9 ms·

The Debate on Whether America’s Best Days Are Past, or Ahead

61 points by w1ntermute 11y ago

beamatronic 11y ago
Whenever I read an article like this I think, well, what is the purpose of life anyway? I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets. So if you look at it that way, from an economic point of view, we have built and are continuing to build the infrastructure needed for future space exploration and colonization.
- nooron 11y ago
  I like to think this as well, and we aren't the first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism
- arnold_palmur 11y ago
  > I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets Completely agree - however it (sadly) leads me to think of the popular quote that is something along the lines of... "born to late to explore the Earth, and born to early to explore the stars."
  - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
    Born too late to experience earthly malthusian hell, born too early to experience cosmic malthusian hell.
- dsabanin 11y ago
  What will we do on other planets? Begin building new infrastructure to colonize more planets? I think that's a philosophy of a virus dressed in a shiny space suit with NASA logo on it. Exploration is great and it's worth pursuing, but making it a main goal and coincidently (or on purpose) an excuse for ruining our only real existing livable planet is I think wrong.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    Humans are the tools that bacteria use to colonize other planets.
    - ferentchak 11y ago
      Richard Dawkins would say it's the gene's tool for colonizing other planets. Plus if genes are going to survive the sun exploding they are going to have to get even more mobile :)
  - theseatoms 11y ago
    Colonization can be viewed as planetary diversification in order to lessen the odds of human extinction.
- bobajeff 11y ago
  Good question but I don't think the answer is 'to colonize other planets'.
  - Recurecur 11y ago
    It's OK that you feel that way, we need a few groundskeepers tending Earth...
- elif 11y ago
  Yeah, but would spaceX have made their life-saving deal with NASA if we were in war-times? I couldnt imagine such an expenditure during world war 2. The fall of America is not just a noteworthy individual experience, it also heralds the potential collapse of pax Americana which has framed innovation for the last half century.
  - dudul 11y ago
    It is often argued that war times are actually great catalysts for technological progress. Isn't it precisely during WW2 that a lot of advancement was made to develop the technology for space exploration?
    - stcredzero 11y ago
      It depends. Konrad Zuse's general purpose computer was put on hold by Germany. So were the extended range true submarines Germany was developing. A part of all that, is if your side is overextended. That can cause the top brass to start cutting things it thinks won't work or that it won't need in the near future.
- FreedomToCreate 11y ago
  Its a game. God is hiding somewhere in the Universe and we have to find him. Thats the purpose. Its just a giant game of Hide and Seek.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    Found Him. Look in Palestine, about 2000 years back...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  > I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets. Why? I'd rather live in a mostly automated robotic leisure society where I "work" 10-20 hours a week and enjoy my life here than break my back mining space rocks for some market wage so it can be put into some mass advertised consumer product no one really needs. And then what? Dig up that planets resources and continue on to the next ad nausea? I think if we could pick a purpose it would be endless comfort and leisure. This could be possible once we finally nail some things politically and technologically. The idea that we'll export 20th century capitalism to the stars seems very questionable to me (The same way its laughable to look back the the USSR's ideas of exporting Communism to the stars or just another step back into exporting feudalism/slavery/mercantilism to the stars being just as silly). By the time that's feasible we'll see 20th century capitalism as antiquated because we'll be able to do some much more with AI and robotics. Scarcity will be much less of an issue.
  - WildUtah 11y ago
    ||I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets. |Why? I'd rather live in a mostly automated robotic leisure society where I "work" 10-20 hours a week and enjoy my life here than break my back mining space rocks" Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Great Filter.
mwfunk 11y ago
What's depressing is that I think most of us would agree that America's best days are not the current era, therefore they must be in the past or future. :(
- Shivetya 11y ago
  I think its more on point to say when people are overwhelmed by what is happening around them they get distressed. We are the first generation is information saturated. There is so much out there waiting to be found and so much flooding in that many only focus on the extremes of what they receive.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  I am not sure you could ever get a consensus of contemporary people to agree that they are in the best of all possible times no matter what era. It's a well-worn joke that the last generation is always assholes and the next generation is always useless and heading to hell, going back to Socrates and I'm sure beyond even that. On top of that, being depressed about it certainly isn't a reasonable reaction to reality, just an emotional reaction to perception. It's probably worse than pointless since the most likely use would be as a rationalization for giving up.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago
    I'm not American but European, but in the 80s and 90s I remember there was a general perception of progress, of things getting better and better. We got some inventions that were a revolution for people's everyday life, like computers, mobile phones and the Internet. Achievements like putting a man on the moon were still rather recent and still seemed like they would be repeated. Religion appeared to be on a decline in the West and freedom of expression on the rise, without being so much menaced by religious bigots on the one side and political correctness on the other. People weren't worried about terrorism (at least compared to now), one could go to the airport and ride a plane in like 10 or 15 minutes. I think there was a general change in attitude at the turn of the millennium, of course the symbolic turning point was 9/11, although it would probably have happened anyway. But the 9/11 changes were especially visible, we went from being a society that took bold steps forward to a society that walked cautiously and scaredly - and that's even in Europe, I suppose it was even more noticeable in America. I don't know if there would have been as much as a consensus about being in the best of all possible times, but I think if you asked in the 90s many people would answer that they were better than any past time, and still improving. You would get that kind of answer much less often now. All this in the West, of course. I suppose if you ask e.g. in China, things would be quite different.
