recessions only happen once in a lifetime?

More like once in a decade, and recent ones are substantially smaller than in previous centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...

Current standard of living is predicated on 3-4% annual growth. All developed countries incur massive debts, hoping that, thanks to growth, it will not be hard to pay off 10-20 years into the future.One of the biggest component of this are state and public pensions. So yeah, we could live without constant high growth, but it would mean living within our means and not borrowing against the future. In practice, that would lower standard of living for everyone (not retiring to Florida etc.).

It is usually like < 1% of people causing all the destruction and mayhem using the apathy of the masses.

> I'm not sure how bad it will be, but I'm just tired. I'm tired of living through "once in a life time events" every decade or less.

Recessions aren’t once in a lifetime?

> I'm tired of the world insisting that every company must be growing in order to be valuable

They don’t. It’s just the growth companies don’t pay dividends

> and then when growth stagnates, people ditch it to cause massive losses.

Because it’s price is speculation on future profits which would create future dividends

> Can we not just have moderate success?

Yeah

> Can we create a system that doesn't self implode every so often?

Not really, but we can make the implosions less severe

> Can we create a system where making money at all costs (including the decimation of the planet, the wage-slave workforce, and the engorging and toppling of governments through cronyism) isn't the the default?

> I have to remember that people are _generally_ good. I have faith in the next generation of leaders, thinkers, and doers. What will happen will happen, but I have hope that the youth who have seen wave after wave of "being at the brink" might be able to create a system where this isn't the norm.

Seems dubious to me. We will do better on some select issues but mostly otherwise the same

“Recessions aren’t once in a lifetime?“

Depends on where you are. Parts of Latin America have been in an economic pit since the late 70s - I guess you could say “once in a lifetime” - for some people, their entire lifetimes have been spent in a state of economic crisis.

Yeah but for functioning economies, you can expect a recession every 10-20 years, with smaller corrections more often.

I remember the talk about "stagflation" in the 1970s, though I was too young to really understand it. The boom economy that started in the 1980s crashed in 2000. I remember that well as I lost my job. In 2008 I was working in the public sector and my employment was unaffected, I also didn't have any mortgages with stupid terms, and didn't need any of my retirement investments yet so I just rode that one out. So a recession in 2022, especially given the past two years, is maybe a bit early but not really surprising.

Not especially familiar but is it really a 50 year recession and not just stagnation

More economic and political seige and sabotage than anything that might be misconstrued as a "natural" economic fluctuation or condition.

Parts of Latin America have been specifically targeted by capitalist nations worried about the spread of South American influence on the neoliberal world order they control.

Amen. The continual hysteria about "growth" is goddamned annoying. Things can't grow forever. Can't they just make a healthy living?

Meanwhile, what the U.S. should be doing is ruthlessly cracking down on de facto monopolies and oligopolies that are ripping off Americans and making record profits, like meat... baby formula... and most of all TicketMaster.

This is all fundamentally driven by the Red Queen effect. If you focus on quality living, somebody else will just sprint a bit harder and destroy you.

This is supposed to be Free Enterprise's incentive to keep you competitive, i.e., you will lose it all if you don't keep your sprinting top notch. This is the nature of disruption. Look at what Uber did to the taxi industry (and the value of taxi medallions in NYC).

Oligarchies offer a way to buffer this effect, so that there can be several companies existing in an industry that slow-walk (disruptive) innovation and buy up competitors in their early stages. Hard to say how long an oligarchy can hold, though. Look at Intel & AMD, and how they're facing a serious test from ARM chips. Even further, what will the onset of Quantum Computing do to the market holds they have.

Free enterprise's nature as winner-take-all is what makes the difference here. Why was it that Friendster, Myspace, and Second Life could all co-exist, but when FaceBook came along they went defunct (mostly). In a more extreme example, consider robotics/AI and how it will replace humans. When robotic surgery is perfected, will 'manual' surgery even be considered 'safe' anymore?

From a geopolitical competitive lens, no.

All that would mean is a replacement of the world order and an even further degradation of quality of life.

Many of those same monopolies exist as a result of US agencies regulating companies in to non-existence. The ones the that you call monopolies happen to be the survivors.

When in history was what you're asking for possible for as long as you're asking for it?

Does not seem reasonable, tbh...

> people are _generally_ good

generally means they are average which means half of the people are even worse!

I think Australia is the option to take in that situation. The American Dream is to build something huge out of nothing, sell it for a billion dollars, and poorly compensate the non dreamers who worked hard to make it happen.

What does Australia mean to you? It's a whole country, a complex object, but you seem to use the word as though it has some obvious meaning in this context - that meaning isn't immediately apparent to me, as an Australian

Mostly the lifestyle in larger cities - Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney.

