Is this similar to the Peter principle, though? And not that it is exactly that concept, but that book is from 1969. People have been making this observation for a while.
In this context, it's more comforting to really pay attention to very competent people. I had a home inspector spend ~5 hours on my house and was amazed by every little detail he discovered and documented, and how knowledgeable he was, etc.
[1] Office of National Statistics via BBC: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/2560/cpsprodpb/13FD8/p...
That's not necessarily a negative, a lot of entertainment has been predicated on non-thought (Seinfeld was great in part because of no hugs, no learning) consumption. However, when it leaks into how we access and shape the world, there is an increase in 'slop'pily made, low quality structures and products. I feel like its ushering in an era of 'Chabuduo' [1] across the globe that's going to be very difficult to come out of.
[1] https://www.chinaexpatsociety.com/culture/the-chabuduo-minds...
People are so distracted, scrolling ad-nauseam, that the only hope and dream they have is: to become an “influencer.”
They’ll sell a view of their children and family life to the highest bidding sponsor. Then, peddling products to a fresh batch of spectators who think, “Ah! Wouldn’t that be the life? I should do that too—then I will be famous and making a hell-of-a lot more money than I am now!”
I mean the amount of scam ads on YouTube alone selling a lifestyle of abundance and riches—living like a rockstar—only perpetuates the wrong values.
People should be PROUD of hard work. And they will be, when they become less distracted and start to see the joys of value creation again.
Note: I just want to clarify that my intent is not to say that social media is inherently evil—there’s lots of value-creation happening there—just that THIS particular issue is because social media has misdirected people’s ambitions.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/what-is-gen-zs-no...
https://www.sostandard.com/blogs/social-media-is-changing-ge...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/study-young-people-want-to-b...
As for the garbage man... can you blame him? What reason does he have to maintain the appearance of vigilance? Their routes are long, getting longer with cuts, they're largely understaffed, and they deal with both the contempt of the public and their refuse.
Conditions are actively getting worse for some; the UK's second largest city has proposed cutting wages by up to £8,000 p/a due to a bureaucratic nightmare of their own making [1].
It is a thankless job with no opportunity for progression which most people would rather put out of mind completely. Frankly, they deserve better.
Of course they find out when it is ready to rent that there is no market for "luxury housing for seniors" because seniors who have money either split for Florida or go to Kendal [1], and the remainder are on a fixed income and looking for "affordable housing".
> something that sounded like every other thing: some dude talking to some other dude about apps that some third dude would half-listen-to at 2x speed while texting a fourth dude about plans for later.
It's not that the dudes don't care, it's that the dudes have 15 other things expected of them, which weren't expected 15 years ago and caring capacity feels like a biological limit. There isn't the required amount of caring available in the average human any more, and caring is needed for standards to be maintained.
15 years ago, the world was in awe that stuxnet, a cyber attack, had impacted the real world. I was in cyber at the time, and the idea that day to day lives of normal people would be impacted in the real world was like Hollywood fiction: unthinkable.
A few weeks ago, I didn't even notice the reason my local big brand store shelves were empty was because of a cyberattack. It was a week later I saw the article explaining it on BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg4zrpk5p7o
I feel like a cynical old man, but I'm sure most here will relate - the age of tech we are living in now is not the one any of us thought we were working to create.
[1] Power Failure: The downfall of General Electric - >>44102034 - May 2025
[2] Fatal Recklessness at Boeing Traces Back to Long-Standing C-Suite Greed - https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/boeing-corporate-... - April 9th, 2024
[3] HN Search: Boeing - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I don’t think this is much different now than in the past, arguably less so. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620
I saw one on twitter the other day and was struck by it's take:
"in the 1900s, it was common to dream of the 21st century. when was the last time you heard talk of a 22nd century? it's like we don't believe we're going to make it anymore, but to endure, we MUST dream of futures worth suffering for. please, dare dream of a 22nd century."
https://xcancel.com/DavidSHolz/status/1926775363801088191#m
Like, yeah, I'm not really thinking about the year 2125 and what that will be like. I just kinda assume it's beyond some tech singularoty or something that I can't imagine.