oldmanjay 11y ago
Consider the framing of the article, using a tv show to describe the reality of the past. Is there more than a vanishingly small percentage of people who have ever lived as a sitcom portrays? With such an intellectually bankrupt start, and remember, this is a framing device meant to set your opinion on a guided track, what could we actually expect to get from this article?
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  >>this is a framing device meant to set your opinion on a guided track This is all too common with the NY Times.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    It is common with all media. The key is to be aware of the framing and question what the author wants you to believe is true.
  - tokenadult 11y ago
    People here on Hacker News set submission titles to provide framing to discussion threads all the time. It's definitely a contribution to the discussion here to read the entire fine article, whether it is published in the New York Times or in some other publication. Thorough examination of an argument based on more than just the source or the title of the submission is helpful to other participants here. As for the argument in the article, which I see online with a title "America’s Best Days May Be Behind It" and a still image from the The Dick Van Dyke Show, I think the best part of the article's argument is the yeah-but part, where optimism is expressed. "What Professor Gordon fails to account for, Professor Mokyr argues, is that the information technology revolution and other recent developments produced mind-blowing tools and techniques, from gene-sequencing machines to computers that analyze mountains of data at blistering speed. This is creating vast new opportunities for innovation, from health care to materials technology and beyond. 'The tools available to science have been improving at a dazzling rate,' he told me. 'I’m not sure how, but the world of technology in 30 to 40 years’ time will be vastly different than it is today.'" I am older than most participants on Hacker News. My family is plainly better off than my parents' family, even though we have fewer total hours of labor force participation per year than my parents jointly had, with the same number of children (four). I can remember a LOT of predictions from my youth that the world would go to hell by the time I was a young adult. It hasn't happened. Prosperity and healthy lifespan and levels of education are rising all over the world. Yeah, the world is still full of problems, but our supply of problem-solving tools and our scope of choice about what problems to solve when is better than ever.
bsder 11y ago
I think that people are far too pessimistic and have lost sight of the end goal. The goal is not to create productivity. The goal is to create leisure. And, so far, we've done a really shitty job of that.
- x5n1 11y ago
  That's the thing, we were all supposed to be living luxurious lives, instead we're working 60 hour work weeks. And the elite think that more of that should be in store for us, you know because the economy just isn't doing all that well. Mainly because they are busy disrupting everything and automating it, using massive piles of capitals they have amassed on our backs to coerce us to work harder and produce more with less money -- productivity. With automation they need less of our work, so we should work more for less, while the capital they have amassed does most of the work through automation. Logically nothing we do as a species makes sense unless looked through the logic of economics, consumption, and production. It's a system with its own logic and we are so conditioned to think in its terms that we can think of no other way of organizing people and/or work. The best days for America was the American Dream as George Carlin said you have to dreaming to believe it. It was simply a hope that more of that money would trickle down to pretty much anyone if they worked hard enough. That hope is no longer there. No matter which way you frame it.
  - FreedomToCreate 11y ago
    Pretty Cynical there. Its really all about perspective. Look at this. As we continue to automate things, we reduce the time and effort required to manufacture the things we need. This creates an immense amount of leisure time. As we focus on creating social systems which provide basic income and living needs, we are currently on trajectory for a system where people can choose to do whatever they want, with complete leisure. All need for food and devices is sustained by machines, we are provided with all basic needs by the government and you can do whatever your heart desires. Now people may think that is pointless, but imagine what people could accomplish with the ability to pursue anything they want. There is 7 billion people on this planet. Its impossible to expect everyone achieving the american dream through sheer handwork.
clock_tower 11y ago
From the article: "What does this portend for our well-being over the next half century? Has technological progress slowed for good?" Yes -- but is that a problem? Technology naturally reaches plateaus from time to time; at present, we're on such a plateau, able to catch our breath and more fully deploy our ideas before whatever it is that comes next. Africa has skyscrapers now; who cares if we don't have jetpacks?
sjg007 11y ago
They are always ahead of us.
ranprieur 11y ago
This whole debate seems philosophically sloppy. The rate of return on capital investments, the pace of technological change, the disposable income of ordinary people, and subjective quality of life are all different things that are only loosely related. But if we throw around the word "progress" without carefully defining it, we might imagine they're all the same thing.
- nabla9 11y ago
