[HN Gopher] How the World Is Getting Better
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How the World Is Getting Better
Author : zdw
Score : 19 points
Date : 2023-04-07 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (awealthofcommonsense.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (awealthofcommonsense.com)
| mvdl wrote:
| Hans Rosling tried to tell us. Take this test to see if your
| perception of the world is right. https://upgrader.gapminder.org/
| [deleted]
| jschveibinz wrote:
| So it is very interesting to see that this article has very few
| views, no other comments, and very few up votes.
|
| We are living in the best of times. We just don't want to believe
| it.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| I agree on a longer time scale, but my life and the lives of
| many I know is markedly worse than 5 years ago. Crime is up a
| LOT in NYC, and the subway for the first time in my lifetime
| feels sketchy during the day. Inflation has really hurt a lot
| of my lower SES friends, and there's a general nihilism that's
| pretty unpleasant.
|
| Also, the mass shooting thing has gotten much worse in the last
| 30 years.
| powerbroker wrote:
| Mass shooting deaths YTD at end of March 2023: ~200.
|
| Gun violence deaths YTD at end of March 2023: ~10,000.
|
| Question asked: "How many peole in the u.s. die in mass
| shootings compared to how many people die in gun violence?"
|
| Source: https://www.phind.com/search?cache=6a726999-4846-410b
| -aa52-5...
| asmor wrote:
| All these examples are on timescales of 70+ years. That's kind
| of meaningless to me, a millenial, looking at all wealth having
| already been bundled up. Living in cities or owning a house?
| Barely affordable, even with an average tech salary. I don't
| even want to assume how shitty things would be if I made below
| 50k like most of my peers.
|
| You could make a very similar list focusing on income, cost of
| living and relative buying power on a timescale of 50 years or
| another on the environment on a scale of 20 years and both
| would be quite depressing.
|
| It feels very "well actually" wishful thinking by someone well
| off enough to ignore all the cracks.
|
| At least it doesn't feel quite as deliberately misleading as
| the Steven Pinker "we redefined the poverty line, look at all
| the poverty that's going away" slight of hand.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _meaningless to me, a millenial, looking at all wealth
| having already been bundled up. Living in cities or owning a
| house? Barely affordable, even with an average tech salary_
|
| Well, you're living. Without disease, war or famine. The
| world's knowledge at your fingertips.
|
| I'm about your age, and while there is a lot of work to be
| done, one of the most difficult hurdles to solving them is
| the nihilism and civic disengagement in our generation and
| industry. We're sitting in a golden age of human achievement
| at the centre of the first world.
|
| > _could make a very similar list focusing on income, cost of
| living and relative buying power on a timescale of 50 years
| or another on the environment on a scale of 20 years and both
| would be quite depressing_
|
| Real wages have gone up over the last fifty and twenty years.
| Living in cities has become less affordable. But that you're
| citing that as a standard of wellbeing, it's a massive
| improvement from the post-War era.
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(page generated 2023-04-07 23:02 UTC)