10 ms·

The Economics of Mad Max and Star Trek

eru 11y ago
> The economics of Mad Max echo those that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. During the Dark Ages, precious resources became scarce, and men from regions devastated by famine swarmed more prosperous lands. Citation required.
- simonh 11y ago
  No it isn't. I can't stand citation culture. My wife does courses as part of her Nursing practice and has to write papers full of citations in the modern style. You can't even say it was a sunny day without referencing an official weather report. The thing is, most of the references you see in books and articles are to sources no more authoritative than the one citing them. If you're dealing with research then yes, sources and standards of evidence are important, but in many cases it creates an illusion of authority. This is an article on the Internet, not a historical thesis. If you doubt something it says, say so and say why you doubt it. If you think it's worth challenging, it should be worth some time checking for yourself or at least explaining why you doubt it. Just tossing two word over the fence is lazy and provocative without making any actual contribution to the conversation.
  - austinjp 11y ago
    Sometimes I think it's worse even than that. As you say, providing a supporting citation gives a gloss of authority and acceptance, whether in an academic paper or on a chat forum. The reader should ideally appraise the cited source and decide if they agree. I doubt this happens in even 1% of cases. Ideally I'd like to see citations that both support and disagree with the point being made. Then I could take a more balanced overview and decide my level of trust in the evidence. However this would lead to a systematic review for every sentence written/read. To my mind this is a major problem in the peer-review scientific process, and I don't know of a decent solution. This is where I'd like to see a really potent AI: systematic reviews.
    - sgt101 11y ago
      Have a look at deepdive from Stanford. http://deepdive.stanford.edu/ http://deepdive.stanford.edu/
  - mseebach 11y ago
    I agree that citation culture is stupid, but that doesn't make the quoted assertion less false. See parts 5 and 6 of this: http://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-things-that-are-common-knowledge-about-history-that-historians-almost-universally-consider-incorrect/answer/Tim-ONeill-1 http://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-things-that-are-co...
    - simonh 11y ago
      I'm somewhat skeptical of the quoted assertion as well as I think it's overly generalised, but e.g from the source you give, from part 5: "When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the Fifth Century the effect on material culture and technology in Europe was devastating. Without the Empire to fund major engineering projects and large scale infrastructure, many of the skills and techniques involved in monumental buildings and complex technologies were forgotten and lost. The break down of long distance trade meant people became increasingly self-sufficient and produced what they needed locally." I know this had positive side effects, I did read the article (thanks, great read) but the collapse of the western empire was no picnic. But now we're having a reasoned discussion, whereas 'citation required' is a conversational brick wall.
  - eru 11y ago
    > No it isn't. I can't stand citation culture. A less meme-y way would be to say: I'm sceptical (and even seem to recall having read just the opposite), please provide more than a simple assertion to convince me.
- tiatia 11y ago
  Strangely I've read that people even had better nutrition after the collapse since in the end, before the collapse, the tax burden was tremendous.
Hermel 11y ago
In a world as depicted in Mad Max, people would probably choose to live in the mountains and near rivers, not in the middle of the desert.
- lotu 11y ago
  Did you watch the latest movie? It is heavily implied that the rivers had all dried up or were poisoned. The people lived near an under ground aquifer controlled by the local warlord Immortal Joe.
  - Gys 11y ago
    I did not see the movie. But without rivers the mountains would still be a better option then ground level land: cooler and rainy because of the height.
    - saiya-jin 11y ago
      well, movie (heck, all MM movies took place in Australia, which is anything but mountainous land. and it goes on - if rivers are poisoned, rain is some sort of hardcore acid pouring down. you actually want to avoid that as much as possible. so no, even for people that would be able to travel far, mountains might be a worse choice. plus, they are so deep into apocalypse, that they don't know geography beyond what they can reach by cars
      - eru 11y ago
        We have mountains in Australia, too.
  - golergka 11y ago
    Immortan.
lotu 11y ago
>Imagine a machine that creates gourmet meals out of thin air. It is solar powered, cheap to use, can be manufactured for less than a plasma screen TV. ... Every restaurant in the world goes out of business. Chefs, waitresses, and dishwashers lose their jobs. The marginal cost of manufacturing goods falls to nearly zero, but if the technology for such a machine remains proprietary, then the replicator’s food is only as free as its designer decides. Our Silicon Valley whizkid, free of competition, charges as much for the food we now make in our kitchens as we might’ve once paid in a five star restaurant. If the machine costs as much as a five star restaurant per meal then why the fuck did the all the restaurants in the world go out of business‽ Furthermore why are we assuming that no other company on Earth will think the food market might be profitable? Even if a design is propriety that doesn't prevent independent invention.
- lotu 11y ago
  I had to continue: > Work before farming resembles what the rich do on holiday today. The rich spend their holidays intimidating lions of their own kill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBpu4DAvwI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBpu4DAvwI8 or running for 8 hours to drive a Kudo to having a heart attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o >Subsistence farmers worked far longer hours than their ancestors. They died younger and lived more miserable lives. The sole upside was that farming allowed the same plot of land to feed many more people. The author misses the upside of not worrying about getting eaten by a lion or trampled by a wildebeest.
