[acdanger]

It's exceedingly depressing and it's one of the reasons I can't stomach the Bay Area.

It doesn't take long to notice serious manifestations of societal rot. And yet some of the brightest minds of our generation spend their best years trying to get people to spend more of their cognitive surplus on mindlessly staring at their device screen.

I'm not at all saying this is tech's fault. I think the problem is much more systemic. But that doesn't make it any less troublesome.

[hasbroslasher]

I completely agree. It's not tech's fault at all - tech companies prey on our basic neural hardware as much as fast-food companies do, as much as predatory banks do, and all for the same reason: to generate capital.

Luckily, I think I'm starting to see more people waking up to smell the societal rot that tech has helped foster, and people are becoming more motivated to fight it. I'm just waiting to see if tech folks can mobilize to push for causes like socialism during my lifetime. That would be the ultimate "Revenge of the Nerds" story line at this point.

[intended]

I read a line from a book review by Krugman where he says “free trade is not as important as saving the planet.”

The context was the unlikely event of the WTO calling fouls if America and a few other regions levied carbon tariffs on imported goods.

Of course, The article was written in 2013, and it’s cyncisim would be considered wildly optimistic in today’s climate.

But perhaps his point is wrong.

Perhaps for humans, it is free trade that is more important than the planet.

Free trade is effectively our distributed human brain. Our ability to make choices and distributing those choices down information trees encompassed by entire industries.

Society is one big exercise in managing complexity - obfuscating or dispersing away decisions and information.

And maybe for human beings, that is just more important than saving the coral reefs or the elephants.

The insects may die, so we lose almonds and other flowering trees. That just means almonds and other precious species disappear.

But most human beings don’t even get almonds, Or meat, or fruit, as part of their diet anyways.

It would be nice to save other species, but if the whole planet was just covered in bio crop species 1-299, and a few aesthetics, humanity would be alive and ok.

Perhaps the awful truth is that for humanity as a species, free trade and economic growth is more important than saving the planet.

[stcredzero]

It's not tech's fault at all - tech companies prey on our basic neural hardware as much as fast-food companies do

Do you think tech can solve the problem of homeless addiction? There actually aren't that many homeless in the Bay Area.

There is only one problem with socialism. There is no check and balance on the amount of appropriation, which cannot be voluntary. Unchecked power eventually leads to oppression. Systems which you can't opt out of often lead to evil. (This may apply to Capitalism, but there it's somewhat ameliorated by creative destruction.)