I disagree, I think things are getting better. Apart from house prices I think almost everything here (Australia) is better than it used to be. The trains run on a better schedule. You get more varied, better food, more people can eat out, you can travel anywhere much cheaper. Every year we get better technology that's cheaper. Jobs are easier than in the past. More people are into fitness, there are new drugs out all the time that cure illnesses that we thought couldn't be treated (cancers, cystic fibrosis, obesity). Movies are better (maybe not TV), there is much more entertainment.

People have rose-tinted glasses but my parents' generation grew up eating bread with dripping, working back-breaking jobs, getting exposed to stuff like thalidomide and asbestos, living in small houses and only having the TV and the pub to entertain them.

Across domains like AI, social platforms, and institutions, there’s a recurring pattern where optimization improves metrics but degrades real-world alignment. This diagram tries to visualize that shared failure mode.