You still have a family unit, that's not too individualistic but also not too tribal. You have technological and military progression, and a fairly comfortable stable economy. You don't have to worry about billions of dollars in corruption or an aggressive president using nuclear weapons in negotiations. Nor are there the wars and tensions of the middle east or eastern Europe.

I left Australia a few years ago because it is rapidly becoming a highly corrupt police state. Chinese influence is rife. National security laws have legalised mass surveillance and undermined all sense of IT security and personal privacy. Major journalists have been raided without reasonable justification. Basic human rights ratified in the Geneva Conventions are no longer upheld such as the right to leave the country, or for citizens to return. The average person with 'moderate success' will struggle to even own a home, and the climate is very hot already; so I don't forecast much hope for high quality of life relative to other highly developed nations, especially for the HN demographic that cares about digital infrastructure. So I disagree in general, since Australia has its own fears to worry about

Ah, wasn't aware of that. Last time I was in Australia was about 10 years back, so my perception could very well be wrong.

Sums it up pretty well actually. Life isn’t so easy in Australia anymore, I guess thats what happens when realestate has indebted the entire population. Personally, Id rather buy something in Europe for a fraction of the price, with more freedoms and liberties.

Yep as an Aussie, can confirm our various leadership's regressive slide into greed, corruption and loathing these past 10 years.

I've had several European co-workers express disbelief at the gross levels of corruption evident at all levels of large business and government (especially when the latter is buying something from the former and large sums are splashed about wastefully to line pockets of the pencil pushers).

Hopefully the recently elected new Labor-led coalition govt will follow up on their promise to implement anti-corruption trials of various members of the previous government, who were blatantly stealing taxpayer money, via their offshore Cayman Islands family trust accounts and similar.

After the recent election defeat, we now have an ex-cop opposition political leader who "somehow" is now worth $300 Million, not an inheritance, but most probably various corrupted kickbacks from giving out overly expensive contracts (it's been famously called "The Game of Mates"). And he is just one of dozens of obviously over-wealthy liars.

The list of people involved is huge at many levels, and I hope several of these people end up in jail, but the damage is already done (e.g. cancelled Fibre-to-the-Home rollout, and we already spent double the fibre costs to purchase Murdoch+Telstra copper cable instead, for only 1% the bandwidth capability).

Personal quality of life here can be excellent, especially if you earn 50% over the average wage, which is any 5+ years experience software developer role.

Just don't work for old bigbiz or govt if you want to avoid dealing with sleazy theiving weasels.

www.MichaelWest.com.au

and

"Friendly Jordies" (on YouTube)

are two of the best investigative journalists here, and helped sway the vote in the last election.

Change is coming and the exposed corruption will be a force for greater public accountability in the future (hopefully!)

I recommend watching videos from juice media, funny and informative, showing corruption and shitfuckery in Australia - https://www.youtube.com/user/thejuicemedia/videos

This actually convinces me that things are great in Australia, if those are the worst issues.

We are truly the "lucky country" - even a derogatory term has been misunderstood by the general population as a compliment.

You can go a long way with incompetent leadership if you can dig stuff out of the ground and sell it.

> I'm tired of living through "once in a life time events" every decade or less.

The world is getting "smaller". An ever smaller group of people can create bigger chaos than they could in the past, be it hacking, 3D printed WMD's, or Tweeting hate. We have entered the Century of Trolls.

“Once in a lifetime events”

You’ve been misled. While the exact details may be once in a lifetime, expect world shaking events every 10ish or less years.

Sounds like you want regulation, comrade.

Are you now, or have you ever been... poor?

Think of the 20th century and people dealing with WWII and perpetual nuclear threat of the cold war? The world is too complex to be free of instability, free market capitalism makes it less so. Consider that developed democracies seldom fight with each other.

Cyclical collapse in capitalistic system is built-in. Risk tolerance expands slowly over time and then collapsed dramatically when the system is unsustainable, then restart.

Yeah the world was just really stable and peaceful before capitalism came around.

The comment you're replying to didn't imply otherwise.

> Eating and breathing in the capitlistic system is built in.

See why people don't say this even though it's true? Because the only reason to point this out is to imply causality and to point out that it's different than some other system.

Saying that something exists in one system does not imply that it does not exist in no other system. At best, it implies it it does not exist in some other systems.

Modern societies seem incredibly averse to allowing recessions take their natural course these days.

There has been unprecedented money printing in tough times that doesn't revert to mean before the next economic crisis comes along. This results in huge misallocation of resources and a lot of long term negative consequences all to avoid short term pain.

At some point the developed governments on Earth will have their hand forced rather than playing god with the economic cycle.

"Avoiding short term pain at the cost of long term consequences" is the cause of most instances of civilizational collapse.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/indiana-jones-collapsed-...

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