Comment by ffsm8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ffsm8 | Hacker News Reader

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Or phrased differently: she struggled for her survival. It's a very physical one-off challenge that you can master (or not).

That's inherently very different to realizing that the golden era has basically passed and it's only gonna get worse from here, societally speaking.

None of the inherent issues our societies has had were solved. They've just become worse with every decade, inequality in particular has gotten worse with every technological advance, and it'd expect it to get meaningfully worse with LLMs now, too.

A select few will still get meaningfully richer, but - on average - their prospects for their future are a complete dumpster fire.

You (leobg) are likely right that people a few hundred years ago probably wouldn't have become depressed like Gen Z, Alpha and likely soon Beta too... But they'd probably long since taken up their arms, wiping out a good chunk of the population and consequently redistributing wealth to the survivers. Do you honestly think that'd be better for us?

Historically, the people taking up arms certainly did NOT distribute wealth if they won. Rather, the leaders of any successful rebellion just became the new elite and the poor remained the poor but with new leadership.

That’s not how it was among the Germanic peoples at least. They followed people who were called “gold-giver”. It was seen as the responsibility of the leader to bring wealth to his followers in exchange for their loyalty and courage. I think Christianity changed that expectation to some degree.

> It was seen as the responsibility of the leader to bring wealth to his followers in exchange for their loyalty and courage.

Replace the word wealth with prosperity and the same applies for your later example. The leader is just someone you can’t see, touch, or hear so is harder to displace.

You're looking at it very 1-dimensionally.

The war leaders certainly didn't literally distribute wealth to the conscripted people. Instead you had plundering, with the winners simply taking things and the dead were ... Well, outta the picture, consequently the survivors had the opportunity to become skilled craftsman and marry after their return, as most didn't survive (even if their side won).

Let's say a farmer family's children were all conscripted. 5 left and 2 returned. Before the war, 4 had few prospects. After the war, both will have prospects, one to succeed the farm and the other one as the husband to another farm that didn't have anyone return.

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