Readit NewsIf GP picked up that 12 again, they’d notice.
And why should I? Reading text on the web, calling, sms’ing, listening to music or using navigation does not require “next gen” hardware. Hell, it doesn’t even require current gen hardware. It would probably work just fine on 2000s era hardware.
I’ve looked at every possible organization that could theoretically fit including; MSF a.k.a. doctors without borders, swords to plowshares, goodwill industries (who employ significant numbers of disabled people for sub min wages while the CEO makes 3M+), Mondragon etc… and they all have exactly the same fucked up incentives
why? because there is no way to survive as a structure, if your org is made up of people who want to eat and don’t want to be a monk.
unless your organization is the lead maximalist resource dominator you will be overrun by some organization with no ethics
Ultimately it comes down to the fact that people have to trade physical and mental work for money to survive. So there is no alternative to do the “right thing” without also risking your own safety and stability in your chosen society. 99.99999% of people are completely unwilling to risk their life on behalf of any particular philosophy - if only because those people don’t feel strongly enough about any particular philosophy to actually put themselves on the line for it.
So whoever has the most money, has the ability to get the most people to work for their goals.
Unfortunately the people with all the money/power do not care about anything other than growing their own personal power
I want to argue that the rule of law is one moral system that applies to all organizations. Sure, some overstep and may gain some advantage due to that. But in principle and hopefully on average the result should be net negative. In democratic countries the laws are more or less directly the will of the people, about as egalitarian as we can get, no? Anyways, following the rule of laws should lead to “morally sound” corporations as defined by the people. Corporations can go further than what is legally required, too. That is often used in marketing.
Finally i think the same principles apply wherever humans (or other species) compete. Humans on the whole are not entirely cruel barbarians, we try to care for individuals who are not able to care for themselves etc. Whether “true” altruism exists is another discussion, but it certainly looks like it. So if that’s how people act, why should corporations be more corrupt than the bodies that make them up and govern them?
One thing you will have trouble with however, is that disease categories and the process of determining cause of death changed a great deal from 1527 to 1858. So the categories you're working with aren't stable at all.
I'd argue automated dependency updates pose a greater risk than one-day exploits, though I don't have data to back that up. That's harder to undo a compromised package already in thousands of lock files, than to manually patch a already exploited vulnerability in your dependencies.
[0] https://blog.yossarian.net/2025/11/21/We-should-all-be-using...
Stock market? As you write - what will happen when the next generation of consumers and workers won't be born? On the other hand it is clear that market is anything but rational, and maybe it doesn't really need people in the same way internet doesn't need real people. Maybe the future is bots trading with each other, pumping up the bubble.
Bonds? The same problem, lack of next generations.
Real estate? Land? Maybe if you already have something in very good location, though even then I am a bit skeptical.
Then one needs to remember that money is just a number. It doesn't matter how much digits you have, but what can you get with them - real resources and services. So maybe the question is wrong from the very beginning.
I sometimes believe that ironically the best insurance in childless world are your own children. Unless, of course, we will face a scenario where old people, constituting majority of the population, will squeeze those few remaining young hard to get their pensions and healthcare. Yes, the same people that today preach about how it is good to not have children etc. will be first to put a boot on them in the future. For this reason I expect growing tensions between those people with children and childless ones.
This is why I constantly find most such discussions on demography pointless, as participants rarely understand how everything in our society depends on the assumption that no longer holds - that there will be more people, and that young will be more numerous than old.
In the end probably best things to safeguard you in the upcoming crisis will be the same as always - local community, family (including children), friends and your own skills. People living in more agrarian societies, or just in the countryside, generally have better situation in that regard.
Jokes aside I agree with you on strengthening bonds with local community, and it's something that many people neglect, not even knowing their neighbors. Especially so for city dwellers. Strong social bonds are an end in its' own right!
On your agrarian note I wonder if we will see a return to the country side as younger people are priced out of cities and more jobs accept remote work. Then again, RTO and "affordable" rentals may nullify that. But as real estate prices grow I keep wondering how anyone has the money to buy real estate in the city any more. Corporations I guess.
Regarding money being just a number I don't disagree exactly, but it sure feels like my flavor of white collar work might be among the first to be automated. If not, and the stock market flat-lines and taxes shoot up because we need to support the super-centenarians then my investments and cash flow are shot. I don't count on UBI to save me before pretty much everyone is out of a job, and in the meanwhile I will need to exchange money for goods that I'm not certain will plummet in price to match my lack of funds. So that's part of the reason I'm thinking about how to hedge or even gain in a future that might look different from our past.
I feel like a lot of people are vaguely aware of the skewed demography in the northern hemisphere, but I don't feel like there is a lot of talk about how it will affect the way we work and invest.
The problem becomes the banks financing private ownership of the robots. Maybe the populations livelihood shouldn't be a profit center. Or in the case of the modern economy, where consistent profit is failure, an wealth extraction growth center.
Maybe there is a Star-Trek utopia at the far end, but in the meantime we are looking at potentially several years where me and a chunk of other white-collar workers are unemployable. I'm not sure UBI will be enacted before a large chunk of the general population is unemployable. And how will we fund UBI? Taxing the automators? They can just move their business to a tax haven.
Maybe I can find a job in some sector that's hard to automate, but I imagine a lot of people will be looking for those jobs. And that would probably lead to a pay cut.
So, what then if we want to maintain or even improve our standard of living? Invest in tech stocks? Sure. But we will still need to pick out winners or spread our bets. Will the gains in the stock market be enough to cancel out job loss?
Traditional investments like real estate and property may not be solid bets if there are suddenly a lot of it to go around due to there being less of us around. Then again, city growth seems stable.
Another point is what happens to stock markets when there are less consumers and producers. Stagnating GDP and indices do not make attractive investments. Where do I invest my hard earned cash then? Private elderly care, drug companies, robotics companies?
We should probably look to the countries mentioned in the article, like South Korea or Japan for answers. But I'm not sure I'm able to pick out winning strategies looking at those, or even be sure they would work where I'm based.
I'm curious what your thoughts are - how do you invest and prepare for the next fifty years?
I realize this is a selfish comment to make, but shoring up oneself is at least actionable for us as individuals, in addition to trying to make the world a better place for everyone else.
I bet ancient people saw themselves as the pinnacle of civilisation, much like we do now.
I'm sure Romans were sitting there with their cities and aqueducts and street vendors and Colosseum and huge empire thinking this is as good as society had ever been.
Nobody was sitting there saying "we don't even have electricity" or "of course light doesn't come out of our eyes to see, that easily fails the scientific method" because they didn't know those things existed.
Mathematica seems a little pricey but maybe it would motivate me to learn more math.
I would love to read what non-mathematicians use MatLab, Mathematica, and Maple for.