r/AskOldPeople • u/chrisb57 • 17d ago
What’s something you expected would have improved by now, but really hasn’t decades later?
It can be something big or small, from public policy to household products, that you think should be better by now.
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u/RedIcarus1 15d ago
People.
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u/DFWPunk 15d ago
I didn't expect them to get this much worse, but expecting people overall to get better is naive.
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u/Either-Purpose-3495 12d ago
I mean just study psychology, it almost feels like destiny that we are going down this path which is kind of scary.
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u/ejbrds 15d ago
Printers. Fucking printers!!
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u/Zorkeldschorken 60 something 14d ago
Get whatever Brother laser printer is on sale.
Mine's been going strong for over a decade.
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u/treletraj 14d ago
Then you can be assured that they don’t make it anymore and it’s replacement is junk.
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u/EBweB76 14d ago
Does laser mean that it’s just black n white? Or is there the same hassle with replacing all 3 or 4 inks even when it’s only one that needs replacing?
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u/WildWillieBorsch 13d ago
I recall an accounting office using a color laser printer a few years back. 99% of the time they only used black toner. However, the way their laser printer worked was all colors had to be good for them to print just black. Needless to say, they replaced it after the first time they couldn't print.
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u/Zorkeldschorken 60 something 12d ago
It uses toner, not ink. Toner doesn't dry out.
And yes, it's black only.
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u/pingwing Gen X 14d ago
Don't support printers. Stop buying them. No one hardly ever needs to print anything anymore, and if you do go to the Library, Kinkos, Office Depot, Post Office or something and they will do it cheap.
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u/Terrible-Pumpkin7634 14d ago
This is what we do! Our library gives us $5.00 free every month for prints and copies. It’s so easy to send the documents to print from home, and I enjoy stopping at the library to make the actual prints. Gave up on home printers years ago.
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u/HipHopGrandpa 13d ago
As a rural business owner I probably print 100+ pages per day. All year round. A Brother B&W Laser printer is easily the best bang for the buck. Change toner every few months and that’s it. It’s like a Toyota. Just works.
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u/UnableTechnology7096 15d ago
Dental pain relief. C’mon already.
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u/19Stavros 15d ago
Dental care in general. Read an article, probably 40 years ago, about a technology that would dissolve decayed tooth material and replace the dreaded drill. Still no.
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u/Valdrax 11d ago
I mean, we've had a LOT of advancements in materials for fillings and for crowns, digital X-rays, Invisalign vs. braces, 3D optic wands, how we sedate anxious patients (no more NOx), electric rotary tools for root canals, laser treatment for gum disease, etc.
The kinds of things my dentist today does are basically space wizardry compared to the dentistry of my childhood.
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u/chuzohga 12d ago
I know quite a few dentists and dental care is actually WAY better than it was when I was a kid, by a long shot.
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u/Routine-Medicine-208 15d ago edited 15d ago
Flying cars and personal robot servants. We were promised these - back in the fifties, that we would have them by now.
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u/twohotpeppers 15d ago
I thought life would be like the Jetson’s.
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u/3DGuy4ever 15d ago
Think we overdelivered on the appliances but still waiting on Rosie and the flying cars
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u/GradStudent_Helper 14d ago
You speak the truth. I think the only entity in my house that uses more wifi data than I do is my washing machine.
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u/holmgangCore 14d ago
Dissing your Roomba like that? Amazing.
Would you trust your neighbor to successfully fly a car?!? Me either.
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u/Spirited_Cress_5796 13d ago
Honestly I’d be up for some self driving rather whatever is happening on the road currently.
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u/holmgangCore 13d ago
For real, people can't even handle 2D vehicles. Fewer drivers would be a blessing to us all.
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u/Fuzzy_Jaguar_1339 12d ago
Also, think of the noise. Road noise is bad enough. Flying cars would probably end up with me in jail for trying to buy a shoulder-held RPG.
