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A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

economist.com

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Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#131

Post by erikpukinskis »

maxxxxx wrote: post #44

It will be interesting to see how the next 400 years will go. For a long time the US could just keep growing into new territories and absorb a lot of ambitious immigrants that way. It seems this phase is over. The US is now a grown up country where everything is owned already so it will be much harder to grow. The Trump success seems a symptom of this. Instead of just growing as the US had always done Trump's message…

Detroit is, for most intents and purposes, "not owned".

We're in a brief moment where the internet exists, but has not yet disintermediated population centers.

Within 10 years there will be a new city born every week in the US with great jobs, great coffee, and "market housing" i.e. construction cost plus 50%. The property markets will collapse.

Along with this there will be a massive readjustment of wages in favor of workers. The average number of full time employees per corporation will go from 16 to 0.16. The Dow companies will lose 50% (only) of their market share over the subsequent 10 years to federated sole proprietorships and small partnerships, but the middle class will double in size, and population is still headed towards 10 billion, so big companies will grow in net revenue anyway.

From there you can start to see how we get to "everything owned"... 10 billion people and every one of them is extracting maximum utility from a couple acres (about the max area a single human can maximize utility of)... That's 20 billion acres of really "owned" property... Property you couldn't make an offer on without losing money.

We will get to "everything owned" in the U.S. but we're not close. It only looks like that from porches in boom cities.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#132

Post by HumbleGamer »

cryptonector wrote: post #101
zizek23 wrote: post #34

Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…

Other resource-rich countries haven't fared as well. Indeed, it is a truism that the more natural resources, the worse a country performs economically. Some of the wealthiest countries are deprived of natural resources (Israel, Singapore, Monaco, and others) while a bunch of resource-rich countries have done poorly or terribly (Brazil, Argentina, all of Africa, India, Russia, and others). It's what you do with the st…

Well, should we consider some of the underlying factors for why African nations in particular are doing terribly? Seems the 1885 Berlin treaty set that continent back for at least a few centuries, the effects of which are still causing havok to this day.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#134

Post by freeflight »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #124
adwhit wrote: post #19

Given that 400+ years of growth has got us into a position where the likelihood is that the planet will be unable to sustain human life within a few hundred years, I'd be curious to find out what future historians will make of the West's supposedly proud story of progress. In the end, would we all have been better sticking with the Native American way of life? Benjamin Franklin: “When white persons of either sex have…

Life will be fine. Rats, pigeons, raccoons, flies, jellyfish, quite a few plants, fungi, etc, will all be fine. The Cretaceous was a thing. The atmosphere had about as much CO2 as it could hold. There were lots of animals. We're headed back to it. Will there be Eastern Brown Pecker Grouse habitat? No. Will there be coral reefs? Lol no. Will most of the pages of National Geographic be unrecognizable by the naturalists…

> The Cretaceous was a thing. The atmosphere had about as much CO2 as it could hold. There were lots of animals. We're headed back to it.

Extinction scale events have been "a thing" in Earth's history for as long as Earth's been around [0], as you note we are very likely in the middle of another one right now [1]

The big difference this time being: Previous ones most certainly had not been man-made, this one has a very high chance of being man-made. Who's to say humanity is incapable of damaging Earths biosphere beyond a point where it can recover? If we can manage to fill the oceans with more plastic than fish by 2050, then I'm certain we can manage to do quite a bit of damage to this planet as a whole [2].

A while ago I read a paper reasoning something like that might be the explanation for the Fermi paradox; extraterrestrial civilizations getting so advanced that they destroy the biosphere of their own planet, beyond repair, but not advanced enough to escape said destroyed planet. Sadly I can't find it anymore.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#List_of_extin...

[1] http://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/degradation_and_destr...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/01/2...

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#135

Post by plandis »

zizek23 wrote: post #34

Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…

I'd love to hear your take on how Bill Gates owes his success solely to slavery?

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#136

Post by Mithaldu »

plandis wrote: post #135
zizek23 wrote: post #34

Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…

I'd love to hear your take on how Bill Gates owes his success solely to slavery?

The modern form of it, which is having businesses with practically no worker protections (right-to-work, the health care situation) compared to other european countries.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#137

Post by interfixus »

adwhit wrote: post #19

Given that 400+ years of growth has got us into a position where the likelihood is that the planet will be unable to sustain human life within a few hundred years, I'd be curious to find out what future historians will make of the West's supposedly proud story of progress. In the end, would we all have been better sticking with the Native American way of life? Benjamin Franklin: “When white persons of either sex have…

>the likelihood is that the planet will be unable to sustain human life within a few hundred years

Clearly, I haven't been paying the amount of attention I ought. Is this the present level of orthodoxy I need to subscribe to, in order not to be deemed a climate denier? (Or is it "sceptic" these days?).

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#138

Post by labster »

walterstucco wrote: post #108
aaron-lebo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound bitter. Find a society without historical sin and then we can talk. You went off on some tangent about jingoism without explaining where the book supports that. Did you read the book or the review or did you just want to rant?

> Find a society without historical sin The Minoans

Didn't they trap young people in a giant maze with minotaurs? I'm pretty sure minotaurs are specifically forbidden under the Geneva Convention.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#139

Post by sk5t »

Banthum wrote: post #114
phugoid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s just not right to say that so few people should get to control the entire continent just because they were there first. By that argument, it's just not right to say that multi-millionaires should control so much wealth just because they were born into privileged conditions. Wouldn't fairness require a forced redistribution of those resources?

That's why we have such massive forced redistribution of those resources (e.g. progressive income taxes), yes. There is a limit in either case. Nobody would say one person should be allowed to control all global wealth, or that one person should be assigned all of North America. It's just a matter how where you draw your line.

One might consider that the fortunes and income of the very wealthy are, for the most part, not subject to income tax, nor progressive taxes of any other sort of which I am aware. Dividends, capital gains, etc.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#140

Post by pizza »

gerdesj wrote: post #85
ratacat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of like, I come over to your house for dinner... Murder your family members, and sell you to a slaver, then your house is mine. Pretty straight forward.

A landmass and a continent: which bit of bloody great chunks of rock, soil, stuff etc are you having problems with? You can do what you like but the continental plate it was performed on wont give a fuck. You could even destroy that continental plate or even the whole shebang but it will still not give a fuck. Landmasses and continents don't give a fuck - they really don't.

So then "property is theft" is what you're arguing?
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