  - noelwelsh 11y ago
    As far as I am aware, by every measure hunter-gatherers had better lives than the vast majority of farmers until very recently. They had better nutrition, as evidenced by being taller. They had more equal societies. They worked very little. Contemporary hunter-gatherers generally live only on very marginal land, as more organised societies have taken over the rest, and their lifestyle is not a good reflection of what life was like before civilisation. A few links to explore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Hunter-gatherer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Hunter-gatherer
tiatia 11y ago
"The only people who believe in infinite growth in a finite world are madmen and economists". Kenneth Boulding I think the Max Max scenario is far more plausible. "There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state-economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/ http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat... Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growth-at-our-doorstep-but-not-recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt... Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-consumption-are-inseparable.html http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-... Galactic-Scale Energy http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...
tiatia 11y ago
Quote from the article : "There is a third option. It is likely and it is ugly. Even a technological wonderland can create a pernicious society. Technological progress can create dystopia even if ecological disaster is avoided. What if the benefits of productivity gains are monopolized by the top one percent, as they largely have been for most of the past 30 years? This is the world of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, a terrifying, but familiar world of gated communities and genetic engineering, with generalized poverty for everyone outside the corporate elite." That is an interesting idea but not likely to happen in the long run, but maybe during an intermediate state. Taking historic events as an indicator, the "upper 1%" see little incentive to try to prevent a coming collapse. It is not their children not getting jobs, only the children of the other 99% are not getting jobs and not getting opportunities. So the disaster will grow slowly through all ranks. The "top 1%" will fall last, but fall they will. "Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914...
- tiatia 11y ago
  From the article I quoted: "In scenario 5.3.2, with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites. It is important to note that in both of these scenarios, the Elites – due to their wealth – do not suffer the detrimental effects of the environmental collapse untilmuch later than the Commoners. This buffer of wealth allows Elites to continue “business as usual” despite the impending catastrophe. It is likely that this is an important mechanism that would help explain howhistorical collapseswere allowed to occur by eliteswho appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases). This buffer effect is further reinforced by the long, apparently sustainable trajectory prior to the beginning of the collapse. While somemembers of societymight raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory “so far” in support of doing nothing.
gonvaled 11y ago
> What ecological pessimists forget is that so far scientists have always been able to stay ahead of resource scarcity. They have always found better, less toxic replacements for what we’ve lost. Wrong. Very wrong. Humanity has been living over carrying capacity since the beginning of time. We always produce more offspring than what the environment/society can sustain. It is only recently (last 50 years?) and in a very limited area (first-world) that we are living below carrying capacity (of that region). The world as a whole is very much living above carrying capacity. And no, it does not matter that we are "wasting food" in the first world. For all intent and purposes, that food is not available to the rest of the world. Until we are able to first feed and then procreate, keeping the demographic curve well behind the food production curve, we are doomed. But that will never happen: as soon as scarcity is not an issue, we tend to reproduce like rabbits. We are very much a virus.
- rtpg 11y ago
  The "overpopulation until the end" myth is completely debunked by the demographic curves of many different developed countries (Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan to name some). I think the common assumption is that the population of nations as they develop taper off eventually.
  - gonvaled 11y ago
    The "population is controlled whenever technology is able to lead the way" is a myth which is based on the false assumption that "technology is able to lead the way". Humanity has not followed that pattern in the last 200 thousand years, and nothing suggests we will be able to get to that utopia.
- treerock 11y ago
  This makes no sense. The evidence (we still survive and population keeps growing) suggests that we a living well within the carrying capacity of the earth. Technology, invention, social adaptation all help to increase that carrying capacity, making more efficient use of available resources. That may not continue indefinitely, but also population growth may not continue indefinitely. We are not a virus.
erikb 11y ago
It's so strange. First the article explains in Star Trek land most people don't need to work and don't need to buy things because production is essentially free. But in the end he argues that making production more and more free people won't be able to afford to buy them. What about the not buying part?
- x5n1 11y ago
  Imagine a machine that gives you whatever you want that can reasonably be produced. Imagine a world with infinite resources. Economics exists due to scarcity. If there is no scarcity, then everyone can have whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want. Robots will extract the raw resources, build it, and deliver it to you wherever you want them to. There will be no sales. There will be no excess. Just what is needed whenever it is needed.