Part of it too is that the world seems 'solved' in a lot of ways. Like, we're not worried about the great economic debate of capitalism or communism. We know which works better. We don't care for climate change right now but are worried about it a lot, yet we all kinda know that we just have to get our act together to solve it and that's not going to happen until things get really bad. The gender and color barriers are broken. The trans barriers are like, something I guess. Sure light speed, but all the physicists say that impossible. Mars, yeah, I guess, but that's a lot harder than we thought it would be. SpaceX is doing cool stuff, I guess, sorta, when things don't blow up in the sky or with their boss. The AIs are here and they kinda just took our jobs and all the fun out of the world. Video games are cool, but we all know it's just coasting through time. You can order a pizza now at the south pole, it's hot when it gets to you. That dude fell out of a balloon for Red Bull, I guess. All the rivers are mapped, it's just people speed swimming them now. Poverty isn't a question of if, but which asshat to get out of the way.
I mean, this is usual with humans. Same goes for corruption and politics. It's all just muddling along without a lot of 'zazz' to it. We're just stuck waiting for enough bad to occur to get over that activation energy and get moving. Like a frat bro piling more garbage onto the already overflowing can, eventually it will get taken out, by someone, maybe me, but not right now.
Like, what could the future hold that is worth actual suffering for, per the tweet? It's all just oatmeal beige.
Meanwhile, from Pineapple Street Studios in 2024: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-wonder-of-stevie/i...
I suspect this is true to a certain extent, but IMO this narrative has been exaggerated to the point where it is completely useless. If Boeing execs were only focused on "short term profits," how did commercial aviation deaths decrease despite there being significantly more flights?
https://www.statista.com/chart/4854/commercial-aviation-deat...
Boeing 737 Max: The troubled history of fatal crashes and 346 deaths in 7 years - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/busi... - July 8th, 2024
As Boeing looks to buy a key 737 supplier [Spirit AeroSystems], a whistleblower says the problems run deep - https://www.npr.org/2024/06/16/nx-s1-4998520/boeing-737-spir... - June 16th, 2024
Boeing’s Decline Traced to Decades of Catering to Shareholders Above All Others - https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/quick-take/boeings-decline-traced-... - April 8th, 2024
Boeing’s long fall, and how it might recover - https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein... - April 7th, 2024
Do we? https://www.nokidhungry.org/who-we-are/hunger-facts "According to the latest estimates, as many as nearly 14 million children in the United States live in "food insecure" homes."
> The gender and color barriers are broken.
Are they? https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/roe-...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/report-black-people-are-...
> All the rivers are mapped
Not really, plenty of unmapped rivers in jungles, also the ocean, and also, you could always FOSS map it: https://www.mapillary.com/app
> Like, what could the future hold that is worth actual suffering for, per the tweet?
Maybe a world like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkaway_(Doctorow_novel)
Or this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Like_the_Lightning
Or this? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41637112-a-half-built-ga...
Maybe? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13651.The_Dispossessed
This? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41824495-fall-or-dodge-i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Feder...
High unemployment, billions in US foreign aid, etc.
I'm not sure we're reading the same article then.
Here's some archive footage from 60's Yugoslavia for your reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXr5aKZ8mps
Sure doesn't look like people living in squalor in their mud huts.
Why care when—if you're the average bear—you can work incessantly and never really get anywhere close to what past generations enjoyed? I'd prefer to live in a world where people cared more, but if the incentives aren't there, we can expect to see the amount of "care" continue to decline.
This is why the "fix the money, fix the world" ethos of Bitcoin should be given more attention by detractors.
https://news.mit.edu/2024/study-flying-keeps-getting-safer-0...
> To whine or complain, often needlessly and incessantly.
I'm not sure the parent is quite using it correctly: either they're just using it to mean "complain" (which I'd disagree with; the word to me definitely carries the "needless" connotation.) or they're engaging in a bit of self-deprecating humor that just isn't really coming across fully.
It's a bit of a regional word, in the US. (Regional to PA, IME.)
It wasn't so much different from our time. Read "Don Quixote" [1] and be amazed.
