Humans weren't built to live in massive societies with 100s of millions of people.

No wonder we love minecraft and Satisfactory and playing murder-hobos in ttrpgs. I would be in favor of restructuring society to be in smaller units, communities where people know and understand eachother, but nobody has that power.

One thing I disagree with "We won’t live in small villages with cobbled streets en masse anymore because we need the giant glass skyscrapers and the congealed intellect of our multi billion population to move ahead"

Do we? What is "moving ahead"? I would say there's a good chance our way of life is simply going to waste all the resouces that sustains it and collapse over a long period of time without moving on to a "higher" state. I know lots of people working in tech, none of whom actually advance useful technology. Instead they advance technology that makes their bosses rich and makes people consume more for no real benefit. That's actually the opposite of useful. The glass skyscrapers are not helping us move ahead.

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nozzlegear 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Humans weren't built to live in massive societies with 100s of millions of people.

Humans were built to socialize and live in societies though. It's part of our own nature to group up and form communities.

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Animats a day ago | parent | next [-]

Unlike the hunter-gatherer concept, medium sized cities can work. But they don't.

Cities in the 50,000 to 250,000 population range are not doing that well. That's what drives population to mega-cities. This, when you think about it, is strange. A city in that size is big enough to support multiple factories, large retail establishments, fully equipped hospitals, entertainment businesses, repair services for all key technologies, and an airport. So why don't such cities outperform mega-cities, where the friction costs of scale start to get in the way?

This has been studied. Search for "medium sized cities" "problems". The phrase "urban shrinkage" is used in Europe. In most of the developed world, medium cities are not doing well. What seems to happen is that young people leave, the average age becomes older, a smaller fraction of people are in the workforce, factories close, and a slow death begins. Those forms of decline feed each other.

Japan is furthest along this path. Only Tokyo and Osaka grow; the rest of the country has hollowed out. It's a big issue in the US and in Germany. Don't know about other countries.

Without growth, medium sized cities age and die. Yet population is leveling off. Now what?

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skeledrew a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even for the social butterfly, the number of others someone can actually communicate with is capped at a reasonably low number.

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fittingopposite a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

With the difference that the larger the cities, the less we know the people around us and socialize with them. Totally different if you live in a tribe of 200 people or a mega city with 20 million people around you.

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Detrytus 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, but the size of community matters. In a 100 people tribe everybody knows everyone else. In 1M city most people are strangers, a.k.a. competitors, enemies even.

	▲	krapp 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		People competed all the time within tribes, even to the point of violence. Myths like Cain and Abel didn't come from nowhere.

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LanceH 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We also don't want to die of pneumonia at 11.

	▲	coldtea 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		People in villages of 1000 don't die of pneumonia at 11 either. We can let the weirdos that want to live in huge cities make the anti-pneumonia medicine and use it elsewhere.

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WJW 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't hate it, but at the same time things like the power grid and semiconductor manufacturing have supply chains that easily have 100 million people each in them if you follow it down enough. That's probably underestimating it, even. Modern society is super complex like that, however I don't think it's accurate to say that electricity and the internet have not brought any benefits to humanity.

I get it, it can be alienating to live in modern society. But you can create meaning and community even today. Probably not if you spend 80 hours a week in the office, but if you put in the effort to get to know your neighbors, join local sports clubs and keep up with the friendships you've built over the years, having a social group is not out of reach. It's just that you can't maximize for two different goals at the same time.

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bloppe 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I feel like you can have both. A big society with industry and laws and markets etc. and a circle of like 10-50 people that you consider close. That's basically how I see my own life.

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fittingopposite a day ago | parent [-]

I feel the issue we experience in the modern world that it just feels unnatural and alienating to be surrounded by thousands and thousands of people we don't know at all and who don't know us. In a small tribe you have the comfort of knowing everyone around you fairly well. The modern world is so anonymous.

	▲	bloppe 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		True, but also small town life sure isn't for everyone. Megacities exist because a lot of people actually like living in them.

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beacon294 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It just depends how far through the eye of the needle we already went, and how far we have to go. I don't want to go backwards. Humans are adapting, always locally, and never uniformly.

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DarmokTanagra a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Humans weren't built at all.

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The_Blade 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i like breaking bad in RimWorld

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chaostheory 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Centralizing populations helps with energy and transportation efficiency, which is important if you care about the environment.

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ux266478 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

But can't sustain itself. The larger it is, the larger the diffuse buffer it needs to support itself, and this diffuse buffer naturally spreads out as well. It's the natural flow of things to do so.

	▲	chaostheory 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s far more sustainable than the suburbs

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skeledrew a day ago | parent | prev [-]

No need for a lot of transportation as we have good communication.

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chaostheory 21 hours ago | parent [-]

What about physical goods?

	▲	skeledrew 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Localize production where possible. Forget about scaling at all costs, because some costs aren't worth it.

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sologub 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We have to move to stars, maybe not all at once.

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gswdh 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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