Totally agree there’s something unnerving about these utopic systems pushers.
However, there’s a strong argument to be made to to the question, what does our socio-politico-economic system look like if we leave it “un-designed” and let it grow in its natural direction? To which the answer is royal-subject-feudalism.
We’re seeing the decline of constitutional democracies before our eyes. Was it a grand experiment that will give way to the lazier solution to human order?
Feudalism is the multi-polar trap we snap back to when the serfs don’t actively put energy into a better system.
Maybe some would say fine to that. Because nowadays the serfs could have laptops and nice houses. And the freedoms that you would have limited by your rulers would be minimal.
But even so, the idea that sliding back into feudalism would defer a path to more decentralized sovereignty seems obvious.
There’s not a single discussion going on in American politics at the federal level that is not some version of the US circling the drain (I’m American). The bright spots (state/local level) are very limited (psychedelic therapies research comes to mind).
Abroad there are some bright spots, though Americans will sparsely here of them:
1 Taiwan’s civic tech - using software to aid in crowdsourcing democratic options and discussion
2 Amsterdam’s circular economy project - investing in comprehensive analysis and rule-making focusing on reducing waste of all kinds - construction, pollution, consumables etc
I’ve looked at these last two personally, here’s a short list of similar projects (from chatgpt) if you’re interested
Barcelona Superblocks
New Zealand Wellbeing budget
Estonia’s e-governance
South Korea Smart City initiatives
Finland’s basic income experiment
Portugal’s participatory budgeting
Also El Salvador’s interests in Crypto is … interesting though too early to tell if this will be of real benefit to citizens at scale.
Historically all great “empires” have all fallen, and the US is right on pace for academics who study these things - our descent has begun. However there is one thing that’s different now. The speed of tech development will begin to outpace all other human forces that shape our civilization.
Taiwan is the leader in using tech for enhancing democratic participation. Can’t stress enough how valuable that might be if used correctly.
And of course, AI should accelerate the bioengineering, geoengineering, and perhaps some type of financial/economic engineering that could pull us from the brink.
I’m hoping that an AI future may make us happier and more sovereign, but the momentum towards a corporate techno feudalistic dark age, where government, citizens, and institutions are all bought and paid for by private mega corps, is growing.
Fickle? It’s been Russia and China for like 100 years. I’m no expert but it might be due to crushing political oppression and aggressive empire building. Japan, S Korea, and Taiwan are all chip manufacturing power houses, and the only one not happy to see China blockaded is China. Though I’m sure they’re working on hacking into and stealing these new designs as we speak.
It hasn't been. The US was one of the key players who built China up to what it is today, for a significant chunk of the past century they were strategic partners against Russia.
And it is worth remembering that post WWII the US was busy marginalising the Europeans, making sure Germany was prosperous but didn't execute an independent military resurgence and helpfully euthanising the British empire. There were enemies other than Russia and China over that period. It just happens that the other European powers were broken to the point where their resistance was ineffectual and the process was mostly amicable - if they'd been more competent it'd have been a lot nastier.
Awesome work! One question on a killer feature I need for an app like this. Recursive mode: where a folder will show every image in all sub folders recursively. Does your app have something like this?
Yep. The food, soil, and water systems are now and probably forever more riddled with plastics, heavy metals, and industrial agro chemicals. Plastic pollution (being a massive diversity of different petrochemicals) are probably the largest growing issue that would explain the US increase.
However, there is one more culprit that is have recently been getting educated on. Blue light pollution.
I’ve been learning how the more we disrupt our circadian rhythm with screens and artificial light, especially at night, we massively disrupt our natural hormone cycles (master hormone leptin for example). This makes it impossible for adults past a certain age to lose any weight (regardless of diet and exercise), exacerbating the already growing obesity problem.
Measures of human flourishing are rising for the mid-stagers and so globally it might look ok. In late stage countries human flourishing has begun a decline.
While the last 20 years we have made progress on a some acute problems like heart disease, complex ill-health is very much on the rise - Cancer, nearly all mental health issues, obesity & diabetes, suicide. Poverty is on the rise, literacy rates are down.
Human flourishing is just keeping its head above water in these places. Humans are resilient, but there are limits.
Capitalist-fundamentalists will also throw up their hands when asked how we might solve existential problems for which the is no end in sight - eg global warming, the toxifying of our food systems with plastics and industrial chemicals, government debt, etc.
> Capitalism is a system built by people that recognize that humans are reliably selfish and seeks to align their selfish interests as best as it can with the rest of the populous.
You just described mass institutional psychopathy.
