[travisgriggs]

Which defines why American society seems to be F'ed of late. Decades of short term rewards combined with a baby boomer population looking at their last hoorah and declining relevance. Most of the old people I interact seem to be in a state of denial about soon not being here.

[neumann]

Or just compare the billionaires actions now - they are building tunnels in hawaii to prepare for survival just as they are knowingly destroying the future instead of spending their obscene wealth to protect it.

[simianparrot]

Elon Musk is working towards getting humanity to Mars in the low chance Earth becomes uninhabitable, and he'll never live to see the Mars dream become a reality even if everything goes as planned.

But I guess that doesn't fit the common narratives about a man that isn't a cartoon but a flawed human with strengths and weaknesses.

This is why we don't hear of great men anymore: We only hear about them when they're long dead and their transgressions forgiven and their strengths raised to a pedestal unattainable by real live human beings.

[blackoil]

Goals and means. No matter what end goal is, if it requires eugenics (hyperbolic example) to reach there, people will resist.

[sussmannbaka]

He is not doing that.

[travisgriggs]

Amen. Mankind is not going to Mars as an escape route. Elon uses this as a way of generating a vision/dream.

When mankind makes serious progress to any of a) living at the poles in scale b) living underwater at scale c) living subterranean (underground) at scale, get back to me and we can talk about offworld habitation (Mars, Venus, or Luna). All of these are hard enough, and provide mitigation against various disasters, at some level. They're hard enough problems to solve as it is.

[simianparrot]

So you claim contrary to interviews and public reporting and Wikipedia that no, he isn’t working towards that until he gets us there.

EDS is a thing, I guess. Sad to see on HN of all places.

[simianparrot]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_colonization_pro...

[antisthenes]

I'm surprised this kind of garbage is allowed on Wikipedia. The whole article reads like a PR statement, constantly stating what is "possible" or "planned", but never any actual progress in terms of missions.

Basically lots of forward-looking hot air like a financials press release for shareholders.

Utter nonsense.

[coldtea]

Parent didn't say he doesn't pay lip service to it, or doesn't make bullshit timelines and promises.

[vntok]

One can be both "working toward" a goal and "making bullshit timelines and promises" at the same time, those things are completely orthogonal.

[simianparrot]

Parent didn't say _anything_ and frankly doesn't really meet HN's criteria for good discourse. All it said at time of my reply was "He is not doing that".

He is doing that. Whether you believe him, or whether he succeeds, or whether he's lying, is an entirely different conversation and something I can't _prove_. All I can prove is that there are public claims he is doing it, and he keeps saying it in interviews.

[Imustaskforhelp]

There are places on earth where life is unhabitable and on mars its absolutely nonsense really.

But maybe its a dunning kruger effect, I asked an actual aerospace engineer and he said its doable but he's a bit of an elon fan too, and I did read on HN an article on how life on mars is impossible..

Still, it would be most likely be very bad life on mars compared to earth but nope, we all are ready to burn our earth so damn quickly... and listen Elon has a band around him and you could say that he was a salesman in the sense that he had a lot of hype around him which inadvertedly helped tesla

But one shouldn't live life on rocks floating in water [hype] since that might just be a dream or you are crashing down.

And he's a little pathetic in the sense that maybe when I think of all, that could actually be done to help people and with all the influence he had, he fulfilled his agenda really but the agenda was never to better us humans but to get him more power..

So lets call spade a spade shall we?

[coldtea]

>Elon Musk is working towards getting humanity to Mars

Sure

[rhubarbtree]

Greatness seems to come from long term vision, and with success that vision collapses to short term gains. It’s cultural. Why does that happen and how do you prevent it?

[Cthulhu_]

I don't know (not a philosopher or politician or whatnot), but I think great steps were taken when countries introduced a constitution; the US was one of the first modern countries 250 years ago. I think a constitution is that long-term vision, setting a country's morals and values in writing, spanning multiple generations and administrations.

Of course, it can never be set in stone because morals and values evolve; things like equal rights for PoC and women were only added later on, and they seem unsteady at best right now.

