As to my understanding of the background behind this and the greater context:

Economic growth on Earth is slowing down significantly; that is because quantitative growth is not possible without damaging the planet, and qualitative growth (such as infotainment, IT) are slowing down as well (consider “enshittification” as a symptom of poor vision for the IT industry).

For one, that is why people want to go to Mars. I’m definitely not a Musk fanboy, but people have wanted /thought about going to Mars before Musk. (consider Robert Zubrin 2000 “The Case For Mars”). If it is doable, and it probably is considering there’s enough water on Mars to sustain a civilization, they are hoping/predicting that it might become a booming market. I don’t want to be a “lunatic” or whatever you’d call me; but i’d argue i’ve done more research about this project than you, in case you’ve watched a YouTube video that says “it’s dumb/impossible”.

But back to the article:

Since growth of Earth’s economy is slowing down, demand for human labor is decreasing. Since the labor market is a market, less demand at equal supply leads to lower prices (wages). That is why “cost of living” appears to be skyrocketing. Food prices have not gone up in the recent years (because the means of food production did not change much in recent years), but real wages have gone down, if you subtract inflation. That is how it should be looked at.

Lower wages lead to a significantly lower quality of life for workers, as they are arguably one of the most decisive factors for quality of life. That is why “everything seems to get more difficult” over time.

I honestly don’t see a solution for this; demand for human labor could not easily be stimulated more than has already been tried in the last 15+ years. If automation still replaces labor, it will not lead to mass unemployedness (such is a thing of the past, when people were either employed or unemployed), but instead to drastic drops in wages (which makes it more attractive for companies to employ people or keep them in employment). I know laborers are proud of their labor, and are going to feel it as a “shock” that wages go down. I still think it’s necessary for the Quality of Life (which is very important, maybe the most important thing that politics should talk about) to introduce some sort of subsidy (like Universal Basic Income). I know some people are gonna be against it (notably without giving a good argument); but i do deem it necessary. That would give more buying power to the people and people could more easily deal with the rising cost of everything, including education.

well, Silicon Valley used to be good 5+ years ago. The enshittification cycle only started somewhere around 2018 imho.

Trump can go fuck himself.

but … but what about human lefts?

yeah true i guess

if the people in eastern ukraine want to have independence from the government in kiew, or be a part of russia even, why not just let them? there’s an UN-enshrined imprtant right to self-determination.

The proper and correct thing to do would have been to ask the people in eastern ukraine what they want in February 2022 via an UN-organized popular vote.

Instead, there was war.

or just encrypt it, in case you have the technical knowledge to do that reliably.

the reason why they have fluorine in the drinking water in the US (but not in europe) is because people in the US consume drastically more sugar, so their teeth need extra protection.

no, well, it is known and quite well medically understood that a higher fluorine intake will indeed make the teeth harder, as fluorine becomes a mineral in the teeth. there’s no or extremely little doubt about that.

however, what one could argue is that it’s not entirely clear whether fluoride could cause unwanted side-effects; or whether adding it to all the water is really necessary (or wasteful).

most of europe also has way better food than the US though

Also it would be illegal.

Also tanks have a hard time navigating through a forest. Why not just plant a forest between Europe and Russia?

Why tanks and not air defense though?

Aerospace reconnaissance and ground-air-missiles are much more important to catch ballistic missiles and other attacks than tanks, which are slow and can be steadily bombed over time.

Yeah, while aesthetics is typically considered a side-effect of your choice of client, i think Lemmy should offer prettier aesthetics to choose from. In the menu:

chat is important for real-time messages (like talking to each other irl), but there should be a wiki/faq that answers frequent questions IMO.

Lemmy (and Matrix to a lesser extent) gives me the vibes that Nintendo Super Mario Bros gave me around 2008 - just magical, wonder what can be done.

social media. It’s a mind virus

I agree. Ideas in general are like a virus living in our brains. (They mostly consist of small packages of information. They require a host for metabolism / real effect. They spread from human to human.) The internet facilitates the spreading of these viruses; which often overwhelms the participating humans. In theory, it can/will also lead to a lot of innovation, because ideas spread more rapidly/easily. In practice, i think it does, but it also leads to virus-infection-like / fever-like symptoms, including: nausea, feeling of weakness (whenever reading political news).

I agree with you.

who we truly are, free to love, free to wonder, free to explore, free to be alive, free to be just happy. It isn’t worth it if we aren’t happy. We need to find out happy place again if we’re going to survive the next few centuries.

What you’re describing here, i call “self-determination”. Being who/what you truly are. It’s incredibly important, maybe the most important thing we have to consider.

oh society has lots of problems.

trying to fit it into one comment can be difficult but i can list some issues that i perceive:

• there’s no long-term plan. none at all. nobody has an idea what humanity will look like in 100+ years. that leads to considerable uncertainty in the youth, which definitely makes their mental health difficulties more severe.