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What Will Happen in the 2020s

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Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to me. Soviet Union's fall was a very unique set of events, some unique to the time and sweep of history, some just plain unique. It was a combination of the right leaders, Chernobyl, fallout from WW2 divisions such as the Baltic States Molotov Pact protests, and Solidarity and Lech Walesa in Poland, then the right chain of events over a decade. Many of those Soviet Republics were very reluctant participants, for…

Yeah, when China breaks down again, it will be for very unique reasons, singular for their time and place, and dependent on a few very good or bad political decisions. When has social change ever not been unique?

Which is rather my point, rather than a few vague sweeping generalisations of GP drawing parallels where none appear to exist.

It's always easier to explain collapse with hindsight. :)

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#242

A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take. China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods. What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months. I don’t think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we’ve seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it’s not indicative of the next decade i…

None of 4, 5, or 6 are at all likely either.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#243

A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take. China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods. What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months. I don’t think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we’ve seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it’s not indicative of the next decade i…

Another interesting aspect is they might need to transition into a focus on their middle class or risk pricing themselves out of the labor market. Politically, I would think thats a bit of a catch 22 for the party. Empowering a large group would weaken the party, I would think.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#244
post #151
post #102

> The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. I don't think so. WWII was a war between two fronts. Climate change affects countries very differently. The ones not affected much will unlikely contribute. My guess is that everyone to his own in this one. > experiments to reallocate wealth and income more equitably will produce a new generation of world leaders wh…

China doomed to fail based on what?

Based on history. Except this time there are several global powers looking to either take over or keep it fragmented.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#245
post #155

There are two wealth in this world: financial wealth, and demographic wealth. Both are limited by natural resources, so it should come as no surprise that they are declining. Humanity will be confronted with the principle of reality.

What is demographic wealth?

I'm guessing a population that can generate wealth (think age distribution, education).

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#246

> Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of their fiat currencies Why? I don't see what would be the benefit of that. Fiat currency already is digital. And - at least where I live - domestic transfers are instant.

Giving each citizen an account at the central bank. Then everyone will have access to "real" money digitally (not only via cash, which is currently the case).

What's the point? Why would countries bother?

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#247
post #2

>5/ A decentralized internet will emerge, led initially by decentralized infrastructure services like storage, bandwidth, compute, etc. The emergence of decentralized consumer applications will be slow to take hold and a killer decentralized consumer app will not emerge until the latter part of the decade. The pendulum of history suggests this will occur (at some point), and I hope it happens sooner than later in man…

The spark is already here. I work in a rapidly emerging domain where the trends clearly indicate that traditional concepts of centralized infrastructure cannot serve the required workloads: operational sensor/geospatial data models. Basically, machinery measuring and reasoning about the physical world at scale, often in real-time. Several aspects of these data models (technical, economic, regulatory) strongly indicate a globally federated implementation that allows for fast, decentralized, ad hoc cooperation of storage-dense compute elements at the edge. The aggregate data velocity is so high that the physics of data model centralization is untenable, so there is a certain near-term inevitability about it even though you can make a centralized solution work today.

There is active research into the theoretical and practical design of systems and protocols that will make this plausible. It has no precedent in literature and it is a very non-trivial problem but the sense is that a practical workable design is achievable in the not too distant future.

It is worth noting that effectively managing climate change requires implementing the same kind of data model with similar theoretical constraints. Building data models of physical reality at scale breaks just about every part of classic data infrastructure architecture.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#248

> Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of their fiat currencies Why? I don't see what would be the benefit of that. Fiat currency already is digital. And - at least where I live - domestic transfers are instant.

Here's a possible reason for why a crypto fiat currency with a distributed ledger might be attractive.

Currently, all fiat currencies operate with a central ledger at whatever central bank is authorized to print or destroy units of the currency. For example, every US dollar is linked through a chain of deposits and liabilities back to an account at the Fed since any bank operating in the US is required to hold an account with the Fed. However, this gives the US the ability to control the transfer of USD to use in sanctions.

Suppose you were an Iranian company that wanted to buy goods from the EU, to be paid in USD. In normal times, an Iranian bank with an account at the Fed would ask the Fed to transfer USD from its account to that of the EU bank to complete the trade. However, since Iran is under sanctions, the Fed can freeze the assets and refuse to initiate the transfer or confirm that the Iranian bank has the required funds. Without assurance that you can actually pay for the goods in USD, the EU company decides not to sell any goods and you're stranded from the world market.

Trying to bypass this by buying the goods with Euros doesn't work either, since the Fed can also threaten the USD accounts of EU banks too. Suppose the US catches an EU bank helping an Iranian company trade with a EU company in Euros. The US could then order the Fed to freeze the accounts of the EU bank or extract a fine for violating sanctions. EU banks get spooked away from helping Iranian companies deal with international payments due to the risk of getting themselves locked out of the USD system. All this is thanks to the power the Fed has over the one central ledger of USD that they can modify and freeze at will.

But with a distributed ledger secured with cryptography, the Iranian bank wouldn't have to depend on the Fed to modify their central account book when performing money transfers. They could cryptographically prove that they had a certain amount of USD in their accounts and transfer it to the EU bank in a way that all bystanders can observe and confirm. You would have a currency system with unblockable and unsanctionable transfers, as if you had teleported containers of physically verifiable US dollar bills from Iran to the EU.

This would be the key draw for countries trying to make their fiat currencies crypto. They could then advertise it as a currency that is impossible for the host country to use for sanctions. This boosts the cryptocurrency's viability as a reserve currency, and once enough countries begin using it then the host country could print money to improve their country's consumption, living standards, and economic clout without worrying about inflating the currency away.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#249

> 4/ Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of their fiat currencies, led by China who moves first and benefits the most from this move. The US will be hamstrung by regulatory restraints and will be slow to move, allowing other countries and regions to lead the crypto sector. Asian crypto exchanges, unchecked by cumbersome regulatory restraints in Europe and the US and leveraging decentralized fina…

If there is a use for crypto here it will be for rich Chinese to evade their government when moving money outside the country as they typically do. That's the real use of Bitcoin. It's why Bitcoin mining is such a big thing in China. It's "exporting". Made in China, sold outside China - that's exporting, and not only legal, but encouraged and subsidized. Buy a share in a Bitcoin mine in yuan, watch your EUR or USD ba…

It also messes up the Bitcoin mining economics for the rest of the world. If you see mining bitcoin as a way to convert CNY -> equipment and electricity -> bitcoin -> foreign currency, you’re willing to operate at a loss. Kind of like how when people launder money they accept they’ll only get 50% or something of their dirty money converted into clean, except in reverse.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#250
What? No reference to country specific disconnected-from-the-rest-of-the-world Internet, a-la Russia's experiment a few days ago? To me, more government control over the Internet to the extent of governments basically sealing the Internet to within country borders with more regulation (taxes, anyone?) of out-of-country access seems like a no-brainer thing happening in the upcoming decade...way more than just the great-wall-of-china firewall.
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