5 ms·

Fascinating to see how something can be so prescient in many specific predictions, from technology to even certain political developments, yet essentially miss

Fascinating to see how something can be so prescient in many specific predictions, from technology to even certain political developments, yet essentially miss the mark on the net outcome. Yes, we've had substantial economic growth, but the sort of emergent benevolence of unfettered globalism hasn't exactly come to pass. Yes, many fewer people now live in extreme poverty, but the gap between rich and poor has become shockingly large and continues to grow, with highly un-democratic ramifications. And the slow motion ecological disaster we're witnessing hasn't been enough to motivate businesses to curtail their negative externalities. I think the author's ideological bias is most revealed by this passage: > Right around 1980, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan begin putting together the formula that eventually leads toward the new economy. At the time it looks brutal: busting unions, selling off state-owned industries, and dismantling the welfare state. In hindsight, the pain pays off.

ur-whale 6y ago
> I think the author's ideological bias is most revealed > gap between rich and poor has become shockingly large Your ideological bias is clearly revealed as well.
- frobisher 6y ago
  On the contrary, I think the gap is a statistical fact in many places. e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality
  - sampo 6y ago
    Global inequality going down, inequality going down in continental Europe, and Latin America. Inequality increasing in anglosphere. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/07/Top-Incomes-768x549.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/07/Top-Incomes-768x5... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-inequality-in-latin-america https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-inequality-in-lati... https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality#global-income-inequality https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality#global-income-i...
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      That's income inequality. Try looking into wealth inequality for the real picture. Governments, at least in europe, are quick on the trigger to tax income but never wealth. In Germany, that already leads to an insane level of wealth inequality, among the highest in europe, where tons of families have mini feudalistic empires quietly stashed away.
pmiller2 6y ago
This really misses the mark for me, as well. There was also absolutely no mention of any thought of climate change, besides a flippant, throwaway passage about how "with global warming and ozone depletion, we'll all either die of cancer or live in Waterworld." Well, that, and a dash of "oh, biotech will save us!"' We have largely done nothing to reverse or slow the trajectory toward climate disaster we were on in 1997, and now we're down to the last few years where we can even hope to make a difference. Had people started taking greenhouse emissions seriously in 1997, we might have had a chance.
- nwah1 6y ago
  The emissions have been near the best-case projections, and far below the average and worst-case projections https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-unstoppable-momentum-of-outdated https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-unstoppable-momentu...
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Thanks for the link. FYI: I worked on the ozone hole crisis 35 years ago. That climate crisis had clear scientific measurements, and the global community united to solve it by banning CFCs, while this climate crisis is apparently pseudo-science and virtue-signalling in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Ozone_hole_and_its_causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Ozone_hole_and...
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
    The best-case projections (of the unmitigated emission scenarios) are pretty frigging scary.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Climate change is not our biggest problem - the fact that the CCP has 200 nukes pointed at the US ranks far, far higher. Nobody is going to do anything about climate change, so get on with your life.
vonwoodson 6y ago
There is an interview question that is : “If you could add a President to Mt. Rushmore, who would it be?” The correct answer is Ronald Reagan. Not for any reason, other than that if you don’t say Reagan, than you’re not “one of us”. In 1997, I think people could reasonably say that “Reagonomics” was working, and this sort of litmus test likely would add credibility to a person’s rationality. In 2021, it’s obvious that the combination of The Southern Strategy, The Moral Majority, and Gingrichian Hyper-Partisanship have endangered The Great Experiment to the brink of disaster. Reagonimics, today, stands for the destruction of main-street, the outsourcing of American jobs and prosperity, the heightening of capitalism-fueled inequality, the death of The American Dream for millions of Americans, and the near complete disillusionment of The Millennial Generation having been born while Reagan was in office and the first American generation to be financially worse off than their parents since these things have been measured. Today, that litmus test is not a sign of rational thinking and grounded values. Today, it is an American flag being used to beat a federal police officer. It is a gun being used in a mass shooting and synagogue. It is a New York slumlord and Reality TV actor trying to become God-King and his throngs of loyal followers decrying reality itself in order to... well, the end never was clear. I would like to think that I am morally innocent, that I do the right thing as often as possible. But, God save me from the morality of the future. I think that it’s hard to look at an article written a quarter of a century ago and project today’s sensibilities onto it. Though anyone interpreting these works today absolutely should see and understand the failures of their belief systems, especially when so clearly stated.
- tjr225 6y ago
  I would think it would be FDR. Sure, Reagan convinced the boomers his policies made them rich...
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  FWIW I read the article when it came out and it enraged me. It seemed completely out of step with reality then, and in hindsight even more so. And in the context of the .com crash that happened a handful of years later, and then the 2008 crisis after it...
- lazyant 6y ago
fortran77 6y ago
> benevolence of unfettered globalism hasn't exactly come to pass. I remember laughing out loud listening to people talking about the "Arab Spring". As someone who splits his time between the US and the mid-east, I knew there wouldn't suddenly be a rush of western-style democracy flooding the Arab world.