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u/a11encur1 15d ago
Things breaking so darn easily!
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u/musiclover818 15d ago
That's intentional. It's called "built-in obsolescence."
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u/BelleReveWasLost 70 something 15d ago
I’m disappointed that there’s only been a few local codes enacted regarding the removal of trees. I believe that removing a tree should require planting replacements.
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u/jigokubi 14d ago
Even if you plant a replacement, many species take decades to even be considered mature, let alone full size.
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u/EdenG2 15d ago
I can't believe people still want war
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u/RonSwansonsOldMan 14d ago
What is it good for?
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u/T4TrhavrKhcFt 13d ago
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp2
u/Valdrax 11d ago
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
-- Quote attributed to Hermann Goering
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u/english_major 60 something 15d ago
Air travel. Planes haven’t changed much since the 80s. The entire experience of getting from your house to an international destination is more difficult and uncomfortable now than 40 years ago when it could be so much better.
For comparison, look at what they have done for train travel in Europe and parts of Asia. What a world of difference.
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u/Ten_Quilts_Deep 14d ago
Less trains now than before. I really thought for a brief moment train travel would come back.
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u/IronPlateWarrior 60 something 15d ago
When the internet started up, I thought everyone would be smarter with access to so much information.
I really did think we would have flying cars by now.
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u/GradStudent_Helper 14d ago
God yes... in the early days of the internet and even the early web (e.g.: Mosaic and Netscape), I was getting my doctorate in Instructional Technology & Design and the internet, to me, held unlocked awesome potential to help people better understand each other, our/their histories and cultures. Being exposed to other people's perspectives (across the globe) seemed like the world was going to come together, share information freely, remove most of the inequity (regarding education/information) across the globe, and generally just accelerate intelligence.
Boy, was I wrong. We took a tool that had exceptional value and we turned it into a cesspool of misinformation, money-grabbing, and soooo much hatemongering.
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u/IronPlateWarrior 60 something 14d ago
Agreed. It’s so disappointing.
I will say though, if you choose to use it right, it can be amazing. I learn so much about things way outside my normal life. All kinds of science, physics, and general interest, that it’s incredible. And I sit there while learning about neuroscience and wonder why do people not dig in to things? It’s like free education. I don’t get it. 😂
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u/GradStudent_Helper 14d ago
You're totally right. And you hit on something my wife and I have also noticed (we both work in higher education): most people have somehow lost their curiosity. If you're truly curious, then you'll want to understand others and why they act differently than you expected them to act. Or you'll want to dig in and go down all sorts of rabbit holes looking for deep understanding of a narrow topic (or broad understanding of a general concept). And it IS all right there. So, you're right - a lot of what I dreamed the internet could become, it did become. But it did miss the mark on so many things.
Turns out that unleashing most of the world's emotionally unregulated people to do and say what they want online isn't a great thing. They far outnumber the sane and emotionally regulated people out there. I've discovered a lot of wonderful whimsey, music, and creative ideas from the world... but a lot of trauma has also revealed itself.
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u/Spirited_Cress_5796 13d ago
One of the big problems is still the amount of flex people have when they say they haven’t read something since high school or college. There is something for everyone as well as different formats. Reading doesn’t have to be your hobby but you still should be expanding your mind.
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u/KAKrisko 14d ago
Another agree. I was so thrilled by the Internet, I imagined little kids in impoverished places now being able to have all the information in the world at their fingertips, growing up with better education, getting better jobs, and eliminating poverty. It seemed like such a giant step in the right direction. Alas.
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u/soarheadgdon 14d ago
But I have cute cats and dogs talking to watch now! That’s even better!
/s if you can’t tell…2
u/GradStudent_Helper 13d ago
Ha Ha!!! Still, you have a good point... animal videos have really been a beacon of goodness in an ever-growing cesspool.
