HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

>Is losing faith/hope in humanity something others experience as well?

Generally considered the 'doomer' political circle. No proper political alignment, often seen as purple or populist. Also not necessarily a pessimistic world view.

>s it due to the way i perceive things (i.e. my entourage)?

Most likely yes, but can be independently derived.

>Am I in a bubble and I don't see it? How do I get out? Should I be in a bubble to keep my sanity? How do I build those filters?

Everyone is in a bubble. Imagine a venn diagram of things you know and things you dont know. That's your bubble. Being in a bubble isn't inherently bad. Being in an echo chamber is bad and the probability you are in an echo chamber is very high. To evaluate if you're in an echo chamber, pretend to say something you dont agree with inside your echo chamber just see how it's reacted to. "climate change is false for X reason"

>- climate change or how society/corporations/governments are destroying the environment and/or are barely doing anything. All I think about sometimes is how we'll begin to see famines spreading across poor countries until it's all too late... Yet Elon buying Twitter is still in the news till this day.

Climate change is often the first one in the doomer field lately. Take extinction rebellion for example, or the maya calendar or y2k doomers. They are all climate change now. Their climate change echo chamber is quite problematic.

All this 10 years left or various ultimatums are absurd. They've been saying it'll be 10 years for decades. We're on take 5 or so. In reality climate change is never going to properly threaten human life. We are going to do what is right at the right time and it'll be solved.

We have probably 30-40 years to solve this problem without any major controversy.

>- social inequality is rising year on year. inflation is a killer for poor families that are barely making ends meet. Yet most corporations are announcing lots of profits and they barely give a sh*t about their workers.

Totally a problem. Will inflation lead to mass death or something? No. Social inequality is a problem that is really hard to solve. It derives heavily from the ability to take of debt. "credit score" disallows the peasants from taking on debt and therefore end up missing out on a force multiplier that leads to social inequality. How do you fix this? Given poor people debt? We saw how that worked out after glass-steagal repeal.

No society in history has ever had a system that eliminated social inequality and frankly I don't think there ever will be for quite some time. If someone got into fights in high school, got their 51% and gets blackout drunk every day after their mcjob. Their outcome in society must be less than a doctor who did all the extra work to be qualified to be a doctor and saves lives. It builds an incentive system to build people into doctors and not mcjobs.

>- workers: all I hear is there's a shortage of workers. shortage, shortage, shortage. But they rarely talk about salaries and wages being so low.

This actually has to social equality measures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#/media/File:US_La...

In the 1950s before equality ~85% of men were employed. 35% of women. Overall about 60% of society were employed. Today men are around 65% and women are 55%. Yet still around 60% in total. So what happened was we displaced useless men into homelessness and took useful women and told them not to have babies. Which happened within a generation. Birthrates in 1950 compared to 1980 is night a day bad.

Tons of benefits from doing this. We have a more productive and more useful population. Egalitarianism was tremendously successful and the few countries that dont do this today are harming themselves. But what did that do? It produced more workers in supply but total jobs more or less stayed the same. Demand didnt change. Simply supply vs demand. Workers are going to be paid less.

We do have some consequences to deal with... but absolutely nobody is considering going back. There's great news here for workers and it's just starting now. It's the worker shortage of 2030. It's set it stone. Come 2030 the world war 2 countries are going to be hurting bigtime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux1GxExRUUY

>- billionaires: ugh, enough about these megalomaniacs.

When warren buffet became a millionaire, it wasn't the same as a millionaire today. Owning a 2bed 1 bath in toronto is worth over a million and you're a millionaire. Inflation over time. In maybe 100 years inflation will make everyone billionaires.

Billionaires existing is not really a thing anyone. It's not like Bezos literally has a billion $ in the bank account. He owns things that sum up to maybe being worth billions. He has no actual way of consuming those billions. So in reality it's not a problem at all. He contributed tons to society and people rewarded him.

The last thing you want to do is punish or stop this. Amassing wealth and being unable to every spend it means everyone is more wealthy than if they hadnt. Removing billionaires, you deincentivize anyone else to do useful things in your society. You basically kill your own society.

>- media: it's feeding people rubbish all the time. All. The. Time.

Big time. In reality they've been lying to us forever. We are just catching them now. Not really something that changed to affect your losing hope in humanity. If anything we're about to fix this.

