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Comment by ButyTh0 | Hacker News Reader

Why do we have to get by as you say? On whose command?

Why do we always act like there's an immutable social obligation to march right along believing the prior generations had freedom to start marching in that direction, but we are forever locked in to such a direction.

You know all the people that made those choices are dying and future generations have zero obligation to carry on linearly from where they left off?

Women would not have the right to vote. We'd all be speaking Latin.

Two things that would remain true if society of the living was tightly coupled to exactly how the past worked.

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The original comment has conflated every ill into "have to", combined with political fatalism. Not unreasonable given the way things have turned out, but yes it's not inevitable either. It's just the direction of travel that the majority chose.

Certain "have to" are imposed by the physical world. The world will have to use less oil in 2026 than in 2025, because production has been so heavily impacted by the war. What happens beyond that .. well, only a fairly small number of people get to make that decision. Next US presidential election is in 2028.

This is a valid point but I’m struggling to understand what it has to do with the gp comment.

The reality is the West has been leaning on cheap labour for decades. That can’t continue as the rest of the world is catching up.

This is a good thing even though it will be painful for people used to consuming cheap goods from Asia and other parts of the world.

>> That can’t continue as the rest of the world is catching up.

This has already been happening quietly in several industries.

I remember many years ago when I was working in a bike shop (early aughts) and the Specialized engineer was talking about how Taiwan used to be the brunt of the jokes in the bike world for decades. He went on a rather long rant about how over that same time, they had essentially dumped billions into becoming a technological behemoth when it came to bike manufacturing. Their factories were so far advanced, and their engineers were so highly qualified, that many bike companies (including Specialized) were moving their manufacturing back to states because it had become too expensive to continue using the Taiwan factories.

Your comment is devoid of content, of substance. Just more parroting of obligations that do not exist.

You're not struggling to understand my comment. You're struggling to think altogether when your argument is "well because random political choice in 1979, we must today in 2026..." type reductive, functional illiteracy.

But ok; we must coddle the past to satiate some. Well, debt jubilees are things humans have done before. Wipe the ledger and start counting again. What is grandpa going to do? Rise from the grave?

> What is grandpa going to do? Rise from the grave?

If he did, he'd jump right back in

As an obscure 19th century theorist once said, history does not walk on its head. That is, it is not ideas or sentiment that make the difference, but processes and the actually existing relations among people.

If you don't have the guts to pick a side, if you remain at the level of just disciplining sentiment, if you can't even say what you mean, then you are no better than a swindling preacher--you are part of the problem you are nominally fighting against.

Or is this just dead internet?

> Just more parroting of obligations that do not exist.

What obligations did I mention?

You seem to want to say something whether it has any relation to the parent comments or not.

There's the obligation to validate your expectations.

When in reality we're all off the hook caring you even exist.

You don't have to do anything, nobody cares about individuals when you have 8 billions. The masses, on average, want cheap simple fun, cheap stuff and so on. Market responds. Good luck trying to change that.

Sure, there is some market manipulation, ads are the best example (how can any adult with even a smidge of self-respect accept any ads in any form is beyond me, thats mind slavery 101) but since forever masses wanted bread and games more than literally anything.

All those companies making high quality expensive products that lasted decades? Barring tiny exceptions, they either went down with quality (less control, move to china etc) or went bankrupt.

Parent is right in 1 aspect - if we elevate whole world to similar income levels, the income of previously-rich countries will have much less purchasing power, can't escape simple numbers. But who cared in the past about slave kids in sweat shops, right, they didn't have the right skin color, passport or religion to worry about.

"Good luck going to the moon!"

"It's impossible." They said.

"Simple" numbers generated by Machiavellian computation given the economy.

So it turns out that difficult computation and going to the moon are possible.

Problem you asserted as in the way is solved.

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