  - erikb 11y ago
    Yes, that's the Star Trek vision he explains in the beginning. This doesn't answer the question of why the author in the end of his argument suddenly says that "Robots [...] [delivering] it to you wherever you want" would result in job/money problems. Logic would say that with the need for trade there is no need for money and with robots producing everything for you there is no need for you to work.
    - x5n1 11y ago
      Well if you don't work you can't get money. So if there are still other economic activities for which you need money, not supplied by the machine then you are out of luck.
      - eru 11y ago
        Just go for a European style social security net. Problem solved.
- calibraxis 11y ago
  Because we have the wrong social structure. Humanity is sufficiently advanced that our problems are basically solved problems. But our methods of organization keep us from applying the solutions, except under heavy constraints. For example, we could have access to every book and video ever published. The history of human thought. And creators could be compensated. But our systems do not allow this. Underneath it all is violence; attempt to act as if it weren’t the case. Openly share books and movies you’ve experienced. An armed bureaucrat will come after you.
saiya-jin 11y ago
the guy has some interesting points (hard to say valid ones since we are all just guessing how future will shape up), but constant mentioning of minimal guaranteed income as cure-it-all-for-our-bright-future is a bit too much to swallow (mentality of quite a few nations i know is, hand out anything, and you remove the only motivation for them do do anything positive or even neutral to society) The last line of article says it all - Tom Streithorst has been a union member... - in my own personal experience, unions are plague, nothing to be proud of, but that's another topic altogether. This makes it automatically a left-wing-orientated article, which is OK by principle, but not in sync with my inner beliefs and all experiences in my whole life so far (and I've seen the world a bit here & there)
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  Unions are why we have the forty hour/five day work week. Guaranteed income is probably the only sane way to move forward. Your description of "mentality of nations" make very little sense, and doesn't actually mesh with the many studies on what happens when you invest in people.
  - golergka 11y ago
    > unions are plague, nothing to be proud of > Unions are why we have the forty hour/five day work week. Just for the record, these two statements don't contradict each other in any way. What unions did 80 years ago and what they're became now are two completely different things.
    - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
      Unions aren't perfect, granted. But even now they serve a purpose.
      - golergka 11y ago
        My comment didn't imply any judgement; I was just pointing out the semantics of the thread, that althoigh two statements can appear contradictory, they aren't necessarily. Personally, I don't have enough information abou unions to offer any opinion.
mseebach 11y ago
The author doesn't even seem to agree with himself. This line: > "We have never yet failed to become richer; as a species, our lives have always gotten better. You wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but Greece today is more affluent than the Germany of 1974. Even the least among us own technology that would have been science fiction just a dozen years ago. Our ancestors would be amazed at the splendor of our lives, and by this I mean our grandparents, not cavemen." is directly at odds with this: > "What if the benefits of productivity gains are monopolized by the top one percent, as they largely have been for most of the past 30 years?" If the benefits had been large monopolised by the 1%, Germany in 1974 would be substantially the same (for the 99%, that is) as today, and there would be little splendor for our grandparents to be amazed at. Sure, some amount of wealth seems to have accumulated at the top, and that's generally undesirable, but the fact that there has been huge leaps in quality of life for all is so blatantly obvious that the author, despite trying to drive the opposite point, (accidentally?) uses it as a throwaway rhetorical device.
laaph 11y ago
I think this is a poorly written essay that has all sorts of interesting things to say. I say that because I feel about half the comments here seem to miss the point and are focusing on nitpicks. I wish he had looked at the hamburger making machine that was being developed rather than "a machine that makes gourmet meals". When talking of that concept to friends and family, I realized for many people that caused them to think of the plight of minimum wage workers, and I literally found out who of my friends and family had Luddite reactions to that and argued they shouldn't be built and shouldn't be legal if they were to be, just for the sake of preserving jobs. I also wish he spoke to the current state of music and/or video. We literally are in the Star Trek universe with music and video. I can open my computer and find enough music and movies that I couldn't watch or listen to them all in my lifetime. We can imagine a button on our stove that you could press (or voice activate) and it would duplicate an apple for you. Meanwhile we literally have a machine that will duplicate music for you, at near zero cost, and we've had many people do all sorts of things to restrict usage of them. The head of the MPAA compared the video cassette recorder to the Boston Strangler in terms of how much it would destroy society. There have been many economists who have argued that people will find always find new jobs. After all, there is always something more to do, or at least at jobs I've worked at, although not always money or will to hire more people to do more stuff. It might be worth exploring the ideas if those economists are wrong and we do end up in a world where you can have a computer make you a hot earl grey tea from nothingness, but few people can afford it, when the hardware is completely locked up under patent laws and the inventors insist on being compensated for creating such an impressive thing.