  The central issue is economic growth, not some wague "progress". You should read Gordon's research paper, not articles about them if you want more rigor. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315 http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315 >Even if innovation were to continue into the future at the rate of the two decades before 2007, the U.S. faces six headwinds that are in the process of dragging long-term growth to half or less of the 1.9 percent annual rate experienced between 1860 and 2007. These include demography, education, inequality, globalization, energy/environment, and the overhang of consumer and government debt. A provocative "exercise in subtraction" suggests that future growth in consumption per capita for the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution could fall below 0.5 percent per year for an extended period of decades.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    Which just makes the point - growth is a meaningless statistic if it's not widely distributed. A more accurate statistic would be median disposable income, as a proxy for general economic self-determination - and that's been on a steady downward slope since the 1970s. The tragedy is that there's plenty of physical work that could be done, outside the pointless confines of Web 2.0. The US and the rest of the West needs better energy distribution grids, smart everything, renewable power, and mitigation against climate change. A lot of the existing infrastructure, including surface transport, is barely fit for purpose. Improved education at all levels is an easy win. And so on... None of this is likely to happen within current economic and political narratives. So yes - the US and the West do not have a bright future, unless the narratives change.
- ProAm 11y ago
dominotw 11y ago
NPR had a debate recently about this http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1251-declinists-be-damned-bet-on-america http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FseKcahmDiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FseKcahmDiA
stult 11y ago
I'm really sick of seeing articles about this guy's book. He identifies a trend and claims that the trend will continue. Yet the existence of the trend itself has no inherent predictive value. Current income inequality does not tell us anything about tomorrow's policy environment and its effects on future income inequality. Demography considered in isolation does not predict economic growth. Decreased labor force participation from boomer retirements may in fact reduce inequality by restricting the supply of labor and raising its price. Not to mention that he blithely refuses to consider what technological advances are actually in the R&D pipeline and how they may affect economic growth. Any one of the long list of potential tech revolutions over the next 20 years could reverse the trend. Fusion and miniaturized fusion (e.g. what they're developing at Skunkworks) could completely eliminate emissions and completely crash energy prices. Self-driving cars and trucks will drastically reduce transportation costs. Imagine the effect of fusion-powered 99% automated ships on the cost of global supply chains. Biotech is increasing quality of life and the length of time workers are able to participate in the workforce while cutting down on time spent out of the workforce due to disability or illness. And that's just scratching the surface. Gordon fails to realize that innovation tends to happen in bursts. Information technology did not have as much of a direct impact on productivity as previous technological revolutions, but it has impacted innovation itself and will increase the frequency of those bursts.
jordanpg 11y ago
I've heard of Gordon before, and I've understood his important point to be less about innovation and productivity, and more about the remarkable historical and technological circumstances of post-war America and the associated economic growth that Americans tend to accept (insist?) as de rigueur. It was a perfect storm of capital, values, and scientific progress, but notably, it has never been seen before and it is unlikely to last forever. I think because comfortable (say, median income or better) Americans literally cannot even imagine how uncomfortable things can actually get (or how uncomfortable they actually are in some places) these conversations tend towards unwarranted optimism.
- warfangle 11y ago
  > the remarkable historical and technological circumstances of white, cis-gendered, cis-sexual male post-war America
laotzu 11y ago
>Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth. -Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964
- ableal 11y ago
  An under-appreciated little book. Although sometimes pushing its theses past the breaking point, it sports quite a few interesting insights.
ck2 11y ago
Which "best days of the past" ? Let's limit it to just the past 50 years to be fair. The ones where people of color couldn't drink at white water fountains? Jim Crow laws only ended in 1968 and you can be sure their mindset persisted for years after that well into the 70s where it may not have been illegal but it could end your life. Or maybe it was the vietnam war years? Maybe it was the decades when two people of different color couldn't marry or two people of the same gender? How about the living hell decade Bush put us through over invading Iraq for literally made up reasons and caused ISIL? If you think the past was great, you probably were privileged one way or another and fortunate not to be a minority. America can only get BETTER, it certainly isn't hard to do better than the past with all of our poor choices.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  Remember the 90s? Terrible time for LGBT community.
pj_mukh 11y ago
Two quick things, -Has America ever considered that it is not a loss of American power as much as its an equalization of power across the world. Everyone wants what America has and roughly, they are getting it. This should not really diminish what America has or will get. This does not need to be zero-sum. -There are a couple of things that keep America ahead of everyone else (even though as I established, it is pointless) and that is soft-power and immigration. Everyone wants what the latest Hollywood star has and everyone wants to move close to Hollywood (or other American power centers).
rconti 11y ago
Life expectancy has 'only' increased by 10% in 50 years? That sounds pretty damn good to me.
- tokenadult 11y ago
  Moreover, contrary to opinions often expressed on Hacker News, the demographic data from all countries with good data show that increases in healthy lifespan are occurring at all ages, even age 40, age 60, or age 80. "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[1] [1] http://www.prb.org/Multimedia/Video/2010/humanlongevity.aspx http://www.prb.org/Multimedia/Video/2010/humanlongevity.aspx
deleted 11y ago
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61 points by w1ntermute 11y ago

