Comment by simianwords
10 days ago
It is not realistic - we are consuming way more than any of the previous generations. Poverty is at an all time low and steeply dropped since the last century. We are curing diseases, people are living long. What's the pessimism about?
I just thought you could make your point without calling other people cringe for disagreeing. I agree the average now is better than any century before, while also agreeing there's many interests of the type the comment you replied to illustrates, trying to either reduce personal freedoms or perpetuating a certain order of things. Both things can be true and they are both realistic view points, specially because there's multitudes of people all with their own priorities fighting for their own ideal futures and a few of those have a crazy amount of power.
Fair points and I agree with you.
> It is not realistic - we are consuming way more than any of the previous generations
That's not true. At least not true on all metrics. Energy consumption is down on 30 years ago, for example.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...
Mat and protein consumption peaked around 20 years ago too.
> Poverty is at an all time low and steeply dropped since the last century. We are curing diseases, people are living long. What's the pessimism about?
It's not pessimism, it's reality. The ruling class are demanding we reduce consumption while increasing and flaunting theirs. That's just what is. If you're denying that or think it's pessimism I really don't know what to tell you.
> That's not true. At least not true on all metrics. Energy consumption is down on 30 years ago, for example.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...
That's because of efficiency gains. Easily explained by the fact that consumption over all other products increased.
>Mat and protein consumption peaked around 20 years ago too.
Meat consumption is not a realiable indicator of anything in developed countries. It is the same in Netherlands as well. But increased dramatically in India and develping countries.
>It's not pessimism, it's reality. The ruling class are demanding we reduce consumption while increasing and flaunting theirs. That's just what is. If you're denying that or think it's pessimism I really don't know what to tell you.
What's the proof that we reduced consumption? Without cherrypicking?
How is compsumption a measure of good times? We are citizens, not consumers
I used consumption becasue the post used it. But take any other metric? Life expectancy?
The climate will get worse and worse.