<story><title>Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?</title><text>Is anyone else noticing that for several 5 year blocks (pentad) the world just seems to get markedly worse? It&amp;#x27;s like no body seems to give a shit about anyone except themselves anymore. Whats the cause of this? What&amp;#x27;s the solution?&lt;p&gt;A bunch of things I&amp;#x27;ve noticed:&lt;p&gt;* Landlords seem extremely greedy and do terrible rent seeking tactics like fees upon fees (250 admin fee to rent here, $75 to apply, $300 non refundable pet deposit, $25 a month pet rent, $12.50 community fee, $15 trash valet, $5 online payment fee, $100 a month community internet (for the $50 a month package), going Month to month after a lease ends is 2x the annual price. And then they use RealPage to collude to make prices higher[1]&lt;p&gt;* People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there&amp;#x27;s someone with loud as exhaust on &amp;quot;sportish&amp;quot; car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained.&lt;p&gt;* General worker apathy is endemic everywhere I go people seem aggravated I would dare to check my order and point out they didn&amp;#x27;t put in the ketchup i asked for, or the napkins, or whatever. Or when I dine in the tables are dirty. Or the gym is filthy, the cleaner just drags the mop around looking busy but accomplishing nothing. But in many instances they keep asking for more tips.&lt;p&gt;* Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time today. And this one I think I&amp;#x27;ve observed the root, it seems that people get promoted away from their problems so they&amp;#x27;re not the ones to solve them. And those who do write good software (albeit slightly slower) are not promotable beacuse they&amp;#x27;re &amp;quot;under performing&amp;quot; their peers. Why does it seem management (and many thusly incentivized engineers) have abandoned decades of experience showing how to create reliable, robust, reusable code that is both great the customer, fast to iterate on, and only a tiny tiny bit slower to write.&lt;p&gt;* Seems like everything is subscription model and you have to pay N times to access something thats only worth 1-3x . Eg: I Netflix for a couple hours a month. At the price for 4k access I can almost go out to a theatre. Video games are all trending to subscription models. I just learned the other day that the PS4 games I got with my subcription to PSN all are locked because I stopped subscribing (nearly 50 games) .  So I paid them like $125 for access to these games for 24 months, and now I cannot play any of them? At least I still own NES&amp;#x2F;SNES&amp;#x2F;N64 Game cartridges that will never lock me out.&lt;p&gt;* Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I&amp;#x27;ve noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world. Folks stealing shit. People driving absurdly dangerously in cars that are not designed to travel like that. (tailgating, lane switch, accelerating at the fastest I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen a beat up Sentra do...) . I never see cops hit lights and sirens at them. And every year our taxes (their paycheck) and our insurance goes up (a consequence of poor driving habits). And at the same time, we get these cases where a dude like Tyre, at least as I see the body cam, seems to be basically complying and the police freak out on him, he basically complies, and they taze and pepper spay him, no wonder he ran away -- what is someone supposed to think when they say &amp;quot;on the ground&amp;quot; and you get on the ground and then just keep getting more and more aggressive. Like are you gonna just lay on your face while they potentially pull their gun and just shoot you in the back of the head? How do you know what&amp;#x27;s going on unless you can face and see them? How can you trust they wont, cause even if it&amp;#x27;s 99.999999% they wont, you only get 1 one chance and if you get it wrong you&amp;#x27;re dead without any coming back.&lt;p&gt;* Over and over again we keep hearing stories of fake people becoming the top paid, respected, or otherwise status people in society. Elizabeth Holmes, Frank&amp;#x2F;JP Morgan scam for $175M[2], fraudulent crypto schemes&lt;p&gt;* And there&amp;#x27;s a ton of little things too like the water is poison, the air is poison, the food system is poison or crashing etc.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m aware of pinker&amp;#x27;s general argument that many numbers are getting better. But it seems like people just treat eachother like shit these days.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else have other examples? I am I way off base here?&lt;p&gt;[1]: https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theverge.