>- corruption: it's so wide spread, people have become desensitized. war... famines... I could go on...

Check out this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

The world is amazing. Things are great, there's no more third world countries. That video is 15 years old. I read his book. Things have actually improved significantly since that video.

Poverty worldwide is being redefined because it's getting better and better. Practically the whole world is getting connected to the internet allowing them access to unlimited knowledge. Places like Africa who don't care about patents can steal every single idea from the patent system. They are rapidly building up their societies.

This huge increase in development is going to raise everyone to today's standards in the west. Meanwhile the west is on the verge of 1 big thing. The end of scarcity.

You might have say $50,000 in your bank account right now. In the end of scarcity world that $50,000 produces every good you ever need. Solves every service you ever need the rest of your life. You get to do things that can't be programatically done. That's an ideal world.

The future looks amazing.

By every measurable metric, Humanity has gotten better. Longer lifespan, lower child mortality, better education, easier access to basic life neccessities and goods, (ironic to say at this time but yes even) better health, etc etc etc. We live in an age where every problem is weaponised and we are hyperaware of the problems now so that we don't see all the progrees that is done. https://www.openculture.com/2020/05/16-ways-the-world-is-get... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

⬐ Clubber

>By every measurable metric

Every measurable metric? How about median wealth? How about levels of debt? How about job satisfaction? How about median income per household? Per person? How about access to healthcare and cost? How about suicide rates? How about drug overdose rates? How about corruption? How about cost of higher education? How about homelessness? I mean cmon, you're looking at thing with rose colored glasses.

⬐ AnimalMuppet

Median wealth? Better today.

Levels of debt? Probably worse today.

Job satisfaction? Probably worse.

Median income per household? Better.

Per person? Better.

Access to healthcare? Better for the median person, not sure about the poorest.

Healthcare cost? Probably worse.

Suicide rates? Probably worse.

Drug overdose rates? Probably worse.

Corruption? Probably better, though more publicized (maybe better because more publicized).

Cost of higher education? Worse if you go to an expensive school. But there's never been a time when it's easier to educate yourself, for free, if you don't care about the piece of paper.

Homelessness? Not sure; it's more publicized now, but it's been bad off and on for decades. It's probably better now than in the 1930s, but that may not be a fair comparison.

⬐ cowl

> Job satisfaction? Probably worse.

The very fact we are talking about this shows a great progress. 100 years ago, you had a job -> you were satisfied.

> Access to healthcare? Better for the median person, not sure about the poorest.

It's better for the poorest too. in Planetary scale.

>Drug overdose rates? Probably worse.

this is a recent metric, can't be used to prove or disprove Humanity advancement.

> Homelessness? Not sure; it's more publicized now, but it's been bad off and on for decades. It's probably better now than in the 1930s, but that may not be a fair comparison.

Not only is 1930 fair but when we are talking about Humanity progress, the comparison must go even further in 1800s...

Talking about humanity progress makes sense only in grand scale of time and planet. not on specific countries and 50 years...

⬐ pietrovismara

Life today is so much better than at any other time in history, because washing machines! And because I'm middle upper class, almost forgot that.

⬐ nightski

Or it is you looking at the past with rose colored glasses. The parent never said all those things were perfect, just that they are measurably better than before.

⬐ all2

As long as we're "howaboutin" let's talk about genetic diversity. DNA is self-replicating, self-repairing, etc. But what it doesn't do is create new information. With human procreation methodologies we lose bits of data, and just living life our data undergoes entropy. The outcome is less genetic information available every generation.

And one more "how about testosterone levels in men?" These have been falling for the last 60 or 70 years. Men in the West will be impotent by 2040ish at current rates of decline.

⬐ betwixthewires

By every single one of those metrics the world in aggregate is better than 100 years ago. Go back 250 years ago and it's not even arguable.

You're being short sighted.

The best stats you've ever seen | Hans Rosling

https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w

⬐ mistermann

Having not watched the video due to crappy mobile (but I've seen some of his videos before), is this a "things are getting better, stay the course" type video, a "many things are ok, but we have very serious problems here", something else?

⬐ vishnugupta

> "things are getting better, stay the course"

This is the overarching theme.

⬐ rogue7

> is this a "things are getting better, stay the course" type video

Yes.

And sadly it isn't happening from what I can tell ; see for instance the latest IPCC report [0].

