9 ms·

Three Big Things: Important forces shaping the world

124 points by Tangokat 7y ago

starchild_3001 7y ago
If it's time to shoot from the hip (or rather extrapolate), let's rebut a little bit. i) Human working population is shrinking, but robots are rising. Remember this person doesn't exist https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/ (but they look much like the real thing). See Boston Dynamics's Atlas, Spot etc. So, yeah, don't worry about demographics. Robots & robot assistants will multiply like rabbits (or rather like Windows 10 SW). This will overcompensate for the drop in working population. 2) Inequality is real. It's extremely dangerous and getting worse (tax cuts anyone?). But that doesn't mean it will reverse itself anytime soon. Most of humanity lived in bare subsistence levels vs the rich during majority of human history. If anything, equality is an aberration from the norm. 3) Access to information is awesome. This means governments & powers that be are hard at work stopping it :) Censure, regulation, control will be the norm going forward. Wild-west attitude towards information dissemination will reverse course.
- abnercoimbre 7y ago
  I don't know about #2 or #3? Now that we've seen how good we can have it, Americans won't tolerate a Second Gilded Age for very long. Same goes for the massive, life-changing benefits of having easy access to any information.
- hackeryogi 7y ago
  (i) it's a very interesting point that you put forth. Yes, robots will compensate for the _working population_ ; However, I think the OP wants to direct the attention towards the economic impact of a changing demographic. Robots won't earn and [ borrow and ] spend. Consumption, Consumerism and the access to Capital is the reason world GDP has multiplied manifold in the last century and why it continues to grow. A shift in demographic has a massive impact on that.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    > Consumption, Consumerism and the access to Capital is the reason world GDP has multiplied I'm sure improvements in technology and production played some part...
roenxi 7y ago
Demographics are a huge deal, and combines in very concerning ways with: 1) Humanities general inability to foresee the future. 2) The surprising resistance of political bodies to trying new things when the current method 'seems to be working'. I've come around to the idea that China's 1 Child Policy was a a very responsible idea. It was probably executed with the characteristic horrors of an authoritarian government - but the idea that population is just going to sort itself out is imprudent. There are 3 futures. One where population naturally levels off and finds a sustainable level, one where growth turns out to be truly exponential in defiance of physical limits and one where a lot of people discover they can't be supported by what is on offer and die of starvation or violence. The good news is that is 2 happy endings to 1 bad one. But humanity has a very long history of need-resource-access-driven violence and evolutionary factors will push us back there if it isn't politically resisted at a grand scale.
- yamato2022 7y ago
  Your second scenario is what is often promoted despite being hard to believe at this stage. Your third scenario is very likely IMO. Your first scenario sounds like the world runs on magic beans and somehow things will just work themselves out without any intervention or disaster (your third scenario) ...
  - mxwsn 7y ago
    I find opinions like these to be somewhat disconcerting. I don't know terribly much about demographics, but people who study demographics and economic development seem to fairly consistently agree that global population /will/ level off. At the core, the reasoning is simple -- as women become better educated and countries develop economically, birth rates drop, with no exceptions that I am aware of. The United Nations projects that the global population will level off at 12 billion around 2100.
    - pygy_ 7y ago
      Can we feed 12 billion people for ~100 years without ruining the rest of the biosphere (assuming the population peaks there then shrinks)?
Gatsky 7y ago
Demography is rightly placed first. Youth is short and life is long, therefore the political and economic implications of an ageing population are huge. In Australia for example, the biggest ticket item for government spending is ‘assistance to the aged’, $70 billion out of a total budget of $500 billion. This is distinct from the money spent on health, which is also heavily skewed towards the elderly. I am not making a value judgement on government spending, but the numbers suggest we will be locked in a cycle where spending on the elderly will continue to be a dominant factor in government spending for the next 30 years. What will be interesting to see is how the governments keep finding the money.
- iamgopal 7y ago
  Wealth, assets and money always are transferring hands. 30 years from now all wealth of bill gates could have been distributed to trusts, funds and next generations. i.e. We are continuously adding assets to what we already have, at global scale. ( And debt to the environment. ) I wonder what would be tipping or balance point.
- shostack 7y ago
  If the trends here[1] continue, the impact grows quite rapidly. [1]https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
deevolution 7y ago
"The three big ones that stick out are demographics, inequality, and access to information." The biggest, most important force shaping the world today is the invisible hand of evolution.
- cwp 7y ago
  That... seems like a non-sequitur here. What to elaborate?
  - sanxiyn 7y ago
    I don't see what is there to elaborate. Humanity is evolving, and OP thinks it is an important force shaping the world today.
    - cwp 7y ago
      This is obviously true, but irrelevant at the timescale that the article considers, ie, about a century beginning in 1945. Have we evolved significantly since WW2? Is the internet going to exert selection pressure on humanity? Maybe, but we won't notice in 3 generations.
cryptica 7y ago
About 'information access', I think the new barrier to socioeconomic mobility is going to be misinformation and regulation. Those who have power will do anything to keep that power; with abundant and free information, fake news and misinformation will be used to control the masses. Probably the world will be in such a state that: 1. Most of the rules in society will not make sense but you will accept them anyway simply because everyone else accepts them and there will be a lot of myths and misinformation to justify the rules. 2. Not believing the myths and not following the rules will get you imprisoned or killed (as has typically been the case throughout human history). I think 'government regulation' is increasingly taking the place of religious doctrine when it comes to protecting the interests of the rich and powerful. There are a lot of arbitrary laws which were introduced under some vague pretext whose real purpose is to create a moat to protect corporate interests.
fouc 7y ago
I suspect 20% drop in China's working age population might not actually hurt as much as the author tries to imply. The sheer size of the population and the amount of population within cities and outside cities should play a role here. A 20% drop could actually have the opposite pressure, create some efficiency and dramatically push up the quality of life and create a better functioning economy, and overall economy could actually go up and/or become much more stable.
js8 7y ago
"They eventually have enough, and coalesce as a group to become powerful enough to force change, typically with taxes, minimum wages, and labor unions." Typically? You wish! Look at what happened in many states of Latin America. They have huge inequality problem. And they are not closer to solving it than they were half a century ago. What IMHO usually happens is the rise of authoritarian populism. Until the inequality is addressed, it might then oscillate between fascism (like Pinochet) and populist-socialism (like Chavez). P.S. I like the blog post overall, except it completely ignores the ecological crisis and global warming.

