I don't even think it's some sort of nostalgia for many. It's some sort of lifestyle they envision themselves of having by buying certain products, these older products are just more 'unique' nowadays.
I think the distraction problem is more fundamental than that. Especially for children growing up now with a very capable smartphone who will experience genuine anxiety being separated from it.
Nostalgia is perhaps a catalyst, but I'm convinced there is something more there.
Artists are a shrinking population, I wonder if having most of the top floors (20 out of 30) converted to extremely large luxury apartments (5000sqft+) and only 'adding capacity'to plumbing and what not for the lower 10 floors, which would house smaller units, would be economically viable. Although actual luxury market requires high ceiling so probably wouldn't work out.
I'm sure many many people have thought of all sort of solutions as the value for finding some sort of solution is extremely high.
People don't live alone they live in a society, even if you're above these temptations others aren't. This is why drugs are a problem, don't want tweakers in my train/bus/...
The human experience is defined by comparison. That's how our five senses work. While we can work for betterment of society as a whole, there will always be points of comparison between segments. Some segments will be better off than others. To deny that, to try to conform everyone to the same strata, that's contrary to our very nature.
Every so often we get a wave of socialism/communism hitting HN as a new generation is exposed to these ideas. It is a seductive idea, to be fair, has convinced many an intellectual over the years. It's very persuasive, especially on paper, yet it keeps failing in real life for one simple reason. It doesn't account for the human psyche, which is this:
People don't want to be equal. They want to be better. People are envious of success, they wish it upon themselves, not upon others. For, would you consider it success if everyone achieved what you did?
I order a lot from Amazon and it’s never happened to me (to my knowledge), and yet other commenters report 100% fraud rate across multiple items in the same order.
Might depend on what sort of things people buy. Expensive makeup or skincare products, you're gonna get scammed 50% of time. Has been the case since 2015 or so.
Fraud is good, these companies need their revenue so they can create an all powerful AGI. If you don't allow them to scam they'll lose against the chinese
The time of retailers being 'honest' is over. Scamming, bargaining and the likes were a big part of business. Bargaining was normal before certain religious beliefs (like the quakers and calvinists, similar religious beliefs were found with catholics), The fact it was more efficient with the industrial revolution not to do so helped it.
When you lose both those factors it's bound to come up again. People don't 'really' believe anymore in the west, doesn't bother me so much besides the fact that nothing better really replaced it. Better operation research/management/computers now allow for the bargaining to be done 'efficiently'.
Nobody in the US cares about this anyway, who cares if Zuckerberg makes billions scamming people. People were brought into passivity by the same culture industry and the politicians gain from these guys, they're cash cows for the US. I don't see how things could get better.
Secularism, changes in 'christianity' in the US. I'm not some christian nationalist but I do believe changes in values allowed Amazon to do this. Maybe I'm wrong and people will end up going against this in the long term. The 'christian' view of this behaviour didn't come from a vacuum. My biggest worry is the passivity/docile nature of people nowadays can't bring such change.
Looking at it through a religious lens is pretty narrow-minded. Secular people have values too. You're limiting your ability to understand the world around you.
Some secular people have values, I don't think religious people are saints. Secular people however don't have a framework to 'force' others with supposed values to adhere to them. I don't believe it's narrow minded to believes changes in religion might have an effect on things, the way people follow their religion is influenced by external factors, don't see why it wouldn't be the other way around as well. Atheists are quite new we'll see what happens.
You are deeply mistaken as to roots of this culture difference. There many highly religious cultures which absolutely lack the "social agreement" framework. The real reason why "social agreement" countries exist is feudalism. Feudal structure of power was the second on this planet (after ancient Greece, but that culture had been exterminated) to allow bidirectional agreements between kings and wealthy nobles. The only countries which managed to preserve this tradition unbroken were European ones, NA colonized by the Europeans and Japan which had societal structure close enough to adopt this culture without big changes and who later transferred them to its own colonies in Korea and Taiwan. And that about all countries valuing "social agreement". This is not because of religion or lack of it, it because of the accident - not being conquered by a despotic empire in the middle ages.
Gallup polling says 1% of people in the US didn't believe in god in 1967, 17% in 2022. Of those 17% i'd imagine many believed at some point (or went to church/temple/...), these people don't really behave like a 'pure' atheist would. They're very much still influenced by the religious ideas they grew up in. So yes it's a rather new thing if you're thinking about society.
