[aoleinik]

Out of curiosity, what _should_ the US be working on? The only two things I can think of that really needs more man hours is space travel and quantum computing, but those fields are generally far from being revenue generating and require mountains of initial investment.

I agree that ad tech and social media are net negatives, but what are the alternatives? A dead economy, where most of the money circulates on necessities?

Not asking this sarcastically or rhetorically - genuinely want some good insight on what people who say the current direction of the US is poor think the direction should be.

[axelroze]

Reorganization of work so that there are not many bullshit jobs => 15 hour work weeks for any knowledge work. The other time the people can work on something else and/or read about science and philosophy. A truly efficient society does not have people wasting time copy pasting stuff between Excel sheets. Eventually all work will become knowledge work through automation and robotic development brought by the new generation of critical-thinkers.

Removal of free (costless) social media. Everyone who uses social media must pay for the employee and hardware costs by the minute. End of ads and end of engagement. End of push notifications. If people gain time by working 15 hours a week but lose the gained time on social media then no good is created. There is some value in Social Media but it must be consumed a little otherwise it is poison. Similar for Netflix and TV.

Once people are free of bullshit work and of bullshit free time (facebook and instagram feeds) and all boring physical work is automated, we should look to the stars. The final frontier.

That is my hopefully doable utopia. Actually this is John Maynard Keynes year 2000 utopia expanded a bit. Society failed as we are 2021 now and 996 is the norm instead of 15 hour work weeks. Working more is not the solution. Working smart is. Also not everyone needs to have a job.

[TylerLives]

Medicine, robotics, social media that improves people's lives, maybe fix universities (or create an alternative. You can learn a lot on the internet, but social aspect of it can be improved), ...

[dnautics]

To some degrees with those two things if you do it wrong, "just adding man hours" to those endeavors can slow progress, not accelerate it