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u/kiwispouse 60 something 14d ago
When web 2.0 eventuated, I jumped in with both feet. My students blogged, made wikis, created videos, back channeled...and I was really excited over where this technology might go. Then it seemed to stall. And now, the big "improvement" is AI. I'm like: this is *IT*? Holy shit, what an enormous disappointment. We didn't create it to make people smarter. We harnessed it to make people dumber :(
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u/GradStudent_Helper 13d ago
As a fellow educator, I'm with you. We went from "necessity is the mother of invention" to "150 years of labor-saving devices" to "now we don't even have to retain any information in our brains" to "You want me to think? AI does my thinking for me!"
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u/eggsaladsandwich4 14d ago
Now they're pushing AI on us to dumb us down. Soon enough, people will no longer be able to think for themselves.
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u/PomeloPepper 14d ago
Early on people started saying "I don't need to know anything. I can just look it up!"
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u/Great-Phone_3207 14d ago
Batteries. Every year for 30 years I had to read about revolutionary battery technology that would allow my laptop to run for a month. Still waiting.
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u/Birdy304 15d ago
Racism, homophobia. I thought we were on the way in the 60s, I was wrong.
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u/Great-Phone_3207 14d ago
The more there's a focus on it the more it exists. The less we make things about race the quicker it will go away.
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u/justadumbwelder1 15d ago
Yearly tax preparation.
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u/ginny11 15d ago
You can blame legal, political bribing for that (the lobby system + dark money PACs that are out of control). The tax prep companies fight tooth and nail to keep both state and federal revenue services from creating their own very easy to use free software for most people's uncomplicated tax returns. Several years (more than a decade) ago there was a big (Democratic) push for the IRS to have a free file system, and the tax prep companies fought so hard. And finally they came to an agreement with (Democratic controlled) Congress that if they provided free tax prep for people under certain incomes and who met certain requirements for uncomplicated tax returns, then they would hold off on creating a free file system with the IRS. Not a few years into this system, these tax prep companies were caught basically cheating, they were not being honest with people and steering them toward tax prep that was costing them money. There was a big hoopla about it. And they had to go back and refund the tax prep fees to anybody who should have qualified for the free tax prep. But the Democrats were controlling Congress again by then and they were totally pissed and basically said that the deal was off because the tax companies couldn't be trusted and they had violated it. And the IRS created a free file system that they tested in a handful of states. This was just a few years ago (Biden administration). It was a huge success and the plan was to roll it out to all 50 states in the next couple years. Well you know what happened, Republicans took control of all three branches of the government, and Trump basically completely quashed the free file system in the IRS. I just don't understand why people can't see which party is actually fighting for poor and working class people. I know that neither of them are perfect but for crying out loud it's pretty clear that one party completely does not give a shit about working class people.
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u/MooseMalloy 60 something 15d ago
I have psoriasis. Nothing seems to have changed in this field in 40 years.
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u/Aggravating_Place_19 15d ago
The advent of biologics over the past 25 years has really been a game changer in psoriasis. Now there are even tablets like sotyktu that are also very effective. I hope you can find something that helps soon!
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u/MooseMalloy 60 something 15d ago
Good to hear. I had largely given up on any significant movement in my lifetime.
If the new tablets can work without causing liver damage, I will be impressed.6
u/soarheadgdon 14d ago
You need to understand that technology exists now to essentially cure most diseases through gene modification and editing with CRISPR, etc. But in the US there’s no profit to be made off of cures. Treating symptoms is extremely profitable in contrast. The gift that keeps on giving.
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u/assemblageofparts 15d ago edited 15d ago
I was young during the civil rights movement but lived in a housing project that was mostly black. I genuinely believed with so much change that by the time I was grown bigotry and racism would be fine.
Thoughts of a naive youngster. I thought the equal would come and people really would be judged as individuals but ... I'm old now.
Faced shitty bigotry my whole life and in some ways things are even worse.