Whether the updates you read are actually playing out live, or happening in a book doesn't make much of a difference, unless you are actually influencing events.
https://www.upworthy.com/11-ridiculous-future-predictions-fr...
The OP here, basically has a simple (and common!) 3-way collaboration/communication problem:
- OP did not get along with 1 single fellow coworker that he was assigned to work with; this coworker reportedly does not listen to reason, does not read the research or background info that OP shared, etc.
- OP tried to seek help from a manager/lead type person, but that person was also not useful (i.e. not able to force a course-correction towards better collaboration).
Note: OP did not actually indict his entire team, or the entire eng organization, as all being hopelessly useless. OP said he had a problem with 2 specific people, and asked for tips to deal with that (small!) scenario. But instead of giving "small" advice for a "small" (and again, common and usually fixable/at-least-improvable) problem, both the toxic hive-mind as well as the HN commentators here have completely avoided trying to solve the actual root issue (which isn't nearly the impossibly-large-turnaround effort that everyone's making it out to be)... What we have here, is fundamentally an XY problem (https://xyproblem.info/), in that OP asked for help with X, but got advice about Y.
EDIT: Okay so I guess I should offer some concrete advice to OP for what I'm calling his "small" original problem -- usually there are 2 categories of options from this point: either escalate again, or try to resolve interpersonally without escalation.
- Escalation route: OP tried the 1st manager/tech-lead, who couldn't bring a resolution... that's... pretty common actually! So escalate 1 more level, calmly and professionally. Whether it's a skip-level director/VP, or a project manager, or whichever stakeholder is appropriate in OP's context -- explain politely what steps you have tried to solve the problem so far, why the counter-proposal / alternative is bad or won't work, and emphasize that you are still happy to collaborate further, but you are currently at an impasse and need a more senior person to weigh in. Then, OP needs to be prepared to "disagree and commit", if the decision doesn't go his way. NOTE: if the decision doesn't go his way, it could mean 1 of 2 things: a more senior person brought in extra context or expertise that OP did not know about and hence made a better decision that OP can learn to appreciate, OR it could mean everyone is an idiot and OP is the only sane person in the company... there's no reason to jump to the most negative conclusion as the only one, but certainly I acknowledge it's possible (I just don't think it's good advice to assume the worst, without even trying a simple +1 extra round of escalation... OP could at least try 1 more time).
- Non-escalation interpersonal route: OP can find a professional way to say to the problematic coworker, "frankly, I still disagree with your approach, and it's my job to document my disagreement with our manager(s), but at the end of the day, if you insist on doing it your way, then go ahead". Sometimes, the only/best way to learn, is to let someone else try and fail. This isn't callousness or retribution, this is actually a common lesson for mentors who might otherwise struggle to try and protect their mentees from ever possibly making a mistake or being wrong about something... an overbearing/overprotective mentor would need to learn how/when to take a step back, to let a mentee try and fail and learn-how-to-learn from their failures. Of course, OP is not this coworker's mentor, and does not need to feel obligated to assume that role, but I am simply pointing out that letting someone go off and do something you disagree with, can actually be an act of caring (rather than a form of not-giving-a-fuck).
That's not a direct response to your concern, but I think this quote applies in a parallel manner -- I've seen this quote applied as a statement about what it means to be "punk", and how simply being content with yourself (meaning you don't fall victim to all the ways society attacks/preys on insecurities or tries to sell you drugs or makeup or clothes or surgery or whatever to change yourself), is actually incredibly "punk". You don't have to dress up weird, or go out and do graffiti, or get into fights... just being content with yourself is "punk", within a capitalist/post-capitalist world.
So, in a similar vein, I think this author is saying that, "caring" is also a form of being "punk", in a world where seemingly not-caring is mainstream now. The thing is, being "punk" doesn't need an external "why" reason to justify it... the whole point of "punk" culture is about authenticity, that just being yourself is what's important, that you don't need a special reason to reject capitalist consumerism or mainstream opiate-of-the-masses media or to dress how you feel instead of how society thinks you should look. In that way, being "punk" is quite Buddhism-aligned actually, to center on existence and enlightenment through self-realization, instead of pursuit of external "why" reasons for doing X or Y.
