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What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

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Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inflationary monetary policy is wealth transfer to the upper class without people realizing it. Going to need some evidence to back up that statement. Without centralized banking you essentially have no set policy one way other the other. I can understand why one would take issue with the current governance structure, but I don’t agree that letting money randomly fluctuate with no mechanisms for intervention to be…

> no set policy one way other the other Isn't that the idea of liberty though? No central authority deciding what is a "good thing" - just keeping the peace.

The absolute end to that line of reasoning is that there shouldn’t be any state at all.

Why does the state need to “keep the peace”? It does so through a monopoly on force. Why can’t private individuals simply work things out on their own however they see fit?

The idea of liberty, to me, is the idea that citizens have power over collective decision making, ie the rule of law, consent of the governed. I realize I am in the minority in modern day America though.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#332

Fascinating. I guess about one third of his predictions were correct. Eye-opening moments for me: - "white countries" - "radial energy" - "the servant problem" - no smoke in the house, "perhaps not even tobacco" - "the child is likely to be taken over by the State" - His vision of a house filled with frequently replaced disposable surfaces - "king of Jugo-Slavia" [will still reign] - "the American race [will become h…

> "the child is likely to be taken over by the State"

I'd be interested what daycare and school looked like in 1922, because arguably childcare is mostly state run at this point

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#333

It's interesting to compare this to the WEF future projections: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... Especially with regards to this passage:: "In 2022 [economic development] will be as finished as it is to-day in England. American wealth will then be either developed or known, and all of it will belong to somebody. There will be no more opportunity in America than there is in England to-da…

> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research w…

Gun control in the 1880s Old West:

"The laws of Tombstone at the time required visitors, upon entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman's office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.)"

"Dodge City, Kansas, formed a municipal government in 1878. According to Stephen Aron, a professor of history at UCLA, the first law passed was one prohibiting the carry of guns in town, likely by civic leaders and influential merchants who wanted people to move there, invest their time and resources, and bring their families."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-...

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research w…

Central Banking has been one of the most powerful and liberating achievements of civilization. And you now have the 'freedom' to strike and sue your employer, women have the 'freedom' to actually have a job, you have the 'freedom' to attend college which only about 5% did at the time, you have the 'freedom' to do almost anything in life. And what 'freedoms' have you lost? Well, there's more taxation. And you have to…

I'd be keen to be able to employ people without the government intervening in negotiations (minimum wage, various employment laws, etc.). I don't think the government has any place deciding what I can and can't offer. I also would like to be able to use my own judgement when hiring people, without having to worry about proving (the negative) that I'm not being discriminatory.

Workers have always had the freedom to strike. And employers should have the freedom to terminate striking employees. I don't see the need for regulation here. The "freedom" to attend college has created a mountain of student debt and an overeducated workforce. I fail to see the benefit.

All in all, directly, I'd like to live in a society where people are entitled to only what they can negotiate for, not more. And one that does not strive to protect people from the consequences of their own misfortune or inadequacy.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably a waste of time to argue this, but the arguments for central banking were the same as the arguments put forth by Alexander Hamilton. More stability, greater resilience, etc. The arguments against it were vague references to tyranny, orchestrated by people whose wealth is generated from resource extraction and inherited wealth.

Inflationary monetary policy is wealth transfer into the upper class without most people realizing it. Wealth, be it institutions or individuals, will always push for central banking as it entrenches their power.

That’s why the regulatory environment of the 20th century is important… Monetary policy that includes full employment provides benefits to the broader population.

“Hard money”, gold, Bitcoin, land, etc focused policy only benefits the return on assets for the people with those assets.

What we have now is the worst of both worlds.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#336

It's interesting to compare this to the WEF future projections: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... Especially with regards to this passage:: "In 2022 [economic development] will be as finished as it is to-day in England. American wealth will then be either developed or known, and all of it will belong to somebody. There will be no more opportunity in America than there is in England to-da…

> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research w…

Yes and no.

You see, "private property" was a step up from Feudalism. It allows you to own things. For example, the Web disrupted AOL, MSN, Compuserve, cable channels, radio stations, journalism, etc. But then, people started to just make their own "private" sites bigger. "I built it -- I own it!" OK, so Mark Z owns facebook, Jeff Bezos owns Amazon, and so forth. Our public discussions take place on "privately owned" platforms (really, owned by Wall Street bigwigs, but even they can't vote Mark Z out, they try and fail every year).

So basically the current system has led to a bunch of surveillance capitalism. That iPhone and Kindle can yank the apps and books you "own" out from under you. That Alexa and Siri listens to whatever you say all the time. That car you "own" will also soon have a bunch of software downloaded to make sure you are limited in what you can do -- which is probably the scariest thing because some sleeper attack can make all cars suddenly crash into gas stations at once.

In short ... your ideas of "private ownership" work on a small level but then you get these large corporations that continue "owning" things, and not giving them to you (infrastructure, backend software, AI data sets, you name it -- even "intellectual property" of patents and copyrights).

