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Comment by InfinityByTen | Hacker News Reader

Food for thought: if a failure (of sorts) can make the successful rethink their ways of being, is that success missing the point, maybe?

A lot of ways of life in India are sustainable. In fact going the consumerist ways of West is a step in the opposite direction, given what all problems that has created for the planet. I think the motive of the piece is not the nostalgia of repairing, but how living with constraints births sustainability and how we all can learn from it (including India) and in fact foster it in a positive way :)

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>A lot of ways of life in India are sustainable. In fact going the consumerist ways of West is a step in the opposite direction, given what all problems that has created for the planet. I think the motive of the piece is not the nostalgia of repairing, but how living with constraints births sustainability and how we all can learn from it (including India) and in fact foster it in a positive way :)

Isn't this the degrowth ideology expressed in a slightly obfuscated way? Being poor is more "sustainable", because you don't have as much resources to consume.

I didn't know there was a term to it. I wouldn't think of my stance currently as advocating of purposeful scarcity in an anticipation of better distribution. Instead I do consider it critical to "take a step back" and "evaluate the problem statement at hand". Is the end goal more consumption or better living?

The end goal is progress and prosperity. Semiconductors are one of the few areas where there is rapid progress. Depriving your large working age population of the tools they need to improve their lives is counterproductive. The problem statement at hand is that you have a poor country plagued by graft and bureaucracy with the only sliver of hope being technology that can create upward mobility for your billion+ people.

> poor country plagued by graft and bureaucracy

Tells me how little you know about the country. And that's okay. There are several "rich" countries that are also plagued by graft and bureaucracy. And no, they aren't as happy as Economist indices would tell you.

There are two parts in this comment - poor country ; plagued by graft & bureaucracy

Latest Indus valley report[1] states that about 1Bn people (India3) are in economic condition equal to sub-saharan countries condition. In that sense large part of the country is still poor.

In response to minister Piyush Goel's rant in the latest startup event, a startup founder posted this on reddit which details how the country is plagued by graft & bureaucracy [2] . This is just one rant. Twitter is flooded with actual experience of many.

[1]: https://blume.vc/reports/indus-valley-annual-report-2024 [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StartUpIndia/comments/1js2y1s/piyus...

>Instead I do consider it critical to "take a step back" and "evaluate the problem statement at hand". Is the end goal more consumption or better living?

Except the context of this thread is talking about tariffs on laptops, not random trinkets from aliexpress. If someone is willing to part ways with $1000+ to get a laptop/phone, I think that's a pretty good sign the goal is "better living".

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