124 points by Tangokat 7y ago

If it's time to shoot from the hip (or rather extrapolate), let's rebut a little bit. i) Human working population is shrinking, but robots are rising. Remember this person doesn't exist https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/ (but they look much like the real thing). See Boston Dynamics's Atlas, Spot etc. So, yeah, don't worry about demographics. Robots & robot assistants will multiply like rabbits (or rather like Windows 10 SW). This will overcompensate for the drop in working population. 2) Inequality is real. It's extremely dangerous and getting worse (tax cuts anyone?). But that doesn't mean it will reverse itself anytime soon. Most of humanity lived in bare subsistence levels vs the rich during majority of human history. If anything, equality is an aberration from the norm. 3) Access to information is awesome. This means governments & powers that be are hard at work stopping it :) Censure, regulation, control will be the norm going forward. Wild-west attitude towards information dissemination will reverse course.

abnercoimbre 7y ago
I don't know about #2 or #3? Now that we've seen how good we can have it, Americans won't tolerate a Second Gilded Age for very long. Same goes for the massive, life-changing benefits of having easy access to any information.
hackeryogi 7y ago
(i) it's a very interesting point that you put forth. Yes, robots will compensate for the _working population_ ; However, I think the OP wants to direct the attention towards the economic impact of a changing demographic. Robots won't earn and [ borrow and ] spend. Consumption, Consumerism and the access to Capital is the reason world GDP has multiplied manifold in the last century and why it continues to grow. A shift in demographic has a massive impact on that.
- deogeo 7y ago
  > Consumption, Consumerism and the access to Capital is the reason world GDP has multiplied I'm sure improvements in technology and production played some part...

roenxi 7y ago

Demographics are a huge deal, and combines in very concerning ways with: 1) Humanities general inability to foresee the future. 2) The surprising resistance of political bodies to trying new things when the current method 'seems to be working'. I've come around to the idea that China's 1 Child Policy was a a very responsible idea. It was probably executed with the characteristic horrors of an authoritarian government - but the idea that population is just going to sort itself out is imprudent. There are 3 futures. One where population naturally levels off and finds a sustainable level, one where growth turns out to be truly exponential in defiance of physical limits and one where a lot of people discover they can't be supported by what is on offer and die of starvation or violence. The good news is that is 2 happy endings to 1 bad one. But humanity has a very long history of need-resource-access-driven violence and evolutionary factors will push us back there if it isn't politically resisted at a grand scale.

