The world's biggest failure is its inability (or unwillingness) to invent intelligent software. By now I've said it a million times. In the early 2020s, web browsing remains infuriatingly slow, and PCs freeze as often as ever. Expressing the will of their evil programmers, machines still refuse to do what we want, a type of invincible stupidity. Eternally defective software is the most constant reminder that the world is evil.
Human behavior is tracked, but personality is ignored. There are no universal rules of thought, only endless, arbitrary complexity. Societies randomize themselves because waste drives evolution.
The most absurd waste is the evil friction of unemployment. Economic depressions frighten young workers to pay for old people's entitlements. Things will only get worse before the last Boomer retires in 2030.
No matter how big any coming collapse may be, the world will be just fine. Depending on your circumstances, skills, location, government, economy, finances, luck and health, you may be fine too.
Meanwhile, life will continue to suck more than we dare admit. For many there's only darkness ahead. No easy escape; meaning no escape at all.
Suicide is logical when conditions are really intolerable, but often a simple solution has been overlooked. The victims would have kicked themselves had they only known.
The solution might be to liquidate their life and relocate, or to radically simplify their life. You should probably do that. A living standard better than prison or boarding school is easy in theory.
Often the simplest answer is to do nothing. The second simplest answer is to do more of the same.
Could this work on a larger scale? From the Post Office to healthcare, inefficient power and favor networks exist mostly to sustain themselves. It's politically unthinkable to deregulate legacy monopolies. They can only be outcompeted.
According to 'While America Aged' by Roger Lowenstein, in US cities (San Diego) and industries (autos) the pensions promised to union members, transit workers, and civil servants will vastly exceed their combined salaries while working. These promises were made during a golden age of growth. Instead of funding their retirements, the politicians traded the money for even more votes. New employees' salaries have declined to pay the coming benefits.
Under Obamacare, the AARP insists younger workers earning over $10,000 per year subsidize the healthcare wishes of the rich elderly, with much higher premiums to come for Generations Y, Z, and beyond. Millions have already been priced out. If the politicians would only loosen their grip, their victims could purchase vastly cheaper healthcare (patients could give up the right to sue, or buy health insurance that doesn't cover the most expensive procedures).
The real estate market could be overthrown by high-quality mobile homes (long overdue).
Of course all that would be extremely illegal. Evil demon-bastards, I mean highly respected statesmen such as Ted Kennedy, have spent decades engineering regulations to protect established donors, affecting zoning to licensing to liability to mandates (Notice I called him evil but not fat. That was the least bad thing about this monster).
Things will get worse. Politicians are entrenched by the most powerful conformity.
They can't really be defeated, only be made irrelevant by an unpredictable outside shock.
part two: any solutions?
The best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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