<story><title>Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?</title><text>Environment, people, technology are changing rapidly. What are some worthwhile problems or ideas that you think would be important to solve or work on by end of the decade.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>ssss11</author><text>This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.</text></item><item><author>xerxesaa</author><text>We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.&lt;p&gt;Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market&amp;#x27;s expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>defrost</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    is a collection of essays published in 1973 by German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher.

    The title *Small Is Beautiful* came from a principle espoused by Schumacher&amp;#x27;s teacher Leopold Kohr (1909–1994) advancing small, appropriate technologies, policies, and polities as a superior alternative to the mainstream ethos of &amp;quot;bigger is better&amp;quot;.

    Overlapping environmental, social, and economic forces such as the 1973 energy crisis and popularisation of the concept of globalisation helped bring Schumacher&amp;#x27;s *Small Is Beautiful* critiques of mainstream economics to a wider audience during the 1970s.

    In 1995 The Times Literary Supplement ranked *Small Is Beautiful* among the 100 most influential books published since World War II.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
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<story><title>Ask HN: Problems for the next decade?</title><text>Environment, people, technology are changing rapidly. What are some worthwhile problems or ideas that you think would be important to solve or work on by end of the decade.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>ssss11</author><text>This aging topic is very important. Re: stock markets, economies need to shift from eternal $ growth to share holder wallets, to providing equitable outcomes for all people and the planet - that will be very interesting to watch, i can’t see it going well.</text></item><item><author>xerxesaa</author><text>We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences.&lt;p&gt;Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market&amp;#x27;s expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dools</author><text>You might be interested in the work of Steven Hail and Gabrielle Bond. There&amp;#x27;s an online course they run through Torrens University that covers a lot of this stuff:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.torrens.edu.au&amp;#x2F;courses&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;economics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.torrens.edu.au&amp;#x2F;courses&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;economics&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>