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Comment by someguy7250 | Hacker News Reader

People don't really like each other enough to work for a positive future. And yet they all want to live in a populous city with amazing opportunities/infrastructure/environment/etc

That's the problem.

If technology is so advanced and if solar panels are getting cheaper, why aren't we building new cities in the desert? (Or, why aren't we bringing new techs to small towns that already exist?)

If everyone is so tired of planned obsolescence and not owning their devices, why aren't we making new industries based on sustainable, repairable, open source phones?

There could be whole new towns running an economy on producing sustainable hardwares and then selling the repair parts. It wouldn't be a lot of money. But if everything we use is repairable and sustainable, we wouldn't need a lot of money.

Maybe I am just silly to hope for such a future?

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I think you are projecting your interests onto the population at large, planned obsolescence of phones is not really a major concern for most people.

And if you are starting out by asking people to accept a poorer lifestyle because it will be sustainable and repairable, you are setting yourself up to lose.

I don't even agree that these are choices we necessarily have to make - I think we are getting closer and closer to sustainable growth, not merely subsistence.

True. I am not asking people to just accept anything though.

If you want growth, have at it. When my phone completely breaks, I would love to get a better hardware with more features.

> There could be whole new towns running an economy on producing sustainable hardwares and then selling the repair parts. It wouldn't be a lot of money. But if everything we use is repairable and sustainable, we wouldn't need a lot of money.

> Maybe I am just silly to hope for such a future?

Not silly- that's the future we need

The desert may have unlimited power with the sun, but they don't have easy access to water.

Moreso, the opportunities exist in the coasts as that's where the inertia of import/export of both goods and humans are.

Hopefully one day we will be advanced enough to start transforming the desert. It's not an easy task and I don't know enough about science or economics to say it's definitely feasible. It's just a hope.

And if people would hope for that then they would be willing to improve existing small towns too.

I don't like this trend that we all move to major cities and compete for scraps of lands and housing.

> If technology is so advanced and if solar panels are getting cheaper, why aren't we building new cities in the desert?

Why would we build cities in the desert? It's a lot easier to generate power in the desert and transport it to other places, than it is to supply cities in the desert with water, and increased energy costs due to having to run A/Cs 24-7-365.

If it's a question of land, there's plenty of land in places with water and better climate.

Yup that's a better idea.

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