eru 11y ago

> The economics of Mad Max echo those that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. During the Dark Ages, precious resources became scarce, and men from regions devastated by famine swarmed more prosperous lands. Citation required.

simonh 11y ago
No it isn't. I can't stand citation culture. My wife does courses as part of her Nursing practice and has to write papers full of citations in the modern style. You can't even say it was a sunny day without referencing an official weather report. The thing is, most of the references you see in books and articles are to sources no more authoritative than the one citing them. If you're dealing with research then yes, sources and standards of evidence are important, but in many cases it creates an illusion of authority. This is an article on the Internet, not a historical thesis. If you doubt something it says, say so and say why you doubt it. If you think it's worth challenging, it should be worth some time checking for yourself or at least explaining why you doubt it. Just tossing two word over the fence is lazy and provocative without making any actual contribution to the conversation.
- austinjp 11y ago
  Sometimes I think it's worse even than that. As you say, providing a supporting citation gives a gloss of authority and acceptance, whether in an academic paper or on a chat forum. The reader should ideally appraise the cited source and decide if they agree. I doubt this happens in even 1% of cases. Ideally I'd like to see citations that both support and disagree with the point being made. Then I could take a more balanced overview and decide my level of trust in the evidence. However this would lead to a systematic review for every sentence written/read. To my mind this is a major problem in the peer-review scientific process, and I don't know of a decent solution. This is where I'd like to see a really potent AI: systematic reviews.
  - sgt101 11y ago
    Have a look at deepdive from Stanford. http://deepdive.stanford.edu/ http://deepdive.stanford.edu/
- mseebach 11y ago
  I agree that citation culture is stupid, but that doesn't make the quoted assertion less false. See parts 5 and 6 of this: http://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-things-that-are-common-knowledge-about-history-that-historians-almost-universally-consider-incorrect/answer/Tim-ONeill-1 http://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-things-that-are-co...
  - simonh 11y ago
    I'm somewhat skeptical of the quoted assertion as well as I think it's overly generalised, but e.g from the source you give, from part 5: "When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the Fifth Century the effect on material culture and technology in Europe was devastating. Without the Empire to fund major engineering projects and large scale infrastructure, many of the skills and techniques involved in monumental buildings and complex technologies were forgotten and lost. The break down of long distance trade meant people became increasingly self-sufficient and produced what they needed locally." I know this had positive side effects, I did read the article (thanks, great read) but the collapse of the western empire was no picnic. But now we're having a reasoned discussion, whereas 'citation required' is a conversational brick wall.
- eru 11y ago
  > No it isn't. I can't stand citation culture. A less meme-y way would be to say: I'm sceptical (and even seem to recall having read just the opposite), please provide more than a simple assertion to convince me.
tiatia 11y ago
Strangely I've read that people even had better nutrition after the collapse since in the end, before the collapse, the tax burden was tremendous.

