With the major exception of the pandemic/remote work, the world is not markedly different than it was in 2013 or 2003. What makes it seems like 2023 is so different?
Totally agree, and it's good to know that anyone besides myself sees it. For me personally, I'm educated and know I have the skills to be on that first side of the divide, but it makes me feel very nervous/sad, because I know a lot of the stuff going on at the lower-wage end of the scale is unsustainable, and it makes me very worried for the future of our society. In the sense of how modern people want to live their lives, people in the service industries are extremely undervalued, and everyone deserves a fair wage for fair work and the ability to live in a dignified way.
I complain about everyone expecting a tip on their POS terminals and prices constantly rising, but in the spirit of my above point, they probably deserve it. We need a return to sanity regarding the returns of being a business owner.
This is also a huge complaint of mine in specific situations. If I go to an NBA game or concert, buy a beer for $12, and the POS has a tip thing, I want to scream. I want to scream at the vending group to just pay the people more money. The profit margin on the beer is insane, give your workers some of the money rather than try to pass the buck on to the consumer you’re already gouging.
But to exclude it for a bit, my personal, super anecdotal and biased view is that those years were very different.
2003 had low hope for a better future, but there was a lot of action in the fallout of 9/11. It felt like we were at least trying, even if it ended up being a horrible try.
2013 I felt hope for a better future, but there wasn't a lot of action to make that a reality.
2023 and there's zero hope for a better future and we're doing nothing about it.
We need at least hope or action.
I think many can agree that climate change is one of the higher priority efforts, and in the last few years, we've seen some major progress.
In the US, renewables make up the vast majority of new generating capacity, by far and solar deployments are growing at a rapid pace. We were still deploying significant amounts of coal plants 10 years ago, nowadays, it's basically zero. [https://www.seia.org/solar-industry-research-data]. China has doubled its solar deployments in the last year.
Wind deployments are accelerating [https://www.iea.org/reports/wind-electricity]
EVs are gaining marketshare at a fast pace, many countries/states are banning ICE sales in the near future. [https://www.virta.global/en/global-electric-vehicle-market]
Cost of lithium batteries has fallen by 89% since 2010 [https://cleanpower.org/facts/clean-energy-storage/]
US passed the IRA which has the potential to really accelerate these changes.
Still not enough of course, but we are seeing significant progress compared to 2013.
Nothing seems to be very different for the last 20 years, which also means things aren't getting any better. That's tiring.
Any time I hear someone talk about how everyone is tired now and they weren't before it smacks of "I'm the main character" syndrome in that they're going through the same thing every generation on Earth has gone through for millennia - getting older - but suddenly it's a crisis because it's them going through it.
