28 ms·

It's interesting to compare this to the WEF future projections: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-

It's interesting to compare this to the WEF future projections: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=56382ee91735 https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... Especially with regards to this passage:: "In 2022 [economic development] will be as finished as it is to-day in England. American wealth will then be either developed or known, and all of it will belong to somebody. There will be no more opportunity in America than there is in England to-day. Those Americans will know that it is practically certain that they will die much in the same position as the ones in which they were born. Those Americans will therefore be less enterprising and much more pleasure loving. They will have rebelled against long hours; the chances are that in 2022 few people will work more than seven hours a day, if as much. The effects of this, which I am sure sounds regrettable to many of my readers, will, in my opinion, be good. It was essential that the American race should be capable of intense labor and intense ambition if it was to develop its vast country. But one result has been haste, overwork, noise, all of which is bad for the nerves. In 2022 America will have made her fortune and will be enjoying it as well as she can."

imtringued 5y ago
Already in 1918, shortly after World War I, when everybody talked about peace and many international organizations were created to secure that peace, Gesell published the following warning in a letter to the editor of the newspaper "Zeitung am Mittag" in Berlin: "In spite of the holy promise of all people to banish war, once and for all, in spite of the cry of millions 'Never a war again,' in spite of all the hopes for a better future, I have this to say: If the present monetary system, based on interest and compound interest, remains in operation, I dare to predict today, that it will take less than 25 years for us to have a new and even worse war. I can foresee the coming development clearly. The present degree of technological advancement will quickly result in a record performance of industry. The build-up of capital will be rapid in spite of the enormous losses during the war, and through its over- supply will lower the interest rate. Money will then be hoarded. Economic activities will diminish and increasing numbers of unemployed persons will roam the streets; within the discontented masses wild, revolutionary ideas will arise and also the poisonous plant called "Super-Nationalism" will proliferate. No country will understand the other, and the end can only be war again. (28)" The only good news is that our fractional reserve system is not as rigid as a gold standard. I.e. we will get a silent depression rather than a great depression.
mc32 5y ago
The above sentiment is not altogether wrong. Once people have certain comfort they cease to be productive and look for ways to while away their time. Sometimes its neutral, sometimes it may be a productive hobby and sometimes it's detrimental (as in they know what needs to change in the world and they will make it so). It's also telling that at the dawn of the XX cent, the US was not a wealthy country. Per capita we were more or less on par with countries that are today still "developing". Out position isn't a foregone conclusion and needs active development to remain there.
- pindab0ter 5y ago
  What terrible phrasing is "they cease to be productive and look for ways to while away their time." We don't live to work, we work to live. Once less work is required to live, more living can be done. Some people may 'while away their time', others do valuable things that don't produce monetary value.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Progress depends on people or, the economy in general, progressing. If everyone is happy where they are and want no more, there is no need to innovate and progress stops. That may be fine if we think we have achieved all we need to achieve as a society or species but most think we have a bit of a ways to go still before we can declare victory.
    - misnome 5y ago
      What about people who are made happy by innovating and progressing?
      - mc32 5y ago
        When social support for that goes away, it's only the "crazy" who would do that just because. But without societal support it's a dead-end. There are countries with lots of people --but whose contribution to innovation is substandard. There is no societal support so innovation is stunted. It’s like thinking justice will happen just because… No, it happens because society supports justice. Justice or innovation don’t just “happen”.
ydlr 5y ago
United States does rank below the UK in terms of social mobility. The notion that that is because the economic development of the country is "finished" seems weird. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report.pdf https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report....
- lettergram 5y ago
  The world economic forum is largely lead by former nazis and communists. They have openly called for the United States to decline as a power. I wouldn’t necessarily take anything they say as fact. Lol
  - ianai 5y ago
    Citation very much needed.
    - lettergram 5y ago
      You can read the “Great Reset” book to get a wider view of their vision. They’ve been talking about this for a long time https://www.salon.com/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025/ https://www.salon.com/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025/
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        And predicting the fall of the US... Makes them both nazis and communists? I'm confused by your argument.
        rbanffy 5y ago
        It's really hard to be both far-right and far-left at the same time.
        TMWNN 5y ago
        The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact says otherwise. German and Soviet troops that met in Poland after invading from the west and east had no trouble in celebrating their victory together, holding parades and such. As John Gunther—who was in Moscow when the world learned of the pact's existence in August 1939—wrote, "communism and Fascism were more closely allied than was normally understood".
lettergram 5y ago
> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research why it was created - not just wikipedia, get some books published between the 20 to 60s. When was public education first introduced at scale? When was eugenics promoted in the United States? The 1910s - 1920s was the beginning of the major authoritarian and progressive movements in the United States. Read about the history of Woodrow Wilson. At the end of the day, the United States during the 20s was losing its independence already. It was openly talked about on higher-class circles. In that context all these predictions are really aspirations. That said, I think the United States is still one of the most free and diverse countries on the planet. Has its issues and can 100% improve. But the same people and families who are part of the WEF are the same families / people in the 1910s - 1920s promoting the same general ideas.
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  Any attempt to depict the US as a free country prior to 1920 is a nonstarter. There was slavery, Jim Crow, and women could not vote. Seriously, give me a break.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    We also had one of the strongest eugenics movements in the world, under the same progressive flag as women's suffrage. It took the horrors of WWII to snap us out of it.
    - jacobr1 5y ago
      And it set us back because we overcorrected. The biggest evil of historical eugenics was the non-consensual application, not the idea that we should improve the gene pool. This thread is an interesting summary of possible "eugenics" type applications and if those surveyed consider them moral today: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772 https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772
antux 5y ago
> Those Americans will know that it is practically certain that they will die much in the same position as the ones in which they were born. Those Americans will therefore be less enterprising and much more pleasure loving. You can see this today with the anti-work movement and the overindulgence in tv shows, movies, porn, junk food, social media, and video games. All these things are corrupting the future generations of kids. The corporations that create these have made them too accessible. Once kids start indulging at a young age, it's harder to control when they get older. Their lives will revolve around gaining short-term pleasures, and the world will lose out on the potential long-term creative value they could have contributed.
- jahnu 5y ago
  Alternatively people have found their own way to be happy and want to fill their lives with more experiences and less work for someone else's wealth.
- stareblinkstare 5y ago
- sologoub 5y ago
  Some, no doubt, will choose a less creative path, but we also have evidence in history that people, who have the privilege of not worrying about their daily bread, also choose to spend their time in pursuit of sciences, arts, etc and many things not practical for them in regular employment and that advance all people.
  - antux 5y ago
    Those activities are fine and well. I never stated anything against those things. My point, that you missed, is that an overindulgence in modern media entertainment will lead people down a spiral of short-term pleasure seeking that can compromise their long-term creative potential.
    - sologoub 5y ago
hooande 5y ago
> They will have rebelled against long hours; the chances are that in 2022 few people will work more than seven hours a day, if as much. honestly, with remote work, seven hours a day seems about right. A lot of that isn't even lost productivity, it's cutting back on the general time overhead of working in an office. I don't think that Americans are so prosperous that we've become less enterprising due to class immobility. but we do seem to be getting more efficient with our time
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  >honestly, with remote work, seven hours a day seems about right. This is, with the most possible respect, a position of great privilege. Most people in the US are not remote workers that get to work 7 hours a day. They are expected to be physically present doing things like retail service work, manufacturing, healthcare, construction, etc. The average HN user is in a very specific demographic that has benefited enormously from recent economic trends, a benefit that is not distributed evenly. Many (most?) people are working more then they ever did for an increasingly smaller piece of the pie.
  - sologoub 5y ago
    > Most people in the US are not remote workers that get to work 7 hours a day. They are expected to be physically present doing things like retail service work, manufacturing, healthcare, construction, etc. This is not entirely accurate — as much as 69% of all full-time employees worked remotely during the pandemic: https://news.gallup.com/poll/355907/remote-work-persisting-trending-permanent.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/355907/remote-work-persisting-t... While we certainly do have professions that require in-person presence, it’s not every role in those professions and certainly many more people can enjoy the benefits of remote work. Those who cannot should be rewarded for that and added enjoy benefits/guarantees to compensate.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      > Those who cannot should be rewarded for that and added enjoy benefits/guarantees to compensate. This is more or less the opposite of what happens to these professionals - they are often those who are paid the least and work the longest hours under hourly contracts on multiple jobs (because, if they worked more in a single job, the company would have to give those benefits).
atlgator 5y ago
In the context of conquering "the land" from East to West, I think the articles sentiments are spot on. The conclusion that Americans would settle long term is open to debate. The frontier discussed in the article is a physical one, conquered by hard labor and sweat. And while Americans did succeed and enjoy (physically) lighter days now, the author failed to predict we'd find a new frontier, a digital one. The hard labor is now done in the mind, even if we spend too much time binging Rick & Morty.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Sounds mostly right...
refurb 5y ago
This is a hilarious prediction. I remember reading the same back in the 1990’s. America’s growth will flatten. That was a terribly wrong prediction. I don’t disagree that American’s economic expansion won’t flatten at some point. But as long as the brightest and most entrepreneurial keep going to the US, the growth will continue. I mean where else will they go in the future? China?