Hermel 11y ago

In a world as depicted in Mad Max, people would probably choose to live in the mountains and near rivers, not in the middle of the desert.

lotu 11y ago
Did you watch the latest movie? It is heavily implied that the rivers had all dried up or were poisoned. The people lived near an under ground aquifer controlled by the local warlord Immortal Joe.
- Gys 11y ago
  I did not see the movie. But without rivers the mountains would still be a better option then ground level land: cooler and rainy because of the height.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    well, movie (heck, all MM movies took place in Australia, which is anything but mountainous land. and it goes on - if rivers are poisoned, rain is some sort of hardcore acid pouring down. you actually want to avoid that as much as possible. so no, even for people that would be able to travel far, mountains might be a worse choice. plus, they are so deep into apocalypse, that they don't know geography beyond what they can reach by cars
    - eru 11y ago
      We have mountains in Australia, too.
- golergka 11y ago
  Immortan.

lotu 11y ago

>Imagine a machine that creates gourmet meals out of thin air. It is solar powered, cheap to use, can be manufactured for less than a plasma screen TV. ... Every restaurant in the world goes out of business. Chefs, waitresses, and dishwashers lose their jobs. The marginal cost of manufacturing goods falls to nearly zero, but if the technology for such a machine remains proprietary, then the replicator’s food is only as free as its designer decides. Our Silicon Valley whizkid, free of competition, charges as much for the food we now make in our kitchens as we might’ve once paid in a five star restaurant. If the machine costs as much as a five star restaurant per meal then why the fuck did the all the restaurants in the world go out of business‽ Furthermore why are we assuming that no other company on Earth will think the food market might be profitable? Even if a design is propriety that doesn't prevent independent invention.

lotu 11y ago
I had to continue: > Work before farming resembles what the rich do on holiday today. The rich spend their holidays intimidating lions of their own kill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBpu4DAvwI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBpu4DAvwI8 or running for 8 hours to drive a Kudo to having a heart attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o >Subsistence farmers worked far longer hours than their ancestors. They died younger and lived more miserable lives. The sole upside was that farming allowed the same plot of land to feed many more people. The author misses the upside of not worrying about getting eaten by a lion or trampled by a wildebeest.
- noelwelsh 11y ago
  As far as I am aware, by every measure hunter-gatherers had better lives than the vast majority of farmers until very recently. They had better nutrition, as evidenced by being taller. They had more equal societies. They worked very little. Contemporary hunter-gatherers generally live only on very marginal land, as more organised societies have taken over the rest, and their lifestyle is not a good reflection of what life was like before civilisation. A few links to explore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Hunter-gatherer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Hunter-gatherer

tiatia 11y ago

"The only people who believe in infinite growth in a finite world are madmen and economists". Kenneth Boulding I think the Max Max scenario is far more plausible. "There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-state-economy-except-at-a-very-basic-level/ http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat... Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growth-at-our-doorstep-but-not-recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt... Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-consumption-are-inseparable.html http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-... Galactic-Scale Energy http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...