[0] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

⬐ noahtallen

I do really like that video and the book Factfulness.

However, income inequality is definitely one of the things getting worse with time. And it’s scary for everyone, because if you don’t have money, your ability to survive is reduced, and if you do have money… look back to what happened only a handful of centuries ago or even less when the proletariat revolted.

Sure, we aren’t there currently, but the trajectory is not going in a direction which inspires confidence in our future.

⬐ korantu

Is income inequality even good measure in the forst place? More and more people of this world are rising out of poverty, and getting education, why specifically does uphieval would occur?

⬐ kortilla

No, it’s not a good measure, but it is a useful tool for people to build support for political upheaval that wouldn’t otherwise be justified.

⬐ diordiderot

The thing is, it's all relevant. You can't pretend human psychology doesn't exist

⬐ raducu

Measure of what?

Income is a proxy for a lot of tings.

While completely understandable and rational, people racing to get out of poverty at the same time as the great climate change catastrophe, feminism (sexes "wars"), all sorts of minority/ perpetual victims/ alternative motivation groups/attention wars -- I don't see how we'll navigate these centrifugal forces and chaos in a wise and beneficial way for the planet and for us on the long term.

⬐ rogue7

At first I really liked Hans Rosling's book. But afterwards I read some very valid criticism [0].

> We see that while per capita income has indeed increased in the global South, the global North has captured the vast majority of new income generated by global growth since 1960. As a result, the income gap between the average person in the North and the average person in the South has nearly quadrupled in size, going from $9,000 in 1960 to $35,000 today.

> In other words, there has been no “catch up”, no “convergence”. On the contrary, what’s happening is divergence, big time.

The same goes for the other topics, including biodiversity.

[0] https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/3/17/two-hump-world

⬐ derriz

Jason Hickel's criticism is either disingenuous or demonstrates basic innumeracy. The criticism uses absolute differences to "prove" that divergence is increasing.

This does not make sense. If A and B went from earning 30k and 45k respectively to earning 70k and 90k respectively, Hickel would claim this was "divergence" - because the gap between them has risen from 15k to 20k.

But it simply isn't - A is converging with B (the gap has narrowed from 50% to 28.5%). If this trend continued linearly, A's income would surpass that of B within about 3 more periods of such "divergence".

> if the 1 billion "rich people" drop their emissions down to below average then the majority of the problem will still be here.

True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.

> there will be 1 billion less wealthy people

Just wrong. There are lots of ways to reduce emissions without any effect in wealth. Eating less meat is one example.

> for no particular net gain.

Very wrong, there are huge gains: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...

> I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children.

I knew you would say this, I was just waiting for it. Global birth rates have been in freefall for decades now, it's tragic that people don't know about it. You'd assume that supposedly "better" education in western countries would make people more aware, but western governments are only concerned with maintaining global western hegemony which requires falsely accusing the rest of the world and keeping their citizens ignorant. Also, you can't force people to have less children, that's inhumane. I suggest you go through the following links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness

⬐ roenxi

> True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.

Are you suggesting the majority of a problem is smaller than half?

Eating less meat is pretty stupid as strategies go, it doesn't tackle the root cause (which is too many people).

I'm not clear on what your point is about birth rates trend down in wealthy countries, but that is actually a well known fact. Quite an encouraging one.

The choices are deliberately wide. The idea is that people are unable to make even broad estimates of the state of the world correctly.

This classic TED talk [0] by Hans Rosling presents the same idea. I recommend watching all his other talks as well [e.g., 1-2].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvUxnnlKZSc

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAzT7AhzpBc

⬐ wolverine876

> The choices are deliberately wide.

I'm not saying they are too wide. I'm saying they are framed to show the situation positively. If you ask, 'what portion of the U.S. population has been infected with Coronavirus?' and present these options:

  10%
  25%
  40%

The correct answer (~10%; I don't know exactly) looks positive - it's the lowest number. The following options have the opposite effect (IMHO):

  1%
  2%
  10%

⬐ sdht0

I see your point.

Given their goal is to show that we have reasons to be more optimistic about the world, I think the quiz setup makes sense. It highlights that we can't even distinguish between optimistic 10% and pessimistic 50% for issues we regularly hear about in the news. I'm exaggerating here, but the 50% would have been obviously wrong but isn't because we didn't look at the data at all, instead made an assumption based on our perceptions. This hard hit is a good thing and fulfills the goal of the quiz.