I think your problem is you don't seem to be aware of history before 1967 or society outside of the US. Your local community college might offer some courses in history and sociology.
I agree with some of their sentiment but disagree that it is secularism specifically.
If anything, my observation has been that social media provides better avenues for exploitation by bad actors and, for lack of a better term, people unwilling to do 'self work'.
It used to be a lot harder to 'grift'; historically, a community would eventually suss out bad actors which leads to shunning/etc.
But, when your 'community' is an entire country or a large area of the planet, the signal/noise ratio changes along with the behavior of the bad actors.
As an example not directly related to Amazon, I've worked with more than one person who would be a decent programmer if they worked on their job skills as much as they worked on their job hopping skills; online job posting (at least for a while) made it way easier for someone to just hop from job to job collecting a paycheck before the 'well now they should be onboarded and productive' red line is crossed and they are found out.
I've seen it with more than one person that is happy to screw over multiple 'friends' because they just use the internet to find the right groups to make new friends [0].
I've seen it with acquaintances where they just keep burning through 'matches' on dating sites without any introspection as to their own toxic behavior[1].
And sure, in all these cases people bad actors can still get 'outed'. However the bad actors are also happy to be dishonest in their own messaging, which again messes with the SNR. They'll just try to drag you through the mud and drain your endurance fighting their lies if you try to speak up, and unless you've really got time to burn... everyone stays quiet.
And, well, society is worse as a result.
[0] - They'll even pick up new interests in the process, once they've sufficiently burned themselves in a given community.
[1] - My favorite example was two narcissists that -both- were looking to replace the other before they broke up with each other...
In "non-secular times" people as a whole were far less mobile, so they grew up and built connections around the same people, and any connections to the wider world were very low-bandwidth if they existed at all. So they trusted the people they were near because they were around them constantly, and also tended to resist change.
I think you are conflating religious values with how things were when people mostly lived among the same people for most of their lives and didn't have modern communication methods that brought the whole world (or an appearance thereof which is what modern social media is) to their face.
After years of scamming customers, amazon has finally seen the light and won't be prioritizing shareholder returns (which they're legally required to do). In reality hey're just trying to tone down the scamming they've been doing ever so slightly because it's hurting revenue. 100% sure it will just end up at 2019 or 2021 amazon scam levels, Some sort of 'scamming optimum' for amazon.
If you think it never started try going to some third world country and compare, their people are used to the bargaining/scamming but nobody cares. Things will end up the same here at some point.
In most countries living in the woods on your own isn't allowed. You're forced to be connected if you want a job, social life, not be seen as a crazy person. You pretend like we're all living on some island where everything is merely decided by what you as an individual do.
In my home country several old people had to close their shop as they were forced to move to a digital accounting system, they didn't have a choice. My bank only allows me to go to their office without an appointment 1 day a week (maybe not even). My grandpa who doesn't have a phone (he never even got a landline), doesn't have internet and barely even drives, he has to depend on others to call and make appointments. If you want to apply for a job, you need internet connection. Many won't even hire you without owning a car (even if you could perfectly commute with a bicycle or public transport).
If you think we're at the end of this 'evolution', we're just getting started. My grandpa could perfectly do everything on his own until 2010, by 2018 it was getting almost impossible, 2026 he feels like a burden for not being into technology.
People are social beings. I could live a life which is (vastly) better than people in 1930 or 1960 by doing the most menial work. The problem is that if most of society wouldn't, I'd be seen as a paria. If I didn't have a partner it would be extremely difficult to find one, children would be bullied at their school.
I actually did very menial work in a food processing plant while still in education, I'm not better than the people working there but I'm different from them in interests and in upbringing (even though I didn't come from wealth, the people I studied with, shared hobbies with did). I wasn't able to discuss the things I read with these people and they weren't able to talk about their interests. I believe if I had to work there for years or decades it would lead to dysfunction.
The biggest problem with ads is that even if I were willing to pay any amount of money I would still get many of the problems brought by this 'ad run' world. There's enough things where you can't even avoid ads.
I mean, to steelman their point, there's a lot more misinformation than information on Google. I still personally think that it's a worthwhile trade though
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