Whenever I read an article like this I think, well, what is the purpose of life anyway? I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets. So if you look at it that way, from an economic point of view, we have built and are continuing to build the infrastructure needed for future space exploration and colonization.

nooron 11y ago
I like to think this as well, and we aren't the first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism
arnold_palmur 11y ago
> I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets Completely agree - however it (sadly) leads me to think of the popular quote that is something along the lines of... "born to late to explore the Earth, and born to early to explore the stars."
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  Born too late to experience earthly malthusian hell, born too early to experience cosmic malthusian hell.
dsabanin 11y ago
What will we do on other planets? Begin building new infrastructure to colonize more planets? I think that's a philosophy of a virus dressed in a shiny space suit with NASA logo on it. Exploration is great and it's worth pursuing, but making it a main goal and coincidently (or on purpose) an excuse for ruining our only real existing livable planet is I think wrong.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Humans are the tools that bacteria use to colonize other planets.
  - ferentchak 11y ago
    Richard Dawkins would say it's the gene's tool for colonizing other planets. Plus if genes are going to survive the sun exploding they are going to have to get even more mobile :)
- theseatoms 11y ago
  Colonization can be viewed as planetary diversification in order to lessen the odds of human extinction.
bobajeff 11y ago
Good question but I don't think the answer is 'to colonize other planets'.
- Recurecur 11y ago
  It's OK that you feel that way, we need a few groundskeepers tending Earth...
elif 11y ago
Yeah, but would spaceX have made their life-saving deal with NASA if we were in war-times? I couldnt imagine such an expenditure during world war 2. The fall of America is not just a noteworthy individual experience, it also heralds the potential collapse of pax Americana which has framed innovation for the last half century.
- dudul 11y ago
  It is often argued that war times are actually great catalysts for technological progress. Isn't it precisely during WW2 that a lot of advancement was made to develop the technology for space exploration?
  - stcredzero 11y ago
    It depends. Konrad Zuse's general purpose computer was put on hold by Germany. So were the extended range true submarines Germany was developing. A part of all that, is if your side is overextended. That can cause the top brass to start cutting things it thinks won't work or that it won't need in the near future.
FreedomToCreate 11y ago
Its a game. God is hiding somewhere in the Universe and we have to find him. Thats the purpose. Its just a giant game of Hide and Seek.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Found Him. Look in Palestine, about 2000 years back...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
> I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets. Why? I'd rather live in a mostly automated robotic leisure society where I "work" 10-20 hours a week and enjoy my life here than break my back mining space rocks for some market wage so it can be put into some mass advertised consumer product no one really needs. And then what? Dig up that planets resources and continue on to the next ad nausea? I think if we could pick a purpose it would be endless comfort and leisure. This could be possible once we finally nail some things politically and technologically. The idea that we'll export 20th century capitalism to the stars seems very questionable to me (The same way its laughable to look back the the USSR's ideas of exporting Communism to the stars or just another step back into exporting feudalism/slavery/mercantilism to the stars being just as silly). By the time that's feasible we'll see 20th century capitalism as antiquated because we'll be able to do some much more with AI and robotics. Scarcity will be much less of an issue.
- WildUtah 11y ago
  ||I like to think our destiny is to colonize other planets. |Why? I'd rather live in a mostly automated robotic leisure society where I "work" 10-20 hours a week and enjoy my life here than break my back mining space rocks" Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Great Filter.

