<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>uneekname</author><text>I try not to argue with strangers much on the internet, but I really disagree with you on this one.&lt;p&gt;What someone wears is a part of their self-expression. In this post, you use the phrases &amp;quot;respect for one&amp;#x27;s appearance&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;care about [one&amp;#x27;s] appearance&amp;quot; to suggest that people have a responsibility to follow certain norms in how they dress in order to make &amp;quot;&amp;#x27;civilization&amp;#x27; aesthetically appealing,&amp;quot; in your words. Aesthetic is a subjective, and I think it&amp;#x27;s funny that you are so eager to project your aesthetic onto others. I for one actively choose to wear pajamas, go barefoot, keep my hair disheveled in public &lt;i&gt;because that is my aesthetic and I think it looks good&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;I will also clean up my local park, reduce my ecological footprint as much as possible, insert socially responsible behavior here...but you should consider widening your view of what is and isn&amp;#x27;t ok to wear in public.</text></item><item><author>keiferski</author><text>Respect for other people, general social norms, polite behavior, personal dignity, and in general just a respect for one&amp;#x27;s appearance and a desire to make &amp;quot;civilization&amp;quot; aesthetically appealing. People seem to enjoy living in beautiful buildings with green parks nearby, without pollution or noise, and yet somehow think dressing like a slob or putting zero effort into one&amp;#x27;s appearance is unimportant.&lt;p&gt;To be honest, if you don&amp;#x27;t find this obviously true, I&amp;#x27;m not sure any argument is going to convince you. I&amp;#x27;ll also add that in many countries outside of America, it is just &lt;i&gt;the default&lt;/i&gt; to care about your appearance when in public.</text></item><item><author>kelseyfrog</author><text>Maybe I have something to learn, but what load-bearing social foundation would public pajama-wearing endanger?</text></item><item><author>keiferski</author><text>A society is made up of people. The way people act, dress, talk, or do anything else has a pretty direct impact on other people in that society. Unless your definition of society is an extremely disconnected one, comprised of alienated individuals that have no interaction with each other, yes, it does affect other people.</text></item><item><author>Zircom</author><text>&amp;gt;being a grown-ass adult in pajamas out in public&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m with you about all the other things but people wearing whatever clothes they want to affects you in literally no way shape or form.</text></item><item><author>PessimalDecimal</author><text>&amp;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;&amp;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.&lt;p&gt;Both of these resonate with me. I perceive it as a general decline in the willingness to enforce any sort of standards of behavior by any means (social shaming or formal enforcement by law). Antisocial behavior like drag racing, speeding through neighborhoods, arguing and even fighting on airplanes, being a grown-ass adult in pajamas out in public, etc. You&amp;#x27;re likelier to get resistance for trying to enforce any sort of basic decency than to flout old (but not that old...) standards.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>josephg</author><text>To me, the distinction is whether we put in effort in our dress. It doesn’t matter what we look like; it matter that we spent resources to look like that.&lt;p&gt;People in many industries wear ties to work. I used to wonder what the point is of a tie, or a good suit. I don’t think it’s just fashion, but what? My take now is that it implies you care about how you’re seen by others - that you’re actively going to burn some of your time and money to demonstrate your vulnerability to your reputation. If someone who hasn’t washed and wears pyjamas gets in a fight in the street with someone in a suit, the person in the suit has more to lose. And that means if I want to make a business deal with one of them, I’m going to feel much safer dealing with the person in the suit because if they do wrong by me, they have reputational face to lose. (Or at least that’s the implication).&lt;p&gt;So yeah, I also agree with the GP. I think putting effort into the appearance of our cities and ourselves is effort spent signaling to each other that our society is worth investing in. It can go too far, and it was fun wearing pyjamas out on the street during covid. But I’m glad to live in a place that removes graffiti and where people sometimes dress up to go out.</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>uneekname</author><text>I try not to argue with strangers much on the internet, but I really disagree with you on this one.&lt;p&gt;What someone wears is a part of their self-expression. In this post, you use the phrases &amp;quot;respect for one&amp;#x27;s appearance&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;care about [one&amp;#x27;s] appearance&amp;quot; to suggest that people have a responsibility to follow certain norms in how they dress in order to make &amp;quot;&amp;#x27;civilization&amp;#x27; aesthetically appealing,&amp;quot; in your words. Aesthetic is a subjective, and I think it&amp;#x27;s funny that you are so eager to project your aesthetic onto others. I for one actively choose to wear pajamas, go barefoot, keep my hair disheveled in public &lt;i&gt;because that is my aesthetic and I think it looks good&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;I will also clean up my local park, reduce my ecological footprint as much as possible, insert socially responsible behavior here...but you should consider widening your view of what is and isn&amp;#x27;t ok to wear in public.</text></item><item><author>keiferski</author><text>Respect for other people, general social norms, polite behavior, personal dignity, and in general just a respect for one&amp;#x27;s appearance and a desire to make &amp;quot;civilization&amp;quot; aesthetically appealing. People seem to enjoy living in beautiful buildings with green parks nearby, without pollution or noise, and yet somehow think dressing like a slob or putting zero effort into one&amp;#x27;s appearance is unimportant.&lt;p&gt;To be honest, if you don&amp;#x27;t find this obviously true, I&amp;#x27;m not sure any argument is going to convince you. I&amp;#x27;ll also add that in many countries outside of America, it is just &lt;i&gt;the default&lt;/i&gt; to care about your appearance when in public.</text></item><item><author>kelseyfrog</author><text>Maybe I have something to learn, but what load-bearing social foundation would public pajama-wearing endanger?</text></item><item><author>keiferski</author><text>A society is made up of people. The way people act, dress, talk, or do anything else has a pretty direct impact on other people in that society. Unless your definition of society is an extremely disconnected one, comprised of alienated individuals that have no interaction with each other, yes, it does affect other people.</text></item><item><author>Zircom</author><text>&amp;gt;being a grown-ass adult in pajamas out in public&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m with you about all the other things but people wearing whatever clothes they want to affects you in literally no way shape or form.</text></item><item><author>PessimalDecimal</author><text>&amp;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;&amp;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.&lt;p&gt;Both of these resonate with me. I perceive it as a general decline in the willingness to enforce any sort of standards of behavior by any means (social shaming or formal enforcement by law). Antisocial behavior like drag racing, speeding through neighborhoods, arguing and even fighting on airplanes, being a grown-ass adult in pajamas out in public, etc. You&amp;#x27;re likelier to get resistance for trying to enforce any sort of basic decency than to flout old (but not that old...) standards.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>keiferski</author><text>Some people think that aesthetics is entirely subjective. This is the default view of Western liberal democracies, especially among people that haven’t really thought much about the topic.&lt;p&gt;Some people, including a lot of philosophers and art theorists that can be considered “experts”, disagree. I would consider myself in this camp, although not a credentialed expert by any means. And no, I’m not “projecting my aesthetic” on to others, simply defending the idea of norms and expectations. This is a very different thing.&lt;p&gt;As I said in another comment, if you can’t get beyond the idea that Value is not entirely subjective and that everything isn’t just “your opinion, Dude,” then no argument is probably going to convince you of anything. Hence you will just end up in a situation like the OP posted about.</text></comment>