Late stage capitalism is a popular narrative with the modern left. Although most conservatives, liberals, libertarians etc do not share this idea, it is still leaking into the mainstream. The latestageidiot subreddit has 800k subscribers. Here is why they are wrong:
The World is Improving. In Every Metric.
This is a fact. Numbers don't lie. Maybe you're feelings do, but numbers don't.
Some of these metrics are also very very underrated. Child mortality - do you have any f*cking idea how tragic the past was when childbirth was a super dangerous thing? We just forgot about super fast as soon as modern medicine made modern nuclear families possible. Literacy rate - people just think about literacy as obvious but it really isn't. The economic potential of everyone being able to read and basic maths is amazing.
Not Just The 3rd World
Please, talk to your parents how their lives were when they were your age. It's easy to think that they had it easier. Admittedly, if you're a white 1st world male you're expectation might be a house, a car, children and family vacations but rising property prices made this far out of reach. Many countries have a real estate crisis, no doubt.
But that house was far smaller and worse isolated. The car barely had security features besides a seat belt and far less comfortable. And it was not as accessible to people below the upper middle class and to non-whites as Hollywood wants to make you think.
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You have all of humanities knowledge in your pocket. Like literally. Think about it how amazing that is. Library of Alexandria.
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You can have your apartment cleaned by a robot. Wtf
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Your great grandma spend a day a week with a washing board. Do you have any idea how miserable it was to spend a huge percentage of your life with this? This might even be a bigger leap forward than the internet:
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You can buy groceries or takeout with the click of a button. That's amazing.
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You can spontaneously order a car for a few bucks anywhere near urban areas. This is a huge quality of life improvement even compared to the 2010s. Don't fall for the hedonic treadmill Quality of life improvements are happening every few years.
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F*cking groceries man. All the exotic fruits of the world in every Walmart year round. When my parents were my age a papaya was a rich people status symbol. Now I can buy it for 2-3 bucks. Imagine you were an alien visiting earth and guess what the subjective pleasure of a mango in London should be - like 100 bucks? No, it's like almost free.
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TIL of Viktor Belenko, the Soviet pilot who defected with the MiG-25 (most advanced Soviet interceptor of its time), who initially assumed that his CIA handlers were keeping him in an elaborate tourist trap made to impress foreigners because he couldn't comprehend the sheer abundance he was seeing. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/z5vpkw/til_of_viktor_belenko_the_soviet_pilot_who/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Communism makes every day goods into luxuries, Capitalism makes commies think they are in a tv show with a hidden camera
This is Early Stage Capitalism
We're just getting started.
Entertainment
We have already reached endless entertainment. AI will very soon make endless entertainment maximising entertainment enjoyment.
Other White Collar
Generative AI just made a big jump as we all saw. This is going to leverage all white collar jobs so much further. It's like we're slingshotting humanity.
Robotics
The big bootstrapping of robotics is eminent (maybe a few decades). The day when a robot is able to repair another robot we will be.
Yeah yeah, you might think Wall-E is a dystopian world of NPCs. It is, you are right. But it's a metaphor bro. In the 1900s children worked 14 hours a day in the mines, you have a 40 hour coffee drinking desk job, think about what you could do with your free time when this trend inevitably continues.
Medicine
Maybe you're an edgelord contrarian and think big pharma is evil. I don't. Life was miserable very recently when people died from every little infection. The future is bright.
Example: You know the bullshit weight loss pills from shady website ads? It's becoming real. We're solving obesity as an illness just like we solved broken bones as an illness.
With MRNA many viral diseases will become a thing of the past. Biohacking and crispr is advancing rapidly.
Bitcoin
The most underrated WWE surprise entrance. Right now humans only have money liquid and value loosing (checking account) or longterm value increasing but locked for decades (investments). And neither of these things with the security of decentralization.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here. You all know how amazing such a simple, in retrospective obvious idea that is. It's 2023 and humanity already made it this far without it - society is going to be amazing with it.