Would you agree that whatever you are currently working on, either at Nodewood or evisort, is contributing to this superficial betterment of the world? Not to be dense but you are talking about empathy for people who are at the bottom of the human totem pole while posting on a tech forum while working on products that most likely don't contribute anything to actually making the world a better place. If you really cared, you would give up almost everything to give up what you have to go help those in need...but I guess a post on HN will do as well.
It is sad, I work in it as well, I ask myself "wtf am I doing" every single day. But the security of having and providing a warm/safe home for my family, being able to have fun experiences, etc...is too much to give up. I can definitely say I am selfish.
You are not my friend, so let's not pretend. My response had nothing about whataboutism, and I am skeptical that you even know what that means based on your reply. I am directly saying that you are speaking from a high moral chair, while likely not actually doing anything to help the world. Its okay, I do the same thing, the difference between you and me is that I am not pretending to be Gandhi.
Oh here is a definition of whataboutism: "the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue".
I am assuming you won't be able to figure it out though.
You are allowed to be sad about the world without helping it get better, which the parent never implied they were. They're just agreeing with you that things are bad, assuming they work in tech they're probably just as conflicted about it as you or I am, so the attack felt kinda out of left field and unrelated to the original debate, which is whether things are getting worse in general.
The OP is categorically wrong about some of their assessments:
"with more and more wealth going to a smaller and smaller segment of the population while the impoverished fraction grows on the daily"
Poverty around the world is being reduced on a massive scale. There are undeniable issues with wealth gaps, but the world population is still benefiting greatly from the imbalanced amount of downstream wealth coming to it.
"The rise of right-wing and/or outright fascist authoritarianism across the world, even in countries that would have fought strenuously against it a scant hundred years ago"
The world has been dominated by these ideas for the majority of its existence. Several of the world powers still operate within these ideas, not to mention many of the third world countries, the power just moves from regime to regime. Acting like authoritarianism is "new" because the OP just got an inkling of it in their own country is pretty dense.
TLDR op just plucked a few news headlines that get re-iterated and made that their world view.
A) poverty can be reduced while inequality increases. And inequality is definitely increasing. And the assessment that inequality isn’t that big of a deal and that we should focus only on poverty is very from a “categorical” assertion, imo.
B) “the world isn’t getting worse because bad things have existed in the past” isn’t a very clear argument. I think the BBC says it best: “Nationalism has always been a feature across Europe's political spectrum but there has been a recent boom in voter support for right-wing and populist parties.”