yamato2022 7y ago
Your second scenario is what is often promoted despite being hard to believe at this stage. Your third scenario is very likely IMO. Your first scenario sounds like the world runs on magic beans and somehow things will just work themselves out without any intervention or disaster (your third scenario) ...
- mxwsn 7y ago
  I find opinions like these to be somewhat disconcerting. I don't know terribly much about demographics, but people who study demographics and economic development seem to fairly consistently agree that global population /will/ level off. At the core, the reasoning is simple -- as women become better educated and countries develop economically, birth rates drop, with no exceptions that I am aware of. The United Nations projects that the global population will level off at 12 billion around 2100.
  - pygy_ 7y ago
    Can we feed 12 billion people for ~100 years without ruining the rest of the biosphere (assuming the population peaks there then shrinks)?

Gatsky 7y ago

Demography is rightly placed first. Youth is short and life is long, therefore the political and economic implications of an ageing population are huge. In Australia for example, the biggest ticket item for government spending is ‘assistance to the aged’, $70 billion out of a total budget of $500 billion. This is distinct from the money spent on health, which is also heavily skewed towards the elderly. I am not making a value judgement on government spending, but the numbers suggest we will be locked in a cycle where spending on the elderly will continue to be a dominant factor in government spending for the next 30 years. What will be interesting to see is how the governments keep finding the money.

iamgopal 7y ago
Wealth, assets and money always are transferring hands. 30 years from now all wealth of bill gates could have been distributed to trusts, funds and next generations. i.e. We are continuously adding assets to what we already have, at global scale. ( And debt to the environment. ) I wonder what would be tipping or balance point.
shostack 7y ago
If the trends here[1] continue, the impact grows quite rapidly. [1]https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

deevolution 7y ago

"The three big ones that stick out are demographics, inequality, and access to information." The biggest, most important force shaping the world today is the invisible hand of evolution.

cwp 7y ago
That... seems like a non-sequitur here. What to elaborate?
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  I don't see what is there to elaborate. Humanity is evolving, and OP thinks it is an important force shaping the world today.
  - cwp 7y ago
    This is obviously true, but irrelevant at the timescale that the article considers, ie, about a century beginning in 1945. Have we evolved significantly since WW2? Is the internet going to exert selection pressure on humanity? Maybe, but we won't notice in 3 generations.

cryptica 7y ago

About 'information access', I think the new barrier to socioeconomic mobility is going to be misinformation and regulation. Those who have power will do anything to keep that power; with abundant and free information, fake news and misinformation will be used to control the masses. Probably the world will be in such a state that: 1. Most of the rules in society will not make sense but you will accept them anyway simply because everyone else accepts them and there will be a lot of myths and misinformation to justify the rules. 2. Not believing the myths and not following the rules will get you imprisoned or killed (as has typically been the case throughout human history). I think 'government regulation' is increasingly taking the place of religious doctrine when it comes to protecting the interests of the rich and powerful. There are a lot of arbitrary laws which were introduced under some vague pretext whose real purpose is to create a moat to protect corporate interests.

fouc 7y ago

I suspect 20% drop in China's working age population might not actually hurt as much as the author tries to imply. The sheer size of the population and the amount of population within cities and outside cities should play a role here. A 20% drop could actually have the opposite pressure, create some efficiency and dramatically push up the quality of life and create a better functioning economy, and overall economy could actually go up and/or become much more stable.

js8 7y ago

"They eventually have enough, and coalesce as a group to become powerful enough to force change, typically with taxes, minimum wages, and labor unions." Typically? You wish! Look at what happened in many states of Latin America. They have huge inequality problem. And they are not closer to solving it than they were half a century ago. What IMHO usually happens is the rise of authoritarian populism. Until the inequality is addressed, it might then oscillate between fascism (like Pinochet) and populist-socialism (like Chavez). P.S. I like the blog post overall, except it completely ignores the ecological crisis and global warming.