[oraphalous]

Reminds me a quite a bit of the plot line from Liu Cixin's The Dark Forest. When aliens are set to wipe out humanity in 400 years, the idea of a small number of elites escaping in generation ships is so abhorrent to the masses that would be left behind, that 'Escapism' is deemed a crime and banned.

I wonder if among civilisations generally in the universe, this resentment is so common, it could be counted as a "hard step" in Robin Hanson's grabby aliens model.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.01522

[corimaith]

The article points out this is mostly a western phenomenon. In China where the inequality is much more stark, support remains high.

I wouldn't say this is resentment as much as classic resource allocation struggles at play here. A zero sum view that X resources put into space is X resources not being put into my goals. They'll do it with other areas too like military spending or foreign aid, but space is more vulnerable.

[elzbardico]

Home ownership rate in China is around 90%. Maybe their billionaires are really fucking billionaires, but your assertion of inequality being much more stark in China is hard to reconcile with this data when most young folks I know are renters or went back to live with their parents and the vast quantities of homeless people I see.

Really, China is not a paradise, but we should be aware of the fact that we are fed copious amount of anti-china propaganda everyday.

[hollerith]

The Chinese save more than Americans do, and they don't trust their stock markets and banks to keep their savings safe, so they tend to put their money into real estate.

And the main reason they save more is that they are trying to make it more likely they will survive the next time their society descends into chaos like it has dozens of times in Chinese history.

[Ar-Curunir]

you do realize that if you have a civilization as old as China does, “dozens of times” is a small number, right?

[hollerith]

Good point. It is better to point out that the last time China descended into chaos was in the 1960s (Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward).

In comparison, the last time society was dangerously chaotic for the average American was 1865, and the chaos was less widespread (or at least it was more predictable where the chaos would erupt).

For the average Englishman, unless I am missing something, the last time was 1646 (end of the English Civil War) unless perhaps the Englishman lived on the border with Scotland (and again any informed observer would be able to predict that that was where any chaos would erupt).

[Ar-Curunir]

I don’t know, the World Wars were pretty devastating for much of the West, no?

[galdosdi]

1865? What about 1929? For many average Americans the depression was just as bad, and the hunger killed just as bad whether it was due to a war or an economic cycle. You may be underestimating just how bad it was in the 30s.