Is obsession with Hollywood style lifestyles holding back human progress?

[RitzyCinnamonRoll]

Before 2020 there were times where I thought a lifestyle with at least a mansion and a German made car would be cool.

But recently I wonder what would society be like if all the people who were into big mansions, German made luxury cars, Italian made sports cars, private jets, and yachts were instead content with a American style upper middle class lifestyle with a McMansion and nice vacation each year and complained about inequality, climate change and global warming, lack of funding for science and technology, and the slow progress in space programs?

And they also wanted a massive effort to create a future without any smog in cities. Making electric cars affordable, airplanes powered by electricity and cleaner alternative fuels, public transportation propelled by green energy, more advanced and safer nuclear power, better funding of "Fusion Power", and cities designed to be more walk-able.

There are a billion times more resources in the solar system than on Earth.

https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/when-we-are-martians/

What if a massive human and/or robotic effort to put industry in the asteroid belt using a reasonable portion of the economy that would aid massively in reducing emissions and pollution and can be done in a way where emissions from rockets wouldn't be a big deal could be accomplished?

I am not a fan of Elon Musk's recent behavior but I hope his revolutionary "Starship" opens doors that would otherwise be closed. Saturn V launch cost, 1.2 billion. Space Shuttle launch cost, 1.5 billion. Starship launch cost, 40-100 million.

What if we lived in a world where Kim Kardashian

https://goss.ie/us-showbiz/kim-kardashian-calls-out-nasa-in-shocking-online-statement-192541

promoted building a Moon base to build nuclear powered spaceships safely away from Earth to take humans to Mars faster?

https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/historic-facilities/rockets-systems-area/7911-2/

[toomuchbaloney]

Musk would certainly be willing to risk your economic wellbeing and the future of this republic to chase his cosmic dreams.  

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

Yep TikTok and social media do indeed promote a lifestyle that's wasteful and out of reach for most of us. 

To survive and build a better world would require worldwide cooperation and trillions upon trillions of dollars.  

Not going to happen.  

I've often wondered "will we ever be that great nation that tackled our problems".  The one that built the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Damn, or the Panama Canal.  I came to the conclusion that we won't.  The world will continue to decline until we destroy it.