In the past, we’ve had issues with women suffrage, slavery, and sanitation, among many other things.
Today we have gun control, AI, intended/unintended false information, vaccines, etc. as consistently hot topics.
In a few decades’ time, what views do you have now that may spark major social debate in the future? What conservative and/or progressive stances do you take today that might be too far on either extreme in the far future?
The right to privacy. Just because I don’t want someone watching me 24/7 doesn’t mean I’m up to no good
I fervently believe that the best if not only way to reliably reduce crime (including that committed by abusive cops) is restorative justice, but the vast majority of people still consider the necessity of penal justice (and in some places like the US even penal SLAVERY) to be so absolute that it might as well be a law of nature rather than the system that best serves the rich and powerful.
I had a long talk about this with my dad recently. He’s a conservative Catholic, and also a professor of philosophy and ethics. He just could not wrap his head around the idea that someone could commit a crime and not be locked up for it. He believes that justice cannot be served without the perpetrator suffering, or at least being denied their freedom for a period of time. I told him that empirically speaking, that’s not how criminals are reformed, but he was stuck on it.
You habe to have both. People mold their behavior around incentive structures. If you give them the incentive to commit crime, they will commit crime. If you give them the incentive to do better, they will do better.
Then again you also shouldn’t have bullshit laws that punish people for things that hurt no one but themselves, like the war on drugs. If they do something to hurt someone while doing drugs, that’s what we have all the other laws for.
You really don’t have to have both, though.
Incarceration and (in especially barbaric jurisdictions) penal slavery, torture, and state-sanctioned murder are largely ineffective disincentives against doing bad or otherwise undesirable behaviour that do nothing to incentivise good or otherwise desirable behaviour.
In fact, they often directly or indirectly CAUSE more of the former while making the latter much more difficult if not impossible.
By taking drugs, people are teaching children that drugs are cool, incentivizing them to ruin their lives. And they give money to drug dealers, who try to get as many people addicted as possible.
That’s a pretty short sighted view. One that relies very heavily on drugs are bad, never do drugs. And takes all discussion away from types of drugs and the differences between them.
Some drugs have the potential to ruin your life, anyone who has witnessed that knows that these drugs aren’t “cool.” Watching someone struggle with addiction is terrifying. Other drugs have risks, but can be fun and taken with relative safety.
We should be teaching personal responsibility, safe use, and moderation of these drugs. It’s your consciousness and should be your right to alter it as you choose.
Some drugs can help people and heal them physically, emotionally, spiritually, and some drugs will destroy your life in a downward spiral of physical addiction.
Kids reading this: don’t do heroin, meth, cocaine, opioids, random prescription meds, alcohol, or cigarettes.
Do however do pot and magic mushrooms. Buy federally legal hemp flower if you live in non-legalized pot state and grow your own mushrooms from spores. DARE and the war on drugs was a failure, use your own judgment and be responsible adults.
Humans aren’t the only species that have a right to the planet’s resources.
The ever encroaching “tough on crime” stance. Politicians push to make more and more things criminal and with worsening penalties. Many punishments seem disproportionately cruel or long for the crime. It’s political suicide to say that we should treat our felons better or to reduce sentencing right now.
Yeah, we can’t even agree to stop torturing inmates with solitary confinement or 110°F temperatures, and whenever I bring this up I always get pushback about how prison isn’t supposed to be fun.
Well, yeah; it’s also not supposed to be torture.
Disability rights, equal access to nutrition (not just edible items but actually nutritious food), equal access to electricity especially for cooling.
I suspect the resource wars will ramp up with climate change, driving a lot of international conflict of all types.
Circumcision is immoral, religion can be a serious social harm, the use of AI in art should be prohibited or at least frowned upon
That the internet is not as important as people think it is. Opinions can seem like they’re popular in a bubble, but outside in the real world when you really get to know people its both a blessing and an insight.
I half agree, internet is important to have access to all views available. The problem now is that it’s profitable to keep people in their own bubble as most are to lazy to look at more then 1-2 sources for their info and loads limit themselves to corporation (facebook for one) or government regulated sources (freely in the US or by force in Russia and China).
A lot of people are dissuaded to think for themselves, which is killing for a source with this much info of which a lot is garbage. Internet went downhill when the commoners were given access and thus the corporation found a new place to fleece money from them. (and yes, this could be considered as a garbage opinion as well ;) )
This is an old one for many countries…but I fear a housing crisis in Germany.
