[lrdswrk00]

Conversion of water into money is arbitrary; people need to eat.

Food isn’t a luxury. It’s a biological necessity and it need not be coupled to financial markets. We’ll grow food because we must.

Remember; fiscal economics were sold to a dumber general public by then poorer educated, yet rich, men.

Anyone clinging to their ways as an economic philosophy is effectively letting people who hadn’t come up with indoor plumbing dictate who we are.

[username90]

You can just use less water hungry crops for that, would also greatly reduce the risks of a drought. The reason it isn't done now is that water hungry crops pays better and farmers doesn't pay the real cost of the water.

[only_as_i_fall]

Ok and what's the plan when California's groundwater is depleted?

[lrdswrk00]

That’s up to the people occupying California at the time.

Humanity is doomed. I’m not saying we should accelerate it by leaning into YOLO.

But along with accepting our own personal mortality we might consider it’s time to socially accept our species mortality.

We don’t need to solve this problem right now and any work towards a solution isn’t guaranteed to last beyond our lifetimes, for numerous reasons outside our control.

Science provides the best model for understanding what economic activity our environment can sustain. Maybe it’s time to be the exceptional and gritty people we tell stories about being and rather than solve California’s eventual problem, try to hold it off by reducing or eliminating markets for bullshit.

Or we can pretend we’ll engineer our way out of a problem we have no idea how much time we really have to solve and cross our fingers like it’s a football game and feudal market economics thinking we’re simulating chaotic reality when it’s obvious political collusion and protectionism are occurring.

I wonder which way we’ll go

[samatman]

Feels weird to invoke the Lindy Effect on Hacker News, but here we are.

The general premise (and Taleb didn't come up with this) is that for a phenomenon with no natural lifespan, you should assume you're halfway through its actual lifespan.

Biologically modern humans are about 100,000 years old, so I put our tombstone at 102021 A.D.

Now that could be wrong... in either direction! But I'm inclined to plan for the future such that we're as comfortable as we can be for the next hundred millennia.

[lrdswrk00]

Seems presumptuous you would know what comfort means to humans in 100 millennia.

All while ignoring the discomfort millions within your own country experience today.

How nice of you to white knight for a future you won’t be around to witness and ignore reality as it is now.

I suppose reality now is too hard. May as well just keep going as you are and cross your fingers it matters in “100 millennia”.

That’s some self aggrandizing nonsense.

I have no respect for my countrymen. Still lost to imaginings of forever life. Even the ones who should know better.