imtringued 5y ago

Already in 1918, shortly after World War I, when everybody talked about peace and many international organizations were created to secure that peace, Gesell published the following warning in a letter to the editor of the newspaper "Zeitung am Mittag" in Berlin: "In spite of the holy promise of all people to banish war, once and for all, in spite of the cry of millions 'Never a war again,' in spite of all the hopes for a better future, I have this to say: If the present monetary system, based on interest and compound interest, remains in operation, I dare to predict today, that it will take less than 25 years for us to have a new and even worse war. I can foresee the coming development clearly. The present degree of technological advancement will quickly result in a record performance of industry. The build-up of capital will be rapid in spite of the enormous losses during the war, and through its over- supply will lower the interest rate. Money will then be hoarded. Economic activities will diminish and increasing numbers of unemployed persons will roam the streets; within the discontented masses wild, revolutionary ideas will arise and also the poisonous plant called "Super-Nationalism" will proliferate. No country will understand the other, and the end can only be war again. (28)" The only good news is that our fractional reserve system is not as rigid as a gold standard. I.e. we will get a silent depression rather than a great depression.

mc32 5y ago

The above sentiment is not altogether wrong. Once people have certain comfort they cease to be productive and look for ways to while away their time. Sometimes its neutral, sometimes it may be a productive hobby and sometimes it's detrimental (as in they know what needs to change in the world and they will make it so). It's also telling that at the dawn of the XX cent, the US was not a wealthy country. Per capita we were more or less on par with countries that are today still "developing". Out position isn't a foregone conclusion and needs active development to remain there.

pindab0ter 5y ago
What terrible phrasing is "they cease to be productive and look for ways to while away their time." We don't live to work, we work to live. Once less work is required to live, more living can be done. Some people may 'while away their time', others do valuable things that don't produce monetary value.
- mc32 5y ago
  Progress depends on people or, the economy in general, progressing. If everyone is happy where they are and want no more, there is no need to innovate and progress stops. That may be fine if we think we have achieved all we need to achieve as a society or species but most think we have a bit of a ways to go still before we can declare victory.
  - misnome 5y ago
    What about people who are made happy by innovating and progressing?
    - mc32 5y ago
      When social support for that goes away, it's only the "crazy" who would do that just because. But without societal support it's a dead-end. There are countries with lots of people --but whose contribution to innovation is substandard. There is no societal support so innovation is stunted. It’s like thinking justice will happen just because… No, it happens because society supports justice. Justice or innovation don’t just “happen”.

ydlr 5y ago

United States does rank below the UK in terms of social mobility. The notion that that is because the economic development of the country is "finished" seems weird. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report.pdf https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report....

lettergram 5y ago
The world economic forum is largely lead by former nazis and communists. They have openly called for the United States to decline as a power. I wouldn’t necessarily take anything they say as fact. Lol
- ianai 5y ago
  Citation very much needed.
  - lettergram 5y ago
    You can read the “Great Reset” book to get a wider view of their vision. They’ve been talking about this for a long time https://www.salon.com/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025/ https://www.salon.com/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025/
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      And predicting the fall of the US... Makes them both nazis and communists? I'm confused by your argument.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        It's really hard to be both far-right and far-left at the same time.
        TMWNN 5y ago
        The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact says otherwise. German and Soviet troops that met in Poland after invading from the west and east had no trouble in celebrating their victory together, holding parades and such. As John Gunther—who was in Moscow when the world learned of the pact's existence in August 1939—wrote, "communism and Fascism were more closely allied than was normally understood".

lettergram 5y ago

> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research why it was created - not just wikipedia, get some books published between the 20 to 60s. When was public education first introduced at scale? When was eugenics promoted in the United States? The 1910s - 1920s was the beginning of the major authoritarian and progressive movements in the United States. Read about the history of Woodrow Wilson. At the end of the day, the United States during the 20s was losing its independence already. It was openly talked about on higher-class circles. In that context all these predictions are really aspirations. That said, I think the United States is still one of the most free and diverse countries on the planet. Has its issues and can 100% improve. But the same people and families who are part of the WEF are the same families / people in the 1910s - 1920s promoting the same general ideas.

