I look forward to laughing at this list a decade from now.
What Will Happen in the 2020s
371–380 of 692 posts
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
"How's life in soviet russia?" "Can't complain!" This is the mistake you're making regarding China. Source: grew up there
I mean, yeah, being against those in power isn't a good idea in authoritarian regimes. At the same time, people describe living in former east germany as the most easy-going / carefree time of their life. Being taken care of as long as you do as your told isn't all bad and probably was the default state of the smaller communities in the past. Whish we would find ways to achieve this without the authoritarian aspects.
>At the same time, people describe living in former east germany as the most easy-going / carefree time of their life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_attempts_and_victims_of...
People made the best of the situation they had. There is a reason the links above happened, though, and it wasn't because the system people lived in was easy-going and carefree. Keep in mind that the transitional years, after the governmental collapse, but before western institutions stepped in, were worse than regular life when the eastern systems were functional. Balance that against the thought that the eastern system was unsustainable, and had the west not been able to step in when it did, the results would have been far worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine for an example of what happened in a centralized system that didn't have outside assistance when things collapsed.
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the only way #6 will come true is if the replacement for meat looks, smells and tastes exactly like the real thing and it'll have to be cheaper too. People all over the world love meat, especially US, UK and the Chinese. I've tried to convince some family members to reduce their meat consumption even a tiniest amount gets a huge amount of resistance. People aren't going to give up their meat: they may not even b…
If an effective carbon tax is introduced (see #1) then the price of meat will rise astronomically, which will make reduced consumption inevitable. In many places, climate change will make existing agriculture unsustainable, so there'll be massive upheaval in the industry at the same time. If that's combined with a cultural movement similar to flugskam, I think drastically reduced meat consumption is possible. Of cour…
I buy carbon offsets based on a questionnaire about lifestyle. It works out to about $180-220 USD per year, depending on whether I take a vacation by flying to Europe. If that were factored into prices as a tax I don't think it would count as an astronomical increase.
But perhaps the questionnaire and algorithm from terrapass is deficient in some way. What are you basing your calculations off of?
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#374I don’t really buy into 4-6. I don’t see any benefit for a country to turn its currency into a crypto asset. Either they are relinquishing a great deal of control in democratizing their financial system (also exposing themselves to attack), or it’s a crypto in name only that doesn’t seem any better than digital cash through banks except for a buzzword. Decentralization is hit or miss. You get economies of scale with…
The reason a country would want to use a crypto asset for their money supply would be to own the private ledger completely; they wouldn't utilize the decentralized, public, blockchains we see today. All financial activity and transactions can easily be monitored on a blockchain; the movement of money could be tracked from it's inception to it's current location on one ledger. Each private key can correspond to a citi…
Yeah, but if you own the private ledger completely, what advantage do you have over just having that kind of control over banks? It seems you can just do all of that with heavy handed banking regulations.
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at Impossible Burger. Burger King sells them. Try an Impossible Whopper alongside the Beef Whopper. They're making a million pounds of burgers a month, from soy, potatoes, and heme for the meat flavor. Their plant in Oakland is only the size of a supermarket. This isn't an expensive product to make. When the beef industry's lobbyist in Washington first tried one, he called his people and said, "Guys, we have a p…
There is a coming backlash against fake meat due to the amount of chemicals and processing required. It's not just soy, potatoes and flavoring.
Yes, and it's funny.[1] The Impossible Burger was cool when it cost $20 at Jardiniere. Then the company scaled up and started supplying Burger King. This got some foodies upset. Wait until they get the price down to well below meat and start supplying McDonalds.
[1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/10/7/20880318/meatle...
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef. They don't want the highly processed fake stuff that contains who knows what. The only way beef loses is if the alternatives are significantly cheaper. If a McBeef is $5 more than a McFakeBeef then you got a shot at converting people.
You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly. There is also the fact that plant based diets are still associated to certain ideologies and because of that they will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing ideologies. Sure, you do…
I think you're absolutely right that the status symbol aspect of meat consumption is going to be a large factor in people's decision-making.
That said, there are inflection points at which certain products switch from being seen as status symbols into more questionable signals - wearing fur springs to mind as one example.
I don't think it's at all guaranteed that traditional meat would end up in that category; it's a long way from it currently. But it's within the realm of possibility.
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals, which include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism, and embracing the fall of the West. For the most part, the author’s expectations about crypto are mistaken in that they assume financiers in the west trust China enough to buy into its digital currency. We are bordering on a Cold War; we aren’t about to trust them to keep their promises on cryp…
> A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals Not liberal ideals. Globalist neoliberal ideals. > which include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism, and embracing the fall of the West. These aren't liberal ideals. They are globalist neoliberal ideals. Anti-human, anti-american and pro-globalist financiers. > or it becomes more closely unified and a world power in the likes of the US, Russi…
> Not liberal ideals. Globalist neoliberal ideals.
"Neoliberal" refers to Clinton-style ("third way") liberal politicians. I don't know who you're using it to refer to.
> Having europe turn from a "vassal" to a competitor would represent a significant loss of power for the US.
You forgot to include why you think that's a bad thing.
> Guam and Puerto Rico are already part of the US.
But they can't vote and have no (useful) representation in Congress. Citizens of Guam and Puerto Rico are treated as second class citizens ("US Nationals", not "US Citizens").
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason a country would want to use a crypto asset for their money supply would be to own the private ledger completely; they wouldn't utilize the decentralized, public, blockchains we see today. All financial activity and transactions can easily be monitored on a blockchain; the movement of money could be tracked from it's inception to it's current location on one ledger. Each private key can correspond to a citi…
Yeah, but if you own the private ledger completely, what advantage do you have over just having that kind of control over banks? It seems you can just do all of that with heavy handed banking regulations.
The cryptographically proven history built in rather then attempting to lay on on top
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#379A 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…
China is good at things we are really bad at: building up modern infrastructure fast and at reasonable cost, investing in long term projects (payoff in decades so meaningless for election cycle driven politics in other countries).
I doubt China has good infrastructure, which is why they build it so fast. Also it helps to absolute control over your workforce.
Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s
#380A lot of the regulations that "hamper" U.S.-based fiscal markets provide basic protection against financial mismanagement and corruption. The writer's supposition that relatively unhampered Asian crypto-currency markets would be trusted is highly optimistic. They are more likely to turn out to be prone to in-house theft or corrupt insider-dealing, or to external hacking (the 750K BTC lost from Mt Gox are still missing[1]), or to government control and manipulation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bit...