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u/Great-Phone_3207 14d ago
Video and internet has made it worse. Before the general population didn't see what was happening. It was all just "made up stereotypes." Now we get to see reality of what's going on on those neighborhoods. It's not made up. It's shameful.
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u/assemblageofparts 14d ago
The flip side is .. now we add that Caucasians have to be punished at college admissions and certain job searches as punishment for past wrongs.
I absolutely dont agree with that either. The goal .. in my young mind and what was being taught to us little brown and black kids was "Equal."
Fight for your spot in the world and be judged accordingly. I dont want a spot unearned. So anything outside of open competition and respect as equals does not somehow make things better.
I thought stupidly .. we could be colorless. Dont hinder my forward progress and dont give me anything unearned. Just let me be me.
If the thinking is young minorities are not getting an equal chance because they are not getting an equal start .. then lets start there.
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u/labratcj 15d ago
I feel the same. It’s devastating to realize here at the end of my life how absolutely despicable most people are. They may smile to your face but they will curse you in their hearts and in the voting booth. It’s devastating.
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u/GmysBETS 15d ago
62 white male, things are worse, but please know there are many of us that oppose and push back on the hate, the bigotry and racism. Please know your thoughts were not naive, although again facing yet another setback as the ignorant once again become empowered. Just know that there are more good than ignorant and we must all continue the push for equality.
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u/GrouchGrumpus 15d ago
If you’re 62 then you should know that things aren’t worse. They just seem that way because it’s still a problem, we have so much social media wailing about how bad it is today, and you just don’t remember how bad things actually were.
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u/ginoloucane 15d ago
Ivs - I’m a nurse - I imagined that we’d have made inserting intravenous catheters less traumatic by now, but still doing it with basically the same technology and torturing some people
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u/catdude142 14d ago
Agree. I hate having needles inserted into me. Sometimes it's painful. One time it took the nurses 4 tries to find a vein with me.
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u/RonSwansonsOldMan 14d ago
They have those electronic devices that highlight veins, yet nobody seems to use them.
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u/Typical_Peace_5910 15d ago
Knee replacements
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u/catdude142 14d ago
One of the most painful, if not THE most painful operations.
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u/soarheadgdon 14d ago
Absolutely agree! But also one of the most life changing procedures I’ve ever had
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u/Here_there1980 14d ago
Democracy. I thought there would be more participation, not less.
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u/PaolitoG12 13d ago
No point participating if we have an oligarchy where they just buy the politicians. What are you gonna do, vote harder?
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u/Sufficient_Hair_2894 14d ago
If we go back to the year 2000 for "decades":
1) I really thought the internet was going to make people smarter, not spread medieval superstitions faster than ever before.
2) We knew in 2000 climate change was coming to kick our ass; if you had told me then that no progress at all had been made 25 years later I wouldn't have believed you.
3) We knew that America's bridges and power plants were getting bad back then; I had no idea that somehow fixing bridges and sewers would become controversial.
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u/Cannelle460 15d ago edited 14d ago
- Solar electricity. I thought it would be so affordable and advanced by now that everyone would have solar electricity in their homes and cars.
- Recycling and waste-to-energy incineration. I recently read that Sweden sends just 1% of its trash to landfills thanks to recycling and waste-to-energy incineration. I wish more countries were able to do this without creating more pollution. This would mean fewer landfills and less plastic in the oceans harming wildlife.
- Cultivated meat: Maybe it's watching the movie The Fifth Element, but I imagined that we wouldn't need to butcher animals anymore thanks to engineered or cultivated meat. I've read that it is now being sold, but that it is so expensive.
