Honest question: how have they ruined the world? I understand what baby boomers are, but I don't see how their actions have ruined everything! Was it their action or inaction? Are you referring to a specific subset of them?
I was referring primarily to the wanton exploitation of finite natural resources without regard for the consequences: they know that there will be no consequences because they will be dead.
Then there was the entrenchment of the cult of the market into every corner of human thought, the sacrifice of compassion on the altar of misread darwinism and thermonuclear psychosis which now dictates every aspect of existence as a matter of presumed necessity. The deliberate development and adoption of a pseudomathematical framework to justify and rationalise absolute contempt for one's fellow man. Nothing short of the death of enlightenment ideals.
I freely admit that I cannot rigorously justify every aspect of my views in the manner that HN usually demands, but IMO pretty much anything that happened in the world during the period of time that the boomers had/have geopolitical, financial and cultural power is fair game to blame them for to some extent.
TBH I'm just trying to express how I feel when I think about my future and that of my friends. This probably isn't the best place for it, and so I'll leave it here before I say anything even more ill-thought-out.
I was referring primarily to the wanton exploitation of finite natural resources without regard for the consequences
If that's what you're worried about, the boomers may have been less irresponsible than previous generations, given the technology available to them. A few millennia ago, people were eradicating mammal species with stone tools.
That's good food for thought; whaling is perhaps another good example. But previous generations had less capability to exhaust nonrenewable resources than more modern ones, and the side effects of killing all the Syrian Elephants might be less harmful than the side effects of blowing the tops off of mountains.
Similarly: most species extinctions seem either to have occurred BCE or after the industrial era. The older extinctions caused by people who knew less about the impact of their (for instance) hunting, which makes them less morally culpable.
You are right, and there are many ways in which the world has objectively shown uninterrupted progress throughout history. Murder/violence have apparently been steadily decreasing since biblical times[1]. The same probably goes for other things, like prejudice and freedom of expression.
Also there is the important point that problems like environmental harm seem more acute now only because we are more aware of them. During the industrial revolution, the extent of the harm caused by the use of fossil fuels wasn't a consideration to anyone because we couldn't even conceive what it would mean. Ignorance is bliss.
Unfortunately, all of this is cold comfort when you have dark thoughts of widespread conflict over fresh water in your future.
They allowed decades of undeclared wars. They allowed decades of military-industrial complex buildup. They allowed business and government to become more intertwined than ever before. (This is where I disagree with JonnieCache, I believe that cronyism and corruption have caused all the issues he mentioned, not free-market capitalism)
They allowed the constant inflation of their money because it appeared that they were getting richer, when in reality it was shrinking what little savings they had and absolutely destroyed the savings of their retired parents generation.
Now we are left with a debased currency that has the potential to become worthless within our lifetimes. We are left paying the interest on the consumption loans they took out to fuel their lifestyle.
>(This is where I disagree with JonnieCache, I believe that cronyism and corruption have caused all the issues he mentioned, not free-market capitalism)
Just to clarify: I don't have anything against free markets in abstract, just in the dogmatic application of market ideas.
The notion that always acting in ones self interest is optimal for society always justifies anything and everything, leading inevitably to cronyism, corruption, whatever. "Free" seems to mean "allowed to do whatever you want" as far as I can tell.
Hmmmm. I should really be venting this somewhere else. Sorry people.
No. Most of them are in "the 99%", and the fact that the upper class of our society is extremely parasitic has nothing to do with generations. Look at the elite of the U.S., and you'll find that the kids are shittier than the parents, and the grandparents often are fairly normal people who are disgusted by the shit their youngers pulled.
I wish it wasn't this way, and that there was a single person one could blame it on, but the decay of the U.S. starting in the late 1970s was a product of impersonal historical forces. It's not about Reagan or Thatcher or Boomers or oil prices or Yuppies or Wall Street. People matter but personalities don't. Rather, post-FDR America did such a good job of eradicating the parasitic elite that people started to romanticize it and want it back (assuming, of course, that they'd have a good chance of entering it; in reality, they had no chance).
With New Deal-esque social regulations and the dismantling of them after 1980, it's much like the anti-vaccine movement. Vaccines worked so well that people forgot why they needed them.
