I don’t think it’s that simple. A couple of examples:

Food:

A lot of the processed foods that are easily available make us unhealthy and sick. Even vegetables are less nutritious than they were 50 years ago. Mass agriculture also has many environmental externalities.

Consumer goods:

It has become difficult to find things like reliable appliances. I bought a chest freezer. It broke after a year. The repairman said it would cost more to fix than to buy a new one. I asked him if there was a more reliable model and he said no: they all break quickly.

Clothing:

Fast fashion is terrible for the environment. Do we need as many clothes as we have? How quickly do they end up in landfills?

Would we be better off as a society repairing shoes instead of buying new ones every year?

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ahepp 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's true, they don't "make 'em like they used to". They make them in new, more efficient ways which have contributed to improving global trends in metrics such as literacy, child mortality, life expectancy, extreme poverty, and food supply.

If you are arguing that standard of living today is lower than in the past, I think that is a very steep uphill battle to argue

If your worries are about ecology and sustainability I agree that is a concern we need to address more effectively than we have in the past. Technology will almost certainly be part of that solution via things like fusion energy. Success is not assured and we cannot just sit back and say "we live in the best of all possible worlds with a glorious manifest destiny", but I don't think that the future is particularly bleak compared to the past

	▲	paulhebert 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, it’s complicated. I worry that humanity has a track record of diving head first into new technologies without worrying about externalities like the environment or job displacement. I wish we were more thoughtful and focused more on minimizing the downsides of new technologies. Instead it seems we’re headed full steam towards huge amounts of energy use and job displacement. And the main bonus is rich people get richer. I’m not sure if having software be cheaper is beneficial. Is it good for malware to be easier to produce? I’d personally choose higher quality software over more software. I’m not convinced cheaper mass produced clothing has been a net positive. Will AI be a positive? Time will tell. In the short term there are some obvious negatives.

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zeroonetwothree 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would also add:

Cars make people unhealthy and lead to city designs that hurt social engagement and affordability, but they are so much more efficient that it's hard not to use them.

And then the obvious stuff about screens/phones/social media.