Comment by samarthr1 - Hacker Neue

samarthr1 Nov 17, 2025 parent

> Two related but often confused concepts. Standards of living, quality of life. > > We definitely need more of the latter, and for it to be distributed more evenly across the globe. The former, however, hits an asymptote. The upper middle classes are, in general, a lot happier than the desperately poor, having perhaps 10x their wealth. Billionaires, who have 1000x more again, aren't much happier. > > So the question becomes, if we want to avoid scarcity, how much do we overbuild - such that scarcity is a physical and mathematical impossibility - and how much do we make society a bit more adaptive? A simple example - do we build enough electricity that people are guaranteed to always have enough to charge their heavy EVs, or do we overbuild a bit less, and encourage some percent of the population to work remotely or use light transport at times when energy availability is a little compromised. > > I'm here for a prosperity that gives everyone on the planet four weeks' paid vacation each year, hell, why not eight weeks if we can. I'm not so much here for all those vacations being long-haul aviation - it's enormously more impact on the planet for a tiny gain in quality of life.

Growing up, I have always wanted to go and spend time in Italy. I am sure that there are countless other folks, from places emerging from the shadows of war, pestilence and suffering with similar dreams.

Who are we to say that no, you should instead go tour only places nearby?

Whenever there is scarcity of anything, the rich rarely suffer, but the farmer in rural rayalseema will go without. I fear that if we bake in this "encouragement" into costs of electricity (say), it is not a software engineer who will go drive in a moped, but a day labourer.

The issue with mopeds is not just that you consume less electricity, but that you put your life at risk!

At the risk of digressing, I am all for getting rid of two wheelers for non recreational use. They are bloody death traps (A person dying on a moped or bike does not even make local news in india). In my family alone, we have lost 3 cousins from my father's side to two wheele accidents) So no, not overbuilding only means that poor suffer more, for no good reason.

Earw0rm Nov 17, 2025

Would you like to go visit Italy? Of course, who wouldn't. But understand that the CO2 burden of a return flight from India to Rome is somewhere around 2-3x what the planet can sustain, per person, per year, and that for all the hype, carbon-neutral aviation fuel is so far nothing more than a dream. And you're telling me that you've seen all the wonders of the world within a short-haul flight from home?

So once in a lifetime? Sure. But if people do this routinely, the planet pays, which means someone somewhere pays. Our environmental debt is like a maxed-out bank loan at this point. And those people will paying the price will almost all be poor. Tell me what's more likely: a future where the poor get to fly to Italy every year, or a future where the rich and not-quite-rich do that until we really do run out of room on climate.

In my city we're using electric two-wheelers increasingly. It requires good road design, low speed limits (20mph or even 25kph), high standard of driver training, and well-designed vehicles with good brakes etc. With those things in place, it's possible to operate them safely, and on 1/20th the energy budget of full-sized EVs. 20mph doesn't sound like much, but in a big city it's fast enough to cover a lot of ground, and do so in relative safety.

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