mwfunk 11y ago

What's depressing is that I think most of us would agree that America's best days are not the current era, therefore they must be in the past or future. :(

Shivetya 11y ago
I think its more on point to say when people are overwhelmed by what is happening around them they get distressed. We are the first generation is information saturated. There is so much out there waiting to be found and so much flooding in that many only focus on the extremes of what they receive.
oldmanjay 11y ago
I am not sure you could ever get a consensus of contemporary people to agree that they are in the best of all possible times no matter what era. It's a well-worn joke that the last generation is always assholes and the next generation is always useless and heading to hell, going back to Socrates and I'm sure beyond even that. On top of that, being depressed about it certainly isn't a reasonable reaction to reality, just an emotional reaction to perception. It's probably worse than pointless since the most likely use would be as a rationalization for giving up.
- Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago
  I'm not American but European, but in the 80s and 90s I remember there was a general perception of progress, of things getting better and better. We got some inventions that were a revolution for people's everyday life, like computers, mobile phones and the Internet. Achievements like putting a man on the moon were still rather recent and still seemed like they would be repeated. Religion appeared to be on a decline in the West and freedom of expression on the rise, without being so much menaced by religious bigots on the one side and political correctness on the other. People weren't worried about terrorism (at least compared to now), one could go to the airport and ride a plane in like 10 or 15 minutes. I think there was a general change in attitude at the turn of the millennium, of course the symbolic turning point was 9/11, although it would probably have happened anyway. But the 9/11 changes were especially visible, we went from being a society that took bold steps forward to a society that walked cautiously and scaredly - and that's even in Europe, I suppose it was even more noticeable in America. I don't know if there would have been as much as a consensus about being in the best of all possible times, but I think if you asked in the 90s many people would answer that they were better than any past time, and still improving. You would get that kind of answer much less often now. All this in the West, of course. I suppose if you ask e.g. in China, things would be quite different.

oldmanjay 11y ago

Consider the framing of the article, using a tv show to describe the reality of the past. Is there more than a vanishingly small percentage of people who have ever lived as a sitcom portrays? With such an intellectually bankrupt start, and remember, this is a framing device meant to set your opinion on a guided track, what could we actually expect to get from this article?