SantalBlush 5y ago
Any attempt to depict the US as a free country prior to 1920 is a nonstarter. There was slavery, Jim Crow, and women could not vote. Seriously, give me a break.
- mbg721 5y ago
  We also had one of the strongest eugenics movements in the world, under the same progressive flag as women's suffrage. It took the horrors of WWII to snap us out of it.
  - jacobr1 5y ago
    And it set us back because we overcorrected. The biggest evil of historical eugenics was the non-consensual application, not the idea that we should improve the gene pool. This thread is an interesting summary of possible "eugenics" type applications and if those surveyed consider them moral today: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772 https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772

antux 5y ago

> Those Americans will know that it is practically certain that they will die much in the same position as the ones in which they were born. Those Americans will therefore be less enterprising and much more pleasure loving. You can see this today with the anti-work movement and the overindulgence in tv shows, movies, porn, junk food, social media, and video games. All these things are corrupting the future generations of kids. The corporations that create these have made them too accessible. Once kids start indulging at a young age, it's harder to control when they get older. Their lives will revolve around gaining short-term pleasures, and the world will lose out on the potential long-term creative value they could have contributed.

jahnu 5y ago
Alternatively people have found their own way to be happy and want to fill their lives with more experiences and less work for someone else's wealth.
stareblinkstare 5y ago
sologoub 5y ago
Some, no doubt, will choose a less creative path, but we also have evidence in history that people, who have the privilege of not worrying about their daily bread, also choose to spend their time in pursuit of sciences, arts, etc and many things not practical for them in regular employment and that advance all people.
- antux 5y ago
  Those activities are fine and well. I never stated anything against those things. My point, that you missed, is that an overindulgence in modern media entertainment will lead people down a spiral of short-term pleasure seeking that can compromise their long-term creative potential.
  - sologoub 5y ago

hooande 5y ago

> They will have rebelled against long hours; the chances are that in 2022 few people will work more than seven hours a day, if as much. honestly, with remote work, seven hours a day seems about right. A lot of that isn't even lost productivity, it's cutting back on the general time overhead of working in an office. I don't think that Americans are so prosperous that we've become less enterprising due to class immobility. but we do seem to be getting more efficient with our time

idiotsecant 5y ago
>honestly, with remote work, seven hours a day seems about right. This is, with the most possible respect, a position of great privilege. Most people in the US are not remote workers that get to work 7 hours a day. They are expected to be physically present doing things like retail service work, manufacturing, healthcare, construction, etc. The average HN user is in a very specific demographic that has benefited enormously from recent economic trends, a benefit that is not distributed evenly. Many (most?) people are working more then they ever did for an increasingly smaller piece of the pie.
- sologoub 5y ago
  > Most people in the US are not remote workers that get to work 7 hours a day. They are expected to be physically present doing things like retail service work, manufacturing, healthcare, construction, etc. This is not entirely accurate — as much as 69% of all full-time employees worked remotely during the pandemic: https://news.gallup.com/poll/355907/remote-work-persisting-trending-permanent.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/355907/remote-work-persisting-t... While we certainly do have professions that require in-person presence, it’s not every role in those professions and certainly many more people can enjoy the benefits of remote work. Those who cannot should be rewarded for that and added enjoy benefits/guarantees to compensate.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > Those who cannot should be rewarded for that and added enjoy benefits/guarantees to compensate. This is more or less the opposite of what happens to these professionals - they are often those who are paid the least and work the longest hours under hourly contracts on multiple jobs (because, if they worked more in a single job, the company would have to give those benefits).

atlgator 5y ago

In the context of conquering "the land" from East to West, I think the articles sentiments are spot on. The conclusion that Americans would settle long term is open to debate. The frontier discussed in the article is a physical one, conquered by hard labor and sweat. And while Americans did succeed and enjoy (physically) lighter days now, the author failed to predict we'd find a new frontier, a digital one. The hard labor is now done in the mind, even if we spend too much time binging Rick & Morty.

LatteLazy 5y ago

Sounds mostly right...

refurb 5y ago

This is a hilarious prediction. I remember reading the same back in the 1990’s. America’s growth will flatten. That was a terribly wrong prediction. I don’t disagree that American’s economic expansion won’t flatten at some point. But as long as the brightest and most entrepreneurial keep going to the US, the growth will continue. I mean where else will they go in the future? China?