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;23479034&amp;#x2F;doj-investigating-rent-setting-software-company-realpage&lt;p&gt;[2]: https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;jpmorgan-chase-charlie-javice-fraud.html</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>Dalewyn</author><text>&amp;gt;Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories),&lt;p&gt;300% this.&lt;p&gt;I heard on several occasions long ago how newspapers aren&amp;#x27;t worth reading and news programs aren&amp;#x27;t worth watching. At the time I didn&amp;#x27;t understand why and thought it was bad advice, young and naive greenhorn that I was: The news is there to inform us! Being informed is a good thing!&lt;p&gt;Now that I&amp;#x27;m approaching my mid 30s and have some wisdom under my belt (still need to accrue more!), I can properly understand and appreciate the value behind that sagely advice to ignore the news.&lt;p&gt;The news, and more aptly the media at large including social media, isn&amp;#x27;t about informing us. It&amp;#x27;s about angering us, about baiting us into feelings of sensationalism. The vast majority of the bullshit we see on the news is negative because negative stories are very effective at tugging at our heart strings. The vast majority of the content on social media is far fetched from reality because reality is fairly mundane.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a patent waste of time to be concerned about things that don&amp;#x27;t concern you or that you can do nothing about (eg: things happening on the other side of the continent or the fucking planet). Turn off all that bullshit, time is finite and there are much better things that time could be spent on.</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories), and getting more in person interaction.&lt;p&gt;You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics or stories of violence hundreds of miles a way. Disconnect and recharge. Reconnect with people around you and enjoy the world as it exists, not for some representation of all the terrible things on news media.</text></item><item><author>cedws</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m 21 and I think everything&amp;#x27;s going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?</text></item><item><author>zeroonetwothree</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know your age but I&amp;#x27;m going to guess 30+. This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people you knew pined for some earlier time (say the 1970s or 1950s). And you probably thought they were being silly. Well, now you&amp;#x27;ve become one of those people.&lt;p&gt;The fact is the world always seems better when you are younger, not because the world necessarily better, but because it&amp;#x27;s just more pleasant to be young. The future is full of promise, you haven&amp;#x27;t made any huge mistakes yet, and your body hasn&amp;#x27;t started the inexorable march towards decay and death.&lt;p&gt;Most of your points are subjective, reflecting people&amp;#x27;s mentality or thoughts. I can&amp;#x27;t really argue against this because it&amp;#x27;s your own perception. But I would say you should be a bit skeptical that people&amp;#x27;s behavior can really change that much over such a short period. It&amp;#x27;s much more likely that you interpret it differently than you use to. Scams have been prevalent throughout human history. Perhaps you are just paying more attention to the news lately?&lt;p&gt;Some of the things you bring up are valid objective things. For example it&amp;#x27;s true that many more things are subscription based now. But on the other hands, those are things that weren&amp;#x27;t even available before. You can still buy and play all the same non-subscription games that used to exist (I still play HOMM3 for example). If you prefer cable TV that still exists as well. So I find it misleading to argue that because we have &lt;i&gt;more choice&lt;/i&gt; that it&amp;#x27;s somehow worse when the previous options haven&amp;#x27;t been taken away.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DavidPiper</author><text>Big +1 , I&amp;#x27;ve been off the news for about 5 years now (minus a stint for a few months around March 2020).&lt;p&gt;I always recommend people read &amp;quot;Amusing Ourselves to Death&amp;quot; by Niel Postman. Sums up the news cycle perfectly (and frankly the social media cycle too, even though the book is from the 80s).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; and getting more in person interaction.&lt;p&gt;I think this is key though. From my experience:&lt;p&gt;If you just switch off the news and put that time into more productive personal pursuits - like I did - you don&amp;#x27;t actually lose the news&amp;#x2F;social media mindset. The next time you see someone pull out Instagram during lunch or parrot political babble at dinner they could only have heard on the news, your brain immediately returns to the sensationalist, triggering and combative frame that you&amp;#x27;ve been trying hard to avoid.