Right now it’s not as prevalent as in the us for example but there are no steps taken to prevent it becoming a major social issue.
- Construction industry suffers from high prices and a lack of workforce
- The only housing that is being worked on are luxury properties
- Infrastructure development in rural areas where housing is still affordable is not progressing
- Regulations and hurdles for new buildings are more difficult and complex than anywhere else
- Real estate ownership is often only possible through inheritance/generational wealth, as income is extremely highly taxed
Looks familiar. We already have the same issue in The Netherlands (Hi neighbour).
1st time buyers can’t get a house as they are to expensive, current owners can’t move on as they 1st need to sell before they can buy something (and hope that the selling prize covers the mortgage costs), social letting (entry level) has an issue with availability of houses and most others for the letting market are in the unregulated market and those houses are being sold off as the letting out of houses in that market is being regulated so much that it’s not economical anymore.
On top of that, it’s to expensive to build new houses and the country is already needs 1m houses in the next few years. Due to this the right wing is hammering on stopping refugees entering the country when they are about 5% of the immigration issue. (expats are the other 95%)
Religion gas to go. The way we rarm animals is barbaric. People should be able to pull the plug if they don’t want to live anymore.
Once lab grown meat is common, farms will seem even more cruel to people of the future.
I know religion seems like an obvious scapegoat for a lot of problems, but gassing them seems a bit extreme 😜🤣
Or maybe they wanted to be able to huff religion gas at home rather than at the restaurant/church?
First it’s religion gas to go, then religion gas drive-ins and the next thing you know, people will be reheating religion gas in their own microwave, almost completely cutting profiteering billionaires out of the process!
A person’s right to assisted suicide.
A few countries have this already, and I think 1 or 2 states may have it decriminalized. But I wish it were less of a taboo subject.
It’s ok and even seen as being responsible when we make these decisions for our pets, yet if you want to make the same decision for yourself, you must not be thinking straight.
I have not had and do not have thoughts of suicide, but I have been caregiver to several family members and been witness to the end of life stage.
We should be able to decide for ourselves at a certain point that it’s time to go.
Honestly, not that far into the future I think more and more people will be consuming various forms of media acknowledging in very scientific and real terms the end of the human race.
All the attempts at curbing global climate change will finally be acknowledged as being a pipe dream and even the ultra wealthy will come to see that they won’t survive in their bunkers and instead will die like the rest of us.
I also hold a very dark view that the end of human existence is not the end of human suffering, but that’s a tale for another day.
Climate change is real and really fucking shit up (am an Earth Scientist), but I’d be more worried about a global nuclear incident.
Climate change may do us in, but in all likelihood it will just increase the stresses on food and water supplies. Humans are extremely adaptive and will likely persist unless there is a cataclysmic event that kills nearly all food for decades or more. Scarcity of resources will dictate just how populous we will be 20, 10, 1, 0.1, 0.001 billion?
We’ve survived the Pleistocene when the earth was about 6°C cooler. We expanded greatly just after and have continued extremely well through the Holocene, making it our own (now Anthropocene). We’ve inextricably changed the environment for the worse, but it alone will probably not be the action that wipes us out.
I also hold a very dark view that the end of human existence is not the end of human suffering, but that’s a tale for another day.
And today’s that day! Go on…
I think in the near term there will be a lot more discourse about fatphobia/body types as a protected class.
In the longer term, I think history will look back at current factory farming as absolutely barbaric.
The right to lie. Lies are the root cause of almost every ill we have. Every human caused catastrophe starts with a lie. We must criminalize lying on some levels for the sake of our existence.
If someone injures you through a false statement of fact you can sue them for libel.
It is hard to do more than that without encroaching on free speech: people are entitled to their opinions. That said , free speech is not absolute and has linits.
I’m thinking all current issues will boil down to 1 major issue, to many humans on to little space. The human race is still growing in numbers while the livable space on earth is diminishing fast (even simply ignoring the dwindling clean fresh water supply and options to grow food). Either we need to stop the growth or get off this rock.
As loads of humans still think that nature doesn’t include them and they are not part of the diminishing biodiversity, it doesn’t look good for the foreseeable future. Maybe in a few centuries when we’re either down to 1-2 billion (or less) or have spread out into the universe.
My hope is politicians and, overall, rich people and corporations getting away with everything. It’s crazy what money ans influence can do to cover up/minimize the damages that people and corps should receive for doing the shit they do just for profit and personal interests.
