-The_Blazer- t1_itgmnyb wrote on October 23, 2022 at 2:38 PM

Reply to comment by nastratin in Science, technology and innovation is not addressing world’s most urgent problems by nastratin

The issue is that the world's major problems are not scientific, they're political. A few western examples (since I'm from the west, but feel free to add your own):

Lack of housing? We know how to build housing perfectly well, but cities keep not building public housing for the people and investors keep snapping up all housing for speculation.

Impossible to build a family? We already have dishwashers, washing machines, roombas and whatnot to make family life much easier than during the 1950s baby boom. The reason people aren't building families are oppressive jobs, impossible economic conditions and garbage urbanism that makes cities a hellscape for children.

Bad broadband Internet? Running fiber optics is well-understood, the issue is telecoms forming cartels and/or pocketing grant money instead of actually using it to build the network.

Lack of food in Africa? We already produce enough food for 10 billion people and we already know how to conserve it long term to ship it elsewhere. The issue is that it's impossible to get it to communities in need due to wars and instability.

Tech is not going to save us this time around.

pauljs75 t1_itgto9t wrote on October 23, 2022 at 3:29 PM

Homelessness and things like health care are used as the stick to threaten labor into working under less than desirable conditions. If it were purely left into being a technical and resource pursuit, it would have been solved yesterday. Yes some would need to be institutionalized, others would need to be minded enough just to keep their lives in order, and some just need to be saved from addiction or untenable financial problems. But politically handling any of those seems to be a hot potato problem.

It's not an issue of available housing. There's more than enough. A segment of the population is purposely stigmatized and societally stranded to fend for themselves out in the elements. If they even do something as simple as making shelter for themselves, it's torn down by law enforcement. Somehow that is "for their safety" even though nobody seems to care if they die from disease or exposure.