But yes, choices of [1%, 10%, 20%] would likely make more people choose 10% than among [10%, 30%, 50%] when 10% is the right answer. Thanks for the insight.

⬐ austinjp

The website and title here state the goal is to fight misinformation. In this post you state the goal is to show we have reasons to be optimistic about the world.

Which is it?

I'm not super convinced that the framing of the questions does provide reasons to be optimistic. Instead it comes across to me as a down-playing of issues of serious concern.

What is the evidence that your approach does increase optimism, and what is the evidence that such optimism is warranted?

Have you tried the alternate framing as suggested in above posts, perhaps A/B testing? This might give the lie to your assertion that people are "systematically" incorrect, which frankly I feel to be an overstatement.

Unfortunately I have the distinct feeling of wool being pulled over my eyes.

⬐ sdht0

> the goal is to fight misinformation

The misinformation is that people's belief of the world are based on statistics that were only true decades ago and haven't been updated. For example, the distinction between the developing and the developed world. The world has actually gotten better and we have reasons to be more optimistic.

However, I shouldn't have stated my own interpretation that way.

> a down-playing of issues of serious concern

Unless we really know the state of the world, we won't come up with the right solutions. For things that have improved, we should be optimistic and celebrate the successes. We keep hearing about the hunger problem in Africa, but did years of initiatives work or not? Are education programs really working or not? Are our efforts actually making the world better? We never seem to hear the success stories in media.

That doesn't mean we rest on our laurels and stop fixing the remaining issues.

That doesn’t jibe with these videos from Hans Rosling:

https://youtu.be/jbkSRLYSojo

https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w

⬐ tsimionescu

Here are some critiques of the famous poverty graphs:

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-...

⬐ sethammons

I read your link. Did you watch the videos? The criticisms in the paper you linked accurately state things like GDP != poverty and the best measures start in 1981. There are many ways to measure things. Yes, we are missing good data. But we have others and all the data aligns. People are doing better. In the videos, they are about life expectancy, child mortality, average income, and gdp. Things are looking better all the time.

Yes, bad things are happening. But the trends are in the right direction.

Probably been posted a lot before but always worth a watch. https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w The Great Hans Rosling. His book is well worth a read as well.

Hans Rosling explained very well why advancements in National wealth leads to smaller families (less children per family) and longer lives

It's linked to becoming richer countries, which China has become

https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w

> if you try to objectively make life better for the billions

According to Hans Rosling the world has already changed dramatically for the better, you just didn't notice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

You should check out the book Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Rosling, a now deceased Swedish doctor, makes the case that the world has improved immensely over the past two centuries. He backs it up with copious statistics from the UN and other international NPOs. Rosling also gave one of the best TED talks ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

⬐ ptah

globalization only started in the 80's

⬐ jsperson

Check out the book... included in the coverage of the past 200 years is coverage of the last 40.

This is on of his TED talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Also fuck cancer.

> If you buy some shares in M&S or BP on the stock market, the money you pay goes to the previous owner, not the company. You are what Keynes called a ‘functionless investor.’ When such so-called ‘investments’ pay off they extract wealth from the economy without creating anything in return.

This doesn't seem very coherent. How could a company ever sell stock to raise capital, if the people who bought that stock didn't have a functioning market to resell it on?

Obligatory link to Hans Rosling's economic play-by-play of the last 50 years: https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w?t=4m12s

⬐ notahacker

A better way of putting it would be that your investment might improve the economy only via side effects (e.g. the investor who you purchase the shares from is able to invest that money in a new business venture or buying actual goods, or a boost to the company's share price from your buying activity [if you're a massive fund owner] encourages new businesses to start up in that industry or makes it cheaper and easier for them to raise capital)

Your contribution to the wealth of the economy from buying the stock is only the effect of the marginal increase in the speed of transaction and price from the share owner selling to you rather than having to wait for the next, possibly lower bidder on the share. The contribution to the economy made from you passively holding the stock is only the effect of the marginal boost to the share price from you not selling on entrepreneurs, lenders and investors. The average gain you make from share price appreciation is likely to be more than that; the difference is economic rent.

