Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I don't think this is the correct line of argument, to juxtapose two very different modes of living to make parallels and criticise the current way of living.

First because it distracts from actually useful discussions which should revolve around making what we have now better, more sustainable, inclusive and fair.

Second because our economic system isn't great because people pay a lot on mortgage or taxes, or because people have a hard time understanding state of the art research. It's not great because it is designed to produce profits at all costs, which leads to people getting overworked and underpaid.



Poster summed it up well:

"If our economic system was great you wouldn't have to pay think tanks to tell people how great their lot is."

We're not healthy, mentally or otherwise.


Well, it's possible that certain groups in society -- in particular, highly-educated individuals in Western societies -- have become outliers in how positively they imagine the state of the world to be. (This was Hans Rosling's conclusion, which led to the formation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapminder_Foundation ).

It's probably not going to convince you for me to pull more stats from World In Data, but according to this, people do, in general, seem to be fairly happy with their lot https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction


That is specious reasoning. It might not be perfect, but it is hard to show a better option with empirical success.


maybe it's a type of an addendum on despite we now have more technology & facilities, we still need to work more to survive than when we had stones, berries & caves as surviving tools




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: