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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

A lot of core services in the US are near collapse, because society focuses on short-term value extraction, over long term success. If you look at the US's history, there was a much better balance between the two (with the core being seen as a lever towards future wealth).

You see this in education, infrastructure, public health, scientific research, housing, and energy. All foundational systems of a society, which compound the value of everything else, but they aren't immediate profit centers so kick the ball down the road.

It is an attitude problem first and foremost; and I'm not sure how you fix that.

PS - This also impacts private enterprise, like corporations. Enshittify their current offerings for the next quarter bump but ruin their brand reputation/long-term viability.

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I'd argue more that it's an incentive alignment problem. From the 70s on we changed the way a lot of the incentives work so corporations could more freely capture markets and a lot of Americans were convinced that this would help enrich them as well. All it's done is hollow out our social services and further consolidate wealth in this country. Ironically the people most hurt by these policies are the ones who keep voting for them so until we hit some catalyst inflection point where people can map the policies being enacted onto what's happening in their own lives this cycle will continue. Most Americans seem pretty ready to accept whatever bullshit makes them feel good so the beatings will either continue until morale improves or until everyone feels beaten enough to do something. Seems more likely it's the former than the latter.

> It is an attitude problem first and foremost; and I'm not sure how you fix that.

From a certain perspective, it should be easy: That balance is the norm that has persisted through centuries; the current situation is relativley very new.

I think the important question is, why has this attitude shifted - despite having obviously bad consequences - and how is that shift being sustained?

Through the right incentives, like repealing quarterly reporting requirements. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-sec-preparing-el...

Quarterly reporting requirements are clearly not the causal factor in short term incentives. All the best performing publicly listed businesses invest on decades long timelines risking billions and tens of billions of dollars.

Simultaneously, plenty of non publicly listed businesses make decisions that benefit in the short term at the expense of the long term.

Reducing quarterly reporting requirements does reduce transparency, however,

I don't think it's as much an 'attitude' problem as it is a 'wealth' problem.

The richest folk in this country have bought out every single media apparatus it can get its hands on and have spread decades of propaganda. The 'philanthropic' billionaire that spent wealth so that they could have a building or initiative named after them have vanished and gave their wealth to the methhead billionaires that rip up the wiring of the country to sell for pennies.

It can't be fixed because America is not a nation state.

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