Given there are already enough stock investors for trades to be made in microseconds with tiny spreads, the positive effect of an individual secondary market stock trade is so close to zero as to make the "functionless investor" characterization broadly correct.[1] Moreover, since your decision to purchase secondary market stock has an opportunity cost; you might otherwise have invested it directly in producing something in a market without such ready access to capital, its effect on economic growth might be net negative.

[1]of all the circumstances where economists treat transfer payments as irrelevant, this one might be the most justified

⬐ morgante

The margins are where economic points must be argued though.

Your same logic could be applied to consumers. Any one individual buying products does not keep the economy functioning. We could say they're "functionless consumers."

Except if you extend that logic to all consumers, there is no economy.

Similarly, any one secondary investor might not make or break the existence of functional capital markets. But if you extend that logic to all secondary investors, suddenly there are no longer any primary investors.

⬐ notahacker

Sure, all economic activity is measured at the margin, but all businesses depend on the marginal consumer pushing them into profitability to survive. On the other hand, most businesses function perfectly happily without any secondary market investors or any realistic prospect of selling on the secondary market in the foreseeable future. Absence of secondary market liquidity reduces the sources of investment available to growing businesses, but doesn't drive it to zero, and thus the real economy tends to be much less sensitive to the marginal dollar invested in blue chip stocks than the marginal dollar consumed.

Perhaps even more importantly, I also pointed out that (i) the marginal contribution of buying secondary market stocks to the growth of the economy is substantially less than their average 7% annual return for the passive investor and (ii) because the risk adjusted return of this economic rent is an attractive alternative to investing in creating new capital, it can in certain circumstances even have a negative effect on economic growth. Those were the real points Keynes was trying to make.

⬐ EliRivers

How could a company ever sell stock to raise capital, if the people who bought that stock didn't have a functioning market to resell it on?

It could be a lifetime or time-limited right to a dividend, with voting rights attached. This would prioritise sustainable profit generation with a long-term view, and eliminate the current malaise of seeking short-term spikes in share price.

⬐ jonknee

... And it would further concentrate global wealth into the hands of a few (after you're no longer getting the dividends where do you think they'll go?).

⬐ EliRivers

Given that there are no owners, to the employees seems reasonable. With shares eliminated like this, we can have a such a system.

Perhaps through some kind of all employee profit sharing system that all the employees agree on. Alternatively, if there has to be ownership, ownership of the company can be split between all employees, and the profits shared amongst them accordingly.

I should divulge that by HN standards I am a screaming commie. I think unions are a good idea, and I think inheritance tax should be pretty much 100%. I'm not necessarily in favour of this employee-owners profit redistribution system, but it's an answer to the question of where profits should go if there are no rentier shareholders.

⬐ ommunist

I would only agree on inheritance tax if you simultaneously maintain quality free public education and social lifts.

⬐ hueving

>Given that there are no owners, to the employees seems reasonable

By what standard? Does a new employee get the same percentage as every other employee? If so, how is that fair when certain positions objectively have much more impact on the success of the company? If not, who decides allocations for new employees and who the allocations should come from?

Also, who is going to put up the capital in the first place to start the business if there is no return?

⬐ EliRivers

These are all questions that have answers. Such companies do already exist in Western liberal democracies operating roughly capitalist economies. You can find these answers yourself if you choose to. You can probably even think of some ideas yourself. We don't have to accept the economic system we are told is the one true way. We've seen where treating the economy like a religion leads.

⬐ hueving

If there were reasonable answers, you would have provided them. The reason you haven't is because they generally aren't sustainable and do not work. If they did, that model would quickly take over because employees would exclusively seek out companies where they are granted ownership without any capital commitment.

⬐ EliRivers

Companies do exist that are owned by their employees, and yet people do also get jobs at other companies that are not owned by the employees.

These facts would appear to contradict your statements.

⬐ MichaelBurge

I think capital allocation is sometimes too abstract for people to see the value in.

If I bought some land, built a windmill with my bare hands out of stone and wood that I cut and shopped myself, and became the flour producer for the entire region, people tend to say it's a deserved reward.

If I bought that company, paid people to do all the work setting up a dozen more windmills, paid people to manage the new bigger company, and then sold it again to the highest bidder, now suddenly I'm rent-seeking and profiting off of the poor. Even if those things wouldn't have gotten done without this intervention.

It's like a Ship of Theseus: If you split up the flour company into its constituent pieces and slowly hire other people to do them, at what point does it become unethical rent-seeking?