The other candidates for long-term vision (but not necessarily success) is organized religion (e.g. Holy Roman Empire) and generational authoritarianism (e.g. kingdoms/empires, North Korea). There's also an in-between with China's 5-year plans, where they make plans (or, feel like they do, I don't even know lol) instead of trying to make big changes one legislation or one budget term at a time.

[eru]

Why? It's very easy to get people to plant trees for you. Just give a gardener, even a very old one, some money and they'll do it for you.

[blackoil]

No amount of money allows the gardener to plant it in the past. You can pay money now to plant tree now whose benefit will be reaped 100 years down the line. Also, tree is symbolic so no point in going in details of tree growth.

[jon-wood]

The best to plant that tree is 50 years ago. The second best time is now. Just go plant it.

[coldtea]

Because "caring for the future" is not a problem that's solved with money. Especially when short-term profit trumps it, and the people that should be caring wont be alive in that future and don't give a fuck.

Thinking "we'll just pay someone to do it" is exactly the mindset that fucked up everything.

(And, for starters, you need to care for X to pay someone to do X, to begin with).

[eru]

> Thinking "we'll just pay someone to do it" is exactly the mindset that fucked up everything.

What do you mean? We are living in a golden age of unprecedented prosperity.

> Because "caring for the future" is not a problem that's solved with money. Especially when short-term profit trumps it, and the people that should be caring wont be alive in that future and don't give a fuck.

Have a look at the history of shareprices for eg Amazon or Tesla. The stock market loved these companies long before they ever turned a profit. Investors can and do look into the future. (And even short termist who only want to quickly flip some shares will look into the future to try and predict what other people are going to be willing to pay for the shares soon.)

Another exhibit: during the pandemic stock prices recovered long before the world emerged from Covid. They recovered as soon as traders anticipated the broader recovery.

> (And, for starters, you need to care for X to pay someone to do X, to begin with).

Well, if someone in fifty years is willing to pay for the tree (even if she's not born yet), markets will do the rest to come up with a positive price for the tree today.

[coldtea]

>What do you mean? We are living in a golden age of unprecedented prosperity

Hahaha, that's next level cope. Compared to what, the 1910s?

Because compared to just a few decades ago we live in an era of diminishing middle class, less affordable rent and housing, worse job prospects, crap politics, worsening climate crisis, failing infrastructure, inflation, and more widespread depression...

>Well, if someone in fifty years is willing to pay for the tree (even if she's not born yet), markets will do the rest to come up with a positive price for the tree today.

Markets don't even solve today's problems anymore, they'd rather enshittify and seek short term profit

[tristor]

Unfortunately, while they bridle at the truth, Boomers are the most selfish generation in American history. Every single political and economic action of their generation has been done explicitly at the expense of future generations to enrich themselves. They are the first and only generation in American history to leave their children worse off than themselves. Unfortunately, they are also one of the longest living generations in American history also, and still control the reins of power long after most other generations had passed along. I think we're far from reaching the pinnacle of the damage they will do to our society and to the world. Depending on how long the US lasts as an entity, they might well go down in history as the worst generational cohort ever.

[resource_waste]

What is the bad part? Still number 1 GDP.

When was the glory days? Pre 1900s with slavery? The war and interwar years?

The cold war?

Pessimistic.

[Cthulhu_]

> Still number 1 GDP.

China will overtake them in 10, 15 years; possibly sooner depending on the economic damage of the Trump admin's trade policies, possibly later if another US company does well abroad.

[okr]

What a heinous posting. Judging about others shows true evil.

[xwolfi]

Zoom out: 200 years ago they were killing each other over slavery, 400 years ago, there was no american society.

The trend is up, but they're in a local minimum :D

[eru]

> [...] 400 years ago, there was no american society.

Well, there were people living in that part of the world..

[xwolfi]

America went from a land populated by people so weak they were decimated by foreign soldiers on horses, to the strongest army in the world. It evolved, positively ?

[eru]

Increased capacity for violence, yeah! Because that's the only thing that matters..