> etc, etc, etc

This list ... I know this is a quick-fire web forum like any other, so I'm not expecting a doctoral dissertation on the benefits of modernity. If that's from the top of your head, more or less, that's cool, that's what HN is for (and thank god right?). But like, is that it? Is that the best you (we) can say for this "future"? If it is, you've made my point for me, in my view.

> Electrified transportation

We had this 100 years ago - or at least had a good crack at making this the norm - but we lost it. (Why did we lose it?) We could have electrified mass transport, too, but our betters have decided over and over again that we're not allowed. So now we're getting (some) electric cars back (maybe? Toyota doesn't seem too keen) and -- again -- we're supposed to ... applaud? Be grateful? To me, this is baseline stuff, like tap water and weekends. To applaud Elon Musk or any billionaire for being so gracious as to provide them (for a few) is to debase yourself -- it's beneath your dignity as a person.

> vastly improved medical imaging and diagnostics

For whom? And at what price? For HN denizens (you and me included, probably), yes (again though, maybe). And even then, it's tied for most of us to mostly meaningless employment, toiling away at TPS reports in the exact companies I'm decrying here. Let's not even get into what sort of medical imaging and diagnostics everyone else gets and what they have to do to pay.

> vaccines for the most widespread and deadly diseases (like malaria)

To back up a sec: the thing I'm getting at in these posts isn't an objection to modernity per se, it's to the modernity forged by the utterly unrestrained capitalism that has brought our planet to the brink of collapse. So, if you're talking medical research, you need to account for how much basic science is done by public servants in public institutions paid for by our tax dollars and whose coattails pharmaceutical firms are all too happy to ride as they run off with it to develop products. (The internet and much of modern tech followed the same model.) Take the MRNA technology present in the covid vaccines our pharmaceutical industry has given us: it was developed bit by bit, hacked away at, over 40 years, by women like Katalin Karikó, working in public universities and demoted and denied funding much of that time. (Google her, she's fascinating. I wouldn't have had the strength to do what she did.) Also, those malaria vaccines ... we're not there yet. I'll grant you happily that we may finally be there, almost, but ... not yet.

> cleaner air by replacing coal with renewables

Cleaner air than what? Than what the very same economic interests responsible for it have spewed into the atmostphere for the last 100 years? Again, baseline, obligatory stuff. I'm happy the air is cleaner but, like, if you spit in my face and then clean it off, I'm supposed to be grateful? "What an age we live in!!" ???

> earth-facing satellites that let us learn about the planet that our lives depend on

I'm not even sure what this means. Like the satellites that detect how badly we've fucked everything up? Sure. I'm happy to give it to you.

> why don't you move to a country where you won't be bothered by such things

> why stay

In general I don't like this line of argument when I see it used in the normal contexts (Person: "Healthcare is horrible here, and people suffer unnecessarily, let's have a universal system like everywhere else." Other person: "If you hate America so much why don't you leave?"). But you asked sincerely, so I'll answer sincerely:

1) w/r/t to the aspects of my critique that have to do with truly global or systemic problems, moving to another country makes zero sense except maybe to my little feelies: I see it as the same as, after noting that my bedroom is dirty, deciding to sleep in the cleaner living room. The house is still filthy and I've done nothing about it. It's just denial. An inbuilt human function, to be sure, but I'm not into it.

2) When I was very young, I quit something I'd cared a lot about because it frustrated me at a certain point in my progression. In the weeks and months following, it ate away at me. Sometimes it still does, tbh. I've never forgotten this and I've built it into how I live my life (tried, anyway -- but sometimes succeeding in small ways!). Simply put, I don't quit and I don't run. The things at issue in this thread aren't cereal boxes in a supermarket aisle: choosing a different box of cereal (cutting and running) isn't only cowardly, it works against what I'd like to see in the world.

3) I stay because the developed world, as you put it, is the only place where I have even a snowball's chance in hell of making changes right now. Why? Because I'm already here, right now, and I have (some) legal and political rights, fluency in the language, a community I can attempt to influence, etc. Not to mention it's the part of the world historically responsible for the most damage (of the kind I've outlined), so attempting to act here is (I hope) more bang for my buck. All told, it's my duty to stay because it's my duty to try and influence what's around me right now -- not to mention that it's all I can do to make anything better, as I don't have any power (even a sliver) anywhere else.

4) I love it here. You're maybe conflating my hating obscene wealth accumulation and billionaires and the system we've made to make them happy with hating this country or these countries or the land or (above all) the people. These critiques are made because I love it here. If it didn't, why would I bother? And if, in loving it, I show some zeal, well, have you never loved zealously?