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A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

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Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#451

Post by spurgu »

simonh wrote: post #228
KorematsuFred wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would I rather prefer the society of 1995 or of 2020 ? That is a very simple question for me. I do not find it very close. If I your were in India which was a deep socialist state in 1980s and 1995 just when the seeds of 1992 reforms were sowed, it was a complete shithole compared to the India of 2020 even with COVID.

Likewise China, I first went in 2001 and it's a different country in terms of most people's every day lives. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty into comfortable livelihoods and I personally know some of them. There's still a long way to go, but it's incredible how far it's already come.

But is it sustainable? China has been (like most western countries) creating a ton of debt to make that happen.

Re: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

#452

Post by KorematsuFred »

spurgu wrote: post #451
simonh wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise China, I first went in 2001 and it's a different country in terms of most people's every day lives. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty into comfortable livelihoods and I personally know some of them. There's still a long way to go, but it's incredible how far it's already come.

But is it sustainable? China has been (like most western countries) creating a ton of debt to make that happen.

Future is not for us to see and when it comes to predicting future of nations and societies we are especially pretty bad. Having said that sustainability is a first world problem. There is no point sustaining anything if 80% of your population is malnourished, availability of food per capita and clothes per capita is less than what is needed for sustenance of life where thousands of children die of polio and thousands more disabled.

I would rather live in an unsustainable India of 2020 than in sustainable India of 1985.

Debt is not really much of a problem for India as debt of gdp ratio is pretty low. Debt is not a problem in terms of sustainability either, when the proverbial shit hits the fan the country might go into massive recession but even in the worst of worst cases and even with terrible politicians at help recessions don't last very long. But the gain upto that point are all real. (India has over 50M more young and healthy people purely because the country has eliminated Polio and dozen other diseases that were common 40 years ago).

Rising population and rapid urbanization would require India to manage its forests, water and other resources better and India is not equipped to do so because of government control of key industries and bad policies. But we can hope things will change for better as a more competent government is at helm.

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