This IS a feature of capitalism, that we might want to rein in. Perhaps there should be a principle that courts would enforce private property less and less when it came to scale. So on a small scale (enforce my right to chattel property, my first 3 houses etc.) it's fine. But just what does it mean that I "own" 999 houses, and see no lessening of my ability to evict people ACTUALLY living in the house as squatters, just because I contracted with a bank and some "People with Guns" to enforce some "deed of ownership"? The land used to belong to some natives hundreds of years ago, or some other group that the current group just "took" from them. What moral system are you going to appeal to, that would allow unlimited private property ownership? Even John Locke's "homsteading" concept had a "proviso" saying that you should only own that which you can reasonably use. Even Adam Smith writing about the "invisible hand" was actually writing about how the Rich are led by an invisible hand to distribute goods equally (in his time) because they can only eat so much.

We see this pathology in online systems as well. Just like Bitcoin and Ethereum allow sending unlimited amounts of money in a fixed time for a fixed fee, this necessarily causes a bottleneck somewhere (proof of work miner, for instance, or everyone storing everything, leading to "flash loans" and other crap on the "world computer"). Actually, they charge the maximum fee for every transaction (even sending 5 cents) because the entire network secures everything. It's built for really huge transfers.

It can be summarized like this: "Centralization is bad, and happens through enforcement of some rules. The resources to enforce rules should therefore not be deployed for unlimited value of ownership by accounts, they shouldn't even be centralized (e.g. proof of work mining elects one "consensus leader", or Facebook has a huge centralized server farm) to the point that you get these pathologies: the elites at the top are out of touch with the people who are ACTUALLY using the products / services. Same with politics / states / etc. Keep it decentralized whenever you can.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no set policy one way other the other Isn't that the idea of liberty though? No central authority deciding what is a "good thing" - just keeping the peace.

That's one definition of liberty, but not the only one. I'd propose the alternative: Liberty is the freedom to take actions in society as it exists. Therefore a society that had greater prosperity has greater Liberty. You sort of admit as much, what is keeping the piece but ultimately deciding which things are good things or not?

Keeping the peace means enforcing nonviolent interaction and providing due process for conflict resolution. Liberty isn't the same thing as prosperity/economic power. They are different words for a reason. You can be very poor and very free, or very comfortably enslaved. Liberty is fundamentally your relationship with those who can use legitimate force against you.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting for them to add a camera to the Apple Watch. Then it can be a full phone replacement for low tech days.

I've been thinking this since the Apple Watch came out, but other than practical limitations (battery life) there's always this problem: have you tried to hold your arm out in front of your face and stare at your watch for a while? It's not the most comfortable position. You might have to add some extra arm/shoulder days in your exercise routine.

I think a fisheye lens plus face recognition should solve that nicely. As long as you can see the watch screen, the image could be cropped, skewed and rotated to focus on your face.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#339
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are a countless other ways a country A country? The federal reserve is run by private individuals. It is a private bank. Don't let the name fool you.

"The Federal Reserve is private" is a meme at this point that is largely divorced from our usual meaning of public/private. Calling the Federal Reserve Board "private citizens" is like calling the Supreme Court Justices "private citizens". They are both officials appointed by the president, who must be confirmed by the Senate, and who collect a public salary. Any profits from the Federal Reserve go right back into th…

Financial elite finances all candidates, some of them win, the winners appoint the financial elite to be board members of the organization that is capable of printing money and giving bailouts/buying poisoned assets from said financial institutions. The money is not made from FED profits, the money is made by the financial institutions owned by the board members. What's so hard to understand about that? It's clearly a scam.

It does not only happen at the central-banking level, but it's another tool used by them. Let me give you a similar example, not directly involving central banking, from my country. Paulo Guedes is the founder of BTG Pactual bank. He goes on and funds the candidate Jair Bolsonaro for presidency. Once elected, Bolsonaro appoints Guedes to Ministry of Economy. His monetary policies decisions makes the USD/BRL go from R$3.71 to R$5.70. November/2021 comes by and pandora papers are released. We find out the dude has almost 10 million USD stashed in offshore tax-heavens. His decisions made his personal fortune grow by 14 million BRL(equivalent to 956 years of minimum wage).

This does not involve central banking directly but the idea is the same: put the financial elite in positions that allow them to make large scale decisions to grow their personal fortunes while affecting the lives of all others. It's a scam.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#340
post #15

>Similar reforms apply to cooking, a great deal of which will survive among old fashioned people, but a great deal more of which will probably be avoided by the use of synthetic foods. This is very interesting especially if you think "synthetic foods" not just literally but as take out, processed products and such. I know a lot of young professional people who technically never cook. Like almost never and whatever th…

The “lunch will be a pill” stuff is always funny to me. There’s a major volume issue unless you’re gonna have me eat chunks of uranium or neutron star or something.

This was my initial reaction too: it doesn't seem to pass basic conservation of mass.

But actually how much mass must you necessarily lose to stay alive each day? Most of it is probably water, so if we allow "four pills plus as much water" at a meal then it's harder to rule out the pill diet.

Maybe a better way to bound it: apparently we exhale around 1 kg of CO2 each day, which has 370g of carbon in it so unless we can radically reengineer our metabolism I guess you need a minimum of 370g daily to maintain carbon levels. 370g / 3 meals / 4 pills = 30g per pill. Even with the density of diamond that would be (picking a convenient rough number) 8 cm3 or 2x2x2cm.

Which is... a hard pill to swallow. Maybe not impossible though.

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