tiatia 11y ago

Quote from the article : "There is a third option. It is likely and it is ugly. Even a technological wonderland can create a pernicious society. Technological progress can create dystopia even if ecological disaster is avoided. What if the benefits of productivity gains are monopolized by the top one percent, as they largely have been for most of the past 30 years? This is the world of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, a terrifying, but familiar world of gated communities and genetic engineering, with generalized poverty for everyone outside the corporate elite." That is an interesting idea but not likely to happen in the long run, but maybe during an intermediate state. Taking historic events as an indicator, the "upper 1%" see little incentive to try to prevent a coming collapse. It is not their children not getting jobs, only the children of the other 99% are not getting jobs and not getting opportunities. So the disaster will grow slowly through all ranks. The "top 1%" will fall last, but fall they will. "Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914...

tiatia 11y ago
From the article I quoted: "In scenario 5.3.2, with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites. It is important to note that in both of these scenarios, the Elites – due to their wealth – do not suffer the detrimental effects of the environmental collapse untilmuch later than the Commoners. This buffer of wealth allows Elites to continue “business as usual” despite the impending catastrophe. It is likely that this is an important mechanism that would help explain howhistorical collapseswere allowed to occur by eliteswho appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases). This buffer effect is further reinforced by the long, apparently sustainable trajectory prior to the beginning of the collapse. While somemembers of societymight raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory “so far” in support of doing nothing.

gonvaled 11y ago

> What ecological pessimists forget is that so far scientists have always been able to stay ahead of resource scarcity. They have always found better, less toxic replacements for what we’ve lost. Wrong. Very wrong. Humanity has been living over carrying capacity since the beginning of time. We always produce more offspring than what the environment/society can sustain. It is only recently (last 50 years?) and in a very limited area (first-world) that we are living below carrying capacity (of that region). The world as a whole is very much living above carrying capacity. And no, it does not matter that we are "wasting food" in the first world. For all intent and purposes, that food is not available to the rest of the world. Until we are able to first feed and then procreate, keeping the demographic curve well behind the food production curve, we are doomed. But that will never happen: as soon as scarcity is not an issue, we tend to reproduce like rabbits. We are very much a virus.

rtpg 11y ago
The "overpopulation until the end" myth is completely debunked by the demographic curves of many different developed countries (Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan to name some). I think the common assumption is that the population of nations as they develop taper off eventually.
- gonvaled 11y ago
  The "population is controlled whenever technology is able to lead the way" is a myth which is based on the false assumption that "technology is able to lead the way". Humanity has not followed that pattern in the last 200 thousand years, and nothing suggests we will be able to get to that utopia.
treerock 11y ago
This makes no sense. The evidence (we still survive and population keeps growing) suggests that we a living well within the carrying capacity of the earth. Technology, invention, social adaptation all help to increase that carrying capacity, making more efficient use of available resources. That may not continue indefinitely, but also population growth may not continue indefinitely. We are not a virus.

erikb 11y ago

It's so strange. First the article explains in Star Trek land most people don't need to work and don't need to buy things because production is essentially free. But in the end he argues that making production more and more free people won't be able to afford to buy them. What about the not buying part?

x5n1 11y ago
Imagine a machine that gives you whatever you want that can reasonably be produced. Imagine a world with infinite resources. Economics exists due to scarcity. If there is no scarcity, then everyone can have whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want. Robots will extract the raw resources, build it, and deliver it to you wherever you want them to. There will be no sales. There will be no excess. Just what is needed whenever it is needed.
- erikb 11y ago
  Yes, that's the Star Trek vision he explains in the beginning. This doesn't answer the question of why the author in the end of his argument suddenly says that "Robots [...] [delivering] it to you wherever you want" would result in job/money problems. Logic would say that with the need for trade there is no need for money and with robots producing everything for you there is no need for you to work.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    Well if you don't work you can't get money. So if there are still other economic activities for which you need money, not supplied by the machine then you are out of luck.
    - eru 11y ago
      Just go for a European style social security net. Problem solved.
calibraxis 11y ago
Because we have the wrong social structure. Humanity is sufficiently advanced that our problems are basically solved problems. But our methods of organization keep us from applying the solutions, except under heavy constraints. For example, we could have access to every book and video ever published. The history of human thought. And creators could be compensated. But our systems do not allow this. Underneath it all is violence; attempt to act as if it weren’t the case. Openly share books and movies you’ve experienced. An armed bureaucrat will come after you.