&lt;p&gt;You need to create spaces _with other people_ where you&amp;#x27;re all disengaged from the cycle.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s getting harder. Particularly if you consider TikTok now part of the cycle.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?</title><text>Is anyone else noticing that for several 5 year blocks (pentad) the world just seems to get markedly worse? It&amp;#x27;s like no body seems to give a shit about anyone except themselves anymore. Whats the cause of this? What&amp;#x27;s the solution?&lt;p&gt;A bunch of things I&amp;#x27;ve noticed:&lt;p&gt;* Landlords seem extremely greedy and do terrible rent seeking tactics like fees upon fees (250 admin fee to rent here, $75 to apply, $300 non refundable pet deposit, $25 a month pet rent, $12.50 community fee, $15 trash valet, $5 online payment fee, $100 a month community internet (for the $50 a month package), going Month to month after a lease ends is 2x the annual price. And then they use RealPage to collude to make prices higher[1]&lt;p&gt;* People are noisy as fuck and dont seem to give a shit. Seems like every night there&amp;#x27;s someone with loud as exhaust on &amp;quot;sportish&amp;quot; car ripping around the neihborhood. For months this guy would start up his loud car at 7am and no one care when I complained.&lt;p&gt;* General worker apathy is endemic everywhere I go people seem aggravated I would dare to check my order and point out they didn&amp;#x27;t put in the ketchup i asked for, or the napkins, or whatever. Or when I dine in the tables are dirty. Or the gym is filthy, the cleaner just drags the mop around looking busy but accomplishing nothing. But in many instances they keep asking for more tips.&lt;p&gt;* Software seems to be overrun by a mentality that any future cost is worth it to save even 1 minute of development time today. And this one I think I&amp;#x27;ve observed the root, it seems that people get promoted away from their problems so they&amp;#x27;re not the ones to solve them. And those who do write good software (albeit slightly slower) are not promotable beacuse they&amp;#x27;re &amp;quot;under performing&amp;quot; their peers. Why does it seem management (and many thusly incentivized engineers) have abandoned decades of experience showing how to create reliable, robust, reusable code that is both great the customer, fast to iterate on, and only a tiny tiny bit slower to write.&lt;p&gt;* Seems like everything is subscription model and you have to pay N times to access something thats only worth 1-3x . Eg: I Netflix for a couple hours a month. At the price for 4k access I can almost go out to a theatre. Video games are all trending to subscription models. I just learned the other day that the PS4 games I got with my subcription to PSN all are locked because I stopped subscribing (nearly 50 games) .  So I paid them like $125 for access to these games for 24 months, and now I cannot play any of them? At least I still own NES&amp;#x2F;SNES&amp;#x2F;N64 Game cartridges that will never lock me out.&lt;p&gt;* Police seem to not give a shit anymore. I&amp;#x27;ve noticed what seems to be total lawlessness going on in my world. Folks stealing shit. People driving absurdly dangerously in cars that are not designed to travel like that. (tailgating, lane switch, accelerating at the fastest I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen a beat up Sentra do...) . I never see cops hit lights and sirens at them. And every year our taxes (their paycheck) and our insurance goes up (a consequence of poor driving habits). And at the same time, we get these cases where a dude like Tyre, at least as I see the body cam, seems to be basically complying and the police freak out on him, he basically complies, and they taze and pepper spay him, no wonder he ran away -- what is someone supposed to think when they say &amp;quot;on the ground&amp;quot; and you get on the ground and then just keep getting more and more aggressive. Like are you gonna just lay on your face while they potentially pull their gun and just shoot you in the back of the head? How do you know what&amp;#x27;s going on unless you can face and see them? How can you trust they wont, cause even if it&amp;#x27;s 99.999999% they wont, you only get 1 one chance and if you get it wrong you&amp;#x27;re dead without any coming back.&lt;p&gt;* Over and over again we keep hearing stories of fake people becoming the top paid, respected, or otherwise status people in society. Elizabeth Holmes, Frank&amp;#x2F;JP Morgan scam for $175M[2], fraudulent crypto schemes&lt;p&gt;* And there&amp;#x27;s a ton of little things too like the water is poison, the air is poison, the food system is poison or crashing etc.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m aware of pinker&amp;#x27;s general argument that many numbers are getting better. But it seems like people just treat eachother like shit these days.