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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)

#471

Post by mc32 »

thereddaikon wrote: post #454
Clubber wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Before agriculture, humans spent almost all of their time hunting and gathering. Agriculture freed up some time Agriculture is more work than hunting and gathering, but it's a much more consistent food source. https://www.zmescience.com/science/hunter-gatherer-farmer-ti...

I didn't say agriculture gave us leisure, I said it freed us up to do other things. You may spend less time hunting and gathering but everyone is a hunter and gatherer. With agriculture a smaller part of your society is dedicated to food production. This allows for specialization and civilization. Leisure, as we understand it is a pretty modern development. In that study they are defining leisure as the opposite of l…

It would seem plausible to claim agriculture put demand on innovation; tools to make more efficient agriculture. Things like irrigation channels, planting tools, harvesting tools, etc.

Maybe technology developed for conflict came first but I’d guess peacetime uses also put demands on innovation.

Interestingly, I watched some video somewhere where in some part of India[1] there were people who were harvesting wheat with a curved knife (sickle) like implement rather than a scythe. So people had to bend down to harvest a field. Meaning sometimes technology doesn’t diffuse everywhere —even well known solutions.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iU0uYeO7XI

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

#472

Post by yurishimo »

beeboop wrote: post #280
jugg1es wrote: post #233

The most striking to me are passages like this: "It is practically certain that in 2022 nearly all women will have discarded the idea that they are primarily "makers of men". Most fit women will then be following an individual career." ... "But it is unlikely that that women will have achieved equality with men."

He definitely missed the mark about alimony or men not bearing the majority of child support

I don't think he did. My mother paid child support to my father after the divorce. I think in most instances, it's simply more convenient for the mother to take the children in a divorce, or the kids are too young to choose, so it ends that way by default. There is no rule for it though.

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

#473

Post by wbsss4412 »

thegrimmest wrote: post #446
wbsss4412 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re saying is essentially “imagine a government with the power to create laws that allow arbitrary imprisonment with no recourse, that would be tyrannical”, which, yes, but that only has to do with the currency because that’s what you chose for your example. Said government could pass a law stating that all citizens must be in two places at once, and achieve the same effect.

As mentioned in a previous comment, I'm saying "Imagine a government without broad power over general welfare". This was the US government until 1936 with United States v. Butler. I don't think it would be a catastrophe to reverse this decision again. It seems that in spite of best efforts, the US has failed to preserve the very meaning of liberty, as it was initially envisioned, from total deterioration even in its…

The material distinction when the United States was founded wasn’t whether the state in general had broad power over the general welfare, but whether the federal government would. State government did have such power.

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

#474

Post by Ancapistani »

bagacrap wrote: post #156
seafoam wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I will bite, what are you on ?

the marketing team

I know that "funny quips" are generally discouraged on HN, but this is quality content that made me chuckle.

Thanks :)

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

#475

Post by mbg721 »

jacobr1 wrote: post #274
mbg721 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also had one of the strongest eugenics movements in the world, under the same progressive flag as women's suffrage. It took the horrors of WWII to snap us out of it.

And it set us back because we overcorrected. The biggest evil of historical eugenics was the non-consensual application, not the idea that we should improve the gene pool. This thread is an interesting summary of possible "eugenics" type applications and if those surveyed consider them moral today: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772

The Catholic Church still opposes all of those except for offering network support and feeding single mothers (in which cases it recommends generosity). I don't think that's an overcorrection; I think it's the result of thinking very hard about human dignity over many generations.

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

#476

Post by Ancapistani »

beeboop wrote: post #280
jugg1es wrote: post #233

The most striking to me are passages like this: "It is practically certain that in 2022 nearly all women will have discarded the idea that they are primarily "makers of men". Most fit women will then be following an individual career." ... "But it is unlikely that that women will have achieved equality with men."

He definitely missed the mark about alimony or men not bearing the majority of child support

I don't think he did.

Alimony and child support do apply to women as well as men in the US, though it's obviously not equally distributed today. Even if we assume that's not because of a flawed system, I can think of several reasons it might be the case. For example, any or all of the following could cause that in a fair system:

* wage earners are still disproportionately men

* women tend to be much more likely to retain (and desire) custody of children

* women tend to be less likely to work outside the home

While I do believe the system is biased against men, I don't think it's nearly as bad as it may seem depending on your own view of things. There are plenty of stories out there of men who have been unfairly saddled with alimony and child support, and those stories get a lot of play. I think it's fair to say that the trope of "a woman left penniless, with no marketable skills, to care for a family after the man left to shirk his responsibilities" is a trope for a reason - because it is and always has been a common ocurrance.

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

#477

Post by mcsoft »

Some predictions were super accurate (i.e. Europe to America in 8 hours), some failed (lunch in 4 pills), but, due to immense optimism of human nature, one just couldn't envision the most influencing events of XX century - the rise of totalitarianism resulting in World War II and all its disasters. Something I can't escape thinking about when reading modern predictions.

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

#478

Post by nightski »

long_time_gone wrote: post #312
iso1631 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inflation is a flat tax of a few percentage points Flat tax on cash holdings, which poor people don't have. It's a negative tax on debt, which poor people tend to hold. It doesn't apply to assets. Now if wages don't keep track with inflation, that's not a tax, it's an employer reducing wages.

>It's a negative tax on debt, which poor people tend to hold. It doesn't apply to assets. Thank you!! This is the first time I've heard someone acknowledge this since the "inflation crisis" started. Inflation is good for student debt holders.

Could be, but it makes a lot of assumptions and is loose with terminology. Monetary inflation does not equal price or wage inflation necessarily. We are definitely seeing price inflation which no longer seems to be transitory. There does seem to be wage inflation, but that is not guaranteed. So while if wage inflation keeps up for those holding debt, then yes. I wonder though if those in the position of student debt have the least leverage to take advantage of the wage inflation.

The other thing is that costs go up. The impact of this is much greater if you are poor which could also affect your ability to actually pay the loans. One has to eat after all.

So imho, it's a lot more complicated for an individual. Sure for a corporation that borrows tens of millions for a new capital expenditure it makes debt cheaper. But that may or may not translate to someone that is poor and paying off debt.

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

#479

Post by tantaman »

Manuel_D wrote: post #396
VirusNewbie wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is this really the case? Inflation favors debtors over creditors, the upper class tends to be the latter not the former. While it is the case that the value of savings goes down, the lower class are much less likely to save.

I'd imagine that wealthy individuals are highly leveraged. In other words, rather than selling assets to buy things they take loans against those assets to buy things. This (1) prevents ever having to pay tax (2) gives them benefits from inflation and (3) gives them benefits from low interest rates as their assets appreciate faster than their interest rate consumes money

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

#480

Post by mc32 »

soco wrote: post #468
mc32 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When social support for that goes away, it's only the "crazy" who would do that just because. But without societal support it's a dead-end. There are countries with lots of people --but whose contribution to innovation is substandard. There is no societal support so innovation is stunted. It’s like thinking justice will happen just because… No, it happens because society supports justice. Justice or innovation don’t…

Why should innovation lose support? It would fall under "people do what they like" so the innovators would go on innovating. And if the innovations bring even more to the society of course they will be adopted.

Let’s look at the Soviet Union to Russia transition. The state no longer had the same demand for space innovation. Their tech sector has stagnated. People didn’t carry on just because they could.
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