[treis]

It's hard to put thoughts into the right words but the world she wants exists. They're not writing for substack or flying around to conferences. They're out there living their lives without being so unrelentingly negative.

I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits. There's so much good happening but there's this massive undercurrent of negativity that's hard to reconcile.

[Barrin92]

>My TV is the tits

having 50 different flavours of ice cream and a big TV available is a fifteen year olds idea of paradise, but what people actually care about is infrastructure, public health, safety, childcare and progress in the material world.

The US has the problem that the commons and the physical world have been run into the ground, the country has effectively become the Wall-E future.

[treis]

I don't know what you're talking about. All of the things you mentioned have significantly improved over my life. I can bike around my city without it being a suicide mission, pre-Obamacare health care was way worse, crime and accidental deaths are down, and we got stuff like Headstart and free Pre-K. I don't know what progress in the material world you think are missing.

This is what I mean by unrelentingly negative. The world today is way better than the world I was born into.

[landryraccoon]

I'm sorry to say you're very out of touch. This rosy picture is objectively wrong when it comes to housing.

Start with the fundamentals - construction has gotten more expensive. Unlike virtually every other industry in the US, it actually costs more to build residential housing per square foot (inflation adjusted) than it did in 1960. Construction workers in 2025 are *less efficient* than they were 50 years ago, despite all of our technological advancements.

This translates to housing construction that has not kept pace with the growth of the population. The average first time homebuyer is now over 40 years old, and the median homebuyer is 55 years old.

Everyone needs housing. If you bought your house 20 years ago, you likely did not notice that housing has become unaffordably expensive for most young people. Sure, you're having fun biking around the city, but people aren't going to enjoy life in the city if they cannot afford housing.

[treis]

This is what I mean by pervasive negativity. Well all those things got better but what about this other thing?

And this thing is nonsense too. Boomers aren't immortal. Eventually they will die and whatever housing constraint there is will turn to surplus.

[johnnyanmac]

> Well all those things got better but what about this other thing?

This is peak "let them eat cake". A person needs to live out of their car because they can't afford rent, but hey. They can buy a flat screen TV for $200 now!

Things are inverted, and not for the better. You can make all electronics 10x more expensive if it measn we can reasonably expect rent to be 30% of average income again. That means you can actualyl save up for luxuries. Or invest and live frugally. As it is now, it's the worst of both worlds.

>Boomers aren't immortal. Eventually they will die and whatever housing constraint there is will turn to surplus.

Sadly, no. The "great wealth transfer" is not going down to the next generation.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/josephcoughlin/2025/06/02/the-g...

They are either selling it off and living it up, or Healtchare is going to eat into it. Either way, don't expect the boomers dying off to magically reset the economy.

[treis]

>This is peak "let them eat cake

Nonsense. It's these 5 things got way better and the one thing that maybe got worse is going to get better later because it's a cyclical market.

This is what I mean by unrelentingly negative. The world is way better by almost every measure than when I was a kid and the discourse focuses on the few ways it's not.

[stephen_g]

I think you’ve demonstrated the idea of “problems don’t exist if I don’t have them personally”.

You might start to understand the negativity some people have if you could understand the economic struggles they have.

[treis]

My point was that people are thriving and the progress she wants is happening.

[johnnyanmac]

The people around you are thriving. The progress she wants is happening but not without trillions in opposition to the working class. The fight won't be won silently.

[joe_the_user]

I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits. There's so much good happening but there's this massive undercurrent of negativity that's hard to reconcile.

Personally I'm doing something that brings me more happiness than most of my activities for the last twenty years - I'm providing direct aid for the unhoused and the impoverished. And I'm know there are people who are doing things that are their passion unrelated to that.

But I have to say, your list for is remarkable for being about things, not people. You amazed by the cool stuff available for some people for a lot of money and some things that are pretty cheap. But X percent of the population can't pay their rent with their income, cool stuff for sale is hardly going to help them. And indeed that statement itself is a strong illustration of how self-insulating people are from the conditions people live with.

[johnnyanmac]

It's something I note a lot about detractors on HN. They don't think in people, they think in "things". And the "important things" are ones they take for granted. If they secured a house from the tech boom of the 10's before everything went to shit, then they are completely insulated from the idea that "things are harder to get".

Then there's the job aspect. I guess Hacker News is more older millenial/Gen X, so they are on the sticky side of this "sticky job market". If they are done job hopping, they won't feel how bad it is out there.

[accrual]

> illustration of how self-insulating people are

I feel like it's such a cultural thing here in the US. There is a pervasive culture of individualism and operating wholly within ones own means. Need help? Don't ask your neighbor for help, ask Our LLM (tm) for only $9.99 a month! I'm being hyperbolic of course.

[MangoToupe]

This is leaking out of the us, too. The cultural gap between people who have money, access to the internet, and who can speak english, and those people living within a mile away who have none of these things, has never been wider.

[treis]

Unrelentingly negative

[insane_dreamer]

> I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits.

None of these have anything to do with the prosperity - or lack of it - of the average American.