zlacker

> - Poverty and homelessness running rampant? Check.

Compared to what, exactly? because over the last 50 years, there have been dramatic improvements[1].

[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-evolution-of-global-p...

It's true - there's room to do better. So, so much better. But discarding the progress of the last 50 years is so unbelievably counter-productive.

>>schaef+(OP)
You know the line, the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

San Francisco is ground-zero for the coming cyberpunk dystopia.

>>schaef+(OP)
Didn't mean to say that it's worse, just that it's still bad. It's better in some places, but it does seem worse in others. Been to DC in the last few years?

>>dilap+l1
If the cyberpunk dystopia involves aged hippies yelling about neighborhood character and historical parking lots in zoning board meetings

>>schaef+(OP)
The usual myth. Counterpoint: https://www.marxist.com/world-poverty-capitalism-s-crime-aga...

>>genera+G1
I've never been to DC.

I did go past… where was it… Kawangware? I think?

I've never felt so much like a parodic stereotype of my own background[0] in my life as I did that day.

But that, in broad brushstrokes rather than details, is what most people's lives used to look like 200 or so years ago, basically everywhere.

50 years? 1973; back then, even the UK broadly didn't have double glazed windows, cavity wall or roof insulation, even in good middle-class homes. That was only a decade after we stopped calling Kenya a colony.

[0] British

>>schaef+(OP)
By your own link, statistics have reversed and just in 2019-2020 alone an increase of 8 million people fell into extreme poverty. Going by UN metrics, we're actually seeing a stabilization in the "dramatic improvements", and we're struggling to break past the ~8% mark. We're talking about a $1.90 poverty line v a $2.15 poverty line, and that sent the rate from 8.4 to 9.3[1]. In that same document, the UN had to adjust their goal of hitting 3% under extreme poverty by 2030.

How does this not justify what the above person stated, poverty is running rampant? More than 600 million people are still in extreme poverty. A record 100 million are displaced due to conflict in their countries. So I have to ask what exactly is unbelievably counter-productive here? I would argue that placating ourselves is.

[1:14] https://social.desa.un.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/...

>>woah+T3
luxury high-rises, tent cities, autonomous cars, sidewalk bazars, tech workers dancing on designer drugs while the homeless overdose & die in the gutters outside...

>>dilap+Fd
There's nothing cyberpunk about this. Just good old fashioned bad governance, done in the traditional manner.

>>wabore+A9
Okay, thank you for your link. I really did find it interesting.

--

Setbacks, yes. But If I can read a graph (pg 15 of your link), the set back of a global pandemic in 2020 took us to 2015 levels. and we're looking to recover to our per-pandemic levels in 2024.

We might be getting into personal perspectives here... but that seems like a reasonably proportionate setback.

>>woah+8u
>> luxury high-rises, tent cities, autonomous cars, sidewalk bazars, tech workers dancing on designer drugs while the homeless overdose & die in the gutters outside...

> There's nothing cyberpunk about this. Just good old fashioned bad governance, done in the traditional manner.

On the contrary, "good old fashioned bad governance" is an important feature of cyberpunk

>>woah+8u
Sure but SF isn't just another run-down city, it's also the center of the tech universe! So you've got the driverless cars, geeks on one-wheels, the salesforce tower's continually animating digital display, &c. That's what makes it feel cyberpunk to me: The latest tech rubbing shoulders with grimy urban decay.