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Comment by throwaway132448 | Hacker News Reader

It’s unfortunate, but if you’re blaming the people in the thread for this, I think you’re directing your energy in the wrong direction. Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division and distraction instead. If you want people to appreciate the bigger picture, you can’t keep forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook. The HN that you’re presumably nostalgic for existed in a time when there was a lot more fat on the bone, and every efficiency hadn’t been extracted for nebulous benefit to the average person.

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Is there really less "fat on the bone" though? What metric are you tracking for that and what are the historical norms?

"forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook" -> social media?

Rather than assigning blame I think it's fair to ask the people here to behave. Maybe it's not their fault they spend their day doom scrolling and have the attention span of a cat but they do have agency to change that. [EDIT: This is an attempt at humor]

Isn't "Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division" asking for politics? The way we get at "those people" (and let's not even argue about who they are) is to regulate ourselves (or for the moderators to do that) and have a more substantive and positive discussion regardless of our perceptions.

> Is there really less "fat on the bone" though? What metric are you tracking for that and what are the historical norms?

It’s just my experience over the last 15 years. If it doesn’t align with yours, that’s nice to know.

> "forcing them to live on a shorter and shorter term outlook" -> social media?

Sure, but it could be lots of other things like 24hr news or the emergence of the gig economy.

> Isn't "Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division" asking for politics?

No it’s not, it’s asking for agency, personal accountability and self-awareness, as you yourself allude to. If that means politics for you, that’s up to you. I don’t imply to “get at” anyone, but to do best by ourselves instead of doing best by those who benefit from dividing or distracting us.

> It’s just my experience over the last 15 years. If it doesn’t align with yours, that’s nice to know.

I know it's the narrative that times are bad. But me, my coworkers, my neighbors, my local mall, etc. all seem to be doing really great. And look, moon mission! I would think that there are a lot of people in tech who are doing better than ever. We've also seen layoffs and I know it's hard for people to find a job. This is why I'm asking for metrics because I don't think it's actually as clear as the narrative that this is the worse over 15 years. The pandemic was pretty bad? We had the financial crisis? Gas prices were a lot higher in 2021 ... I guess as they say perception is 99% of reality ...

How often do you find yourself wondering how you'll be able to pay rent and your car payment during the month? What happens if you need to get dental work? Does that shift your calculus for expenses day to day? Not it in 2021 or whatever, but like this past week?

I’ve been there. I have friends who have been there in the last month. None of them reacted by projecting onto space exploration or science. It’s absolutely a choice as to what one channels one’s frustrations onto.

I've had a long career in tech and so for me and I assume people like me these are not concerns. I'm not doubting what you describe is the experience for many people.

I'm not American but I work with many Americans who are doing really well (also long careers in tech).

I'm old and I own my house but when I was younger I never leased a car, I always bought used cars that I could afford. So the question of making a car payment wasn't there. I always saved and compared prices in good times and bad times. I rented a cheap enough place to have enough safety margin.

Anyways, being a software engineer through the golden era of software engineering is not your typical person experience.

I still think we need to be more data driven in how we evaluate the state of the economy. The parent was suggesting it's the economic difficulties faced by people on this forum (presumably many in tech) that lead to shallow and political discussion and it's hard for me to gauge that.

tl;dr depending on old you are the bootstraps >> "when I was younger I never leased a car, I always bought used cars that I could afford. So the question of making a car payment wasn't there. I always saved and compared prices in good times and bad times. I rented a cheap enough place to have enough safety margin."

were still there. They've been notably missing/further and further out of reach depending on where you started these past 15 years. I would argue actually closer to 20.

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1970/demo/p60-72... https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/nrs/tables/time-ser... https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/housing-trends-visua... https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-american-income-vs-... https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe... https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo... https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-is-spent-on-personal-... https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/life-expectancy-vs-healt... https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-debt-by-year https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/is-the-stem-job-shortage-ov... https://issues.org/what-shortages-the-real-evidence-about-th... https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-ste... https://www.whatjobs.com/news/shocking-entry-level-job-exper... https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20198/s-e-labor-market-conditi... https://issues.org/stem-workforce-shortage-data-hira/ https://listwithclever.com/research/home-price-v-income-hist...

>> Rather than assigning blame I think it's fair to ask the people here to behave

First, are you not doing just that - blaming the people here for making you unhappy?

Second, you're welcome to demand this, but they/we are just as welcome to tell you to piss off.

As I was typing my reply I did pause to think about whether I am being part of the problem. I still decided to reply. My excuse is that I'm not the one who brought politics into this and I feel ok pushing back against that once others do.

> First, are you not doing just that - blaming the people here for making you unhappy?

I don't think so?

> Second, you're welcome to demand this, but they/we are just as welcome to tell you to piss off.

If the majority of people around here just want to argue politics non-stop and turn everything into that there's little I can do.

> There's little I can do

I use https://hackersmacker.org to mark them with a red dot so I can skip those comments. It's like slashdot's friend/foe system (including social aspect). There are also plugins that allow blocking and filtering users.

I'm, personally, here to interact with people interested in tech. I feel no shame in curating my experience to fit that. If I wanted to be saturated in politics, I would make a Reddit account.

> if you’re blaming the people in the thread for this, I think you’re directing your energy in the wrong direction

Much of the current environment is driven by the SF Bay Tech Elite/Culture.

Peter Thiel funded and enabled Curtis Yarvin, whose work was the backbone of the modern alt right, project 2025, etc. Plenty of tech VCs/elite are investing huge amounts in fighting effective government, pushing models of city states immune from regulation, policing the discourse, and more. Musk gets more press coverage than most but tons of folks who are either on HN, are connected to startups talked about here, etc. are primary forces driving what America has become.

or just don't bring politics to HN. it's not hard

>Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division and distraction

your comment is entirely politcal, i.e. contributing more to the problem.

qui bono? we for sure don't bono.

Choosing one (deliberately ambiguous) line to label the comment “entirely political” is the kind of thinking that explains why tribalism has been so effective.

"Focus on the people who foment and benefit from this division and distraction"

is a political statement. It says: "don't talk about the actual issue, instead let's go after the enemies, we know who they are." It doesn't say "let's find them", it assumes we know who they are.

Division and distraction are the actual issue though. And I didn’t say you have to go after anyone, only be mindful of them (see my reply to another comment). I left plenty of room in my words to project your own approach, because I care about the outcome, not how people should achieve it in their own particular world. If in your world that means “politics” you do you.

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