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September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy

522 points · 391 comments · marjancek

jakozaur · 1790761035 · focus · HN ↗
I'm Polish, but this is such a pessimistic, overdramatic take. The visualisations are impressive, but you're living in Poland's golden age. See this Hacker News story with 1,000+ upvotes: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48062117">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48062117
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy, but it has proved that Russia is weak. The price shock will speed up the transition to renewables, and Iran is losing its grip on Hormuz. So many of the other issues are solvable.
It's easy to be a pessimist, but there's a bright future ahead of us.
1. jeziorsa · 1790762065 · focus · HN ↗
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  1. bartekrutkowski · 1790762292 · focus · HN ↗
    "Golden age" doesn't mean that everything is perfect and we've reached mythical utopia. It merely means there wasn't a better period in history, to date. Please, name one period, where you had more freedom, more rights, more money earning opportunities, bigger food abundance and variety, longer life expectancy, more safety, less wars (speaking locally about Poland) so on and so forth.
    lifestyleguru · 1790762560 · focus · HN ↗
    Sir are you aware of the state of Polish public healthcare and the nearby war?
    bartekrutkowski · 1790762776 · focus · HN ↗
    I am very well aware. Again, the question still stands: when was that the public healthcare provided more services, for more diseases, better medications, better care? When was that there was no wars in Poland for longer than it is currently?
    I'm aware of all the issues we're dealing with, with the horrible war in Ukraine, but that's still unspeakably better situation than it was in 1945 or in 1965 or any other time before that. I hate any war, I'm not happy with the one in Ukraine, but I will take any war happening in the country next to the one I am in, over a war happening in the country I am in.
    jeziorsa · 1790764772 · focus · HN ↗
    You ask about healthcare? I get the impression that you're a bit clueless on this topic.
    Of course, there's more money in healthcare than ever before. Yet somehow hospitals are being closed, and waiting times are longer than they were three years ago. These are facts that may not be obvious to you if you have private healthcare through Medicover or Lux Med.
    Access to private healthcare can make it easy to overlook the problems in the public system, but for many people those problems are very real and affect their daily lives.
    bartekrutkowski · 1790769584 · focus · HN ↗
    I never said anything about private health care.
    You can take a tiny fraction of any good image and find it lacking. The OP wasn't talking about "golden age of public health care" but about "golden age" in general. I'm still waiting for anyone to answer the questions I've asked above, when was it better to live in Poland if not now?
    Not "when it was absolutely perfect to live in Poland" not even "when was the public health care 100% ideal". It feels that the day to day life issues (of which there are plenty, sure) are stopping you from realising how good you have it compared to generations before you.
    I don't know for sure, but I think it's a safe bet that should you be from your own parents generation, you could've been prosecuted for complaining publicly about "the state of the state", not to mention obtaining a computer for your personal use would be next to impossible.
    [deleted] · 1790769724 · focus · HN ↗
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    [deleted] · 1790769798 · focus · HN ↗
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