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The third great wave

economist.com

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Re: The third great wave

#21

Post by mercer »

Apologies for asking a question unrelated to the message of the article, but I'm a bit confused by the use of 'discomfited' in the first sentence. From my understanding, 'discomforted' seems more accurate, and is a more commonly used word anyways.

Do I misunderstand the difference between discomfit and discomfort, or did they use the wrong word?

EDIT: I suppose it might just be a matter of wanting to come across sophisticated. At a later point the article uses 'insoluble' where 'unsolvable' would've been perfectly fine and probably easier to understand for most people.

Re: The third great wave

#22

Post by Totoradio »

mercer wrote: post #21

Apologies for asking a question unrelated to the message of the article, but I'm a bit confused by the use of 'discomfited' in the first sentence. From my understanding, 'discomforted' seems more accurate, and is a more commonly used word anyways. Do I misunderstand the difference between discomfit and discomfort, or did they use the wrong word? EDIT: I suppose it might just be a matter of wanting to come across soph…

I couldn't find the author name on the page, but this choice of words seems to indicate that (s)he has a French background. "Insoluble" and "Déconfit" are french words, and "Insoluble" is a relatively common word.

Re: The third great wave

#23

Post by mercer »

Totoradio wrote: post #22
mercer wrote: post #21

Apologies for asking a question unrelated to the message of the article, but I'm a bit confused by the use of 'discomfited' in the first sentence. From my understanding, 'discomforted' seems more accurate, and is a more commonly used word anyways. Do I misunderstand the difference between discomfit and discomfort, or did they use the wrong word? EDIT: I suppose it might just be a matter of wanting to come across soph…

I couldn't find the author name on the page, but this choice of words seems to indicate that (s)he has a French background. "Insoluble" and "Déconfit" are french words, and "Insoluble" is a relatively common word.

Ah, that would make a lot of sense. Both words can be used in their context, they just stood out to me.

Re: The third great wave

#24

Post by WillEngler »

Totoradio wrote: post #22
mercer wrote: post #21

Apologies for asking a question unrelated to the message of the article, but I'm a bit confused by the use of 'discomfited' in the first sentence. From my understanding, 'discomforted' seems more accurate, and is a more commonly used word anyways. Do I misunderstand the difference between discomfit and discomfort, or did they use the wrong word? EDIT: I suppose it might just be a matter of wanting to come across soph…

I couldn't find the author name on the page, but this choice of words seems to indicate that (s)he has a French background. "Insoluble" and "Déconfit" are french words, and "Insoluble" is a relatively common word.

The author's name is Ryan Avent. From his personal site, it looks like he's from the states and he got his MSc in London. As for discomfit and insoluble, those words strike me as being in line with the Economist's style.

Re: The third great wave

#25

Post by pjc50 »

thrownaway0000 wrote: post #2

The one thing a magazine like The Economist won't dwell on is the wars that these sorts of disruptions have triggered in the past. Wars like the French and American revolutions were fueled by an upheaval in weaponry and technology that rendered arrangements like feudalism obsolete. Primitive phalanx and cavalry style engagements could not suppress ordinary commoners anymore, if they had enough muskets and gun powder.…

Nuclear mutual assured destruction put an end to total war.

To see what's next, we should look at what's happening in the present: deniable war, secret war and proxy war. What's going on in Ukraine, for example? There's all these Russian speaking guys in Russian military gear going around, but they're not officially Russian military.

The conflict and associated sanctions are made more complicated by the gas pipeline. Europe can't afford to stop buying gas or half of eastern Europe freezes to death. But Russia can't afford to stop selling gas or they run out of money.

In some ways having half your industrial supply chain in "enemy" territory is a great incentive to avoid war.

Similarly anyone following the conflict in the middle east who can determine who's on "our" side or even accurately enumerate all the parties involved deserves some sort of prize. Is this kind of ultra-local ultra-fragmented conflict likely to spread? Is it likely to acquire cheap hi-tech microdrones or similar?

Re: The third great wave

#26

Post by girvo »

1457389 wrote: post #10
lotsofmangos wrote: post #9

At some point you get a small amount of very rich people with a large pile of very cheap stuff that they cannot sell as nobody else has any money and even if they did, the marginal cost of producing the stuff is less than the cost of running a market to sell it in.

This is around when they start giving it away, in the hope that the enhanced livelihoods they generate frees the next generation of entrepreneurs to create even better uses for their capital. At some point we get The Culture. Or so the hopeful prognosis goes...

> At some point we get The Culture

Having recently read the entire series, I'm of two minds when it comes to that scenario. Part of me thinks that it can't come fast enough, but the other part knows that without faster than light travel it's nearly impossible; without a way of gaining more space to live in, pressures on living space will become the source of our conflict even if the capitalist economy as we know it today has broken down...

