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Comment by withinboredom | Hacker News Reader

It depends on what you value, right? There are hard limits on the number of people any plot of land can handle and feed. Stagnation is probably a good thing. Always “doing more” isn’t always a good thing. It’s not a zero-sum game where there is some kind of competition.

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Stagnation isn't "a good thing" when you're comparing to societies that are progressing. And it may be a zero sum game, when stagnating nations are drained of talent and brains, so this model is even less sustainable, as anyone who can do better leaves, and the rest are left to support those who don't do particularly well.

Yes, but what is “progress” right now? Move to a country where you can make infinite money (a gamble) but lose it all as soon as you get sick? Or move to another one where every move is monitored and watched? Or where you need a phone to do the most basic things, where you are stranded with no way to eat until you charge your phone?

Progress may not always be good, at least in today’s times it basically means “more efficient extraction of wealth from the middle class”.

Let’s assume what you’re saying was true: doing less is better. Well just mechanically, a “evil” society that does more will attract more labor and capital than one that doesn’t. Any area of competition except “goodness” will be won by the evil country, such as space races, weapons development, and new technologies. That means the society which chooses to do less will be culturally, technologically, and militarily at the whims of the evil society. So the power dynamic will definitionally belong to the doing more society at the expense of the doing less one, and in the final state the goal of goodness by doing less has failed. This is a contradiction disproving the assumption .

Does a society “doing more” actually attract talent? I left one of those countries and essentially being called a 100x dev (not my words, I’m not convinced). I have many friends also leaving that country to come to the EU… so, I’m not sure that part of your premise is valid.

Sure if you can find a geography where your benefits are greater than your costs compared to a different, by definition that is doing more - efficiency is great. Reducing costs doesn’t always mean a net reduction in output; if I can work 1 hour a day and earn enough to fill my remaining hours with happy activities, that’s clearly less productive than working 8 hours a day and not having time to do what I want. Of course usually what happens for many people is they work less, get less, and don’t find a way to happily use the free time. That’s why people are constantly trying to migrate to countries with relatively higher productivity. Obviously not your case.

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