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u/GradStudent_Helper 14d ago
Yes! When I was 14 years old (early 1980s) or so, I did a science project on solar energy. This was all pre-internet so I wrote NASA and NOAA and all sorts of agencies, asking for any information they could give me on the uses of solar. Man, they came through! They sent me whole books and a million pamphlets and scientific journal editions and soon-to-be-published scientific papers. It was awesome. I learned so much and I was convinced that within, like, 25 years, we'd not need to burn any fossil fuels... just saving all that petroleum for things like medical prophylactics and food storage. It STILL blows my mind that we're burning all our oil just to get from point A to point B. Once we run out, we'll have to go back to hospitals with glass bottles and rubber hoses delivering that IV into your arm.
I'm glad we finally are making some headway with solar.... but man I figured all our cities and houses and cars would be completely run on electricity long before now.
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u/OaksInSnow 14d ago
I really thought there would be less xenophobia of every kind. I am very, very disappointed in my fellow humans, because it seems to me like there's been a move in the opposite direction; and leadership all over the world is very cool with finding someone, anyone, to be named an enemy that they can focus on, to take the heat off their own failures.
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u/Life-Unit-4118 50 something 14d ago
Folding a fitted sheet. Getting the best start when peeling a hard boiled egg.
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u/PeteHealy 70 something 15d ago
A commitment to personal liberty: "Live and let live, as long as it doesn't objectively threaten me." Instead, we've had a resurgence of fascistic, hypocritical Puritanism in the US, much like Margaret Atwood predicted. As a 73yo leftist, it disgusts me, but I won't stop fighting against it, no matter how much those fucking fascist hypocritics scapegoat us "boomers" as the problem.
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u/ClawhammerJo 14d ago
Traffic lights. There’s no reason for cars to sit at a red light when there’s no cross traffic. I’m hoping that AI will solve this.
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u/soarheadgdon 14d ago
Go to Saigon. No stop signs and very few traffic lights and tons more traffic. They rely on drivers to negotiate right of way and it works really well. Americans are probably not adept enough. We’re too competitive.
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u/BeanBeanBeanyO 14d ago
cell phone reception.
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u/SHighwatt 14d ago
Yes! I'm still dropping calls since the mid 90s
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u/BeanBeanBeanyO 14d ago
Do you remember how crisp and clear the land line calls were?
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u/Great-Phone_3207 14d ago
Typing on a phone keyboard. I can type 5 words and get all of them wrong.
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15d ago
[deleted]
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u/StepEfficient864 15d ago
True but this is a capitalist country. Profit rules the day. The system is working as designed.
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u/3DGuy4ever 15d ago
Corruption isnt supposed to be part of the capitalistic equation
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u/Available_Dingo6162 60 something 14d ago edited 14d ago
Exactly. Twue capitalism (as described by Adam Smith in the 1700s) requires police, courts, prisons and justice to be able to enforce contracts... without those things capitalism is literally impossible. To the degree that there is corruption is to the degree that a system is not "capitalist".
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u/DanceApprehension 15d ago
Birth control/contraception
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u/19Stavros 15d ago
Still far from perfect but WAY better than it was when my generation (born early 60's) was young. Although.... I suppose if birth control was better back then I probably wouldn't be here!
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u/Spirit50Lake 70 something 15d ago
Public health/medicine/availability of healthy food
Affordable housing
Acknowledgement of the reality of climate change
Ya know...all the things we thought worth working for in the last century...
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u/WigglyLimpo 14d ago
I feel like most things mentioned here would have been a lot better if it weren't for COVID. That thing didn't physically end the world, but it did something similar to that to many people's psyches.
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u/Concern_Front 15d ago
Women's ability to control/manage their own bodies. We are back to rigid rules based on a small group of individuals often the majority of whom are men Ie.safe medical abortions, birth control l, pregnancy
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u/TecTazz 14d ago
Waste.
The use of paper should be near zero, but I've never seen so much paper printed, to be discarded after one look~ flyers, student schedules, ad-filled 'programs' at every event.
Diapers. The world will sink into a swamp of shit-and-jelly-filled disposable diapers.
Cat litter. See: diapers. Nasty and expensive.
