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cowpig an hour ago

Why?

edit: In all seriousness, some numbers I'm concerned about for children are the

- % of carbon in the atmosphere

- the number of militaristic demagogues in positions of power

- the number of hours the average person spends reading propaganda on social media

- the parts per million of microplastics in drinking water

- the democracy index

The sum of dollars consumed, dollars invested, dollars spent by governments, and net exports is a weird proxy signal to obsess over

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Kyo91 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Unemployment rate doesn't make the top 5?

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tshaddox an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Because eventually there will be an asteroid or nearby supernova that will destroy civilization unless humanity’s total wealth and technology have improved vastly between now and then. Stasis is death.

	▲	majormajor an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I don't find it likely that my kids or grandkids will have better odds of avoiding asteroid or supernova death by working to death to try to become interplanetary ASAP. I think doing so would introduce far more risks to them. Space ain't friendly. Beyond that I find it hard to care to drive anyone to work their ass off today for whatever humans are around 100+ years in the future. And, of course, more technological development brings more chance of mass self-inflicted die-off of humanity anyway. In 1900 it would've been much harder to kill 10%, 20%, 50%, 90% of the global population than it is today. Everything is death eventually. And predicting the future is hard.