saiya-jin 11y ago

the guy has some interesting points (hard to say valid ones since we are all just guessing how future will shape up), but constant mentioning of minimal guaranteed income as cure-it-all-for-our-bright-future is a bit too much to swallow (mentality of quite a few nations i know is, hand out anything, and you remove the only motivation for them do do anything positive or even neutral to society) The last line of article says it all - Tom Streithorst has been a union member... - in my own personal experience, unions are plague, nothing to be proud of, but that's another topic altogether. This makes it automatically a left-wing-orientated article, which is OK by principle, but not in sync with my inner beliefs and all experiences in my whole life so far (and I've seen the world a bit here & there)

SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
Unions are why we have the forty hour/five day work week. Guaranteed income is probably the only sane way to move forward. Your description of "mentality of nations" make very little sense, and doesn't actually mesh with the many studies on what happens when you invest in people.
- golergka 11y ago
  > unions are plague, nothing to be proud of > Unions are why we have the forty hour/five day work week. Just for the record, these two statements don't contradict each other in any way. What unions did 80 years ago and what they're became now are two completely different things.
  - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
    Unions aren't perfect, granted. But even now they serve a purpose.
    - golergka 11y ago
      My comment didn't imply any judgement; I was just pointing out the semantics of the thread, that althoigh two statements can appear contradictory, they aren't necessarily. Personally, I don't have enough information abou unions to offer any opinion.

mseebach 11y ago

The author doesn't even seem to agree with himself. This line: > "We have never yet failed to become richer; as a species, our lives have always gotten better. You wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but Greece today is more affluent than the Germany of 1974. Even the least among us own technology that would have been science fiction just a dozen years ago. Our ancestors would be amazed at the splendor of our lives, and by this I mean our grandparents, not cavemen." is directly at odds with this: > "What if the benefits of productivity gains are monopolized by the top one percent, as they largely have been for most of the past 30 years?" If the benefits had been large monopolised by the 1%, Germany in 1974 would be substantially the same (for the 99%, that is) as today, and there would be little splendor for our grandparents to be amazed at. Sure, some amount of wealth seems to have accumulated at the top, and that's generally undesirable, but the fact that there has been huge leaps in quality of life for all is so blatantly obvious that the author, despite trying to drive the opposite point, (accidentally?) uses it as a throwaway rhetorical device.

laaph 11y ago

I think this is a poorly written essay that has all sorts of interesting things to say. I say that because I feel about half the comments here seem to miss the point and are focusing on nitpicks. I wish he had looked at the hamburger making machine that was being developed rather than "a machine that makes gourmet meals". When talking of that concept to friends and family, I realized for many people that caused them to think of the plight of minimum wage workers, and I literally found out who of my friends and family had Luddite reactions to that and argued they shouldn't be built and shouldn't be legal if they were to be, just for the sake of preserving jobs. I also wish he spoke to the current state of music and/or video. We literally are in the Star Trek universe with music and video. I can open my computer and find enough music and movies that I couldn't watch or listen to them all in my lifetime. We can imagine a button on our stove that you could press (or voice activate) and it would duplicate an apple for you. Meanwhile we literally have a machine that will duplicate music for you, at near zero cost, and we've had many people do all sorts of things to restrict usage of them. The head of the MPAA compared the video cassette recorder to the Boston Strangler in terms of how much it would destroy society. There have been many economists who have argued that people will find always find new jobs. After all, there is always something more to do, or at least at jobs I've worked at, although not always money or will to hire more people to do more stuff. It might be worth exploring the ideas if those economists are wrong and we do end up in a world where you can have a computer make you a hot earl grey tea from nothingness, but few people can afford it, when the hardware is completely locked up under patent laws and the inventors insist on being compensated for creating such an impressive thing.