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by kzrdude 2353 days ago
When will incentives ever be aligned with one's own long term interests?

There is reason for despair, that competition to survive the day to day - everyone needs to get through their week, month and year - will always detract from the larger concerns about long term sustainability of our civilization and prosperity.
2 comments
CalRobert 2353 days ago
I worry that we have removed people's moral agency by normalizing huge debts for life's necessities. We have the technology to make housing and education cheap and plentiful, but instead create scarcities and credit to have leverage over the workforce and keep them working in ways they'd prefer not to. I mean, every day I think "but guys seriously shouldn't we use all these computers to work on the metaphorical asteroid heading for Earth??? guys??" But we don't, myself included, because bills.
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bamboozled 2353 days ago
I’ve thought about this a lot too. You feel stuck inside a vortex against your will at times.
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igorkraw 2353 days ago
> When will incentives ever be aligned with one's own long term interests?

Once we've installed a good global governance system (imo some form of confederation of confederation ala Switzerland) that democratically aggregates preferences and can align the incentives.

People like to act like competition is inevitable, forgetting that the main hegemon of the last 50 years has competition as a large part of it's ideology (and all the runner ups are not democratically legitimised in the sense people in Europe or the US would consider enough). It's not a law of physics, it's part of a system that can be changed.

So I'd disagree. The time for despair is when you are dead, or can no longer try to improve things. Now there's work to do

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Fjolsvith 2353 days ago
> Once we've installed a good global governance system (imo some form of confederation of confederation ala Switzerland) that democratically aggregates preferences and can align the incentives.

This is wishful thinking with more than half the world not involved in democratic governance. But be of good cheer. There's profit to be made where there's crisis.

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