ur-whale 6y ago

> I think the author's ideological bias is most revealed > gap between rich and poor has become shockingly large Your ideological bias is clearly revealed as well.

frobisher 6y ago
On the contrary, I think the gap is a statistical fact in many places. e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality
- sampo 6y ago
  Global inequality going down, inequality going down in continental Europe, and Latin America. Inequality increasing in anglosphere. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/07/Top-Incomes-768x549.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/07/Top-Incomes-768x5... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-inequality-in-latin-america https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-inequality-in-lati... https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality#global-income-inequality https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality#global-income-i...
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    That's income inequality. Try looking into wealth inequality for the real picture. Governments, at least in europe, are quick on the trigger to tax income but never wealth. In Germany, that already leads to an insane level of wealth inequality, among the highest in europe, where tons of families have mini feudalistic empires quietly stashed away.

pmiller2 6y ago

This really misses the mark for me, as well. There was also absolutely no mention of any thought of climate change, besides a flippant, throwaway passage about how "with global warming and ozone depletion, we'll all either die of cancer or live in Waterworld." Well, that, and a dash of "oh, biotech will save us!"' We have largely done nothing to reverse or slow the trajectory toward climate disaster we were on in 1997, and now we're down to the last few years where we can even hope to make a difference. Had people started taking greenhouse emissions seriously in 1997, we might have had a chance.

nwah1 6y ago
The emissions have been near the best-case projections, and far below the average and worst-case projections https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-unstoppable-momentum-of-outdated https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-unstoppable-momentu...
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Thanks for the link. FYI: I worked on the ozone hole crisis 35 years ago. That climate crisis had clear scientific measurements, and the global community united to solve it by banning CFCs, while this climate crisis is apparently pseudo-science and virtue-signalling in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Ozone_hole_and_its_causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Ozone_hole_and...
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  The best-case projections (of the unmitigated emission scenarios) are pretty frigging scary.
redis_mlc 6y ago
Climate change is not our biggest problem - the fact that the CCP has 200 nukes pointed at the US ranks far, far higher. Nobody is going to do anything about climate change, so get on with your life.

vonwoodson 6y ago

There is an interview question that is : “If you could add a President to Mt. Rushmore, who would it be?” The correct answer is Ronald Reagan. Not for any reason, other than that if you don’t say Reagan, than you’re not “one of us”. In 1997, I think people could reasonably say that “Reagonomics” was working, and this sort of litmus test likely would add credibility to a person’s rationality. In 2021, it’s obvious that the combination of The Southern Strategy, The Moral Majority, and Gingrichian Hyper-Partisanship have endangered The Great Experiment to the brink of disaster. Reagonimics, today, stands for the destruction of main-street, the outsourcing of American jobs and prosperity, the heightening of capitalism-fueled inequality, the death of The American Dream for millions of Americans, and the near complete disillusionment of The Millennial Generation having been born while Reagan was in office and the first American generation to be financially worse off than their parents since these things have been measured. Today, that litmus test is not a sign of rational thinking and grounded values. Today, it is an American flag being used to beat a federal police officer. It is a gun being used in a mass shooting and synagogue. It is a New York slumlord and Reality TV actor trying to become God-King and his throngs of loyal followers decrying reality itself in order to... well, the end never was clear. I would like to think that I am morally innocent, that I do the right thing as often as possible. But, God save me from the morality of the future. I think that it’s hard to look at an article written a quarter of a century ago and project today’s sensibilities onto it. Though anyone interpreting these works today absolutely should see and understand the failures of their belief systems, especially when so clearly stated.

tjr225 6y ago
I would think it would be FDR. Sure, Reagan convinced the boomers his policies made them rich...
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
FWIW I read the article when it came out and it enraged me. It seemed completely out of step with reality then, and in hindsight even more so. And in the context of the .com crash that happened a handful of years later, and then the 2008 crisis after it...
lazyant 6y ago

fortran77 6y ago

> benevolence of unfettered globalism hasn't exactly come to pass. I remember laughing out loud listening to people talking about the "Arab Spring". As someone who splits his time between the US and the mid-east, I knew there wouldn't suddenly be a rush of western-style democracy flooding the Arab world.