Hacker News Reader

It's about life as human being, people or even generations are progressive if they have a world to win. Once they have what they need, they will have a world to lose and become conservative. The majority of people in the west are risk adverse often in extremo and becoming more and more conservative. Funny is that they will lose a lot due to this behavior, and the cycle start will all over.

View on HN

Liberalism -> risk-tolerance and experimentation -> wealth -> conservatism -> risk-averseness and stagnation -> poverty -> repeat...?

How does poverty cycle back to liberalism? Empirically and historically it does the opposite.

Institutions are much easier to destroy than to build, and some institutions can only be built on a sufficiently solid foundation. Let's hope your cycle hypothesis is wrong.

But there's a different pseudo-saying out there that works on a generation level which has been feeling more and more relevant lately. It's the one that goes:

Hard times create hard people,

hard people create good times.

Good times create weak people,

weak people create hard times.

I think I just said the same thing.

Conservatism postures as strength, but it's actually based in fear.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com