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else have other examples? I am I way off base here?&lt;p&gt;[1]: https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theverge.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;26&amp;#x2F;23479034&amp;#x2F;doj-investigating-rent-setting-software-company-realpage&lt;p&gt;[2]: https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;jpmorgan-chase-charlie-javice-fraud.html</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>Dalewyn</author><text>&amp;gt;Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories),&lt;p&gt;300% this.&lt;p&gt;I heard on several occasions long ago how newspapers aren&amp;#x27;t worth reading and news programs aren&amp;#x27;t worth watching. At the time I didn&amp;#x27;t understand why and thought it was bad advice, young and naive greenhorn that I was: The news is there to inform us! Being informed is a good thing!&lt;p&gt;Now that I&amp;#x27;m approaching my mid 30s and have some wisdom under my belt (still need to accrue more!), I can properly understand and appreciate the value behind that sagely advice to ignore the news.&lt;p&gt;The news, and more aptly the media at large including social media, isn&amp;#x27;t about informing us. It&amp;#x27;s about angering us, about baiting us into feelings of sensationalism. The vast majority of the bullshit we see on the news is negative because negative stories are very effective at tugging at our heart strings. The vast majority of the content on social media is far fetched from reality because reality is fairly mundane.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a patent waste of time to be concerned about things that don&amp;#x27;t concern you or that you can do nothing about (eg: things happening on the other side of the continent or the fucking planet). Turn off all that bullshit, time is finite and there are much better things that time could be spent on.</text></item><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories), and getting more in person interaction.&lt;p&gt;You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics or stories of violence hundreds of miles a way. Disconnect and recharge. Reconnect with people around you and enjoy the world as it exists, not for some representation of all the terrible things on news media.</text></item><item><author>cedws</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m 21 and I think everything&amp;#x27;s going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?</text></item><item><author>zeroonetwothree</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know your age but I&amp;#x27;m going to guess 30+. This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people you knew pined for some earlier time (say the 1970s or 1950s). And you probably thought they were being silly. Well, now you&amp;#x27;ve become one of those people.&lt;p&gt;The fact is the world always seems better when you are younger, not because the world necessarily better, but because it&amp;#x27;s just more pleasant to be young. The future is full of promise, you haven&amp;#x27;t made any huge mistakes yet, and your body hasn&amp;#x27;t started the inexorable march towards decay and death.&lt;p&gt;Most of your points are subjective, reflecting people&amp;#x27;s mentality or thoughts. I can&amp;#x27;t really argue against this because it&amp;#x27;s your own perception. But I would say you should be a bit skeptical that people&amp;#x27;s behavior can really change that much over such a short period. It&amp;#x27;s much more likely that you interpret it differently than you use to. Scams have been prevalent throughout human history. Perhaps you are just paying more attention to the news lately?&lt;p&gt;Some of the things you bring up are valid objective things. For example it&amp;#x27;s true that many more things are subscription based now. But on the other hands, those are things that weren&amp;#x27;t even available before. You can still buy and play all the same non-subscription games that used to exist (I still play HOMM3 for example). If you prefer cable TV that still exists as well. So I find it misleading to argue that because we have &lt;i&gt;more choice&lt;/i&gt; that it&amp;#x27;s somehow worse when the previous options haven&amp;#x27;t been taken away.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mdanger007</author><text>What is &amp;quot;the news&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also in my 3rd decade, and wisdom tells me there is much to gain from good news sources: NPR (there are others) teaches me something every day: People outside my socio-economic bubble their triumphs, their struggles.&lt;p&gt;Do you ever think how the divisions in this country are not because of divisive news, but the lack of learning about and empathizing with people different than us?</text></comment>