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If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

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Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#51

Post by ianstallings »

btilly wrote: post #32
jswinghammer wrote: post #3

I think if you just discount all modern innovations then it's easy to say nothing has changed of note. My TV looks better than ever. Should I just discount that as progress because it's still a picture displayed in my living room? If you suggest the iPhone 5 which allows me to get anywhere without planning with turn by turn directions, communicate with family on the road, make dinner reservations, and answer a work r…

Regulation (another word for taxes) and taxes are much higher than in prior periods. Citation needed. Actual numbers, such as the ones at http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-f... , emphatically disagree with you.

Those are for America. But global trends emphatically(?) disagree with you: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/business/global/03iht-srta...

Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#52

Post by lostlogin »

Osmium wrote: post #40
jswinghammer wrote: post #3

I think if you just discount all modern innovations then it's easy to say nothing has changed of note. My TV looks better than ever. Should I just discount that as progress because it's still a picture displayed in my living room? If you suggest the iPhone 5 which allows me to get anywhere without planning with turn by turn directions, communicate with family on the road, make dinner reservations, and answer a work r…

> Regulation (another word for taxes) and taxes are much higher than in prior periods. It should surprise no one that these have negative effects on growth. Are you sure about this? If you're talking about manufacturing regulations, I'd be more wary about buying electronics or toys manufactured in China... Regulations that are good for the consumer can ultimately be good for the companies that make the goods too, bec…

Regulations that are good for workers are important as far as I'm concerned too. And do play a factor in purchase decisions. Basically everyone is worker and consumer, so strengthening consumer and worker rights is good as far as I'm concerned.

Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#53

Post by at-fates-hands »

debacle wrote: post #17

The main problem of the 21st century is and will continue to be energy. We have the science to do amazing things, but we can't afford the power requirements. We wont be able to advance as a civilization without something radically different in the way of generating power.

Amen brother.

This is essentially what it all comes back to right? The thing which drives me insane is so many presidents and administrations have been unable to grasp this. I still think back to Jimmy Carter's speech in 1978 warning about the need for affordable, sustainable energy.

What have we done in the past 30+ years to address this imminent crossroads? Next to nothing.

Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#54

Post by rapind »

I consider our now constant and affordable access to enormous amounts of information (fast and mobile internet) as a massive innovation. It's built on top of lots of other incremental innovations and inventions, but that doesn't lessen it's impact on our fundamental behaviour.

It all boils down to your classification between invention, innovation, and improvement. According to my own subjective classification, there's been a lot of innovation since the 70s. More than I can keep up with anyways.

I think AR is going to be pretty significant too, and a huge enabler of new tech as it matures.

This is just the way to sell a book these days though right? Make extreme claims you don't actually agree with in order to stir up interest.

Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#55

Post by loudin »

I think the article is correct to say that technological innovation has slowed down and will likely continue to slow down over the next period of time. However, I disagree with the diagnosis that this slowdown is due to bad public policy.

Rather, the Internet is such a vast step forward that we are still struggling to build infrastructure. We will be tied up building this infrastructure until we expand the portion of our workforce capable of building technology for the Internet.

Since this is an infrastructure problem, let's compare building pieces of the Internet to building roadways for another great technology - the car. The differences between building roadway and Internet infrastructure are the following:

1) The building blocks of the Internet are not steel, but software and hardware.

If you look at things this way, the iPhone is not its own innovation, but Internet infrastructure. It's a mobile connection to the Internet that serves up other connections through apps. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Yelp - they're all infrastructure. And we've only touched the tip of the iceberg.

2) Unlike building roads, the Internet requires highly skilled workers and doesn't have a 'completion date'.

We still have a lot of opportunities to build out businesses on the Internet, and a large percentage of people who are capable of building these businesses out are doing just that. They're not innovating, but executing.

Until our workforce becomes more educated, the rate of overall change will be stagnant.

Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#56

Post by takluyver »

rndmize wrote: post #25

We live in, presumably, a consumer-spending driven economy. The problem I see is that in the efforts of businesses to become more efficient and to outsource, they're creating a tragedy of the commons effect - if no one is willing to stay in the US and pay US workers highly, US consumers won't have anything to spend. I think this is fairly evident due to the continuing list of articles about jobs that make the front p…

This might make economists cringe, but here's how I see it:

In the past, increasing efficiency was beneficial, because the people no longer needed for one thing could go and do something else, increasing the total amount of things being made and services provided. Most obviously, as agriculture was mechanised, people went to work in the factories (of course, early factories were nasty places to work, but that's another story).

Today, we're still increasing efficiency, but - as I see it - we're running out of things we need people to do, so freeing people up increases un- or underemployment. At best, people are employed to do ever more 'luxury' things that can easily be dropped when money runs tight.

I think we've reached a point where the sum of human happiness is increased not by churning out ever more stuff, and finding ever more services to provide, but by increasing our leisure time. When I was young, I imagined that robots would one day do most of the work, leaving humans to relax and pursue their hobbies. But economics locks us out of that, because having a lot of leisure time (i.e. unemployment) is something to be avoided. I wish I knew how to fix it.

Looked at another way: we can produce the stuff we need without needing all the people to work. But the people who do work resent non-workers enjoying the fruits of their labour, so we almost have to keep people busy for the sake of fairness.

Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#57

Post by debacle »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #53
debacle wrote: post #17

The main problem of the 21st century is and will continue to be energy. We have the science to do amazing things, but we can't afford the power requirements. We wont be able to advance as a civilization without something radically different in the way of generating power.

Amen brother. This is essentially what it all comes back to right? The thing which drives me insane is so many presidents and administrations have been unable to grasp this. I still think back to Jimmy Carter's speech in 1978 warning about the need for affordable, sustainable energy. What have we done in the past 30+ years to address this imminent crossroads? Next to nothing.

Not because we don't want to. There are about ten different ways we could do it, and none of them look incredibly promising.

Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#59

Post by ble »

The phrase 'diminishing marginal returns' is missing from this article. The essence of diminishing marginal returns is something like, "low-hanging fruit gets picked first"; problems that have a good ratio of effort in to reward out are preferentially attacked and so, over time, the average problem is harder to solve or has lower yields.

One could argue that 'stagnation' is occurring not because absolute innovation (however you make up a way to measure it) is down but because the average real-economy impact of a unit innovation (in made up measure) is getting smaller.

Re: If Peter Thiel And Garry Kasparov Are Right, Then We're In Trouble

#60

Post by jswinghammer »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #42
jswinghammer wrote: post #3

I think if you just discount all modern innovations then it's easy to say nothing has changed of note. My TV looks better than ever. Should I just discount that as progress because it's still a picture displayed in my living room? If you suggest the iPhone 5 which allows me to get anywhere without planning with turn by turn directions, communicate with family on the road, make dinner reservations, and answer a work r…

>Regulation (another word for taxes) and taxes are much higher than in prior periods. Can we keep the libertarian troll out of these comments? Do you really want to discuss taxes? Most of my wealth is taxed via capital gains. I pay maybe half the taxes my friends pay. My dad used to run his own business in the 70s and 80s. His tax rate was unbelievable back then for his bracket. We live in a low tax low regulation pe…

Sigh. Regulations are being added at a very rapid rate. Regulations are very much taxes just in a different form.

I didn't vote for Romney.

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