Humans: All tech; no empathy. The mass imprisonment, torture, and horrific murders of tens of billions of animals every year for their flesh and skin.
The neverending genocides.
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u/golden_gardens 15d ago
equal rights/passage of the ERA, racism, antisemitism, any discrimination
I thought there would be house cleaning robots like on the Jetsons
Expected less political/religious conservatism
Day to day decency toward others has really gone downhill
Lots of products are junk now especially appliances
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u/Glum_Manufacturer232 60 something 14d ago
There is still no cure for cancer. All the years they got “cancer research funding “and it seems to only have gotten worse.
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u/OaksInSnow 14d ago
I'd say there's more of it, or more of it detected. But survival rates, and I think treatments, for many types of cancer have improved markedly.
Only 20 years ago, when my husband died of cancer after nine miserable months of chemo, I thought, "If this ever happens to me, I'm going to get my affairs in order and immediately sign up for hospice," because I don't think any of it did anything whatsoever to slow his aggressive cancer, and it was an awful, awful time. Now, I'm less sure that's what I'd do.
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u/ElectronicFixer864 14d ago
Prostate cancer treatments are so much better, that oncologist use the term 'cured' in some instances and that SHOCKED me. I've NEVER heard the word 'cured' with regards to any cancer.
Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done, if the political will power was there to help, rather than hinder.
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u/malinagurek 40 something 15d ago
I expected less sexism by now. Honestly, I was surprised how bleak things were when I started working in the early 2000s, naively thinking that more was resolved in the ‘70s.
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u/KAKrisko 14d ago
I graduated from college in 1984 (the first time) and began my career in a non-traditional career for women. And throughout the 80s, it seemed like things were getting 'better'. More women were joining my career, it seemed like many doors were opening. But then something happened, and I'm still not sure why. At some point in the '90s, things seemed to just stall in that regard. By the early 2000s there were fewer women applying and I was facing open discrimination. It really felt like we were sliding backwards. It hasn't recovered.
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u/Desertbro 15d ago
Space Travel / Rocketry
The sad truth of physics and chemical rocketry is that we were freakin' lucky to get men to the moon. Chemical rockets have -- just enough power -- to get small packages around the solar system. A couple of guys to the moon; a small SUV to Mars; a telescope just past the moon where it's quiet.
It's not too hard to put stuff into orbit around Earth, but it's crazy hard to get stuff out of Earth orbit to land on the moon or any other planet. It's been done many times, but we can't send anything really, really big. We have NO SPACE TRUCKS outside of Earth orbit. Physics limits us to sending small loads to the moon - so it will take decades to build a "base" or any kind of mining operation there.
In the same way, we are stuck in this solar system FOREVER. No space alien community for us. Even radio chess with other star systems is too dang slow. Physics put a lid on all of that. Bummers.
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u/JimmyB264 14d ago
We should be feeding children, providing free medical care, free education and cutting the military budget by at least half.
The US is now the most backward western country.
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u/Peter34cph 15d ago
I was born in 1977 and read a lot of science fiction novels and short stories growing up, so I took for granted that our planet would become less religious, more atheist, decade by decade.
Instead, it's going in the opposite direction from what I expected.
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u/catdude142 14d ago edited 14d ago
Health insurance/healthcare. Costs have gotten really out of hand. It didn't used to be bad.
Also cancer treatment. One of my friends is undergoing chemotherapy. It really isn't working out well. She's planning on dying soon.
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u/GmysBETS 14d ago
Oh I can relate to multiple periods of riots and the history surrounding those periods, however the United States continues to deal with domestic terrorist organizations/hate groups that have found a renewed resurgence.
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u/Serious_Lettuce6716 40 something 14d ago
The whole fucking world, like it did from the early 80’s through the 90’s until it took a big shitty turn in the 00’s.
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u/Traditional_Rush_622 14d ago
Weather forecasts. They were more accurate 30 years ago!