bsbechtel 11y ago
>>this is a framing device meant to set your opinion on a guided track This is all too common with the NY Times.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  It is common with all media. The key is to be aware of the framing and question what the author wants you to believe is true.
- tokenadult 11y ago
  People here on Hacker News set submission titles to provide framing to discussion threads all the time. It's definitely a contribution to the discussion here to read the entire fine article, whether it is published in the New York Times or in some other publication. Thorough examination of an argument based on more than just the source or the title of the submission is helpful to other participants here. As for the argument in the article, which I see online with a title "America’s Best Days May Be Behind It" and a still image from the The Dick Van Dyke Show, I think the best part of the article's argument is the yeah-but part, where optimism is expressed. "What Professor Gordon fails to account for, Professor Mokyr argues, is that the information technology revolution and other recent developments produced mind-blowing tools and techniques, from gene-sequencing machines to computers that analyze mountains of data at blistering speed. This is creating vast new opportunities for innovation, from health care to materials technology and beyond. 'The tools available to science have been improving at a dazzling rate,' he told me. 'I’m not sure how, but the world of technology in 30 to 40 years’ time will be vastly different than it is today.'" I am older than most participants on Hacker News. My family is plainly better off than my parents' family, even though we have fewer total hours of labor force participation per year than my parents jointly had, with the same number of children (four). I can remember a LOT of predictions from my youth that the world would go to hell by the time I was a young adult. It hasn't happened. Prosperity and healthy lifespan and levels of education are rising all over the world. Yeah, the world is still full of problems, but our supply of problem-solving tools and our scope of choice about what problems to solve when is better than ever.

bsder 11y ago

I think that people are far too pessimistic and have lost sight of the end goal. The goal is not to create productivity. The goal is to create leisure. And, so far, we've done a really shitty job of that.

x5n1 11y ago
That's the thing, we were all supposed to be living luxurious lives, instead we're working 60 hour work weeks. And the elite think that more of that should be in store for us, you know because the economy just isn't doing all that well. Mainly because they are busy disrupting everything and automating it, using massive piles of capitals they have amassed on our backs to coerce us to work harder and produce more with less money -- productivity. With automation they need less of our work, so we should work more for less, while the capital they have amassed does most of the work through automation. Logically nothing we do as a species makes sense unless looked through the logic of economics, consumption, and production. It's a system with its own logic and we are so conditioned to think in its terms that we can think of no other way of organizing people and/or work. The best days for America was the American Dream as George Carlin said you have to dreaming to believe it. It was simply a hope that more of that money would trickle down to pretty much anyone if they worked hard enough. That hope is no longer there. No matter which way you frame it.
- FreedomToCreate 11y ago
  Pretty Cynical there. Its really all about perspective. Look at this. As we continue to automate things, we reduce the time and effort required to manufacture the things we need. This creates an immense amount of leisure time. As we focus on creating social systems which provide basic income and living needs, we are currently on trajectory for a system where people can choose to do whatever they want, with complete leisure. All need for food and devices is sustained by machines, we are provided with all basic needs by the government and you can do whatever your heart desires. Now people may think that is pointless, but imagine what people could accomplish with the ability to pursue anything they want. There is 7 billion people on this planet. Its impossible to expect everyone achieving the american dream through sheer handwork.

clock_tower 11y ago

From the article: "What does this portend for our well-being over the next half century? Has technological progress slowed for good?" Yes -- but is that a problem? Technology naturally reaches plateaus from time to time; at present, we're on such a plateau, able to catch our breath and more fully deploy our ideas before whatever it is that comes next. Africa has skyscrapers now; who cares if we don't have jetpacks?

sjg007 11y ago

They are always ahead of us.

ranprieur 11y ago

This whole debate seems philosophically sloppy. The rate of return on capital investments, the pace of technological change, the disposable income of ordinary people, and subjective quality of life are all different things that are only loosely related. But if we throw around the word "progress" without carefully defining it, we might imagine they're all the same thing.

nabla9 11y ago
The central issue is economic growth, not some wague "progress". You should read Gordon's research paper, not articles about them if you want more rigor. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315 http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315 >Even if innovation were to continue into the future at the rate of the two decades before 2007, the U.S. faces six headwinds that are in the process of dragging long-term growth to half or less of the 1.9 percent annual rate experienced between 1860 and 2007. These include demography, education, inequality, globalization, energy/environment, and the overhang of consumer and government debt. A provocative "exercise in subtraction" suggests that future growth in consumption per capita for the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution could fall below 0.5 percent per year for an extended period of decades.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Which just makes the point - growth is a meaningless statistic if it's not widely distributed. A more accurate statistic would be median disposable income, as a proxy for general economic self-determination - and that's been on a steady downward slope since the 1970s. The tragedy is that there's plenty of physical work that could be done, outside the pointless confines of Web 2.0. The US and the rest of the West needs better energy distribution grids, smart everything, renewable power, and mitigation against climate change. A lot of the existing infrastructure, including surface transport, is barely fit for purpose. Improved education at all levels is an easy win. And so on... None of this is likely to happen within current economic and political narratives. So yes - the US and the West do not have a bright future, unless the narratives change.
ProAm 11y ago

