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> But yes, we're mostly catching up, not leaping forward. What concerns me is that we (or at least some folks) used to leap forward. I'm struck by a compariso
by wtbob 11y ago
> But yes, we're mostly catching up, not leaping forward.
What concerns me is that we (or at least some folks) used to leap forward. I'm struck by a comparison to the citizens of the Soviet sphere of influence: they were almost all materially much better off than they had been years before, but they weren't as much better off as citizens of market states. The Soviet system did, indeed, enable them to catch up and even surpass the Britain of 1914 or the America of 1917—but that didn't seem as good a deal in 1987.
I wonder how much potential innovation and improvement has died in the cradle due to regulation, financial disincentives, cultural aversion &c. Sure: we're better off now than we were a decade ago, but how much better off could we be?
- guard-of-terra 11y agoWe could be a lot better. Assuming "we" is "people from reasonably developed country". We could work 6 hours per day, 4 days a week. We could avoid having problems with drugs, ghettos, extreme poverty - that sort of self-breeding thing. We could live in fairer world, with less government supervision. Right now there are whole classes of businesses for which ripping customers off is okay (cell companies for example). This did not have to be the norm. The price? Some undeveloped countries will probably be left to their own devices. Which is an unstable situation: once you solve infant mortality for them, you get population boom and then political instability. Hunger, I'm afraid - maybe on grand scale. Some things will be more expensive. Right now services are expensive and goods are cheap. It could be reversed a bit.