Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ItsMe000001 2971 days ago
> with fewer easily processable resources available

I don't think that that is true. For one, the meaning of "easily" shifts all the time, second, I don't see the problem when people actually have something worthwhile to do with their lives.

I am very concerned about what we do to the environment (as someone who had chronic heavy metal poisoning treated by chelators in a university clinic when I hear about mercury in sea fish it actually has a deep personal meaning), but that is a different issue than resource extraction (which of course may make the environmental situation even worse).

On the other hand, I see researching and developing capabilities to understand and manipulate the environment on a large scale much much better as a very worthwhile economic endeavor. For example, this also gives us a starting point for future projects in space, including "terraforming". It's obviously something we could have lots of fun developing - instead of selling insurance, "financial tools" (on top of financial tools), and other BS "products". People working in that sector, which could very well be(come) a major part of humanity, would not have the problem of finding their job meaningless, as so many do today. That the control system we use to steer humanity is incapable of steering us into such an obviously useful and worthwhile direction, but instead steers us towards environmental destruction, creating meaningless jobs, gets people to cheat one another like there's no tomorrow and being honest actually takes a real effort tells me our control system is really bad and out of control. Th eproblem is that the control system (e.g. "finance") has become the final target, instead of being seen as a tool. Instead of optimizing the tool for society we try to optimize society for the tool ("everybody has to be in the stock market - for retirement!" -- Wallstreet approves).