Even someone who buys an income stream solely to ride it out with the minimum amount of maintenance is at least taking a risk to their capital. And even if they protect it with an insurance policy or similar, they're at least locking up the money for a dedicated purpose usually for an extended period of time. People are often afraid of taking risk or limiting their options, so people who do so are providing some value.

⬐ golergka

There's one thing this communist logic doesn't take into account: risk. Ownership and risk are inherently tied to one another. Thinking only about scenarios where this risk already passed and then calling owners "parasites" is survivorship bias in the purest form.

⬐ ommunist

Communists took ultimate risk when they risked their lives overthrowing capitalism as a system, being it Russia in 1917 or Cuba in 1953.

⬐ wtbob

Communists slew far more anti-Communists than anti-Communists slew Communists, by orders of magnitude. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Ho: all killed far more after they took power than were killed by those they overthrew.

⬐ golergka

That statement's not entirely factually correct, lies by omission, but most importantly, doesn't have anything to do with the risk in question.

⬐ ommunist

Sure thing. A sparrow bravely takes risk of competition for food among other sparrows. And this is not that exact risk the hawks take.

⬐ maxerickson

Rent seeking is jargon. It doesn't refer to running a business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent

It refers to the economic consequences of things like regulatory capture and corruption.

⬐ aoeusnth1

The original article is naively expanding the definition to include simply "owning things which are worth money/time", i.e. the time value of money is somehow rent-seeking corruption.

⬐ force_reboot

You are are applying the standard definition of rent/rent seeking used by economists. But MichaelBurge's post is using the language of the original article, which claims that renting out an apartment, or making capital gains from a business, "rent seeking".

So MichaelBurge is making a valid critique of the original article, whether or not the article was correct in using the term "rent seeking"

⬐ aoeusnth1

For your last point, I would also add that the sale of such a income stream is a private consentual business relationship. Neither the seller or the buyer is being exploited. I feel like communists like the author simply don't understand the time value of money.

I'll start myself indicating a non technical one focusing on communication https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

This Hans Rosling talk from a few years ago shows how most indicators are improving worldwide (e.g. reductions in child mortality, GDP per capita).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

⬐ gress

Depression is also rising to epidemic proportions, suggesting that improving economic indicators may simply not have anything to do with quality of life.

⬐ ak217

More like, mental health is not directly correlated with quality of life. Freed from the preoccupation of having to fight or work hard for basic needs, many people fail to find meaning in their life.

⬐ gress

Poor mental health = a low quality of life

⬐ collyw

Are you seriously suggesting that there are more incidences of mental health issues because people have easier lives?

⬐ philwelch

Why does that seem implausible?

⬐ gress

Because a life of mental illness is not easy.

⬐ philwelch

But an easy life can make one neurotic.

⬐ gress

How?

⬐ eruditely

Measuring averages from the extreme is not-accurate(via Taleb)

⬐ gress

What has that got to do with anything that has been said?

⬐ bmelton

I would probably be inclined to agree with that. From a report I read recently (which I can't find again, sorry) pertaining to my home town of Memphis, TN, apparently the general conclusion was that Memphians were happier than Nashvillians, despite the latter having better access to health care, better access to higher paying jobs, better community features (arts, entertainment, etc.)

The report didn't postulate on what the actual cause might have been, or how happiness was measured (or, if it was, I've forgotten), but I found it interesting, and it does support your point here. It seems that, at least since I've been paying attention, America has been trying to optimize for wealth or income, though statistically, it seems that there is validity to the notion that money doesn't buy happiness. If we could better isolate the causes of happiness, we could start optimizing for those factors instead.

⬐ pigeons

Nashvillians don't want to be happy or else many wouldn't be able to effectively do their jobs of writing and performing country music.

⬐ bmelton

Eh. That argument cuts both ways. Memphis blues aren't quite as big a deal as Nashville country, but it exists, and, on paper at least, should make musicians wont to sadness.

⬐ dredmorbius

GDP in particular has some huge problems as a measure of economic good.

There are numerous alternative measures which have been proposed, though none have been widely adopted: FISH, GPI, UNHDI, GSDP, GESDI, etc.

"Nobel Laureate: Examine Alternatives to GDP"

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=nob...

80% of everything is crap.

And yet the original 2007 Gapminder talk[1] still surprised and educates people today

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w