It's not that silly to model as historically that has also happened. To use the "peak oil" example this work also influenced, the technology of fossil oil reserves was a response in part to "peak whale" (not a joke). The main source much commercial 'oil' for things like Street lamps in the 1800s was whale blubber. As whales got overfished fossilised oil reserves were developed and not only took over those markets but…
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "peak whale" and "peak oil" are naturally self-correcting in a free-market, because as the resources become scarce their prices goes up hence leading to technological incentives to find alternative sources. This would also apply to topsoil erosion. However this isn't the case with carbon emissions for example, unless we had some financial feedback loop (e.g. some carbon tax).
Fossil fuel prices are highly political and a mechanism to sanction economies right now. So it is only partially a free market at best. Especially if many players try to keep the price that low...
Do you have any recommendations on what material to read?
This Wikipedia page on Carl Menger’s “Principles of Economics” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Economics_(Menge... says: > Ludwig von Mises called the book the best introduction to the Austrian School of economics
It would also help to read Marx's Das Kapital at the same time, that way you can plough through two equally discredited economic theories and get them out of the way before you move on to actually reading something worthwhile.
I think it was heavily dependent on the administration. To my knowledge, recent past administration quite literally made a step by step "playbook on how to manage a pandemic" and the current administration quite literally completely ignored it, or something close to this.
I have a hard time coming up with examples of countries that handled the pandemic very well, so I would think that it's less dependent on the administration than it might appear.
To the best of my knowledge Belorussia did absolutely nothing and didn't have a massive death wave.
And before you tell me it's a dictatorship so they have hidden the true numbers, I'm pretty sure if it had been the case it would have been at the forefront of the protests last year.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I do think COVID fear has been massively overblown.
I love that there's a "technology will fix things" model. This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change. Another implicit assumption is that we'll be able to move forward unilaterally with such a solution, instead of it becoming a political football until it's too late to do anything, like climate change. A lot…
The problem which we already have the technology to fix is food. What people eat is cultural and is effected by cost and availability. There is much we currently discard or do not cultivate because it not what we traditionally see as food and because there is no cost incentive to encourage a change in culture. Changes can however occur given the right triggers, like how large portion of Europe went over to potatoes d…
I do not believe that everyone deciding to eat something different is "fixing" the food scarcity problem in the same way that desalinization (ignoring all other issues with it as we assumed technology improved to solve them also) "fixes" water scarcity: if everyone is told tomorrow "all water will safely come from desal" we might breath a collective sigh of relief... "starting tomorrow, all food will be replaced by seaweed" a lot of people are going to be super super pissed, right? Maybe even more basic: making enough potatoes to technically satisfy everyone's calorie requirements (ignoring nutrition) might be a technological problem, but the "similar change in food culture" is kind of begging the question, as if we could just cause that change before all the food was gone maybe we could still enjoy the occasional potato (a luxury in our new era of food molded out of seaweed), and if we could get equivalent cultural shifts in how people use transportation (along with food changes, such as not eating meat) maybe we could stave off climate change without technological fixes: if you are relying on a cultural change it isn't a technological fix, and if the way the cultural change will happen is because no one will have a choice... well, then you didn't fix anything in the first place!
This civilization IS different. Not in any magical way just simply in the fact that we are the first who through our combination of wealth and knowledge-creation and with the help of technology and science have the potential of solving the problems we encounter. It's not a guarantee but it's very different than previous civilizations (just as the challenges are). In general humans and our ansestors have gradually bee…
It really isn't. History is littered with civilizations that were on top, got complacent, and were swallowed by up to that point irrelevant tiny neighbours. They all had the wealth, the power, the tech. They didn't have the tolerance for short term pain for greater future gains anymore. So they stood there watching how they went down, slowly but surely . And talking a lot. I would not be surprised if future historian…
History is not littered with civilizations that got universal computation and computers to execute them.
Again there is no certainty in life, but to say that this civilization is not very different than others before it is in my view ahistorial.
I think technology will result in a great outcome for humanity as long as our greed is checked somehow. Most of the problems today are caused by our greed. I’m no MIT scholar nor as educated as most of you here, but from a anecdotal ground level I have seen it really seems some people at various positions from a office manager all the way to the highest political offices are driven by greed. Their greed usually resul…
The problem is defining “greed”. It feels like when I want more stuff per unit time/effort, I’m just “trying to support my family and build a better life for my children”. But when other people do the same, it’s “greedy”. Is there any definition of “greedy” we could use for the purposes of this discussion that would apply yo all humans equally?
I love that there's a "technology will fix things" model. This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change. Another implicit assumption is that we'll be able to move forward unilaterally with such a solution, instead of it becoming a political football until it's too late to do anything, like climate change. A lot…
I disagree with this take on why this model was there. I understood it as it being there to illustrate what it _would_ take to avoid a societal catastrophe. This is helpful, because it shows that we won’t avoid it!
The problem which we already have the technology to fix is food. What people eat is cultural and is effected by cost and availability. There is much we currently discard or do not cultivate because it not what we traditionally see as food and because there is no cost incentive to encourage a change in culture. Changes can however occur given the right triggers, like how large portion of Europe went over to potatoes d…
I do not believe that everyone deciding to eat something different is "fixing" the food scarcity problem in the same way that desalinization (ignoring all other issues with it as we assumed technology improved to solve them also) "fixes" water scarcity: if everyone is told tomorrow "all water will safely come from desal" we might breath a collective sigh of relief... "starting tomorrow, all food will be replaced by s…
The problem is defining “greed”. It feels like when I want more stuff per unit time/effort, I’m just “trying to support my family and build a better life for my children”. But when other people do the same, it’s “greedy”. Is there any definition of “greedy” we could use for the purposes of this discussion that would apply yo all humans equally?
Yeah, especially when there's occasional extremists that refuse to acknowledge that putting one's own first isn't the natural state of things. I guess the way forward is to build a sustainable future for everyone and their families. And to get everyone to agree it's the best way to go about things.
> putting one's own first isn't the natural state of things
I am very confused about this statement, can you please explain what is the "natural state of things" ?