Teaching people that being "rich" is not a goal would help in the progress. The goal is enough: a point when one still yearns, so they can progress, but they don't suffer or live in fear for losing warmth, shelter, food, etc. But this idea seems far from the majority of the US mindset, and it's polluting many parts of the world as well.

"Shelter" sounds like a modest expectation, but at least for me, and a lot of other people, a decent level of "shelter" requires you to be pretty well off. The average house here in the UK costs £~305k, so a mortgage on that requires like 30k deposit + 60k income, which means being a top 10% earner. I've no real aspiration to be "rich" in a superyacht sense, but I would like to be able to remain in my home city and own a modest flat, which requires me to be rich.

The solution is simple: build more houses to increase supply. It needs to be said: there is a drastic shortage of decent housing in the UK. The cost of building a new house is approaching less than half the final sale price (if not even less) simply due to pressure from scarcity.

Why aren’t people building as many new houses as there’s clearly demand? Numerous factors: greenbelt laws, height restrictions, “Right to light”, NIMBYism, etc. I don’t believe I’ve seen either major political party advance a policy of making it easier to build new houses - or tall tower blocks (the nice kind, not the 1960s council flag blocks), I suspect because it would result in immediate uproar from the Daily Mail-reading types who can’t bear to see their house-values fall (I think Sunday Observer types would be a bit miffed too, if not about house prices then certainly the ecological impact: having lived in multiple countries in my life I noticed the “rural-rights” types that advocate preserving hedgerows and rambling access have a considerably larger influence in UK politics compared to other countries).

It is not so simple, let me give example, in UK during pandemic prices hyped by 30%. Reason is, rich own land and properties, but they own them on account of debt and cash flow. Some people have more than 100,000 properties in their portfolio, and they relying on cash flow. So, if anything disturbing happen let say pandemic kills lots of people (or they lose their jobs) and no one rents anymore, then next thing that will collapse are banks, as Banks cannot get their money back. Next thing is government collapsing. In order to maintain this structure, or protect it from collapsing, during each economic crises government pumps more money (subsidies, interest free money, free money) to the rich. What they do? They buy even more properties. So, basically on account of the blackmail-standoff-ransom-situation, they siphoning all the properties from the market. Regardless how many properties you make in UK they will buy them all, as they buying them with additional debt - and in that way protecting their renting business. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good point. In most modern cities, the only individualistic solution to escape eternal rent-slavery (forgive the strong word) is to become rich.

A collectivist solution would be to coordinate with other citizens to abolish the building/zoning restrictions and savings devaluation enforced by local and national governments, that cause the constant real estate price inflation in the first place.

Unfortunately, the "other citizens" are the ones who want the zoning restrictions.

Since most governance schemes favor entrenched players, there's a natural tendency for policies resulting in pyramid schemes to emerge.

The first step is to educate enough people around this issue, so that some opportunistic countries/cities can become competitive at attracting residents using fairer policies as a differentiator.

Uk house prices are crazy enough to make people want to emigrate. But now with remote work you could live in a cheaper UK location but also consider another country. Maybe even just rent so cheaply you can save and invest in other things.

Desire for superiority over other people is instinctive. I don’t believe it’s something that can be “taught” out of existence.

citation needed

The voice of reason right until the end. The world has problems. Lets blame the US. Even if you are right, it will help nobody to say so.

not that i don't think your points aren't good just that finger-pointing is a bit destructive.

There are multiple solutions, but all requires that the our current power structure decide and commit to solving them.

So far there's no consensus on any level. (Meaning there are not enough people at any level to force, or agree/compromise, or influence the economy, or make it the dominant single issue politically/culturally.)

Sure, participating in it by buying, mining PoW coins (or basically any coin that then - due to hedging/diversification - leads to even more PoW coin mining/demand) while knowing about the external cost is morally problematic. However the actual harm is likely less than doing many-many other selfish (immoral/bad) acts.

If the early crypto billionaires exit crypto and put their newfound wealth into effective altruism the moral calculus changes very starkly.

AGI in no way, shape, or form belongs on that list.

You’re right - it belongs on a list of universal-scale risks rather than global-scale ones.

Some of the items on this list - namely AGI, biotech, nanotech - are actually not problems; they're dangerous, but very desirable developments.

Agree with the gist of your comment, though.

If we had it (AI), talking about dangers of having it, would be too late (as human intelligence cannot argue with god intelligence)

It is simple, as ant cannot contain human, in the same way humans won't be able to contain AGI. Can it exist, yes it can - simply, can me and you think, yes. In a way we are "device", so therefore, it is possible to make intelligence similar and/or more powerful than our is.

I am just simply stating, if it (bionic intelligence) already exist - another (artificial) can be built. I am not saying anything about existing models, ways or methods, just that if exist - it is possible to build one "again" so to say.

I still don't think we've proven that at all. Unless you believe in god, then no one has ever "built" an intelligence. The human brain is the result of millions of years of evolutionary pressures.

Regardless how it is created, if it exist it can be made artificially again - it is just matter of time.

Same as with bacteria. 'In May 2019, researchers, in a milestone effort, reported the creation of a new synthetic (possibly artificial) form of viable life,' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_life

Give human enough time and resources, we can replicate anything, that is in our nature.

Bro this made like no sense.

At first I thought it was generated by GPT-3, but then I realized GPT-3 generally generates coherent content.

This idea that we need to be perfect optimisers is foolish and pure whataboutism . You could say the same for any recreational, non productive activity.