dominotw 11y ago

NPR had a debate recently about this http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1251-declinists-be-damned-bet-on-america http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FseKcahmDiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FseKcahmDiA

stult 11y ago

I'm really sick of seeing articles about this guy's book. He identifies a trend and claims that the trend will continue. Yet the existence of the trend itself has no inherent predictive value. Current income inequality does not tell us anything about tomorrow's policy environment and its effects on future income inequality. Demography considered in isolation does not predict economic growth. Decreased labor force participation from boomer retirements may in fact reduce inequality by restricting the supply of labor and raising its price. Not to mention that he blithely refuses to consider what technological advances are actually in the R&D pipeline and how they may affect economic growth. Any one of the long list of potential tech revolutions over the next 20 years could reverse the trend. Fusion and miniaturized fusion (e.g. what they're developing at Skunkworks) could completely eliminate emissions and completely crash energy prices. Self-driving cars and trucks will drastically reduce transportation costs. Imagine the effect of fusion-powered 99% automated ships on the cost of global supply chains. Biotech is increasing quality of life and the length of time workers are able to participate in the workforce while cutting down on time spent out of the workforce due to disability or illness. And that's just scratching the surface. Gordon fails to realize that innovation tends to happen in bursts. Information technology did not have as much of a direct impact on productivity as previous technological revolutions, but it has impacted innovation itself and will increase the frequency of those bursts.

jordanpg 11y ago

I've heard of Gordon before, and I've understood his important point to be less about innovation and productivity, and more about the remarkable historical and technological circumstances of post-war America and the associated economic growth that Americans tend to accept (insist?) as de rigueur. It was a perfect storm of capital, values, and scientific progress, but notably, it has never been seen before and it is unlikely to last forever. I think because comfortable (say, median income or better) Americans literally cannot even imagine how uncomfortable things can actually get (or how uncomfortable they actually are in some places) these conversations tend towards unwarranted optimism.

warfangle 11y ago
> the remarkable historical and technological circumstances of white, cis-gendered, cis-sexual male post-war America

laotzu 11y ago

>Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth. -Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964

ableal 11y ago
An under-appreciated little book. Although sometimes pushing its theses past the breaking point, it sports quite a few interesting insights.

ck2 11y ago

Which "best days of the past" ? Let's limit it to just the past 50 years to be fair. The ones where people of color couldn't drink at white water fountains? Jim Crow laws only ended in 1968 and you can be sure their mindset persisted for years after that well into the 70s where it may not have been illegal but it could end your life. Or maybe it was the vietnam war years? Maybe it was the decades when two people of different color couldn't marry or two people of the same gender? How about the living hell decade Bush put us through over invading Iraq for literally made up reasons and caused ISIL? If you think the past was great, you probably were privileged one way or another and fortunate not to be a minority. America can only get BETTER, it certainly isn't hard to do better than the past with all of our poor choices.

kelukelugames 11y ago
Remember the 90s? Terrible time for LGBT community.

pj_mukh 11y ago

Two quick things, -Has America ever considered that it is not a loss of American power as much as its an equalization of power across the world. Everyone wants what America has and roughly, they are getting it. This should not really diminish what America has or will get. This does not need to be zero-sum. -There are a couple of things that keep America ahead of everyone else (even though as I established, it is pointless) and that is soft-power and immigration. Everyone wants what the latest Hollywood star has and everyone wants to move close to Hollywood (or other American power centers).

rconti 11y ago

Life expectancy has 'only' increased by 10% in 50 years? That sounds pretty damn good to me.

tokenadult 11y ago
Moreover, contrary to opinions often expressed on Hacker News, the demographic data from all countries with good data show that increases in healthy lifespan are occurring at all ages, even age 40, age 60, or age 80. "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[1] [1] http://www.prb.org/Multimedia/Video/2010/humanlongevity.aspx http://www.prb.org/Multimedia/Video/2010/humanlongevity.aspx

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