At the end of the day death is a guarantee. No matter what you do it will eventually end in death. That means that all time time between here and there is not going to change the end point. The worst is already locked in.

So if the worst outcome is eventually going to happen then you kind of have nothing to lose. You could life the rest of your life afraid of things not working out, afraid to try, afraid to take a risk. You could do that and nobody can stop you.

The question is, do you want that? Do you want a life that is defined by what opportunities you didn’t take? Defined by what you avoided?

It seems more likely to be a fun life if you take some healthy risks. Try and meet people. Try to learn new things. Move away from shitty influences. Ditch things that make you unhappy. After all, you literally get one shot at life, you have a finite amount of time left in it, why would you waste it living for people who treat you like shit? Is their opinion of you going to get somehow worse? Could it actually realistically get worse? What impact would that really have?

I left my family at 17. Homeless, cold, and broke. I’m in my 30s now and don’t regret a thing. I’m married, have a wondrous cat, have a loving partner who actually cares about me and who I love dearly. No amount of approval from my shitty parents would be worth giving that up.

They already controlled your childhood and made it hell. Don’t give them the rest of your life too.

From what I have read there is no physical reason that we could not all have a reasonable standard of living right now with no extra technology. The reason for poverty is not a scarcity if resources, it is a distribution problem. Some people take too much and use systems like law and governance to enforce their relative position. Ditching individual wealth would solve most of the issues which prevent a good life for everyone. Being as most wars are ultimately about wealth and the same for borders it would be revolutionary.

Post capitalism.

We have automation for so much manufacturing. We have solar energy which is basically free after manufacture. We could spend a fairly small amount of time really working towards automating most resource extraction and processing.

We could have a really good standard of living not just in the west but globally and we could in the process resolve the threats of climate change but instead we have billionaires.

Just a quick point, you aren’t starving. Plenty of people are not getting their basic needs met. There are tonnes of people who are unhoused, lots of people, especially kids, experiencing food insecurity, and a huge number of women specifically are living in abusive situations because they do not have the means to live outside those situations. Starving is failing to meet one need, but there are plenty of other needs that lead to death if not met. People die from cold and heat purely because of cost. Those deaths are no less tragic because it was cold rather than a lack of calories.

Spangle banging

All evidence points to a regime change (in the physics sense, not the political) being the necessary condition for things to go from our current state to something new.

We currently have people paying poorer people a very small amount of their own net worth to protect the wealthy person’s status and position. This is similar to how kings and queens paid the army and policing forces to control the peasants.

Before the French Revolution I am sure it seemed impossible that the peasants would revolt, but the years leading up to the revolution things were getting worse and worse for the average peasant. There is a tipping point where the average person does not think the current system is delivering on the promise that of you do what you are told you can have a good life. I think we are approaching that point now.

If the rich try to hire someone and underpay them for security, stiff contractors for services, flaunt laws and generally behave obnoxiously at some point people will have had enough. Whether that ends with guillotine action or people just divesting from those systems depends on how much freedom people think they have.

If people thought they could go and homestead, live off the land, and get by without the massive companies these billionaires own then they would have that outlet and choose that peaceful option. The fact that we have taxation creates a pressure to pay in currency which demands earning in that currency. Same with paying rent, you have to earn money simply to live. No amount of growing all of your food gets rid of your financial obligations, so there is no out from the system. If that system is unreasonable it begins to feel less like participation and more like coercive control. Wage slavery is not the same as slavery, but both involve coercion and require the legal system to support them. Both lead to revolutions. Both lead to violence.

I guess the billionaires have to decide if they really want to paint that big a target on their backs by flaunting their wealth. At this point I think they feel untouchable.

The unfortunate thing about people is we acclimatise quickly to the demands of our situation. If everything seems OK, the car seems to be driving itself, we start to pay less attention. Fighting that impulse is extremely hard.

A good example is ADHD. I have severe ADHD so I take meds to manage it. If I am driving an automatic car on cruise control I find it very difficult to maintain long term high intensity concentration. The solution for me is to drive a manual. The constant involvement of maintaining speed, revs, gear ratio, and so on mean I can pay attention much easier. Add to that thinking about hypermiling and defensive driving and I have become a very safe driver, putting about 25-30 thousand kms on my car each year for over a decade without so much as a fender bender. In an automatic I was always tense, forcing focus on the road, and honestly it hurt my neck and shoulders because of the tension. In my zippy little manual I have no trouble driving at all.

So imagine that but up to an even higher level. Someone is supervising a car which handles most situations well enough to make you feel like a passenger. They will switch off and stop paying attention eventually. At that point it is on them, not the car itself being unfit. I want self driving to be a reality but right now it is not. We can do all sorts of driver assist stuff but not full self driving.