Personally I think human technological expansion is a temporary aberation of nature. I think in the long term we'd do best to approximate the advice of the late Georgia Guidestones and allow the human population to reduce to a reasonable equilibrium point such as for example the prescribed (and arbitrary) 500 million and live more like other biological organisms of the Earth planet. What do you think and why? To be clear this is just an abstract philosophical discussion about the ideal way for humans to persist as a species in the natural world on their only available planet. In no way is misfortune wished to individuals of the human species all of whom were born into the world called Earth without their informed consent.
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In any case, to stand here, in history, at this absolute climax of wealth inequality, government capture, and feudal existence being created and to surmise that "technology" is the problem and not "money" or just "distribution of new wealth" even is absolutely beyond me.
"In no way is misfortune wished." Well, whether you're hinting that your abstract philosophy demands these people be put to death or not, you can spare yourself the altar, these people already live with misfortune that I don't think someone with your apparent level of fortune can even properly calculate.
You think money, rather than technology? I think the problem is humans. And no, fewer of them won't fix them.
That's rather a silly way of approaching things. Imagine if your house were on fire, and I said, "the problem isn't flammable curtains or an expired fire extinguisher. It's houses and flames!"
Okay, sure, but we can hardly get rid of houses and flames now, can we?
Even if we could somehow get rid of all humans, that wouldn't meaningfully solve anything. We wouldn't end up with a fixed world, we'd end up with a barren world, void of consciousness, with nobody around to enjoy it. There are plenty of those elsewhere in the solar system.
Does wealth disparity really matter when every human in the western world has a magic box that can deliver endless global entertainment, communication, and information? Imagine if you had no clean water, people around you died of random diseases every day, you stepped in shit on your way to your 85 hour a week job [1], and then also, the aristocrats laughed at you from their rich ivory towers. That's a far drier powderkeg for the french revolution. People sometimes feel outrage today, but ultimately the feed keeps them happy.
It'll all end eventually. But everything always does. The best we can do is keep it going for as long as possible. Anyone who would actually use a time machine to take them anytime, anywhere in the past would be in for a rude awakening. Maybe I'd go back to the 1980s, only to relive the era we're in now all over again, except to buy a ton of AAPL and NVDA this time around.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours
Saying that technology advanced alongside extreme wealth inequality doesn't prove inequality was necessary for that advancement.
Your argument is effectively a deflection from the real question, which is whether life is better than medieval times, but whether we could have the technology benefits we have today without the power concentration and disparity.
Whether the universe as a whole evolves (pockets) in that direction as some fundamental goal is a philosophical question, but that it does so is clear.
Wanna move right to the top to live a good life just like the French in the past.
This is not how other biological organisms work. They are currently in equilibrium because when they aren't they wipe almost everything else out and then create a new equilibrium or collapse the population. Humans are following in this grand tradition of nature. It is destructive tradition and I think we should break with nature on this point.
There is a decent chance that industrial civilization is so disruptive it brings about its own destruction. We should be taking steps to not speed run our own extinction and the extinction of a good chunk of complex life on this planet, but it does not seem that at the present moment that we are willing to do what is necessary.
Anyway, the Georgia Guidestones are just one weirdo's hot takes. They vary from blandly unobjectionable ("avoid petty laws and useless officials"? yeah nobody supports "useless" and "petty" things) to dubious ("rule passion — faith — tradition"? I guess passion's fine, but faith and tradition lead a person in weird directions) to outright eugenicist ("guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity").
Another note: The largest beaver dam discovered is about .5 miles in length. Even if it was purely destructive to local eco systems it would hardly compare to human development.
Of course, when species are destructive to their environments, that's natural too. Consider the mass extinction caused by cyanobacteria back when they first evolved. It's not "nature" we want, it's biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. Shrinking the human population to 500M might feel "natural" to some people, but it really has little to do with our actual environmental goals.
Still, there's a lot of cool technology out there, and a lot of room to use it better.
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