# “I am useful” is the modern battle cry of human failure and suffering Date: 2024-01-16 --- --- ### “I am useful” is the modern battle cry of human failure and suffering * War on the rise fueled by “reasons” and backed by 1000 times more technology and funding than peace * Financialization of global economies has reached levels unprecedented in human history ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/i-am-useful-is-the-modern-battle-cry-of-human-failure-and-suffering-0bebf80e4b.png) * Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Hungary and many others including large segments of Africa run by dictators ![Colored countries are dictatorships](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/i-am-useful-is-the-modern-battle-cry-of-human-failure-and-suffering-047825814c.png) *Colored countries are dictatorships* * University and hospital administrators are sucking their establishments dry alongside managers in corporations * Oil demand is projected to continue to rise over the next five years (except road transport usage) ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/i-am-useful-is-the-modern-battle-cry-of-human-failure-and-suffering-99b8883a3c.png) * Nuclear weapons now joined by biotechnology (80% chance caused COVID) and AI ([election fraud](https://fortune.com/2023/12/28/2024-election-tsunami-of-misinformation-deepfakes-ai/)) as technologies that need serious regulation immediately * America is losing religious faith in droves — led in no small part by [disgust with religious leaders](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/opinion/christianity-america-religion-secular.html) * Flexibility to work from home needlessly hampered in the name of productivity * Predatory governments — for instance the government program [Sallie Mae](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/07/11/484364476/im-a-student-debt-slave-howd-we-get-here) is the origin of student debt bondage and “free” trade agreements are really managed trade written by industries seeking advantage * Oligopoly everywhere — beyond even the Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon thing ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/i-am-useful-is-the-modern-battle-cry-of-human-failure-and-suffering-794a9c7579.jpg) * Incarceration rates in America continue to climb led by “crimes” like drug use where imprisonment makes no sense. * Opioid crisis continues — [free overdose reversal vending machines](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/29/us-opioid-crisis-hope-for-new-approach-as-naloxone-machines-spread-in-2023) being tried So the whole world mostly geared its economies to be ultra-competitive despite the high individual cost required and somehow we still ended up with a system of overpaid, over-powerful bureaucrats and under competitive industry plus all the risks of deregulation and war. Or put another way in a system designed to allow everyone to live their most useful life we are instead rife with fraud, oppression, and high risk. This raises some questions: 1. Can we declare the current experiment a failure? IE TINA (there is no alternative) or not. 2. If it is a failure what caused it to fail? For instance globalization, unregulated money, oligarchs, etc. 3. If it is a failure what can we change in a new experiment? For instance increased regulation, UBI, prison abolition, etc. ### Can we declare the current experiment a failure? If our current system is now [just power politics](https://prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure/) then its easy to declare it a failure. Unfortunately there is no AB test we can point to and no matter how grim things become it’s not easy to know for certain they would not be worse in a different system. Furthermore “natural” experiments by different regions or countries are difficult to judge in a globalized world. U.S. News can make a pitch for Switzerland being the [best country](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings) but it doesn’t mean the world can successfully adopt Swiss neutrality. This inability to assess 1. means that 2. and 3. never get their turn. Certainly if [American life expectancy](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/11/29/average-us-life-expectancy-increased-not-pre-covid/71738611007/) does not recover past its high it is game over for declaring American policy a failure. Similarly if birth rates continue to drop being that far below replacement will also make diagnosing failure inevitable. However only watching deaths and births is not a great strategy for forming an opinion because it invites a deepening dystopia. People that fail to reproduce or die young eventually drop out of the statistics. One option is to simply [ask people](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/americans-take-a-dim-view-of-the-nations-future-look-more-positively-at-the-past/). Unfortunately just polling has a number of issues a) hard for people to form an opinion without data b) hard to correlate results across decades c) bipartisan consensus difficult d) rising technology levels make apples to apples comparisons with the past impossible e) current results do not necessarily indicate the future — recessions, temporary crisis etc. f) I’m fine the hell with everyone else. Another option is a derivative of deaths and births. For instance instead of just looking at absolute deaths and births levels measure a societies ability to react to bad deaths and births results. A society that ignores deaths and births metrics might be already dead. The main issue with the derivative approach is that most societal change is so slow — at a generational pace even. The great depression started in 1929 and it wasn’t until the end of WWII in 1945 that you could see any change — 16 years. A current example is has [student debt relief actually finally quietly arrived](https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/01/10/psst-joe-biden-has-solved-the-student-debt-crisis/)? ![The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living.](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/i-am-useful-is-the-modern-battle-cry-of-human-failure-and-suffering-ce67d9bf95.png) *The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living.* Which brings us to HDI above compiled by a branch of the United Nations. Up until COVID HDI had humanity slowly making progress. But even before COVID the United States scored 0.93 in 2019 up from 0.872 in 1990. Unfortunately HDI doesn’t include reproductive success but still its recording almost 30 years of minimal progress for the United States. Offhand that seems very damning for American policy unless you compare it to the possibility of decline. After all there’s nothing that says technology only increases HDI. Globalization is powered by communications and shipping technology and globalization might be, for all we know, a net drag on HDI. Then again HDI is an average and segments of the US population might well be experiencing a decline. If you are wrongly incarcerated or scraping by in a rural area your HDI is different. Mississippi residents, for instance, [score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score) 0.866. **This is the ambiguity that allows the “I am useful” villains to thrive.** Many of us are quite certain that our current economy has failed but convincing others to experiment with fixing it requires more than this intuition.