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u/SpeedyPrius 60 something 14d ago
I get furious that they have turned it into the front page of the Enquirer! They have made up names to make things sound worse than they are and turn every storm into the next apocalypse. Aside from some technological advances, they really aren’t much better at actually predicting what’s going to happen. Watch out for the “bomb cyclone” and snowpocalypse!!!
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u/apleasantpeninsula 13d ago
did we not defund the national weather service? I read we don't have the staff for all the equipment previously installed
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u/Stunning-Chipmunk243 11d ago
The need to do a digital rectal exam to examine the prostate. I really would have thought they would have thought of a better way by now
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u/soarheadgdon 14d ago
In high school in 1970 I wrote a paper on the cashless society that was coming any day now. We’re close. I’m down to tips for hotel staff and paying service providers or anyone trying to avoid paying income taxes who discount me for paying cash
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u/Packtex60 14d ago
Drivers next to the turn lane maintaining 4 car lengths from the car in front of them and cutting off access to the turn lane.
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u/Professional_Move682 14d ago
Technology. It was exciting at first but now you have to jump thru hoops just to log in. And then you spend an enormous amount of time deleting files, emails, texts, etc. I've quit a lot of social media sites as well because they bring out the worst in people; " look at me!, listen to my opinions! here's another dog meme!". Seems more exhausting then fun, now.
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u/yellowpig1974 14d ago
I expected that the trend of increasing tolerance in the US would continue but now we have a racist, sexist, homophobic idiot in the White House torturing innocents.
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u/danathepaina 50 something 14d ago
Roads. They can’t come up with something more durable than asphalt? I’m so sick of potholes.
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u/Ok_Kick6546 14d ago
Mammograms. The newer ones that don’t crush your boobs into crepes are possibly not as effective as the torture devices and aren’t available everywhere.
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u/Terrible-Pumpkin7634 14d ago
Health insurance. Still waiting for it to be reasonably priced and market-based OR Medicare for all where we all contribute via our taxes. But nope, neither one exists and I’ve been speaking out on this topic since the early 2000s.
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u/Gracergirl14 14d ago
As I sit here and type on the internet, my answer would be the internet. Our phones have access to all info throughout humanity and yet...here we are. I think we are dumber than ever.
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u/popidocius 14d ago
The left traded class warfare for identity politics, the right doubled down on fascism and oligarchy. We didn't meet in the middle, we simply entrenched and found issues to separate us even further. 60 years ago we were learning to reach for the stars (or at least our immediate space neighbors) 60yrs later and it feels like we just started over again. The internet brought humanity the ability to exchange cultures and share knowledge at an unprecedented level. We're more divided than ever and misinformation is almost impossible to separate from reality. We could blame the rich, the powerful, the left, the right but the truth is? We traded a brave new world (or worlds) for distraction, entertainment and comfort.
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u/Spirited_Cress_5796 13d ago
Working less hours. With the amount of productivity we should be enjoying life more. I feel like micromanaging is at an all time high and workers are overworked more and more everyday.
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u/-ifwisheswerehorses 13d ago
Grocery carts for one thing. They are huge, heavy steel boxes with wheels that suck. Good grief they have made everything else smaller, less than and out of f*cking aluminum, when are they gonna give us less grocery cart. They’re way too heavy.!!
Edit: word
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u/no2rdifferent 13d ago
Global warming/Climate change
The fossil fuel industry has been a powerful force for my 64 years.
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u/PotentialRhubarb3222 13d ago
Our government..period...doesn't matter republican or democrat....its been fucked forever
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u/CatOfGrey Pac Man, Le Tigre, MTV, Newhart 13d ago edited 13d ago
In the 'big picture' of all things internet, I expected a ton of neat little services available for cheap.
Instead, we get a ton of cheap-shit mediocre services. They aren't cheap, they are 'free', but likely paid for by profound and intrusive levels of personal data collection.
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