Caring is the punk thing to do, because it is who you actually are. You don't need a special reason to care, if you subscribe to any kind of "punk" mindset/philosophy about life. Don't care because it will yield better material rewards, get you laid, or whatever. Care, just because.
At least, that's the argument... up to you if you buy it or not.
Religion (particularly Judeo-Christian) has a lot of issues with empirical historical / scientific claims, but one thing it was good at is it's culturally adaptive. A lot of the cultural tooling and support it provided both with community and with some of the core cultural ideas around family and children - life purpose and direction are probably good things for most people. Secularism does this pretty poorly for the average person and what people substitute for what's missing is often much worse.
This is one of those situations where averages hide the harm. Yes, when you look across everything it's not a big deal. But you can find clear instances where it is a problem, particularly in homes of certain value in growing markets (like Atlanta: https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/data-investors-now-own...).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra_Delta
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskradata_1680
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ei_Ni%C5%A1
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorenje_Dialog
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_systems_from_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Finance
> One of the main themes of the book is the role played by the central bankers' insistence to adhere to the gold standard "even in the face of total catastrophe."[1] As Joe Nocera, a book reviewer at the New York Times, stated, "the central bankers were prisoners of the economic orthodoxy of their time: the powerful belief that sound monetary policy had to revolve around the gold standard...Again and again, this straitjacket caused the central bankers — especially Norman, gold’s most fervent advocate — to make moves, like raising interest rates, that would allow their countries to hold on to their dwindling gold supplies, even though the larger economy desperately needed help in the form of lower interest rates."
Oh, well, I disagree, and the evidence supports my position. The people who capitalism has most rewarded are billionaires. Billionaires became as rich as they are through cynicism, cruelty, unscrupulousness, and deceitfulness. I challenge you to find me a billionaire without these qualities in spades.
I'm happy to hear arguments that other modes of economic organization may also reward these values if it makes you feel better, but I maintain my point that capitalism rewards them also. In comparison, gift economies reward the opposite values.
> Not universlly, and that's the problem.
I do agree that it's worth a hedge, however, it appears these values are as near-universal as is possible for humans. Every religion I've ever learned about teaches these lessons, Confucianism for the most part as well, we can read about these values in Plato, Aristotle, ancient Greek myths, ancient native american myths... certainly there are outlier cultures, but for these values to be an underlying current in so many cultures... what else could we call universal?
> . And you can ignore this fact and fall into slavery to the most cruel, deceitful and selfish people, or you can effectively protect yourself from such people with the help of capitalism.
But, under capitalism, the majority of people are wage enslaved. Certainly an improvement over chattel slavery, no arguments from me! However given that many forms of slavery persist in the capitalist world, including wage slavery, I don't agree that capitalism stops slavery. In fact totally unfettered capitalism would select for it. We saw this with factory towns. Why do you think capitalism prevents slavery?
> It's just that without capitalism, people with such qualities get everything, including other people as slaves.
I don't understand, are you talking about feudalism or something? I agree with you that feudal lords had many of these features, but feudalism even more than capitalism selected for orifice origin, so I don't think it really selected for much other than how long you could keep enemy states at bay and how long you could keep the peasants from revolting.
> The people who made the decisions to treat the workers poorly will not receive a single worker.
Why do Amazon warehouse workers work in such terrible conditions?
> Because there is competition for labor and because the worker has the freedom to decide where and how to work. This is why workers under capitalism get the best conditions among all social systems.
You genuinely believe working class people have freedom to decide where to work? Geographical limitations, background limitations, whether or not someone has any criminal record, there's so many reasons that many people are trapped in their jobs and can't really move. This is like the fundamental reason wages are allowed to be as low as they are today. It's flagrantly obvious there's today almost no worker freedom today.
> That is, through other non-capitalist mechanisms. The obvious problem of the lack of capitalism
Oh, an anarcho capitalist. https://c4ss.org/content/4043 Anarcho capitalism won't work.