Re: The third great wave

#27

Post by authatheist »

chroma wrote: post #8
thrownaway0000 wrote: post #2

The one thing a magazine like The Economist won't dwell on is the wars that these sorts of disruptions have triggered in the past. Wars like the French and American revolutions were fueled by an upheaval in weaponry and technology that rendered arrangements like feudalism obsolete. Primitive phalanx and cavalry style engagements could not suppress ordinary commoners anymore, if they had enough muskets and gun powder.…

What's next? Drones. No matter how strong one's industrial base, warfare has always been limited by the number of boots on the ground. Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully automated army. War will become a purely financial drain. As technology advances and drives drone costs to the…

Draft-eligible men, huh?

You say it like it's something men would want. "I'm eligible for being shipped overseas to kill or be killed. Yay for me."

You're worried about what drones will do to warfare?

Imagine you're a psychopath ruler of say, 320 million people, you have a massive fleet of killer drones at your disposal and you're electronically monitoring everything your subjects do. There's an old piece of parchment that says you can't be naughty, but you've already "normalized" violations of its rules, and hey, it's not like text on a piece of paper actually binds you in any way - you're the ruler after all.

Suppose that you don't really feel like giving up your power, even after you've completely destroyed the economy. The masses of human livestock on your tax farm are understandably upset about not being able to secure work, food or shelter. Can you think of ways to use your fleet of killer drones for maintaining your position in power?

Re: The third great wave

#28

Post by zyx321 »

chroma wrote: post #8
thrownaway0000 wrote: post #2

The one thing a magazine like The Economist won't dwell on is the wars that these sorts of disruptions have triggered in the past. Wars like the French and American revolutions were fueled by an upheaval in weaponry and technology that rendered arrangements like feudalism obsolete. Primitive phalanx and cavalry style engagements could not suppress ordinary commoners anymore, if they had enough muskets and gun powder.…

What's next? Drones. No matter how strong one's industrial base, warfare has always been limited by the number of boots on the ground. Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully automated army. War will become a purely financial drain. As technology advances and drives drone costs to the…

Well, you're not gonna target the drones. You'll want to destroy the enemy's ability to control those drones, or their ability to build and maintain them.

Or, more realistically/cynically, you want to PRETEND that's what you're doing, when you're actually targeting major population centers in order to terrorize the enemy into surrendering (as used in WW2 by the USA against Japan, Japan against China, Germany and Britain against each other, etc...)

And simply disengaging when you decide you've had enough is a luxury that the USA and USSR have enjoyed in their proxy wars. Americans haven't had to defend their homeland in over 200 years now, and it seems a very skewed view of the horrors of war resulted from that. If war is nothing but a drain on resources to you, you're not so much fighting as you are trying to mug someone who can't really fight back.

Re: The third great wave

#29

Post by CalRobert »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #9

At some point you get a small amount of very rich people with a large pile of very cheap stuff that they cannot sell as nobody else has any money and even if they did, the marginal cost of producing the stuff is less than the cost of running a market to sell it in.

What's to stop them from selling it to each other? Could we see a completely stratified economy, with rich people selling each other the fruits of their automated factories' labour?

Re: The third great wave

#30

Post by VLM »

kissickas wrote: post #12
Chinjut wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, even prior to 1900, quite a lot of people were upset at these sorts of changes, at least when it was their particular livelihood on the line; consider the historical Luddites, for example. Or the subculture behind the tale of John Henry.

When I was in elementary school, I distinctly remember an optimistic perspective in response to automation of labor. Now, I highly doubt that children are being taught that this is a good thing and it seems to be mostly doom and gloom (although perhaps I'm just too separated from this point of view, having no children myself). What changed? Certainly people during the past industrial revolutions were not all optimist…

"some sort of improved welfare system"

Retirement is culturally new and also is no longer something you do right before you die, but if you examine the numbers, soon a rather large fraction of the population will be retired.

Much as childhood used to mean short manual labor on the farm or sweatshop factory, but now means sitting in school for 20 years.

I find it highly likely that both ages will grow toward the middle, and much as joining .mil and being a soldier is seen as a young person's game, or dare I say being a software developer is seen as being a young persons game, everyone will "get used to" the idea that you only work from age 30 to 40, perhaps. Sit in school, maybe national service, raise your kids, until maybe 35, then retire at 45. If everyone (at least female) has kids in their 20s, that means we wouldn't need much if any day care, and we'd be retired in time to play with / supervise grandkids.

Culturally I bet we'd see a bifurcation of work. "real work" would be what grunt labor still exists, stereotypical millwright work on robots at industrial plants, and writing boring TPS reports and CRUD websites. AKA "the grind". Retired work would be passive income lifestyle businesses and arts n crafts. Personally I'd probably go full on FOSS development rather than everything being the property of my employer. My grandmother would likely go full on knitting, selling $400 sweaters similar to but better than the ones at Nordstroms. My wife seems to enjoy traveling and as a FOSS guy all I need is a place to charge my laptop and the occasional network connection so I'm good with that. I would imagine no small number of people would get really into religion, exercise, watching youtube videos...

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